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Iowa court: Automated speeding tickets not public record
Legal Interview |
2020/01/03 17:22
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The Iowa Supreme Court says names of car owners ticketed by automated speed cameras are not public records. The court considered a lawsuit filed by former Ottumwa police sergeant Mark Milligan who was ticketed in 2016 driving a city-owned car. He filed an open records request for names of car owners caught on camera and ticketed and those not ticketed.
Officials driving government cars often aren't ticketed. The city denied his request, but a judge ordered their release.
The city appealed. The supreme court concluded Friday that speed camera tickets are city citations not filed in court and therefore aren't public record.
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Court says Arkansas must count eye law referendum signatures
Legal Interview |
2019/12/12 03:39
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The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state must count thousands of signatures that were submitted in favor of holding a referendum on a new law expanding the procedures optometrists can perform.
In a 4-3 ruling, justices said election officials incorrectly applied new ballot measure restrictions when they refused to review the signatures submitted by referendum supporters.
The new law allows optometrists to perform several procedures that previously only ophthalmologists could perform, including injections around the eye, the removal of lesions from the eyelids and certain laser eye surgeries. The law's supporters say optometrists are already trained to perform the procedures but were being forced to refer patients elsewhere. It has drawn heavy opposition from ophthalmologists who say the change puts patients at risk.
The secretary of state's office in August said most of the signatures submitted for the referendum weren't counted since canvassers didn't file required paperwork. But the court ruled that the requirement wasn't in effect at the time the signatures were gathered.
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Court sides with Congress in battle for Trump’s bank records
Legal Interview |
2019/12/02 01:49
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A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday upheld the legality of congressional subpoenas seeking President Donald Trump’s banking records but said sensitive personal information should be protected.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued the ruling, with Judge Debra Ann Livingston saying in a partial dissent that the lower court should take a longer look at the “serious questions” raised by the case and give the parties time to negotiate.
The court said the application by the president and his children to block the subpoenas was properly denied by a judge this year.
The House Financial Services and Intelligence committees have asked Deutsche Bank and Capital One to turn over records related to Trump’s business ventures. The lawyers for the congressional committees say they need access to documents from the banks to investigate possible “foreign influence in the U.S. political process” and possible money laundering from abroad.
Trump and three of his children challenged the subpoenas. In May, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos said Trump and his company were “highly unlikely” to succeed in proving that the subpoenas were unlawful and unconstitutional.
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Cock-a-doodle-doo! French rooster crows over court win
Legal Interview |
2019/09/06 23:49
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Maurice the rooster can keep crowing, a French court ruled Thursday, as it rejected a complaint from neighbors who sued over noise nuisance.
Maurice’s case and several other lawsuits against the sounds of church bells, cow bells, cicadas and the pungent smells from farms have prompted a national debate over how to protect rural culture from the encroachment of expectations that are more associated with urban areas.
Maurice’s owner, Corinne Fesseau, will be able to keep the rooster on the small island of Oleron, off France’s Atlantic coast, the court decided. The frustrated neighbors are considering an appeal.
The rooster owner’s lawyer, Julien Papineau, told The Associated Press that Fesseau “is happy. She cried when I when I told her the court’s decision.”
Maurice’s dawn crowing is exasperating Fesseau’s neighbors, a retired couple who moved to the island two years ago. They asked the court to make the animal move farther away, or shut up.
Instead, the judge in the southwest city of Rochefort ordered them to pay 1,000 euros ($1,005) in damages to Fesseau for reputational harm, plus court costs.
“That made my clients feel very bad,” their lawyer Vincent Huberdeau said. He said Fesseau intentionally put her chicken coop close to her neighbors’ window and then turned Maurice into a cause celebre for rural traditions, and that the judge went too far in punishing the plaintiffs instead.
Their case also backfired in the court of public opinion, at least locally. More than 120,000 people signed a petition urging authorities to leave Maurice alone ? and a “support committee” made up of roosters and hens from around the region came to support his owner during the trial in July.
“The countryside is alive and makes noise ? and so do roosters,” read one of their signs.
The ruling may spell good news for a flock of ducks in the Landes region of southwest France, where a trial is underway between farmers and neighbors angry over the creatures’ quacks and smell.
Authorities also ruled against residents of a village in the French Alps who complained in 2017 about annoying cow bells, and an effort last year to push out cicadas from a southern town to protect tourists from their summer song also failed.
Since Maurice’s tale came to light, some French lawmakers have suggested a law protecting the sounds and smells of the countryside as part of France’s rural heritage. |
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Slovak court rejects to ban parliamentary far right party
Legal Interview |
2019/04/28 23:15
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Slovakia's Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a request by the country's prosecutor general to ban a far-right party that has 14 seats in the country's parliament.
In his request filed two years ago, Jaromir Ciznar said the far-right People's Party Our Slovakia is an extremist group whose activities violate the country's constitution and its goal is to destroy the country's democratic system.
But the court ruled the prosecutor general failed to provide enough evidence for the ban. The verdict is final.
"The ruling has clearly showed that our party is legitimate and democratic," party chairman Marian Kotleba said on Monday. He said it was "a political trial."
The prosecutor's office didn't immediately comment. Kotleba's supporters applauded in the court room while the opponents unveiled a banner in front of the court that read "Stop Fascism."
The party openly admires the Nazi puppet state that the country was during World War II. Party members use Nazi salutes, blame Roma for crime in deprived areas, consider NATO a terror group and want the country out of the alliance and the European Union.
If granted, it would have been the first ban on a parliamentary party.
There is a precedent, though. In 2006, the same court banned a predecessor of People's Party, the neo-Nazi Slovak Togetherness-National Party, also led by Kotleba.
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Justices spurn Georgia inmate, despite juror’s racial slurs
Legal Interview |
2019/03/16 05:22
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The Supreme Court is rejecting a new appeal from a Georgia death row inmate, despite evidence that a juror in his capital case used racial slurs.
The high court had previously blocked the execution of Georgia inmate Keith Leroy Tharpe. But the justices on Monday refused to take up his case after a lower court ruled against him.
The 59-year-old Tharpe is trying to get his death sentence thrown out because of comments the juror made to defense investigators several years after Tharpe’s trial. The juror signed an affidavit, though he later testified that he voted for Tharpe’s death sentence because of the evidence against him. The juror has since died.
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Chief justice seeks budget increase for court technology
Legal Interview |
2019/01/16 01:32
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The head of the Iowa court system says technology and the need to ensure justice for everyone demands increased spending.
Speaking Wednesday in his annual speech to the Legislature, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady told lawmakers “we simply can no longer proceed into the future thinking it will be a modest linear extension from where we are today.”
The judicial branch is requesting nearly $185 million, a 4 percent increase from the current year’s budget. Gov. Kim Reynolds is proposing nearly $183 million.
Among the new programs Cady proposes is a $1.6 million rural courts initiative to secure courthouses and upgrade services to ensure court services in all 99 counties.
He also proposes a $2.5 million digital upgrade that would allow judges to send search warrants electronically to investigators, improve an internet-based telephone system and upgrade technology to allow for remote video appearances for witnesses, parties in cases and court reporters.
Cady also seeks $1.9 million to pay for a proposed 4 percent increase in pay for judiciary officers. |
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