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Teen Appealing Web Blog Free Speech Decision
Law Firm News |
2008/03/05 12:22
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A high school senior who used vulgar language in reference to her school administrators is appealing the decision of a lower federal court and fighting for her right to serve as class secretary and to speak at her graduation in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
Avery Doninger, 17, was barred from running for class secretary by Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington, Conn. because administrators she had written in her personal blog that officials were “douchebags” because she thought they cancelling an event she had helped plan. She also called for others to take action against Superintendent Paula Schwartz and to “piss her off more” by writing and calling Schwartz. Officials discovered the blog two weeks after she had written and the teen was told to apologize to Schwartz, show her mother the blog and was told she could not run again for re-election as class secretary. Doninger won the position by write-in votes, but was not permitted to serve.
U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz had said that because Doninger’s blog was addressing school issues and because it was read by other students, she could be punished by the school. However, in the appeal, Doninger’s attorney argued that schools should not be able to regulate what is done on the internet if it does not create a risk of disruption and because it did not take place on school grounds or during a school activity.
It's just a bigger soapbox, her attorney, Jon L. Schoenhorn, told the Hartford Courant.
According to the Hartford Courant, Thomas R. Gerarde, the school’s attorney, said that the Internet has increased the impact of their words by how many people they can reach and that if student leaders make offensive comments about the school on the Internet, the school should be able to punish them.
We shouldn't be required to just swallow it, he said.
He also contended that the blog did cause school officials to receive numerous phone calls and emails and that some students had considered staging a sit-in.
However, the Harford Courant reported, Judge Sonia Sotomayor said that pedagogical rights can't supersede the rights of students off campus to have First Amendment rights. |
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Law firm sues 'Juiced' publisher Judith Regan
Law Firm News |
2008/03/03 19:27
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| Former book publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was sued Monday for legal fees by the firm that prepared her lawsuit against HarperCollins LLC after the publishing company fired her.p class=inside-copyIn court papers, Dreier LLP says Regan reneged on a retainer agreement she signed and then fired the law firm in a transparent and calculated effort to avoid paying petitioners the agreed upon fee./pp class=inside-copyAfter Dreier prepared and filed the lawsuit, court papers say, Regan hired Los Angeles lawyer Bertram Fields to negotiate a settlement with HarperCollins. The terms were not disclosed./pp class=inside-copyAfter the settlement was final, Regan fired Dreier and refused to pay the firm, court papers say./pp class=inside-copyThe lawsuit names Fields as a defendant and accuses him of tortious interference with the business relationship between Dreier and Regan./p |
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U.S. court rules against Bayer's Yasmin patent
Law Firm News |
2008/03/03 19:20
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| A U.S. district court ruled against the validity of Bayer Schering Pharma's patent for its contraceptive drug Yasmin, the German drug company said late on Monday.span id=midArticle_byline/spanspan id=midArticle_0/spanpThis was the result of a patent challenge by generic manufacturer Barr Laboratories, Bayer said in a statement./pspan id=midArticle_1/spanpBayer disagrees with the court's decision and will consider its legal options in this regard, the company added./pspan id=midArticle_2/spanpBayer Schering's contraceptive drug Yasmin has annual sales of more than one billion euros. Sales of Yasmin in the United States came in at 321 million euros ($486.9 million) last year, it said./p |
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Canada-U.S. lumber spat gets split court ruling
Law Firm News |
2008/03/03 12:30
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A London arbitration court has issued a split ruling on Canadian softwood lumber shipments to the United States in the latest installment of the two countries' long-running trade feud.pThe ruling, released on Tuesday, addresses the first of two complaints the Bush administration has lodged, alleging that Canada had breached a 2006 trade deal by shipping too much lumber and exacerbating woes for struggling U.S. lumber firms./ppThe United States accused Canada of misinterpreting the agreement to give its exporters an unfair advantage.
/ppThe ruling marked a victory for the Western Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta when the panel found against the U.S. claim that the provinces owed millions of dollars in export taxes aimed at limiting export surges./ppUnder the deal, Canadian lumber exporters can either pay export charges of up to 15 percent based on their selling price to the United States or cap the charge at 5 percent along with an export quota that restrains volume./ppBritish Columbia has traditionally produced about half of all the softwood that Canada exports to the United States./ppHowever, the court found that Quebec and Ontario in Canada's east, which are also big producers and use the quota option to limit their exports, had sent too much lumber south./ppUnder the panel decision, producers in the east of Canada will be penalized for over-shipping their allowable quota, said Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, the U.S. industry group that has been driving the complaints from Washington./ppCanada claimed at least partial victory and said the ruling was a healthy step for the bilateral 2006 agreement, which was designed to avoid repeating years of long, costly lawsuits./ppWhile Canada believes that it has fully complied with the agreement, we respect the tribunal's ruling ... Today's decision provides clarity with respect to the implementation of the SLA (Softwood Lumber Agreement) in the future, said Canadian Trade Minister David Emerson./ppThe United States had argued that the starting point for calculating export charges and volumes should be the first quarter of 2007, while Canada argued it should be July 2007. The court sided with the United States on that issue./p |
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