Animal Law

Lola, courtesy the Washington Post

A court case will soon decide what the legal value of a pet (or fur baby) in Moynak v. Barking Hound Village.

The story starts with the death of the Moynak's beloved pooch, Lola, after they checked it into the Barking Hound Village Inn, while they went away on vacation. Shortly after picking up Lola, she died. The Moynak's say she was given their other dogs medication (who was also staying at the Inn) and was therefore made ill.

You can read more here.

Some background on what other states do for the loss of a pet as stated in the Washington Post article:

"But when it comes to damages for the death of a pet, state supreme courts have usually knocked down trial and appellate court decisions that award emotional or “non-economic” damages, Favre said, because they view it as a slippery slope. (Separately, a small number of states have enacted legislation on recoverable damages in such cases; Tennessee dog or cat owners, for example, can recover up to $5,000 “for the loss of the reasonably expected society, companionship, love and affection of the pet.”)."

Judicial Voices Project

As many of you know, today at the Law School Courtroom a panel discussion on the "Judicial Voices Project" was held. We here at the Law Library would like to remind you all of website celebrating the South Dakota Supreme Court's 125th Anniversary. The purpose of this oral history archive is to capture a "snapshot" of the South Dakota Supreme Court on this occasion for future generations.

Judge Mildred Ramynke via Judicial Voices Project

Included you'll find oral histories of past and present members of the Court, staff, and practicing attorneys. There is also a timeline, photos, and documents to complement these primary sources. Be sure to check out the Digital Library of South Dakota too!

Witch and Warlock Find Themselves in a Salem, MA Court

It wasn't a dispute over anything exciting though. Really, the only thing to chortle about is, you know, Salem's history with witchcraft, and the fact that this hearing took place 3 days before Halloween.

A "Back to the Future Day" Miracle

It's probably not news to any nerds, ahem, I mean pop-culture aficionados, that today is "Back to the Future Day." But! Did you know that the lawsuit between the DeLorean Estate and the DeLorean Motor Company reached a settlement just in time for the festivities?

In 2014 Sally DeLorean sued DeLorean Motor Company for illegally using the DeLorean name to sell products. But finally, on "Back to the Future Day" eve, parties reached an agreement. Truly, this is more than sheer serendipity. . . even if they claim it's just coincidence.

Read more here.

The "Happy Birthday" Song was Copyrighted . . .Until Now

On September 22, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that very specific piano arrangements of "Happy Birthday" is copyrighted, but the lyrics and melody are not. The copyright owners, Warner/Chappell, have been earning around $2 million on the song each year. 

The song (originally "Good Morning to All" with the melody later also being used for "Happy Birthday To You") was written for kindergartners by sisters Mildred and Patty Hill in 1893.

Because "Happy Birthday" had been under copyright, the public had to get creative with its celebratory singsong in movies, plays, and restaurants - hence the improvised birthday ditty you got embarrassed by at Chi-Chi's when you were 13.

American Bar Association Offers Free Student Memberships

A recent article in the ABA Journal announced that the American Bar Association is now offering free memberships to students at ABA-approved law schools. 

Students who join will "have access to the ABA Job Board, free career advice webinars, complimentary continuing legal education seminars and member discounts [and] will also receive four digital and print issues of Student Lawyer magazine, plus a digital subscription to the monthly ABA Journal."  A link to register is available here.

Interested in some of these resources without signing up for a free membership?  The Law Library subscribes to many of the ABA magazines and publications, including the Student Lawyer.  Recent issues are available on the circular rack just inside the double doors to the library.  If you have a few free minutes, feel free to pick one up and browse through some articles.

Recent issues are also available online here.  Article topics from the March 2015 issue range from surviving your first year on the job, choosing law school courses, writing effective letters (by Bryan Garner), and applying for clerkships.

ABA Acts on a Number of Resolutions at Midyear Meeting

The American Bar Association (ABA) Midyear Meeting was held in Houston, TX in February.  At the Midyear Meeting, the ABA House of Delegates approved a number of resolutions regarding the following topics:

- The appointment of counsel for unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings

- The disclosure of lethal injection protocols in states using the method in carrying out the death penalty

- The provision of comprehensive debt counseling and debt management education to law students and young lawyers

- Resolutions regarding juvenile criminal offenders

- Resolution regarding standards for obtaining protection orders irrespective of an existing relationship between the parties

- Resolutions urging: the expansion of housing protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence; comprehensive laws regarding dangerous wild animals; the adoption of legal standards recommended in the 2013 Indian Law and Order Commission report; the strengthening of consumer protections regarding deceptive or fraudulent loan foreclosure rescue practices; and the imposition of death-penalty sentences only by unanimous decisions by juries

Full details with links to the individuals resolutions are available here from the ABA.  
 

New ICWA Guidelines Published

The U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, recently published new guidelines regarding the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).  The updated guidelines, available here, are the first to be issued since 1979.

According to an in-depth news article available here on Native News Online.Net, the new guidelines:

"... clarify the procedures for determining whether a child is an Indian child, identifying the child’s tribe, and notifying its parent and tribe as early as possible before determining placement..."

"... provide comprehensive guidance on the application of active efforts to prevent the breakup of the Indian family..."

and "... provide clarification that ICWA’s provisions carry the presumption that ICWA’s placement preferences are in the best interests of Indian children."

The article also provides details on the history of ICWA and remarks by Assistant Secretary of the Interior Kevin K. Washburn.  The release of the guidelines was also featured in a recent post on Turtle Talk, the Indigenous Law and Policy Center Blog of the Michigan State University College of Law.

Interested in learning more about the Indian Child Welfare Act?  Consider some of the following resources available in the Law Library's collection:

Children, Tribes, and States: Adoption and Custody Conflicts over American Indian Children / Barbara Ann Atwood

Facing the Future:  The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30 / edited by Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Wenona T. Singel, and Kathryn E. Fort

A Practical Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act / Native American Rights Fund

New Collateral Consequences Database Available From the ABA

The Criminal Justice Section of the ABA (American Bar Association) recently completed an online database called the National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC). 

The database (available at http://www.abacollateralconsequences.org/map/) utilizes a user-friendly graphical interface which allows researchers to easily discover "federal and state laws and regulations that restrict employment, housing, and education benefits and other opportunities for people with convictions."  More information about the database is available here from the ABA. (H/t to the WisBlawg at the University of Wisconsin Law Library for their recent post on this topic.)

Interested in learning more about collateral consequences?  A chapter on this topic is available in The Law and Policy of Sentencing and Corrections in a Nutshell, available in the Law Library's Study Aids collection on the main floor of the Law Library. 

Supreme Court Stays Executions of Three Oklahoma Inmates

The U.S. Supreme Court on January 28 placed a stay on the execution of three Oklahoma death row inmates whose case is currently pending before the Court.  The Court is expected to hear argument on the case in April, which centers on the issue of whether Oklahoma's lethal injection procedure (which utilizes the sedative midazolam) violates the U.S. Constitution as cruel and unusual punishment.

The sedative was involved in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma on April 2014, in which Lockett died of a heart attack nearly 45 minutes after the drug administration. 

The Supreme Court case is Glossip v. Gross, No. 14-7955.  Additional information on the case is available through SCOTUSblog here.  For those seeking additional news coverage, articles are available from NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, among others.

The McKusick Law Library has also updated its Capital Punishment LibGuide with information about the Supreme Court case.  The LibGuide also serves as a resource for those interested in pursuing additional research in this area.  Links to print titles in the Law Library's collection are included in the LibGuide, such as:

Death Penalty in a Nutshell / Victor Streib

Capital Punishment / Paul G. Connors (Editor)

The LibGuide also provides detailed information about the death penalty in South Dakota.

Drones in the News - Drone Law Resources

Prominent in the news this week was the report of a Washington D.C. man who accidentally crashed a drone on the White House lawn, after losing control of the device outside his apartment window.  (See a recent news article on the crash here from the New York Times.)

And just last week, a drone loaded with methamphetamine crashed in a supermarket parking lot in Tijuana, Mexico (news coverage from the Washington Post available here).  The U.S. use of drone strikes overseas in Yemen has also been a recent news item (article here from Reuters). 

These stories highlight the many legal issues regarding the use of unmanned drone craft, both in the civilian and military context.  From FAA regulation to privacy issues, to use by law enforcement and potential use by private companies (such as Amazon), the drone legal "airspace" has numerous obstacles to navigate. 

For law students or faculty looking for a brief introduction to the legal issues surrounding drone use, CALI recently released a lesson, Drones: Unmanned Aircraft Systems, authored by Wendy Davis of the University of Massachusetts School of Law at Dartmouth.  The lesson, which is estimated to take 45-60 minutes to complete, explores the legal aspects of drones in both military and civilian settings.  (Consider it a "crash" course in drone law!)

If you haven't yet signed up for a CALI account, please contact one of the law librarians to receive the CALI authentication code for the USD School of Law.

Study Shows Waiting for Bar Exam Results Can Be Stressful

With the fall semester finals at USD Law now in the books, law students can attest to the anxiety that comes along with waiting for their scores.  The same is true for many bar exam takers, and a new study provides data indicating that those taking the bar exam are significantly stressed immediately after the exam and also in the weeks before the results were released.  The article, by Kate Sweeney and Sara Andrews, is titled Mapping Individual Differences in the Experiences of a Waiting Period, and it appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  For the article, Sweeney and Andrews tracked 50 law school graduates who took the California bar exam in 2011. 

A recent post by the TaxProf Blog provides the abstract of the article, as well as comments from author Kate Sweeney, who is a professor of psychology at the University of California - Riverside. 

New Justice Department Guidance on Marijuana Sales and Use on Native American Reservations

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released an October guidance memorandum regarding enforcement of federal marijuana laws on Native American reservations.  The memorandum, available here, indicates that with regard to enforcement, "each United States Attorney should consult with the affected tribes on a government-to-government basis."

There has been fairly extensive coverage of the memorandum in the press, with a recent article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, which quotes U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon of North Dakota, who chairs the Attorney General’s Subcommittee on Native American Issues, and U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado.

According to the Los Angeles Times article, "the Justice Department will generally not attempt to enforce federal marijuana laws on federally recognized tribes that choose to allow it, as long as they meet eight federal guidelines, including that marijuana not be sold to minors and not be transported to areas that prohibit it."  Purdon is quoted for the proposition that "the federal government will continue to legally support those tribes that wish to ban marijuana, even in states that now permit its sale."  In fact, the memorandum was issued in response to tribal governments seeking clarification as to whether the DOJ would recognize tribal marijuana bans in states where recreational use has been legalized (see article from the Washington Post here).  

While the news coverage of the memorandum has varied, most coverage has framed the issue as one of tribal sovereignty.   As Purdon stated in the Los Angeles Times article, "the tribes have the sovereign right to set the code on their reservations."

Other news coverage is available here from U.S. News and World Report, here from USA Today, and here from the ABA Journal. 

Update in Apple iPod Class Action Antitrust Case

Last week, the Prairie Law Blog posted about the beginning of the trial in a class action lawsuit against Apple, in which the plaintiffs alleged that Apple violated antitrust laws by preventing certain models of iPods from playing songs that were not purchased via Apple's iTunes Store.

The ABA Journal recently reported that the judge presiding over the trial disqualified the one remaining lead plaintiff, because she did not purchase the iPod device within the time period required by the class action lawsuit.  The judge ordered counsel for the plaintiffs to find a substitute lead plaintiff as soon as possible for the trial to proceed.  Bloomberg News reports here on efforts to name a new lead plaintiff in the case. 

Stay up-to-date with developments in the case via Bloomberg News' Antitrust Litigation news page here. 

ABA TECHREPORT Summarizes 2014 Trends in Legal Technology

For more than a decade, the American Bar Association (ABA) has published a yearly Legal Technology Survey Report, based on the results of a survey of practicing attorneys about their technology use and choices of technology.  Copies of the official survey report are available for purchase from the ABA. 

Beginning in 2013, the ABA began publishing the TECHREPORT, which includes articles that summarize the data available in the official report and provide additional analysis.  These articles are written by experts in the field of legal technology.  This year's TECHREPORT is available here, with links to each of the 10 articles, which cover the following topics:  Security, Cloud Computing, Practice Management, Blogging and Social Media, Technology Training, Legal Research, Mobile Technology, Virtual Law Practice, Litigation Technology, and Solo and Small Firm Technology. 

The 2013 ABA TECHREPORT is also available here from the ABA. 

The Debate Over C.O.O.L. Heats Up With U.S. Appeal of WTO Decision

Country-of-Origin Labeling (or C.O.O.L for short) has been a long-debated topic on the international level.  U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules promulgated under 2008 legislation passed by Congress require country-of-origin labeling on packaged cuts of meat, as well as some fruits and vegetables.  (See the USDA's fact sheet here regarding labeling for meat and chicken.)  These rules have been targeted by Canada and Mexico, who claim that the labeling requirements put their products at a disadvantage with American consumers.  These countries won success in a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling 3 years ago, which held that the U.S. rules were illegal in their discrimination against imported meat, according to a recent article from Reuters News here. 

The U.S. appealed the initial ruling and new labeling regulations were promulgated by the USDA in 2013 (see the recent article published by AgWeek).  However, the most recent WTO ruling in October 2014 determined that the new regulations were still non-compliant.  On November 28, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative appealed this subsequent ruling. 

According to an article by the Minnesota Star-Tribune, the appeal and the labeling requirements are supported by the National Farmers Union, while many meatpackers oppose C.O.O.L. because it increases costs and paperwork.  A blog post (written by the President of the National Farmers Union) on "The Hill" Blog indicates that the majority of Americans support the labeling, based on a public opinion poll.

Interested in more information about international trade and agriculture?  Consider one of the following titles available in the McKusick Law Library:

International Trade and Economic Relations in a Nutshell / by Ralph H. Folsom, Michael Wallace Gordon, John A. Spanogle, & Michael P. Van Alstine

Agriculture in the New Global Economy / by William Coleman, Wyn Grant & Tim Josling

Plaintiffs Seek a Bite out of Apple in Class Action Lawsuit

A trial in a class action lawsuit brought against Apple commenced this week in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.  The class includes consumers who purchased certain iPod models between specified dates in 2006 and 2009.  The class plaintiffs claim that Apple violated antitrust laws by preventing (in the form of required software updates) these models of iPods from playing songs that were not purchased via Apple's iTunes Store.  The plaintiffs allege that Apple diminished the market for other music players and thus raised iPod prices higher than they would have been otherwise.

Apple contends that the software updates were necessary for product improvements and security of the devices.  A detailed summary of the litigation (which began in 2005) is available here from c|Net.

Emails from former Apple president Steve Jobs are included as evidence in the trial and a video deposition of Jobs will be played posthumously in court later this week.  More information about the ongoing trial is available here from Reuters News. 

Interested in more information about Antitrust Law or class action lawsuits?  Professor Thomas Horton has written many articles in the area of Antitrust Law which are available via his USD Law Selected Works author page here.  Consider also some of the following titles available in the Law Library:

Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles and Their Application / Phillip E. Areeda

Federal Antitrust Policy: The Law of Competition and its Practice / Herbert Hovenkamp

Consumer Class Actions / Stuart T. Rossman, et al.

Class Actions and Other Multi-Party Litigation in a Nutshell / Robert H. Klonoff

A Visual View of Exonerations Nationwide

The Pace Criminal Justice Blog at Pace Law School recently posted an interactive map, displaying exonerations state-by-state in the United States, with further breakdown by the type of crime and the race of the wrongfully convicted.

The research for the interactive map was conducted by Pamela Perez, PhD, Professor of Biostatistics at Loma Linda University.  The research, for Safer-America.com, examined the 1,450 exonerations listed on the National Registry of Exonerations as of Oct. 20, 2014.

Interested in more information about wrongful convictions?  Consider one of the following titles available in the McKusick Law Library:

Wrongful Capital Convictions and the Legitimacy of the Death Penalty / Karen S. Miller

The Wrong Men: America’s Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions / Stanley Cohen

ABA Commission on Future of Legal Services is Seeking Comments

The ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services has recently published an issues paper in conjunction with "a comprehensive examination of issues related to the delivery of, and the public's access to, legal services in the United States."

The issues paper is available here, and identifies several topics that the Commission is seeking comment on, including: Better Service, Problems in Delivering Law and Law-Related Services, Alternative Providers and Regulatory Innovations, Underserved Communities, Policy Changes, Insights from Other Fields, Data, Legal Education and Training, and Diversity and Inclusion.

The submission deadline for comments is December 10, 2014 and submission instructions are included in the paper.

Hat tip to the Legal Informatics Blog for their post on this topic, which also links to blog posts from a Commission member and the Commission vice-chair about the issues paper. 

Susskind Talk Focuses on Multidisciplinary Approach to Future of Legal Profession

The ABA Journal recently reported on a presentation given by Richard Susskind at the Clio Cloud Conference 2014 held last Monday in Chicago.  Susskind, who is the author of The End of Lawyers? and other books regarding the legal profession, encouraged lawyers to view the profession's challenges as more than simply legal ones, and to enlist the collaboration of professionals in other disciplines, especially information technology.  In his keynote address at the conference Susskind suggested, "there is game-changing technology that could be adopted tomorrow" at the small firm level to ensure small firms' future success. 

For those interested in reading books written by Richard Susskind, the following titles are available in the Law Library's collection:

Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future / Richard Susskind

The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services / Richard Susskind

Transforming the Law: Essays on Technology, Justice, and the Legal Marketplace / Richard Susskind

The Future of Law: Facing the Challenges of Information Technology/ Richard Susskind

Expert Systems in Law / Richard E. Susskind