National Courts Monitor

Photo from The Baltimore Sun report, “Lawyers launch fresh push to get poor represented in Maryland civil courts,” 2/2/16

A new Baltimore-based attorney’s group is referencing Freddie Gray in its push for free access to civil attorneys in some cases like child custody decisions and home evictions, the Baltimore Sun reports. Leadership of the Access to Justice Commission says that “… Gray, the 25-year-old West Baltimore man who suffered a fatal injury in police custody last April, grew up in housing with lead paint. He agreed to convert a major lead paint settlement that would pay out over many years into a lump sum that ultimately was worth far less.”

Reporter Ian Duncan writes that the group, “some of Maryland’s top lawyers,” has “launched a fresh drive Monday to have poor people represented by attorneys in civil cases in an effort to spare the vulnerable from what they see as predatory legal practices, such as buying out lead paint settlements for cents on the dollar.”

The story quotes sate Rep. Elijah E. Cummings using language usually reserved for addressing shortcomings in the criminal justice system (as opposed to civil cases): “If you do not have justice, then you’ll have the absence of peace…. I’m seeing it more and more, and … at some point, people explode. So we have a duty.”

The idea of requiring some civil cases to have a “right to attorney” similar to criminal cases is often called “civil Gideon,” after the landmark Supreme Court case that cemented the right to an attorney so often referenced in TV programs. Some cities, most notably San Francisco and New York, have moved toward civil Gideon, often citing potential cost savings if fewer people lose their homes.

Read more about the Baltimore group here.

NYT Offers Insight Into Obama’s Immigration Woes

by NCM Staff

Posted: February 1, 2016

Leave a Comment

Photo from NYT report, 1/8/16: A 2-year-old boy from Honduras at a shelter in San Antonio, where he stayed with his mother before joining relatives elsewhere in the United States.

A New York Times story is detailing how an influx of Central American refugees is complicating the Obama Administration’s immigration policies, including how building family detention camps to send an anti-immigration signal in 2014 has come back to challenge legal and political situations in an election year. In particular, the report notes that Jude Dolly M Gee of the Federal District Court of the Central District of California ordered back in August that migrant children could not be held in a locked detention center and had to be released, with their parents, “without unnecessary delay.”

Instead of moving away from the camps, the government doubled-down win increased capacity. The NYT report is also interesting in noting that the camps were meant to send a “stay away” message to potential asylum seekers. It says that the “… Obama administration devised a strategy to manage the influx, putting them in detention centers to convince others that illegal crossers would be caught and sent back.”

Read the report here: A Rush of Central Americans Complicates Obama’s Immigration Task

Obama’s ‘Clean Plants’ Order Headed For Fast Supreme Court Decision

by NCM Staff

Updated: January 29, 2016

Leave a Comment

Litigation over President Obama’s climate-change order, “Clean Plants,” is headed for an emergency decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The plan requires a 32 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and is being opposed by 25 states, mostly Republican-led with Texas and West Virginia leading the way. But California and and about a dozen other states, mostly Democratic, are supporting the move by the EPA.

David G. Savage, writing in the Los Angeles Times, explains that the GOP-led side of the lawsuit is seeking an emergency decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to halt implementation of the new rule pending their legal battle. A District of Columbia court recently refused to do so, leading to the emergency appeal to the higher court.

Savage said that Chief Justice Roberts has asked for a response by Feb. 4 from the president’s lawyers and will likely refer the matter to the full court. While there’s no deadline, he added, the justices usually act in a few weeks on such emergency orders.

Read the full report here: Supreme Court is urged to halt Obama’s climate change rules.

Gas-Fire Victim’s Mom Will Address Lubbock On Safety Proposal Progress

by NCM Staff

Posted: January 27, 2016

Leave a Comment

The city council agenda in Lubbock, Texas says that Becky Teel “… with the Brennen Teel Foundation will appear before the City Council to discuss Corrugated Stainless Steel Tubing (CSST) and the purpose of the foundation,” but that’s not exactly right. People with knowledge of her planned comments say she’ll actually be there “as a mom” and not representing the foundation. Either way, she’s likely wondering why recommendations for a higher standard of flexible natural gas pipe have not made their way to the council yet.

Courts Monitor Publisher Sara Warner has written in her Huffington Post blog that Lubbock, perhaps best known as the home of Buddy Holly even if some Mac Davis country music fans might disagree, has emerged as the cutting edge in a controversy over a type of flexible pipe that brings natural gas into millions of American homes. Called CSST, for corrogated stainless steel tubing, some forms of the pipe have been implicated in hundreds and perhaps thousands of lightening-strike home fires. Officials say just such a fire killed Becky Teel’s son, Breennen, in 2012.

Lubbock made headlines when it temporarily banned CSST altogether in the wake of the fires. Then a special city safety committee reportedly recommended moving to the safest of several versions of the tumbling, but the city has not taken up the issue. In her reporting, Ms. Warner has noted that the case could have national implications because one community going to the higher requirements might cause others to do likewise. She also notes that the entire debate is being forced not by government regulators or consumer groups but by research and results of civil litigation.

Sara Warner’s HuffPo piece is here: Buddy Holly’s Hometown Unlikely Pioneer With Lightning and ‘CSST’ Fuel Gas Solution.

Seeking Safety, Young Migrants Find Abuse At Hands Of U.S. Placement

by NCM Staff

Updated: January 26, 2016

Leave a Comment

Photo Credit: AP report, 1/25/16

The Associated Press is releasing a Los Angeles-based investigative report that pretty much indicts the entire U.S. government effort to deal with those unaccompanied kids seeking a sanctuary in the United States. The tale of epic fail begins “… as tens of thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America crossed the border in search of safe harbor, overwhelmed U.S. officials weakened child protection policies, placing some young migrants in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved, or forced to work for little or no pay, an Associated Press investigation has found.”

Responding to public pressure, the U.S. simply cut some corners. The AP notes that “… first, the government stopped fingerprinting most adults seeking to claim the children. In April 2014, the agency stopped requiring original copies of birth certificates to prove most sponsors’ identities. The next month, it decided not to complete forms that request sponsors’ personal and identifying information before sending many of the children to sponsors’ homes. Then, it eliminated FBI criminal history checks for many sponsors.”

The AP found dozens of children who were placed in abusive situations and reports that “Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who chairs the Senate’s bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he will hold a hearing on the agency’s child placement program Thursday because he is concerned that the failures are systemic.”

Read the AP story here: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e87200e7361b412fa8c1d5003b7bf357/ap-investigation-feds-failures-imperil-migrant-children

Balt. Lawyer Group: Freddie Gray Illustrates Civil Justice Issues

NYT Offers Insight Into Obama’s Immigration Woes

Obama’s ‘Clean Plants’ Order Headed For Fast Supreme Court Decision

Gas-Fire Victim’s Mom Will Address Lubbock On Safety Proposal Progress

Seeking Safety, Young Migrants Find Abuse At Hands Of U.S. Placement