Cohen V. Cowles Media Co

The case revolves around the plaintiff who was hit by a car. During the fatal crash, the driver of the other car was killed but the plaintiff escaped with injuries. Based on estate law, the plaintiff was accused of the death of the driver and sued in the district court in the Massachusetts. The court named the executor of the estate owned by the dead driver as the defendant. As such, the court had invoked the jurisdiction on diversity. Instead, the federal district court opted to apply principles guiding conflicts of law. The court subsequently established that the determination of the case should be based on Maine law since the accident occurred in Maine. Based on this determination, it was upon the plaintiffs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accident did not occur as a result of their negligence. This contravened the Massachusetts provisions which shift the burden of proof to the defendant.

A California worker is suing Crossmark, accusing them of failing to abide by California state law in connection to the payment of overtime wages as well as violations of workers compensation laws. The plaintiff in the case, Irvin Howard, is a retail executive from California. He filed the lawsuit in April 2016 against Crossmark, Inc. He alleged that Crossmark, Inc. failed to provide fair compensation to their employees through overtime payments at rates established by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Kelley acquired employment as a mattress salesman at Bed-Mart in January 2000. Upon employment, all sales personnel must sign a convent which includes both confidentiality provision - not and non complete provisions. In July 2000, Kelly ended his employment at Bed-Mart and began to work at Sleep America.

On April 20, the District of Columbia Court of Appeal decided in the case “S. Brooke Purll Inc. v. Vailes” to reverse a trial court judgment and to remand it for further proceedings. The case was a dispute between a contractor - S. Brooke Purll, Inc.- and a house’s owner Patrick Darrell Vailes -. The latter sued in the Small Claims and Conciliation Branch for the return of a $5000 payment as an initial payment for the contract while the latter counterclaimed $36.102.04 for liquidated damages. The judge found that the owner failed to perform a demolition and to pay $ 7,031.71. It also determined that the liquidated damages clause was a penalty and, therefore, was not enforceable. It also found that the lost profits damages were not proven and

“On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.”

New Yorker Magazine it states that there must be clear intent to tarnish one’s reputation in order for libel tort law to come into effect. This case was very similar in regards that there was enough evidence that suggest there was intent to hurt the reputation of those mentioned in the articles. Also in the case Anderson v. Liberty Lobby it states the plaintiff must be able to prove that there was in fact damage done to one’s reputation and be able to proof to judges that there was actual malice. As with this case, the court of appeals must take in consideration if the ruling can be made in favor of the plaintiff and that if the summary judgement would go in favor of the plaintiff. The judges want to make sure that they are not wasting time and that there was actual damage done to the plaintiff which can be awarded for punitive

The court case of New York Times vs Sullivan was a case that involved public officials and how they were libeled in the press in the year of nineteen sixty four. L.B. Sullivan was one of three elected commissioners of Alabama. The respondent was L. B. Sullivan was a public official from Alabama and brought a lawsuit against an clergymen, a negro and against a petitioner of the New York Times Company. L.B. Sullivan sued all of these people because he felt that he was libeled in a advertisement of the New York Times. The case had to deal with if the constitutional protections of speech and press limit the states power to award damages for the libel action brought by a public official against the critics of his official conduct.

The Plaintiff, Sullivan, was one of three Commissioners of Montgomery, Alabama who sued the Defendant, the New York Times, for printing and releasing an full page ad about the civil rights movement taking place in the south that defamed Sullivan. The ad was called "Heed Their Rising Voices" and it caused a "wave" of terror that had been directed against those who took place in the civil rights movement in the South. Some of the facts were false. The ad didn't single handily point out Sullivan, he claimed that it referred to him indirectly because he had oversight responsibility of the police. The Defendant stated that they didn't have any reason or proof to say the facts were false. No one put out the extra effort to see if the facts were false

To sum, the case is about an advertising the newspaper included some inaccurate story about the civic leaders, civil right events, and Sullivan. Sullivan (a public official) believed that the defamatory comments that were made of him were making a negative impact on his life, thus he sued the New York times. The court in Alabama at the time ruled “The law … implies legal injury from bare facts of publication itself, falsity and malice are presumed, general damages no need to presume.” Thus, the court from Alabama gave Sullivan a compensation of five hundred thousand dollars. New York times decided to take this case to the supreme court because they believe their 1st amendment rights were being violated. Therefore, a new question arose whether the first amendment protects defamatory, false statements concerning public officials? The court ruled that the 1st amendment does protect the publication of all statements, even false ones, concerning the conduct of a public official except when the statement was made with actual malice. Once again, we notice the irony of freedom of speech the issue is citizens are not informed that under the 1st amendment there is sufficient rights guarantee. It is not solely having the right to express our emotions towards the government, it is to expose information to citizens and have the citizens decided for themselves. Democracy does not work if the government or public official try to hide information from its citizens. Democracy function when there is a clear majority of press that expose the truth and allow people to determine what the issue is. Press must be able to protect us against an overreaching government. Sometimes executive power tries to control the press because they do not want to inform the truth about that for example the Watergates scandal, Edward Snowden, Wiki leaks and

In 2012, a marine project manager called Bellingham Marine Inc. (“Bellingham”) hired Major Engineering Marine Inc. (“Major”) for a project to build a travel lift pier at a harbor. Bellingham then hired a civil engineering firm, Moffatt & Nichol

On April 26, 1968, nineteen year-old Paul Cohen was sentenced to 30 days in jail for wearing a jacket with “F--K THE DRAFT. STOP THE WAR” outside of a municipal courthouse during the Vietnam War. Cohen was found guilty by a California court and was charged under the California statute that prohibits “maliciously and willfully disturbing the peace and quiet of any neighborhood or person by offensive conduct.” The case was argued by the Supreme Court on February 22, 1971 and was decided on June 7, 1971.

With more and more wealthy Australians bringing journalists and publishers to court to demand the revelation of sources shield laws are becoming increasingly important. Shield laws can be defined as an array of laws that offer protection to journalists or other communicators who otherwise face a disobedient contempt charge for refusing to reveal a confidential source. In particular, with the introduction of shield laws in Western Australia journalists’ professional ethics have taken priority over the demands of the law. Although these shield laws provide some protection for journalists and their informants in WA there are still some weaknesses in terms of how these laws are interpreted in court. Furthermore, shield laws are significant in maintaining

One such incident that explains what I mean is the case of Hazelwood v. Kulhmeier. This case was spurred when The Spectrum, Hazelwood East High School’s student-run newspaper, presented

Reporters rely on sources to provide the news they publish, and those sources might not want to share information out of fear that they’ll get in trouble for sharing it. Privileges in reporter were developed to protect journalists. Reporter 's privilege in the United States is the protection that a reporter has under constitutional law from being forced to reveal their confidential information or sources in court. It may be described in the US as the First Amendment right given to journalists to protect their private sources from being exposed.

The first case involved CompuServe, which in the early days of the Internet hosted "an on-line general information service" through which subscribers could access thousands of outside sites and around 150 special-interest forums. When a columnist for one of the special-interest forums posted defamatory comments about a competitor, the competitor sued CompuServe for libel. But the court, in the 1991 case Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe, Inc, found CompuServe could not be held liable as the columnist’s distributor because CompuServe did not review any of the content on the forums before it was posted. Without knowledge of the libel, CompuServe could not be held responsible for