The court originally scheduled oral arguments for 12/10, and at the WTS' request it was rescheduled for 1/14. It's not really anything to read into; attorneys routinely have conflicting commentments. The decision is not going to be handed down at the time of oral argument in any event.
Chaserious
JoinedPosts by Chaserious
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CONTI CASE - Further update appears - Interpretation please!
by AFRIKANMAN infiled letter from:.
rick simons, to notify the court of significant new authority not available at the time of the conclusion of briefing, and also to withdraw a previously submitted subsequent authority.. 11/20/2014.
calendar notice sent.
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No longer to use "house to house record" slips and "please follow up slips"!
by stuckinarut2 ina letter has just been read out indicating that effective immediately, witnesses are no longer to use the s-8 slip known as the "house to house" record slip, as well as the s-43 "please follow up" slip (usually used for foreign language people).. the letter stated that this is because of the changes in privacy laws etc that are becoming common in the world today.. i will try and get a copy of the full letter and post it asap.. .
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Chaserious
Someone asked me to weigh in on this thread from a legal perspective. If these forms have been discontinued in the U.S., I don't think it's due to fear of liability under any privacy or data collection laws. There is nothing illegal in the U.S. about collecting an address along with any information that a person voluntarily discloses, such as name, contact info, etc. This is especially so considering that they are not stored in a central database, but typically just retained in the file of whoever personally collected the information. There is an increasing amount of litigation over unwanted phone/email correspondence, but that wouldn't apply in the case of someone who turns over that information person-to-person and then is contacted. I can’t see any connection between this and “Obamacare” either.
I would guess that this is due to an overall strategy to reduce the appearance of central control over the "preaching" work. They certainly don't want to be on the hook for an agent/servant relationship arising for any liability incurred by individual JWs in field service. This could include anything from vehicle damage/personal injury to physical/sexual assault allegations to trespassing charges. The less individual JWs use WTBTS forms as they go about preaching, that's one less piece of evidence for courts to use to find that the WTBTS is vicariously liable for any acts of individual JWs. WTBTS surely wants the spin that all preaching is organized and directed at the congregation/individual level.
As for other countries, I can’t offer much insight on legal reasons for pulling these forms. As others have said, privacy laws tend to be stricter outside of the U.S.
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Jehovah's Witnesses win partial victory over gated communities. Too little too late?
by Balaamsass2 inmonday, november 24, 2014last update: 1:00 pm pt.
jehovah's witnesses win community access case.
by jack bouboushian .
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Chaserious
The decision from this week was not actually that they could have access to the gated communities - that was decided by the First Circuit Court of Appeals years ago. This was another appeal over how to implement the process of allowing access and how widely it should be applied.
Either way, allowing them access is easily the right decision. The municipal governments are involved in setting up the gated areas. Private persons on private property should be able to keep out whoever they want, but the government should never be allowed to pick and choose who can speak publicly in public places.
As for paying taxes, that never has been and should not be a prerequisite for access to the courts and protection of constitutional rights.
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551
Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown
by Simon inafter a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.
let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .
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Chaserious
I think the civil rights lawsuit will fail because there is clearly no evidence of any racial motivation for the incident
Racial motivation is not an element of a civil rights suit. Excessive force or unreasonable seizure in violation of constitutional restraints on such conduct is sufficient for a civil rights suit. In fact, white plaintiffs file them all the time. There is almost certainly enough there to survive to trial, and the liability potential is so massive that a settlement is likely.
If you are referring to Trayvon Martin as the last trial of the century, there was no civil rights suit because the alleged perpetrator was not a state actor.
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551
Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown
by Simon inafter a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.
let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .
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Chaserious
There was definitely not enough evidence to convict Officer Wilson. That said, it's very unusual for a grand jury not to indict, and even more unusual for a prosecutor to act like he doesn't mind that an indictment was not returned. The whole indictment process was probably a charade, and if not for the public scrutiny the prosecutor' office probably wouldn't have brought these charges.
The civil rights lawsuit is surely next, and I would be surprised if the family doesn't get a sizeable settlement.
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Update today on Candace Conti vs Watchtower case
by Watchtower-Free inhttp://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/dockets.cfm?dist=1&doc_id=2025979&doc_no=a136641.
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Chaserious
Sir82: yes. Although dont consider it set in stone. Some courts will reschedule if an attorney has a planned vacation, another trial, hearing, etc.
New authority is just a case that has been decided since the briefing was done (which was a long time ago in this case) that is relevant to an issue involved.
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Re: CANDACE CONTI - What's the current status?
by CaptainSchmideo incalendar notice sent.
calendar date:.
december 10, 2014 at 9:00 a.m.. .
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Chaserious
That is the date for oral argument.
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Deposition of Richard Ashe
by truthseekeriam inhttp://watchtowerdocuments.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/lopez-11exhibit-8-to-dec-of-copley-iso-opp-to-plnts-mfs.pdf.
did any of you guys sit down and read this??
it's long but i assure you it's a great read.. .
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Chaserious
Do the Watchtower men have their own bible they bring in to court
It's rare these days (at least on the East Coast) for witnesses to be asked to swear on a bible. And there is definitely not going to be any swearing on bibles at a deposition in a lawyer's office. In fact, you can't be made to "swear" at all if you don't want to. As long as a witness "affirms" to tell the truth under penalty of perjury, that's enough to qualify a witness to testify.
As far as objections, what Oubilette said is right. It's not uncommon in any litigation for the majority of questions at a deposition to be objected to. As long as the attorney defending the deposition doesn't instruct the witness not to answer, it's fine. There is no judge there to referee, so they are generally just preserving objections to form. It doesn't mean that the attorney is worried that it's a damning question.
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ALERT: NEW LAWSUIT settlement - $13 MILLION
by Watchtower-Free inhttp://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/135m-awarded-to-bible-teacher-gonzalo-campos-alleged-abuse-victim-jose-lopez-281031832.html.
(published thursday, oct 30, 2014).
thursday, oct 30, 2014 updated at 11:58 pm pdt.
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Chaserious
SV - in response to our exchange on the last page - thanks for posting those quotes from Zalkin / news sources on the appeals decisions in this case. I didn't have a chance to respond earlier, but I think I've gotten to the bottom of it. The decisions by the California Appellate Court and the California Supreme Court were summary orders that refused to intervene, and did not substantively consider whether the judge was correct in issuing her discovery orders
The first indicator to me was the tone of Zalkin's own comments. He was somewhat vague about what these appeals courts did. Plaintiffs' lawyers are promoters. It's part of their job. If one of these higher courts not only said he was right, but explained WHY he was right, he would have spoken about it at every opportunity, including on the podcast.
I also ran an electronic database search today. Written opinions by state appeals and supreme courts are almost always available on an electronic legal database. Nothing there. The answer can be found in these dockets entries from the California Appellate Court, here and here.
On each, docket, you can see that on 3/27/14, there is an entry that says:
The petition for writ of mandate, request for stay and real party's opposition to the stay have been read and considered by Justices Haller, McDonald and McIntyre. The petition is denied. Thus, a writ of mandate was denied through a summary order on the papers (e.g., they never had the lawyers in to court to argue it, and the panel of 3 appeals justices did not write an opinion explaining the reasons for their decision). Then, you can also see that on 5/21/14 (in the second docket link above) the CA Supreme Court denied a petition for review.
Just to briefly summarize, the writ of mandate is a sort of request for an emergency appeal, that is only granted in rare circumstances, regardless of whether there might be merit to the appeal. In most cases, judges will issue various orders along the way. However, the parties have to wait until the end of the entire case, after final judgment to appeal. Even if the judge is wrong, you have to abide by her orders along the way. The writ of mandate is a request for interlocutory appeal, meaning that a party believes they shouldn’t have to wait until final judgment to appeal, for example if an order involves turning over some document where irreparable harm would ensue by the very act of turning it over - the "bell can't be unrung" scenario.
That request was denied, evidently without explanation, by the appeals court. The docket would indicate if a formal opinion explaining the reasons was issued, but none is shown. The CA Supreme Court then refused to entertain an appeal of that decision. The end result for a party whose request for interlocutory appeal is denied, is that they have to comply with the order that they disagreed with. However, the denial does not necessarily mean that the party appealing was wrong; it could be that it just was not an appropriate time to appeal. The bigger question (to me) in this case is what happened between May, when the CA Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, and last week, when judgment was entered. It’s not really possible to tell from the briefs, because the briefing on the sanctions motion was completed in April, when the writ of mandate petition had yet to be decided by the CA Supreme Court.
My editorial take on this is that Zalkin is engaging in a bit of puffery by implying that the intermediate appeal court and the CA Supreme Court have already ruled in his favor on these issues. That’s not necessarily a criticism; talking up his case and promoting how well he’s doing is part of his job. Don't get me wrong - it's an extremely egregious move to refuse to turn over documents that were ordered to be turned over, after exhausting avenues for appeal. Appeals courts will not look favorably upon that. However, it's somewhat of an overstatement to say that the appeals court and CA Supreme Court agreed with everything the trial judge did, when they never had the parties in for argument and never discussed the discovery issues in a formal opinion.
tl;dr version: the appeals courts entered orders that had the result of requiring the WTS and Losch to comply with the discovery orders, but those courts never found that the discovery orders involving document production and deposition testimony were actually correct.
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Chaserious
Some of their outside counsel are JWs. Don Ridley, who represents Losch in the Lopez case, works for a NYC law firm. He was at one time a WT "in house" lawyer, so I doubt they would keep using him if he exited. I believe one or more of the lawyers involved in the Conti case at the trial level was also identified here as a JW in private practice. Who knows if they might offer their services free of charge. Im sure WTS leans on them to do so. When defense counsel is going to charge $300-400 per hour for litigation that takes years thats no small thing.