Civil Justice News

January 9, 2019

Can a state be hauled into another state's courts? Supreme Court tries to decide

USA TODAY reports on a battle between California and Nevada whose roots date back to the nation's founding. At stake is an important issue of states' rights: Can a state be hauled into another state's court system against its will? Forty years ago, the high court allowed it. But times – and all the justices – have changed.

January 9, 2019

Supreme Court considers whether predecessors made a mistake 40 years ago

The Washington Post reports on how the Supreme Court justices are pondering the reversal of a a 40 year old precedent permitting one state to be sued in another state’s courts, without their consent. Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law and Chair of the Civil Justice Research Initiative, argued against reversal of existing precedent and in support of the case proceeding. He emphasized the sovereign power of states to “protect their citizens when they’re injured, including by other states.”

November 4, 2018

Kavanaugh's Approach To Access Depends On Whom You Ask

Law 360 reports on Justice Kavanaugh’s approach to access for justice. Despite writing more than 270 opinions during 12 years as a judge on the D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh has said relatively little on access to justice issues.

November 4, 2018

Justices’ Doubts In Google Row Fuel Legal Aid Worries

Law 360 reports on Frank v. Gaos where the Supreme Court justices’ skepticism of cy pres distributions to charities raises concerns for legal aid providers. Several justices criticized the fact that the $8.5 million deal settling privacy claims against Google would pay millions to attorneys and charities, but nothing to consumers. The scrutiny of these deals indirectly threatens a system that the American Bar Association estimates sends approximately $15.5 million every year to legal aid service organizations.

March 3, 2019

Attys Lose Access Fight Over NYC Jail Conditions For Now

Law 360 reports on a court loss regarding the Brooklyn detention complex in the case New York Federal Defenders v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. A New York federal judge declined to renew an order mandating strict access to attorneys, finding the lawyers who sued over the ordeal lack standing to bring Sixth Amendment claims. U.S. District Judge Margo K. Brodie said that “"I think the government is right, that as to the Sixth Amendment, it is the right of the accused and not the lawyers. While the inmates have the right to bring this particular claim, the Federal Defenders don't." Deirdre von Dornum, the attorney-in-charge of the Federal Defenders, told reporters after the hearing they plan to add inmates as plaintiffs to cure the standing issue.

March 1, 2019

Study: Low-Income Oregonians Are Not Receiving Necessary Legal Aid

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports on a new study by Oregon’s Access to Justice Coalition that showed Oregon is meeting only about 16 percent of the need for low-income civil legal aid services. The study revealed that about 84% of the people surveyed who had legal issues did not receive legal help of any kind. This is due to a lack of funding for legal aid offices and attorneys, Bill Penn, assistant director of the Oregon Law Foundation, said. With its current funding level, Oregon only has two attorneys for every 14,000 low-income individuals who qualify for services, but if it was properly funded then it should be two attorneys for every 10,000 people.

February 10, 2019

Atty Access Win Marks Bigger Fight Over Prison's Conditions

Law 360 reports on a court victory providing access to attorneys for 1,600 peopled detained in a Brooklyn detention complex. U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall, who issued the order, noted that the conditions of confinement raised constitutional concerns. Attorneys had alleged that the lack of heat and power inside in the complex had given rise to a "humanitarian crisis.”

February 10, 2019

3 Cases That Could Boost Immigrants' Access To Counsel

Law 360 summarize three court cases that could boost immigrants’ access to counsel. The first case focuses on improving conditions in rural Georgia and Louisiana detention centers that inhibit access to counsel for clients by obtaining access to more interpreters and providing sufficient space for attorney-client meetings and teleconferencing. The second case focuses specifically on insufficient telephone access at facilities in southern California that restrict access to legal representation. The third case focuses on the issue of whether immigrant children have a right to appointed counsel before the Ninth Circuit.

January 31, 2019

ICE Agents Are Using Pennsylvania’s Courthouses as a Stalking Ground.

A Slate article reports that anyone going before a judge in Pennsylvania courts has their access to justice severely risked due to the increased presence of ICE agents in courts there. According to Slate, probation officers and judges tend to help the agency with “identifying undocumented individuals whose immigration status has nothing to do with their claims before the court.”

January 27, 2019

Rural U.S. Faces A Legal Desert

Law 360 discusses the lack of lawyers and legal aid in the rural United States, which is continually getting worse. Research by Lisa Pruitt, Professor of Law at U.C. Davis, documents the limited access to legal services in rural areas. Similarly, the Legal Services Corporation’s 2017 Access to Justice Report found that “low-income, rural residents received inadequate or no professional help for 86 percent of their civil legal problems.”

October 28, 2018

Legal Aid Funder Faces Existential Crisis Under Trump

Law 360 reports the challenges that legal funder, Legal Service Corporation (LSC) faces under the Trump Administration. In proposed budgets for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, the Trump administration said Congress should "end the one-size-fits-all model of providing legal services through a single federal grant program" because state and local governments "better understand the needs of their communities."

October 28, 2018

High Court Case Threatens Key Source Of Legal Aid Funding

Law 360 reports on a pending U.S. Supreme Court case regarding cy pres deals. Cy pres deals are when class action settlements allocate a portion of the funds to nonprofits when the parties and the judge have agreed the money can't be feasibly distributed to class member. But a challenge to an $8.5 million privacy settlement that has Google LLC paying millions to third parties — and nothing to class members — opens the door for the Supreme Court to issue a broad ruling that could wipe out this significant source of funding for legal aid.

December 5, 2017

Study: Integrating Legal Aid With Medical Care Improves Veterans’ Lives

The Hartford Courant reports on a new study showing that the provision of free legal services for veterans is correlated with improved veteran health. The study showed that the more legal services veterans received, the better they fared, experiencing reduced symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and psychosis, spending less money on abused substances and having better housing situations. Veteran mental health improved even if they lost the case.

December 15, 2016

Non-lawyer Alternative Has Outstanding Success in Civil Courts, According to a New ABF Study

A new American Bar Foundation Study reveals the efficacy of a new solution to the growing access to justice crisis in American civil courts. The study looks at a program in Brooklyn Housing Court that provides “navigators,” trained and supervised individuals without full, formal legal training, to unrepresented litigants in New York City’s civil courts. The study shows that the outcome of most eviction cases depends less on the merits of the case and more on whether tenants have access to legal help. Litigants assisted by navigators were 56 percent more likely than unassisted litigants to say they were able to tell their side of the story in court proceedings.

February 5, 2019

Attacking a Pay Wall That Hides Public Court Filings

A New York Times article reports on the fight against a 10 cent per page fee for electronic access to the federal judiciary’s public record court filings. A class action lawsuit filed in 2016 by the National Veterans Legal Services Program and two other nonprofit groups argues that the “fees inhibit public understanding of the courts and thwart equal access to justice, erecting a financial barrier that many ordinary citizens are unable to clear.” The case is now on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

February 21, 2019

Google to allow employees to sue over discrimination, harassment

The Hill reports that Google is ending its mandatory arbitration policy allowing its employees to sue the company in court over discrimination and harassment claims. The change will apply only to Google's full-time employees. Google also said it will no longer include mandatory arbitration clauses in legal agreements with temporary and contract workers.

February 14, 2019

NY Gives Sex Abuse Victims More Time to Sue, Press Charges

The Associated Press reports on the new New York law that gives childhood sexual abuse victims more time to seek criminal charges or file lawsuits. The law known as the Child Victims Act loosens one of the nation's tightest statutes of limitations on molestation cases. Victims now have until age 55 to file civil lawsuits and seek criminal charges until age 28, as opposed to 23 under the old statute.

January 24, 2019

With Smack-Talking Invective, Lawyer Groups Appeal to Public as One Big Jury Pool

Fair Warning reports on the dueling claims of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) and the American Association for Justice (AAJ) regarding the ‘Judicial Hellholes’ report. Victor Schwartz, the creator of this term and the ATRA’s longtime general counsel, said the report “is about courts where defendants can’t get a fair trial.” On the other side, the AAJ said that “the real hellhole is a world in which an unsuspecting consumer is harmed, abused or defrauded by an unscrupulous corporation and has no recourse and no chance to prevent future wrongdoing.” Academic researchers generally say neither side of this divide deserves praise for objectivity.

January 6, 2019

4 Access To Justice Cases To Watch In 2019

Law 360 summarizes four access to justice cases to watch in 2019. These four cases address civil forfeiture, an immigrant child’s right to a fair hearing without a lawyer, cy pres awards, and double jeopardy. The Civil Justice Research Initiative submitted a legal brief in the cy pres case.

October 28, 2018

MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant Spotlights Access To Justice Field

Law 360 reports that the MacArthur Foundation has awarded a ‘genius’ grant to a researcher in access to civil justice. University of Illinois sociologist Rebecca Sandefur was awarded the no-strings-attached $625,000 grant. Sandefur noted that federal grant money for research into the civil justice system dried up in the 1980s, and scholars focused instead on crime and criminal justice issues as they took priority in the national consciousness.

October 24, 2017

Congress Makes It Harder to Sue the Financial Industry

The Wall Street Journal reports on how Congress just made it harder to sue the financial industry. Congress overturned a rule by an Obama-appointed financial regulator that would have made it easier for consumers to sue banks in groups. The overturned rule prevents companies from including in consumer contracts arbitration clause that blocks class-action lawsuits, though it doesn’t ban arbitration entirely.

June 28, 2017

Stunning drop in federal plaintiffs’ win rate is complete mystery – new study

Reuters reports on a new study by University of Connecticut law professors Alexandra Lahav and Peter Siegelman that show the winning rate for plaintiffs in civil litigation in federal courts declined drastically and steadily between 1985 and 1995, from about 70 percent to 30 percent. If plaintiffs had continued to prevail at 1985 rates across the 24 years the professors evaluated, they would have won 377,000 more cases than they actually did.

December 30, 2016

Washington Post, Top Republicans Say There is a Medical MalPractice Crisis. Experts Say There Isn’t

The Washington Post reports on research disputing top Republicans’ claim that frivolous lawsuits are driving up malpractice insurance premiums and forcing physicians out of business. Researchers and experts say that the nation’s medical malpractice insurance industry is running smoothly and has not been in crisis for more than a decade.