Techdirt. Stories filed under "judge"

Judge Finds Himself In Contempt Of Court When His New Smartphone Interrupts Closing Arguments

Tim Cushing — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:07:11 PDT

Having your cellphone go off during a movie or during your kid's school concert is considered by many to be the penultimate act of rudeness. (Actually answering your phone in these locations is the ultimate act of rudeness, one many feel should be punished by immediate death.) Having your cellphone go off in court is not only considered rude, but (legally) contemptuous.

But, what's the expected response if it's a judge's cellphone that starts making noise while court is in session? At most, we'd expect a brief and possibly brusque apology from the judge before returning to the case at hand. We'd expect nothing more because many authority figures have presented themselves as exempt from the rules they enforce for most of the past 20 50 ~~100 years~~.

Judge Raymond Voet of Ionia County, Michigan is an exception. Rules are rules and should apply equally to everybody, no matter what position they hold.

A Michigan judge imposed a $25 contempt of court fine on himself after his cellphone made noise during closing arguments of a jury trial.

"I'm guessing I bumped it. It started talking really loud, saying 'I can't understand you. Say something like Mom,'" he said. "My face got as red as a beet."

Voet, who said the phone is new and he is still learning how to work it, said he decided to hold himself in contempt of court and fine himself $25 because he wouldn't accept excuses from anyone else whose phones caused disturbances in court.

"If I cannot live by the rules that I enforce, then I have no business enforcing these rules," Voet said.

A new phone can have a steep learning curve and this one soundly defeated the judge's embarrassed attempts to silence it. But rather than just dealing with the misbehaving phone and returning to work (actions no one would have questioned -- after all, he is the judge), Judge Voet subjected himself to the same rules he holds everyone else to.

Sure, the fine is only $25, but the gesture is much, much bigger than that. Voet earned plenty of respect in return for a nominal cash outlay. While we can only speculate as to whether he would have subjected himself to a larger fine in order to set an example, the fact is he followed through on an action that wouldn't have occurred to most of his peers, much less been considered (briefly) with any seriousness.

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Judge Who Said Lumping Together Unrelated Copyright Cases Is Fine... Is A Former RIAA Lobbyist

Mike Masnick — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:33:00 PDT

Last week, we noted that judge Beryl Howell seemed to go against numerous other rulings by mass copyright lawsuit filers in saying that it was just fine to lump all the defendants together, despite the fact that each one was totally unrelated to the others. She even went so far as to claim that this benefited the defendants. She also pointed out that this made it easier for the plaintiffs, and seemed particularly concerned that things be as easy as possible for those plaintiffs. As we noted, our legal system isn't supposed to work that way. The point was making sure that actual due process was allowed, and joining together totally unrelated cases went against that principle.

Of course, perhaps there's a reason why Howell wanted to make things easier for plaintiffs in mass copyright lawsuits. You see, as TorrentFreak points out, Judge Beryl Howell is a recent appointment to the bench, and prior to that worked as a lawyer for a law firm that did plenty of work for the RIAA, and Howell herself was a lobbyist for the RIAA. It also notes that she helped write the DMCA among other copyright expansion laws from the last decade and a half.

As TorrentFreak notes, this certainly seems like a conflict of interest.

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Judge Used Real Courtroom Cases To (Secretly) Audition For TV Judge Job; Quotes Yoda To Defendant

Mike Masnick — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:04:00 PDT

THResq has the story of a judge in San Diego, DeAnn Salcido, who apparently was interested in getting into the, apparently quite profitable, business of being a TV judge. So she had her bailiff's husband secretly videotape her in court presiding over various cases. Later, a TV producer asked to videotape another day and did so. Of course, she didn't tell others in the courtroom on the first day of filming (on the second day some were notified, others apparently weren't), and the Commission on Judicial Performance is somewhat understandably concerned that Judge Salcido may have put on more of a "show" than she normally would have, and that could have impacted how she handled the matters in front of her.

The complaint and her responses are below, highlighting pages upon pages of snarky statements that she apparently made in the courtroom, many of which the Commission believes are inappropriate. Judge Salcido does admit that a few are inappropriate -- such as telling one repeat offender: "What this means is don't come back before the court on another case ... 'cause you will definitely be screwed and we don't offer Vaseline for that." In another case, she asked a defendant if he was "a gambling man," when someone who had violated probation wanted to avoid going to jail. In one case, she went "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," and told a defendant it sounded like he needed a lifeline, and asked him if he wanted to "poll the audience." Best of all? When a defendant told her he was "trying to show that I can do what I'm supposed to," she apparently went Yoda, and had the entire courtroom say aloud "Do or do not. There is no try." Her response to that was that it was a "teachable moments" that others could learn from. Now, it's entirely possible, as she suggests, that this is more or less how she always acts, but the fact that it was a (somewhat secretive) "tryout" for a TV job, it certainly calls into question what her motives were at times.

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UK Judge Not Impressed By Mass Copyright Pre-Settlement Campaigns

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 04:06:04 PDT

We recently wrote about yet another law firm in the UK jumping on the "pre-settlement" letter setup, which is designed to misuse the legal system to send "pay us or we'll sue you for copyright infringement" letters. However, it appears that a judge in the UK is not at all impressed with such a misuse of the legal system and has made that point clear to the law firm Gallant Macmillan. While the judge, Chief Master Winegarten, notes that he doesn't fully understand the technical issues, he does point out that he's concerned about the overall process -- and has heard plenty of complaints about such pre-settlement letters. According to TorrentFreak:

"There wouldn't be this hue and cry unless you were pursuing people who were innocent," he told the applicants.

Condemning the actions as a "huge sledgehammer to crack a nut", CMW pondered, "I can't understand why in these thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- [of letters sent out] no-one has been sued."

An interesting side note, is that the judge also seemed to indicate that with the Digital Economy Act, these sorts of pre-settlement situations may no longer be reasonable, since the whole "three strikes" process may take over instead. I don't know enough about the DEA to know if it really precludes such lawsuits (or even threats of lawsuits), but it would surprise me if that were true.

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Not Illegal To Ask Your Fans To Spam A Judge... Though, Still Not Particularly Smart

Mike Masnick — Wed, 26 May 2010 02:53:23 PDT

Earlier this year, we noted that infomercial king Kevin Trudeau was sentenced to 30 days in jail for contempt of court after asking his "fans" to email the judge in a case in which Trudeau is battling the FTC. The contempt charge is a bit tricky, because it's difficult to see what's wrong with having people email a publicly available judge. And, indeed, it appears that the contempt charge has been overturned and Trudeau won't have to go to jail over it after all. That said, it still doesn't seem particularly wise to ask people to spam a judge who's in charge of determining your fate.

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Judge Who Was Revealed As Anonymous Commenter Sues Newspaper For $50 Million

Mike Masnick — Thu, 8 Apr 2010 17:22:00 PDT

You may recall, a few weeks back, that the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that a regular commenter on the site was actually a local judge (who had recently threatened to jail a Plain Dealer reporter for not giving up his source on a story). While revealing the real identity of an anonymous commenter seems pretty sleazy, we did wonder about the boundaries for a news organization. If it's newsworthy who an anonymous commenter is, then at what point should a publication reveal that info? A judge making snide comments about a case she's involved with may, in fact, be newsworthy, and part of an investigative report might reveal that info. So could a newspaper claim that revealing who made the comments was newsworthy?

Well, another judge may have to make that determination... because the judge who was "outed" has now sued the newspaper for $50 million claiming breach of contract, fraud, invasion of privacy, defamation and a few other charges. You can check out the full lawsuit (pdf -- via Eric Goldman).

What's interesting is that she uses multiple comments from articles and columns written in the Plain Dealer about this debate after she was revealed. I'm not sure that's compelling. The columnists and reporters may have their own opinions separate from that of the newspaper itself. However, the defamation claims may have a bit more heft to them, as she claims that many of the statements made by the Plain Dealer were false and not verified. Still, $50 million seems extreme no matter how you look at it.

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Pirate Bay Judge Accused Of Conflict In Another Case As Well

Mike Masnick — Wed, 6 May 2009 15:14:09 PDT

Following the revelation that the judge in The Pirate Bay case may have had a serious conflict of interest, it looks like the Swedish press has decided to investigate some of his other decisions as well. So now they've turned up another recent case (article in Swedish, here's the Google translation), this time involving BMW, where the judge appears to have been connected to the lawyers representing BMW as well. It's not clear how close the connection was, but it does bring into question why a judge, who's in charge of interpreting laws, should be associated with any group that is advocating a specific change in the law -- because it's difficult to see how he could be impartial in any related case.

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Judge In Pirate Bay Case Appears To Have Ties To The Copyright Lobby

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:11:49 PDT

Via Martin Thornkvist, we find out that Swedish Public radio has discovered that the judge in The Pirate Bay case apparently has some ties to the copyright lobby (that's a Google translation -- if you know Swedish, the original is here). Apparently, he's a member of a few organizations that work towards strengthening copyright laws, and even holds a board position in one of those organizations. The lawyers representing the entertainment industry also belonged to one of the pro-copyright organizations in which the judge is a member. Experts quoted in the article note that this is highly irregular, and the judge should have recused himself for conflict of interest. The judge, of course, claims that he doesn't believe he was biased at all, but others note that any hint of bias is a problem in such a legal case (let alone such a high profile one).

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Judge Slams RIAA Tactics

Mike Masnick — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:08:37 PDT

Early on, in the RIAA's legal campaign against file sharers, it appeared that judges were mostly siding with the RIAA, and taking the RIAA's claims at face value. However, due to widespread backlash, and an improved understanding of how the RIAA's tactics are legally questionable, it appears that opposing lawyers have become much better at pushing back on some of the dubious claims by the RIAA, including the basis for the whole campaign. It's nice to see judges are beginning to recognize this as well. While we've seen it in judges rejecting RIAA arguments in court, in one case, it appears that Judge Nancy Gertner pointed out how ridiculous the RIAA's position was and suggested they stop their legal blitz:

"...counsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers... to understand that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it...."

The RIAA used to count on the "sympathy" vote in court, and played the role of a "victim" quite well (they're pirates! they're stealing!). However, it appears that many judges just aren't buying it any more.

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