Here’s this weeks Court of Appeals decisions list. Looks like 10 decisions– five criminal cases, all affirmed, five civil cases, with a circuit court decision reversing a workers compensation ruling reversed and the other four cases affirmed.
I’m opening the thread here for discussion of any of these cases that catches your eye.
Not sure if this “group effort” comment thing is working, or whether there’s just been nothing much to say about them. At least with the criminal cases, Justice Diaz’s comments on the two from last week suggest that there’s nothing much in the cases so far.
Here’s the May 5th thread. Here’s the May 12th thread.
Here’s a repeat of how its done:
If you can, in addition to naming a case you want to mention, it would be handy to post a link. In comments, hyperlinks are typed in the following form, with the phrase [CASE LINK] replaced by a link to the case and [CASE NAME] its name:
<a href=”[CASE LINK]“>[CASE NAME]</a>
The first case from today would look something like this:
<a href=””http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/Images/HDList/..%5COpinions%5CCO55381.pdf”>Whitley v. City of Brandon</a>
[Dana M. Shadden v. Keith A. Shadden] is likely an example of the Appellant having received bad legal advice from the get-go.
You are evermore right about that one, DLM. Here’s what I see:
1) Wife gets custody in California. Moves to Mississippi (husband moves elsewhere, but that doesn’t matter)
2) Husband moves for custody in California. Wife ignores it, and moves for custody in Mississippi even though under any analysis under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, the husband’s California action has jurisdiction (that’s where the case was filed, and his first filing fixes jurisdiction there…)
3) Wife defaults in California (where the Husband then gets custody) while filing in Mississippi, where court says “You lose, the Cal. court had jurisdiction.”
Yup.
NMC – Did you see who took the Wife’s case to the Appellate level? Hint check folo and THE Kingfish’s archives
I had to read the Jaison O. Harness v. State of Mississippi decision, only because it was DeLaughter’s originally. Harness, it seems to me made mostly specious arguments, but arguing that the traffic investigator was not qualified seemed to have merit, but DeLaughter seems to have explained fairly well his decision to accept Cotten’s qualifications, i.e. Cotten, although not fully trained at the time of the investigation, waited until he was fully trained to determine his conclusions.
Also, Harness’ “Motion to dismiss and motion to suppress” based upon the destroyed blood sample would seem to have weight, until you got to the part about the State Crime Lab notifying all parties that the Lab would destroy the sample after 6 months unless they received notice. If you have received notice and admit that you have received notice, it seems unlikely a court would accept a motion to dismiss and suppress.
DLM, I don’t think you are suppose to actually put in the brackets “[]“, its more like href=”CASE LINK”. I had to backspace in the address bar to take out the closing bracket and quotation mark. NMC got too happy with brackets :-]
WTBAL, you are surely right, but it’s too late for me to fix it now. Thanks to you, html novice that I am, I’ll know for next time.
Here’s the wife’s lawyer being disbarred in Shadden: http://www.folo.us/2008/08/22/james-mcintyre-disbarred/
DLM, along with NMC being bracket happy, even his example is wrong: two quotation marks right after his href= example. Tish, tish. Dammit people, well-formed xhmtl is what we are after.
WtBAL
We are after well-informed commentary about legal issues. It would be better if the xhtml was well-informed but the big thing is the substantive comment, don’t you think?
I try to improve the level (on multiple levels) of commentary and xhtml skills here on the blog, and this is what I get.
I know you have horse, NMC, did you ride in on him?
Well-formed! Well-formed!
A question for those of you who are familiar with appellate practice here: Why are there so many cases where a justice either dissents or concurs only in part of the decision but issues no written opinion? It seems strange that a justice would feel strongly enough about a particular issue to want to make it clear that he or she is not in agreement with the rest of the court, but not quite strongly enough to tell us why.
The concur/dissent w/out joining and w/out opinion has always driven me batty. What are they telling us?
And what is the presedential value of an opinion that is 5-4 where one of the 5 concurs but refuses to join?
It started in the late 80s, became an epidemic when McCrae adopted it, and I think in the last 5 or so years has represented a lack of trust between some of the justices– almost a statement “I don’t want to take the time to figure out what I don’t agree with in there, so I’ll concur but not join your opinion” for the concur-no-opinion.
On the “partial” ones, they’re even stranger. Which part?
Right. The court should not allow that stuff. If you don’t join all parts, specify the parts.
SCOTUS ops routinely use numbered sections so that a justice can dissent from a particular part. In our case, the paragraphs are numbered, so it’s easy.
As for precedent, here’s a “case” study for ya. AmSouth Bank v. Gupta, 838 So. 2d 205 (Miss. 2002). Four justices join, 1 (Easley, natch) concurs/dissents w/o op. McRae and Diaz dissent. Carlson & Graves (the trial court judge) don’t sit. So, 4-2-1? 5-2? Plurality op or majority op? Is a “majority” 5 justices, or just a majority of whoever happens to sit on a case?