Articles Tagged with NY

Why would a defendant litigate over four and a half years, finish conducting discovery, tell a court that it’s ready for trial, and then – only then – ask a plaintiff to admit that he posted photographs on Facebook and other social media sites?

That is the question answered in a recent New York decision by Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Hector D. LaSalle. The case, Guzman v. Farrell Building Co., et al, highlights the consequences for a defendant who wants access to a plaintiff’s Facebook account after filing a note of issue and certificate of readiness to confirm that it is ready for trial.

Plaintiff Samuel Guzman, a construction worker, sued defendant general contractor Farrell Building Co. in early 2006 under New York Labor Law §240(1) for injuries he reportedly sustained in a two-story fall while at work building a home in the Hamptons. Cases filed under Labor Law § 240(1) impose strict liability against defendants found responsible for making sure that safety equipment is in place and operational in order to protect construction workers.

Four and a half years later, the GC informed the court that it completed discovery. It did this by filing a note of issue and certificate of readiness for trial. Soon after submitting this filing, however, the GC claimed its investigator had now found “several hundred photographs of the plaintiff that were posted to Internet media websites such as Facebook,” and others, that it believed were helpful to its case.

An 83-year-old iPhone user sued Apple this week, claiming that she injured herself during prime winter holiday shopping season last December by walking “directly into the clear glass doors” at the company’s Manhasset, Long Island Apple retail store in New York.

Ouch!

Who was at fault here? Plaintiff Evelyn Paswell maintains that her “injuries were due solely to the negligence of” Apple.

It’s February 1st, and we at Justia are happy to report that in January members of our Onward and Facebook communities not only stopped by to visit us, you also liked us, and sometimes, you really, really liked us.

Our heavy hitter in January on the Onward Blog in terms of visits was Courtney’s post on the Online Blue Book – looks like there are more than a few people out there who like to get their inner citation geek on. I encourage anyone who hasn’t already to check out Courtney’s analysis and review of The Blue Book’s online features and also catch a glimpse of one of our Justia pugs, Sheba, giving a shout out to vendor-neutral citation.  Other popular posts this month included our Legal Predictions for 2011 and some thoughts on our shock over California’s new menu labeling laws (note: watch out for the 400+ calorie scones at Starbucks).

One of the perks of working at Justia is that our office is just a few doors down from a Starbucks. Chances are on any given day you’ll find a steady stream of Justians popping over at some point to re-fuel on caffeine and load up on something to eat.  Imagine how surprised a group of us were last week then to see that the coffee chain now posts the calorie content of their drinks and food – uh oh – we’d been busted!  While I fretted over the 400+ calorie scones, Courtney and Ken noticed the high counts of some of their favorite drinks and all three of us wondered what was going on.  Is Starbucks suddenly concerned about our health or, more likely, is there some new law we didn’t know about that now makes it mandatory to list this nutritional information.

Meet California Health and Safety Code Sec. 114094 – California’s new menu labeling law! Turns out this law has been on the books since 2008, but given that establishments covered under its provisions had until December 31, 2010 to make calorie counts and other nutritional information available to customers, none of us were aware of it.

Last week marked the formal launch of a new Supreme Court of California resource center, SCOCAL (http://scocal.stanford.edu). SCOCAL is a joint project between Justia and our friends at the Robert Crown Law Library at Stanford and Fastcase. There are lots of cool features in the site and, as ever, I encourage all our readers who are interested in California law to spend some time checking it out. Below is a brief summary of what you’ll find when you visit the site.

California Supreme Court Opinions – Browse through the full text of recent opinions by date, name or issue, or search the entire collection, which includes decisions from 1934 to the present. Click on the tabs located at the top of each individual case to access related information and documents.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but there’s still time to get terrific gifts for lawyers and clients.  Here are some of our favs:

• The Apple iPad —  It’s sleek, small, and über cool. It holds nifty free legal apps like Fastcase to find state and federal statutes and cases and Oyez’s PocketJustice that let’s lawyers listen to Supreme Court oral arguments.  When your attorney friend is done raging at opposing counsel’s latest outrageous offer to their client, the attorney can vent his or her anger by playing Angry Birds or Star Wars Falcon Gunner. Plus, it makes them (and everyone they meet) think that they’re a swell lawyer, right?
• Adopt a Volume of the Federal Reporter — No, we’re not crazy (at least not all the time)!  For $1,200, you can actually make a tax-deductible donation to Public.Resource.Org to support scanning a volume or two of the first series of the Federal Reporter of the United States in the name of your favorite lawyer or law firm.  The donation is to help them “adopt” a volume of federal case law  from 1880 – 1924 that is now in the public domain.

Given that some of our favorite Justia supporters and friends are law librarians and to help get us all into the holiday spirit of the season, we thought it might be fun to put together a list of library and legal-themed gifts for those folks who keep us on track and organized when it comes to legal research and information. (And for those of our readers who practice law, fear not. We have a separate list coming out for you this week as well!)

On Friday, many law school graduates were eagerly waiting for their July 2010 New York Bar exam results.

The New York State Board of Law Examiners (‘BOLE’) promised law students that “the results of the July 2010 bar examination are being emailed to candidates beginning on November 5, 2010,” but warned candidates that there might be a delay of up to 24 hours before “your email system” would get them.

Any e-mail problems for the lawyers-in-waiting, however, paled in comparison to the results being posted online before they actually received them.  It’s sort of like you already know that your  significant other is going to propose to you, but you don’t know when.  Would you rather find out from him or her directly, or from Facebook first?