Matthew Heller reports: An Alaska judge’s decision allowing public access to proceedings in a custody battle over Sarah Palin’s grandson could encourage her to make a deal with the child’s father rather than risk an “onslaught” by “scandal-hungry tabloids.” Palin’s personal attorney, who is not a family law specialist, is representing her daughter Bristol in…
Category: U.S.
TN: Court spectator seized and forced to undergo urinalysis – lawsuit
Liz Potocsnak reports on a lawsuit arising from the seizure and urinalysis of a spectator in a Tennessee courtroom. The judge was eventually censored for his “routine practice” in his courtroom, and now the individual is suing: A judge in Dickson County, Tenn., had officers pull a spectator out of his courtroom “on a hunch,”…
Suits filed over Aurora’s use of medical data in bankruptcy cases
Bruce Vielmetti reports: Susan Dandridge knew that when she sought protection in bankruptcy court last year, information about her debts and income would go into a public court file. “It’s old bills and stuff from my earlier life I’m trying to clean up,” said the 53-year-old admissions adviser at Herzing University, a for-profit college with…
Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’
Simmons, Joshua L., Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’ (September 19, 2009). Columbia Business Law Review, Vol. 2009, No. 3, p. 950. The full-text article is available as a free download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1475524 Abstract: Your information is for sale, and the government is buying it at alarming…