Defamation case of Janklow Williams versus Newsweek Incorporation
Facts
In February 21 1983, the Newsweek weekly magazines published an article which claimed that Janklow, the then Governor of South Dakota, had raped an Indian teenager girl in United States five years ago. Dennis Banks an America Indian activist, who had fled United States in 1975 after he was convicted of felony charges which could result in more than one-year imprisonment upon approval of the evidence, was being sought for his extraditions. Janklow was now seeking compensation for defamation in the court against Newsweek magazine. Furthermore, he wanted Banks to be returned to South Dakota to answer charges of felony. Previously, an Indian who worked for William had claimed
…show more content…
First, there was a need to establish if there was enough evidence in the statement, which would be able to satisfy the definition of defamation. If the court was to find out that there was enough information, which would be injurious to the plaintiff, reputation in public, or either cause degradation and embarrassment as well as hatred, it would proceed with the case. Furthermore, the court in such publication made by the Newsweek could not be relied upon to expose the truth concerning rape charges against Janklow. The Newsweek publication was however, protected by the law to publish an article as such and could be interpreted in accordance to the reader. Moreover, as Janklow would claim that there was a defamatory statement in the article, there was no provision of admonitory words, which could be used to signalize to the readers that there was no fact presented in such a situation. However, the courtroom found out that Newsweek was subjected to offering evidenced news, which were not broad and subjective but rather offered specified and hard news, which a reader would be able to make claims if it contains information meant to harm the …show more content…
Banks on the other hand though may have had felony charges and free ling form his native country, should be answerable to the commentary he made about the rape allegation s Janklow committed against the Indian girl. By the definition of the terms the court also need the plaintiff to verify in the statement that, the statement in the article was directly refereeing to him and was injurious when exposed to the public. There is a need to consider the defendant to reveal out that had applied the rules of writing whereby the cautionary language must be used in readers of the readers in order to avoid the being accused of revealing person information to the public without the consent of individual being referred to. When one refers to a different scenario case whereby a case of Gregory versa McDonnell the ruling was made as a result of failure of the plaintiff to prove that there was no application of cautionary statements, it’s better to include the rubric of legendary context the type of a forum in which the proclamation was prepared, a situation which could be referred to as a social
In Laduzinski v. Alvarez & Marsal Taxand LLC, plaintiff was looking for a job with defendant, Alvarez & Marsal Taxand LLC. Plaintiff, Laduzinski, claimed that he was lured away from his job under false pretenses since defendants hired him to get access to his contacts. Nine months later, after plaintiff had given all his contacts, the manager of the Alvarez companies fired him because there was no work for him. Laduzinski brought a claim to recover damages for fraud in the inducement. The lower court dismissed plaintiff’s claims because plaintiff was an “at will” employee. After Laduzinski appealed, the issues were whether the complaint stated a cause of action for fraudulent inducement, despite that Laduzinski was an at-will employee; and whether the alleged misrepresentations were actionable statements of present fact or non-actionable future promises.
Analysis / Ruling of the Court. The district court granted the employer’s motion for summary judgement on the sexual harassment claim due to the fact that Sherry Lynch treated both men and women equally in this case; that is, she behaved in the same vulgar and inappropriate way towards both genders. For this reason, Smith’s gender was not a contributing factor to the harassment, which is one of the conditions that would have to be met for the sexual harassment claim. The appellate court agreed and affirmed the district court’s judgement. The district court ended up excluding evidence pertaining to the sexual harassment claim because the sexual harassment claim had been dismissed on summary judgement, and because the court decided that the details of the harassment bore little relevance to the retaliation case whereas this evidence would be unfairly prejudicial to Hy-Vee. The appellate court affirmed the district court’s judgement. Smith did not offer any specifics on what evidence she would have wanted to present, which made it hard for the court to determine whether this evidence was material to the retaliation case or not. In her opposition to the motion in limine, she said she only wanted to discuss the harassment case in general, including mentioning that Lynch had harassed/touched her inappropriately. Hy-Vee had no objection to this, and Smith got to present this much evidence in the trial. Therefore, the appellate court found that she waived any objection to the
Legal Case Brief: Bland v. Roberts (4th Cir. 2013). Olivia Johnson JOUR/SPCH 3060 April 1, 2014. Bland v. Roberts, No. 12-1671, Order & Opinion (4th Cir., Sept. 18, 2013), available at:http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/121671.pdf (last visited Apr. 4, 2014). Nature of the Case: First Amendment lawsuit on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Newport News, seeking compensation for lost front/back pay or reinstatement of former positions. Facts: Sheriff B.J. Roberts ran for reelection against opponent, Jim Adams, in 2009.
Adair v. U.S. and Coppage v. Kansas became two defining cases in the Lochner era, a period defined after the Supreme Court’s decision in Lochner v New York, where the court adopted a broad understanding of the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment. In these cases the court used the substantive due process principle to determine whether a state statute or state’s policing power violated an individual’s freedom of contract. To gain a better understanding of the court’s reasoning it is essential to understand what they disregarded and how the rulings relate to the rulings in Plessy v. Ferguson, Lochner v. New York and Muller v. Oregon.
Leonard Peltier is currently serving time in the Leavenworth federal penitentiary for the shooting deaths of two Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents. According to FBI documents, at around 11:50 A.M. on June 26th, 1975, agents Jack Color and Ron Williams were supposedly searching for Jimmy Eagle, a thief wanted for stealing a pair of cowboy boots. The agents encroached on the Jumping Bull Compound in Oglala, South Dakota of the Pine Ridge reservation, in two separate vehicles that no one could recognize (Incident). In this area, there were several members of the American Indian Movement (AIM). After the intrusion of the agents, someone-and it is unsure who-fired a shot and a shoot out began. By the end of the shoot out at Pine Ridge, Williams, Color, and one AIM activist, Joe Stuntz Killsright, were dead (Incident). Peltier was one of the AIM members at the Jumping Bull Compound, and ultimately he was charged and convicted on murder charges. There is a great controversy surrounding the Peltier case. A large contingency of both domestic and international citizens and organizations feel that Peltier has been wrongly convicted, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government authorities here feel as justice was served.
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
Blackburn was candid that most of his clients were “in the (drug) life at some level” and many of them had prior arrests. For instance, Billy Wafer, was on probation for possession of marijuana at the time when he was accused of selling cocaine to Coleman. “I ain’t an angel but I’ve never sold drugs,” said Wafer. Wafer, unlike most of the other defendants, had his charges dropped because he had a rock solid alibi with time cards from his job. Also, his supervisor testified verifying he was at work when Coleman claimed he sold him cocaine.
In cases having to do with constitutionality, the issue of the separation of church and state arises with marked frequency. This battle, which has raged since the nation?s founding, touches the very heart of the United States public, and pits two of the country's most important influences of public opinion against one another. Although some material containing religious content has found its way into many of the nation's public schools, its inclusion stems from its contextual and historical importance, which is heavily supported by material evidence and documentation. It often results from a teacher?s own decision, rather than from a decision handed down from above by a higher power. The proposal of the Dover Area School District to include instruction of intelligent design in biology classes violates the United States Constitution by promoting an excessive religious presence in public schools.
The court stated the appellant’s statements were false concerned issues that were important to the public’s attention. The statements were neither shown nor could be presumed to interfere with the appellant’s performance of his teaching duties or the school’s operation (Oyez, n.d.). In the matter of false statements, the Supreme Court looked back at New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). The school board was unable to prove the statements were malicious in nature.
Throughout the article Nielson and Kubrin remain objective and not formally leaning in favor of Mr. Skinner or the courts decisions. This goes to show that the authors were maintaining a professional standpoint which boosted their credibility in this text. The authors use ethos throughout the article in order to make his statement clear that ethically one should not consider rap lyrics as evidence. They give examples such as “Nobody believes that Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno or that Bret Easton Ellis carried out the gory murders described in “American Psycho”; neither artist claimed that he was writing autobiographically,” the same applied to Mr.Skinner. Nielson and Kubrin also addressed the manner in which providing the jury with the rap lyrics is not ethically right because it allows there to be a bias against the
Wilcox, B. (1996). Dennis Banks runs for justice on behalf or American Indian Rights. Metro, 14-20.Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://siouxme.com/lodge/banks.html
Syme, D. (1997). Martin Bryant's Sentence- What the judge said, Retrieved 5 July, 2003, from http://www.geniac.net/portarthur/sentence.htm. 7. The Australian Encyclopaedia.
Turner’s father, Dan Turner had wrote a letter to the judge asking him to go easy on his son. Dan said that a long sentence would be “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 years of life”. This one phrase made many people furious and outraged. The father had also said that Turner is having a hard time eating his favorite food, steak, because he is so distraught from the trial. A Stanford professor was shocked that this father would compare not being able to eat steak to being sexually assaulted. Before the sentence was given, the twenty three year old victim wrote a twelve page letter describing in detail how the rape affected her life. She had felt that the jury of her peers did not give justice for the horrible assault she endured. She explained how she went to fraternity party near Stanford, drank a lot, then did not know what had happened to her once she regained consciousness in the hospital. In detail, the victim explained the humiliating and traumatizing experience of a forensic sexual assault
Debated as one of the most misrepresented cases in American legal history, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald still fights for innocence. Contrary to infallible evidence, prosecution intentionally withheld crucial information aiding MacDonald’s alibi. Such ratification included proof of an outside attack that would have played a major role in Jeffrey’s case.
Also the prime suspect had other charges pending against him such as possession of illegal substances and the homeowner of the vacant crime scene said the man was a recovering addict. During the conversation with the officers Johnson refused to give up his DNA sample. The man profess he had not commit any murders and did not commit any crimes regarding the matter. Officers then compel him to give his DNA sample with a warrant compelling him to follow the order. Moreover, after the crime was committed it was discovered that Johnson try to sell one of the victims’ cell phone. He was trying to get rid of the evidence that could implement him on the crime. Witness came forward to verify this story that Johnson indeed try to sell the cell phone for cash. In addition, witness said that Johnson try to be the pimp of the victims that he was