Background: Yohaira Galindez sued the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority after allegedly suffering shoulder and other injuries while riding a RIPTA bus in May 2016. Galindez testified that the driver was speeding and talking to a passenger when a gray vehicle crossed in front of the bus, forcing the driver to brake abruptly. The driver testified…
Held: The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed. It held that Galindez’s medical records were properly used to impeach her testimony about prior shoulder problems. The records’ statements fell within the exception for statements made for medical diagnosis or treatment, and Galindez authenticated the records by confirming the physician and treatment date. When one record proved to belong to her twin sister,…
Background: Mohammed Islam Ahmad Khan, an experienced registered nurse, was enrolled in an advanced neonatal nurse practitioner master’s programme at the University of Southampton. During an April 2021 examination, an invigilator found a model answer among his permitted materials. At a final resit in December 2021, he was found to have exchanged a clean British National…
Held: Mr Justice Morris dismissed the appeal. The Committee had correctly applied the governing principles, considered the relevant correspondence and medical evidence, and reasonably concluded that Khan had not shown he was unable to participate. The High Court rejected his later witness statement as fresh evidence because its account materially contradicted both the information before the Committee and Khan’s verified grounds…
Background: Dan Sharoni served in the Israel Defense Forces as a lieutenant colonel in the Logistics Corps. During criminal proceedings for indecent acts and privacy offenses, he entered into a plea agreement under which he would admit some charges, compensate the victims, and be reduced to private. Related arrangements provided that the IDF would place him…
Held: The Court unanimously dismissed the petition at the threshold. A renewed petition concerning a matter already adjudicated is exceptional and requires a material change in circumstances or newly discovered facts that were previously unknown and could not have been known. Principles of finality and res judicata apply in High Court of Justice proceedings, although with some flexibility.
Background: John Harold Sanders was arrested without a warrant in January 2013 after bringing his three-month-old daughter to a hospital with severe injuries. The child died that evening, and an autopsy attributed her death to a traumatic brain injury and classified it as a homicide. About 64 hours after Sanders’s arrest, before any judicial probable-cause determination,…
Held: In lieu of granting leave to appeal, the Michigan Supreme Court held that statements made while an arrestee is detained in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prompt-probable-cause requirement must be suppressed unless the prosecution proves that the statements were sufficiently attenuated from the unlawful detention. Courts must consider the Miranda warnings, the temporal relationship between the violation and the statements,…
Background: Advent Medical Products, Inc., founded by Randall Fincke to develop and manufacture defibrillators, sold securities to investors without registering them with the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation. Investors generally purchased a promissory note, a call option, and a put option. Advent experienced delays caused by heightened FDA requirements for automatic external defibrillators, a battery…
Held: The New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed the misrepresentation findings. It held that omitting Fincke’s prior litigation did not make his brief professional biography misleading because the lawsuits fell outside the scope and level of detail of that disclosure; the nondisclosure was a nonactionable pure omission, not a misleading half-truth. The court also held that statements about Advent being close to…
Background: Haydee Gallardo fell in the parking lot of Walmart’s Union Township store at approximately 1:30 p.m. on January 3, 2015, during continuous snow, sleet, and rain. The accumulation was between a trace and one tenth of an inch. Walmart’s snow-removal contractor, Land Pros of New Jersey, had spread salt on the parking lot and sidewalks…
Held: In a 4–3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded for entry of summary judgment for Walmart. The majority held that a contractor’s spreading of salt on the minimal snow accumulation present here did not create the “unusual circumstances” required by the first exception to the ongoing storm rule recognized in Pareja v. Princeton International Properties. Absent such circumstances, a…
Background: Washington State University recognized the Gamma Chi chapter of Alpha Tau Omega and provided it benefits including recruitment assistance, institutional support, and permission to use WSU’s name. In return, Gamma Chi annually agreed to university oversight and rules prohibiting hazing and underage alcohol consumption. WSU could investigate violations and impose sanctions ranging from warnings and…
Held: The Washington Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals. It held that WSU had a special relationship with Gamma Chi under § 315(a) because the university and fraternity had a definite, established, and continuing relationship, and WSU had sufficient ability to control the fraternity’s conduct. That relationship gave WSU insight into Gamma Chi’s alcohol and hazing risks and made incoming…
Background: Ryanair commenced proceedings in April 2024 alleging that eDreams unlawfully accessed and used its flight information, sold Ryanair flights through eDreams platforms, infringed intellectual-property rights, engaged in misleading pricing practices and committed economic torts. The claims arose principally from alleged screen scraping and unauthorized interaction with Ryanair’s website and booking systems.
Held: Mr. Justice Oisín Quinn refused eDreams’ application. The Irish proceedings were not barred because the underlying factual, technological, contractual and legal circumstances had materially changed. Ryanair now alleged, among other matters, a closed website system, mandatory acceptance of terms, myRyanair accounts, automated blocking measures and an evolved eDreams business model—including eDreams Prime and bookings made with virtual credit cards. Those…
Background: Benjamin and James Madsen sought orders under ss 98 or 99 of the Civil Procedure Act 2005 (NSW), or the Court’s inherent jurisdiction, requiring solicitor Jonathan O’Loughlin and his law practice, RJCR Holdings Pty Ltd trading as O’Loughlin Westhoff, personally to pay the Madsens’ costs of an earlier interlocutory process. The requested costs were on…
Held: The Court dismissed the Madsens’ application to make O’Loughlin and O’Loughlin Westhoff personally pay the earlier interlocutory costs. Once Meribel FIR ratified their acts, the company assumed the benefits and risks of the proceedings and became the natural and proper party against which those costs should have been sought. The Madsens’ subsequent compromise of their right to pursue costs from…
Background: Jacob Wideman received a life sentence with the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the 1986 first-degree murder of another sixteen-year-old. The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency released him to home arrest in 2016. His release plan emphasized continued counseling with psychologist Dr. Jon McCaine, but after completing counseling provided through a Department program,…
Held: The Court of Appeals affirmed. It declined to consider Wideman’s challenges to the arrest warrant because the superior court had expressly denied those claims in the first special action and Wideman had not timely appealed that ruling. The court held that the later preliminary hearing satisfied due process because the hearing officer needed to determine only whether probable cause existed…
Background: Stephen Johnson used an encrypted filesharing service to access hundreds of videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, uploaded more than 200 videos to his Google Drive account, and saved files on his computer. Google’s automated hash-matching system flagged files in his account and sent 19 CyberTip reports, including suspect videos, to the National Center…
Held: The D.C. Circuit affirmed. The majority assumed without deciding that Sullivan’s initial warrantless viewing violated the Fourth Amendment because Google’s technology could flag inexact or partial matches and no Google employee had reviewed Johnson’s particular files. It held, however, that suppression was unwarranted under the independent-source doctrine and good-faith exception. Sullivan later sought judicial authorization using an affidavit independent of…
Background: The plaintiff sought material, moral, and aesthetic damages after an accident on a trampoline at Mauá Plaza Shopping and subsequent treatment within Notre Dame Intermédica Saúde S/A’s accredited network. He alleged delayed magnetic-resonance imaging, denial of coverage for neurosurgery, and transfer to a public hospital, culminating in quadriplegia. The trial court found no causal link…
Held: The STJ’s Fourth Panel unanimously granted Intermédica’s internal appeal and reconsidered the STJ Presidency’s earlier refusal to hear its appeal from the order denying admission of the special appeal. The Panel concluded that STJ Súmula 182 did not bar that intermediate appeal because Intermédica had adequately challenged the relevant grounds.