There can be no doubt that America is in the midst of a protracted epidemic of mass shootings. Over the past decade, barely a month goes by where we are not treated to horrific headlines from some type of shooting where multiple people are killed. 

A mass shooting in the United States is defined as an incident where four or more people are shot, wounded, or killed in a single event, not including the shooter. On November 30, 2021, four students were killed by another student at Oxford High School in Oakland County, MIchigan. 

The case against Jennifer Crumbley, Mother of the Oxford High School shooter, was submitted to an Oakland County jury last Friday. The shooter's father is scheduled for trial in March. In this pair of truly groundbreaking cases, the shooter's parents were each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Their son has already pled guilty to four counts of first degree murder and was sentenced as an adult to life without the possibility of parole. 

Groundbreaking Case; Complicated and Unusual Circumstances

America has become accustomed to mass shootings; we've become numb to these frequent tragic events and their painful aftermath. Congress cannot pass effective gun control measures and, even if they did, our Second Amendment right to bear arms is a foundational bar to comprehensive gun regulation. 

Mass shootings usually end with the shooter taking his or her own life, or being charged with multiple counts of murder and other capital felonies. In Michigan, a capital felony is any crime where life imprisonment is a potential sentence upon conviction. 

Mental illness is highly correlated with mass shootings; a very high percentage of mass shooters have some form of acute mental illness. The Crumbley case is no different.

The Oxford High School shooting was the first mass shooting -according to the above referenced definition- in Oakland County, Michigan. The case has some very unusual factual aspects. 

First, following the shooting, the Oakland County Sheriff attempted to locate the shooter's parents but were unable to do so because, as it turned out, they went on the lam in Detroit. As a result, the Oakland County Sheriff scrambled a state-wide manhunt for James and Jennifer Crumbley, locating them cowering in a warehouse in the 313.

Second, the Crumbleys allegedly purchased the Sig Sauer 9 mm used in the shooting rampage for their son as a Christmas gift, although he was not elibigle to legally own or possess a gun due to his minority. Jennifer Crumbley testified in her own defense; always a highly risky prospect. She testified that she helped her son research and purchase the weapon.

Third, any time an attorney allows her client to testify, evidentiary doors often get opened that damage the defendant on cross examination. In this case, Jennifer Crumbley testified about her son's text communications about ghosts and demons; trying to explain it all away and to justify why she neglected to get her son professional help. 

The jury heard evidence that Jennifer thought her son was "weird"; that his only hobby involved shooting guns; that they, as a family, made trips to the shooting range; that she researched mental illness on the eve of her son's shooting rampage, but never took him to a professional or even thought he had a mential illness. 

On and on it goes. No wonder the Oakland County Prosecutor believes she can convict on a manslaughter theory. Technically, the prosecutor tried the case under two separate and distinct manslaughter theories; more on that below. 

To be fair, national headlines and publicity notwithstanding, the prosecutor had to bring these charges. Under such facts, not to do so would be political suicide. Nor could she have extended the Crumbleys any plea offer; also political suicide. Karen McDonald had to go to a jury trial in this case. In Michigan, county prosecutors are up for election every four years. In the midst of America's mass shooting epidemic, lack of parental supervision is a legitimate theory to assign culpability in some cases. 

In some ways, the Crumbleys are in a similar liability position as the parent of an infant or toddler who staggers into a room with a loaded weapon and shoots someone. We've seen dozens of such cases across the country. 

Jury Instructions

In criminal cases, there are a set of standard jury instructions that set forth some of the basic procedural and substantive concepts involved in our criminal justice system. They are standard to the extent that they are read to juries in every criminal case. There are also special jury instructions that cover some of the unique circumstances of a particular case, like the case of the Crumbley parents.

The Oakland County jury was charged with the following instructions for involuntary manslaughter. The jury instructions, read to the jury by Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews, included two separate theories of manslaughter; one involving the legal duty of due care contained within the concept of neglegence, the other involving gross neglegence. 

Regarding the gross negligence theory, Judge Matthews charged the jury that the Oakland County Prosecutor had the burden to prove each of the following two elements beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the highest evidentiary burden in Michigan:

• First, that the defendant caused the death of the student(s), that is, that the student(s) died as a result of storing a firearm and its ammunition, so as to allow access to the firearm and its ammunition by her minor child; and 

• Second, in doing the act that caused the student's death, the defendant acted in a grossly negligent manner.

These instructions were repeated for each of the four deceased Oxford High School students. 

Regarding the ordinary negligence theory, a special jury instruction was fashioned and read to the jury:

The defendant is charged with the crime of involuntary manslaughter resulting from the failure to perform a legal duty. To prove this charge, the prosecutor must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt:

• First, that the defendant had a legal duty to the decedent. The legal duty here is one imposed by law. In Michigan, a parent has the duty to exercise the duty of reasonable care to control their minor child so as to prevent the minor child from harming others or prevent the minor child from conducting themselves in a way that creates an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to others. This duty arises when both of the following are true: a) the parent knows or has reason to know that they have the ability to control their minor child; and b) the parent knows the necessity and opportunity to exercise such control.

• Second, that the defendant knew of the facts that gave rise to the duty.

• Third, that the defendant neglected or refused to perform that duty and that her failure to perform it was grossly negligent to human life.

• Fourth, that the death of the student(s) was directly caused by defendant's failure to perform this duty, that is, that the student(s) died as a result of the defendant's failure to exercise reasonable care to control her minor child so as to prevent the minor child from intentionally harming others or the minor child from so conducting himself so as to create an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to others when the defendant knew she had the ability to control her minor child and knew of the necessity and opportunity to do so. 

The jury was also instructed that the shooter's act of shooting was reasonably foreseeable; they were instucted that either or both of the prosecutor's theories were sufficient to convict the defendant. Because one of the prosecutor's witnesses qualified as an expert in computer forensics, the jury was instucted on consideration of expert witness testimony; that they did not have to believe the expert's opinion but that they needed to decide how much weight to give to such testimony. 

Because this is truly a momentus case under the intense scrutiny of our national media, the jury could be out for several days considering the complex jury instuctions. 

Involuntary Manslaughter Law in Michigan

Involuntary manslaughter is a 15-year felony meaning that if convicted, Jennifer Crumbley faces up to 15-years in a Michigan Department of Corrections prison. Normally, defendants without significant prior felony convictions do not receive the maximum sentence. 

But this is not a normal case; this is a high-profile case that has the attention of the entire nation because it is believed to be the first time the parents of a mass shooter have been charged with manslaughter. 

Unlike voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter does not require establishing an intent to kill the victims. Involuntary manslaughter is highly circumstance dependent. The Michigan Supreme Court has described it as:

Involuntary manslaughter is the killing of another without malice and unintentionally, but in doing some unlawful act not amounting to a felony or naturally tending to cause death or great bodily harm, or in negligently doing some act lawful in itself, or by the negligent omission to perform a legal duty. 

This definition from our common law, of course, ties into the jury instructions above. Clear as mud, right?

An average juror, understandibly, may have some difficulty keeping the concepts straight. Judge Matthews did instruct the Crumbley jury that they could convict Jennifer Crumbley if they were convinced of either of the prosecutor's theories of culpability, i.e. the gross negligence theory or the breach of parental legal duty theory.

Full Disclosure

We here at the Law Blogger go way back with many of the players in these groundbreaking cases. We've known Judge Matthews since she was an assistant prosecutor in Oakland County; this blogger appeared before Judge Matthews just last week; our lawyers go back with Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald to the days when she was a family law lawyer with the Dickenson firm, and then a family court judge; we have had cases where Karen McDonald represented the opposing party and we appeared before former judge McDonald in dozens of cases when she was on the family court bench. 

We've known defense counsel Shannon Smith, and currently have our own capital case with Smith's former law partner Mariel Lehman, James Crumbley's defense counsel. Our law firm has had to coordinate the trial in our capital case in Livingston County with James Crumbley's trial. 

So, along with the rest of the country, we will anxously await the jury verdict in this groundbreaking case and the in the James Crumbley case. A guilty verdict could redefine a parent's duties to control the conduct of their minor children; something that many Americans believe is long overdue. 

On the other hand, Michigan jurisprudence has long been settled that the criminal acts of third parties are not deemed to be foreseeable. Should an exception be made when the criminal actor is your minor child? 

Post #638

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The old sues the new; our latest "clash of titans" takes the form of one of the most significant lawsuits filed this year. Full disclosure: this post was not generated or assisted by any AI tool; it is the original work product of the author, Attorney Timothy P. Flynn.

Last week, the New York Times sued Open AI and its affiliated companies, along with Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement. The Times alleges that Open AI, in the development of its proprietary machine learning neural network, scraped millions of copyrighted Times' articles and other protected content from the Internet. 

Further, the Times alleges that despite efforts to negotiate a resolution with the defendant companies, the paper is now owed money damages for the use of its content. This claim is based on the Times' allegations that they have made a significant investment, literally over centuries, in their news platform. Here is a link to the complaint that was filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan.

Core Allegations in the NYT Complaint

The first paragraph of the Times' complaint fittingly reads like a piece of finely-tuned journalism: 

Independent journalism is vital to our democracy. It is also increasingly rare and valuable. For more than 170 years, The Times has given the world deeply reported, expert, independent journalism. Times journalists go where the story is, often at great risk and cost, to inform the public about important and pressing issues. They bear witness to conflict and disasters, provide accountability for the use of power, and illuminate truths that would otherwise go unseen. Their essential work is made possible through the efforts of a large and expensive organization that provides legal, security, and operational support, as well as editors who ensure their journalism meets the highest standards of accuracy and fairness. This work has always been important. But within a damaged information ecosystem that is awash in unreliable content, The Times’s journalism provides a service that has grown even more valuable to the public by supplying trustworthy information, news analysis, and commentary.

These are the self-proclaimed attributes the Times asserts it brings to world-class professional journalism:

• Investigative reporting; 
• Breaking news reporting; 
• Beat reporting; 
• Reviews and analysis; 
• Commentary and opinion; 
• 10.1 million digital and print subscribers worldwide; 
• 250 articles publised every day; and 
• an unparalelled archive of content

At certain points, the complaint editorializes that the cost of the world class journalism the Times brings to the news-consuming public has drastically increased due to general AI products and that flood "today's information ecosystem". The complaint notes the hundreds of newspapers that have gone out of business as a direct result of the Internet and laments the open floodgates of "misinformation".

To protect its work product, the Times alleges that it has copyrighted every edition of its newspaper for over 100 years; it has deployed a paywall; and has strict licensing agreements. 

Here are the counts of the complaint which lay out the legal theories of liability for the Defendant companies: 

Count I - Copyright Infringment

Count II - Vicarious Copyright Infringment

Counts III and IV - Contributory Copyright Infringment

Count V - Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Count VI - Unfair Competition by Misappropriation

Count VII - Trademark Dillution

In their prayer for relief, the Times seeks statutory and compensatory damages; disgorgement; an injunction against ChatGPT; destruction of all ChatGPT models that use NYT content in violation of their copyrights, and, of course, attorney fees.

The NYT is bringing the house in this suit. All within the context of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence, and machine learning. 

Machine Learning Basics

The term "Artificial Intelligence" is one of the most grotesque misnomers of all time. Tech industry professionals eschew the term for the more proper: "machine learning". 

Good old fashioned AI was a complex system of math-based rules. Then, sometime around the turn of the last Century, neural computing networks -computer networks designed to function more like a human brain- began to develop along with high-capacity supercomputers, giving birth to the new era of AI or, more appropriately, machine learning. 

The idea behind machine learning is that language, through prompts, is broken down to its basic component parts -words and characters- and assigned numeric value. With massive computing capacity behind it, the machine then uses probability to determine an accurate, or humanly appropriate, output in response to a given prompt. In the coding and design process, various outputs are then ranked. Thus, through a series of prompts, the computer learns to provide a better, more responsive, higher quality output.

Another feature of modern machine learning is the large language model [LLM]. A massive amount of language data is stored in the machine from which it retrieves and fashions its natural language response to a specific set of prompts. While human users think up the prompts, its the machine that has total access to the massive LLM and vast stores of other data. Think in terms of the Library of Congress combined with every college library on the planet, and then some. 

In the NYT copyright infringment lawsuit, the newspaper alleges that when Open AI's ChatGPT program scraped all manner of language data from the Internet, it swept proprietary NYT content along with it in the process. The Times further alleges that ChatGPT favors the NYT "style" of language as it lends itself to a highly ranked quality output. Makes sense when you think about it. If ChatGPT responds to a series of prompts in the manner of a seasoned NYT journalist, the AI user is ahead of the game. 

One of the many interesting allegations contained in the NYT complaint is that ChatGPT's first two versions were constructed on open source platforms with detailed specifications made public. Not so with ChatGPT's third and fourth iterations, notes the Times. This is because, according to the newspaper, Open AI purposely concealed the data it copied from the Internet to train its latest computer models. 

As an offer of proof set forth in the complaint itself, the NYT compares ChatGPT output and the text of a NYT article; the similarity is unmistakable. Plagiarism, says the Times. In another example, the times cites to a prompt complaining that the user was "paywalled out" of a specific NYT article, and asked ChatGPT to reproduce a portion of the article. The program complied with alacrity, reproducing the copyrighted and paywalled text.  

Another very interesting offer of proof and allegation of injury is the Times assertion that ChatGPT committed what is known in AI parlance as "hallucination". Hallucination occurs when a machine, like a chatbot, generates seemingly realistic sensory experiences that do not correspond to real world input; "misinformation", says the Times. They cite to an example where the prompt seeks a reproduction of the sixth paragraph of a specific NYT article, referenced by date, title and author. The output, however, contains non-existent quotes and other text not found in the article. This has obvious implications to the Times' journalistic reputation and could lead to a claim for damages.

It will be interesting to see how Open AI and Microsoft respond to these highly specific allegations. 

What's happening over at Open AI?

You may have heard about all the drama over at Open AI when they suddenly fired their CEO, Sam Altman last fall. Open AI originally started out as a non-profit, as noted in the NYT complaint. Their stated mission back in 2015 was to develop AI for the good of humanity, not to maximize profits. The company's board of directors had a distinctly non-tech world look; mostly academics and other non-profit professionals, except for Altman, whose tech credentials are solid. 

Despite its stated mission, as the potential for this powerful computing tool came into better focus, Microsoft jumped aboard with billions of venture capital in exchange for a 49% ownership of Open AI's for profit subsidiary. Microsoft, with its myriad tech professional contacts, supported Altman's installation as CEO. 

Last November, however, a giant board of directors misunderstanding led to Altman's firing amid great backlash by Open AI's employees and by Microsoft, its benevolent investor. Some key folks at Microsoft quietly, then not so quietly, reached out to the Open AI board and reinstalled Altman. All seems to be well for the moment. Then, last week, here comes the NYT lawsuit. 

What's Next in the Lawsuit?

The Defendant companies now have the option to answer the Times' complaint or, in lieu of an answer, they can file a motion for summary judgment pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

Given the recent board of directors drama, we will stay tuned to what Open AI and Microsoft do next. They need to focus on this lawsuit because if they lose, every content generator, including this 15-year old -nearly 650 post- blog, will have their collective hands out for a portion of Open AI's profits generated from our content. 

With Manhattan as the venue, this lawsuit will feature a high tech litigation battle between some of the most sophisticated law firms in the world. Four Big Law firms representing the NYT hail from New York, Washington, DC, Seattle, and Los Angeles. 

Post #637

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Earlier this year, at least one Michigan school district has joined a class action lawsuit against the social media application TikTok, its parent company, ByteDance, Inc., and other social media companies. The suit alleges that the social media conglomerates are deploying algorithms designed to create a connectivity addiction to social media sites like Tik Tok, Snapchat, Instagram, Meta, YouTube, Google, and others. 

The lawsuit alleges that the addictive algorithms are causing a mental health crisis among adolescents across the country. The suit points to a string of suicides that seemed to be correlated to the decedent student's participation and use of various social media sites. 

Here is a copy of the Master Complaint; the very first allegation contained therein states: American children are suffering an unprecendented mental health crisis fueled by Defendants' addictive and dangerous social media products. There is an impressive -and growing- roster of law firms representing the various school district plaintiffs from across the nation.

While the class action suit originated in federal court in Seattle, it has now been transferred to the Northern District of California. The multi-district litigation bears the following case caption: In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation [MDL No. 3047] 

The tort theory alleged in the case is that the social media platforms are defective to the extent that they are designed to maximize screen time. For adolescents, plaintiffs allege that this flawed design has a high potential to become addicting. The suit alleges that the addicting behavior can lead to various mental and physical harm, including death.

This phenomenon, as it pertains to adults, was detailed in the 2020 documentary The Social Dillemma. To the extent that children are perceived to be the targets of these social media companies, there will be waves of litigation to come. [Think of Joe Camel's extinction in the late 1990s.]

So far this year, the following school districts have joined the litigation:

• Cadillac Area Public Schools
• Dexter Community Schools
• Elkhart Community Schools
• Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation
• School City of Mishawaka 
• Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools
• Concord Public Schools
• Seattle Public Schools

Surely, more school districts will join the class action law suit in the months to come. More districts from Michigan are expected to join the suit as well.

This multi-district litigation will go on for years; the stakes are high for the various communities and the social media companies. A structured settlement could cost billions of dollars. 

Jennifer Brown, the superintendent for the Cadillac Area Public Schools had this to say about her district joining the class action lawsuit:

We are seeing increases in mental health struggles with our students - anxiety, depression - and it's no secret that the research supports a direct correlation to some of the mental health challenges that we're seeing as a consequence of social media use and technology access within our youth. It is going to take a community to care enough about kids to see that the negative impacts really require more management and regulation so that kids can be kids.

We have all seen how children are drawn like gravity to the apps on a cell phone. They do not need much enticement to interact with social media; once there, most children exhibit difficulty putting the phone down. 

Earlier this year, Seattle Public Schools filed a complaint against TikTok and Snapchat asserting that those and other social media platforms purposely deliver content that is mentally and physically harmful to students. They specifically cited to the "corpse bride" diet and other harmful but viral weight-loss challenges.

Last month in NYC, state attorney general Letitia James and prosecutors from 30 other states -including Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel- sued Meta alleging that Facebook and Instagram featured content that was addicting to children. The complaint asserts that the business model for both platforms exploits young users by deploying harmful and manipulative features designed to maximize their time and attention on the site for profit. Here is a link to the complaint; also filed in federal court in the Northern District of California. 

For their part, the social media companies, asserting a content ban, have filed motions for summary judment based on First Amendment protections. The federal judge assigned to the case found that suit is more subtle than an outright content ban. The judge denied the defendants' initial dispositive motion, holding that the plaintiffs were more concerned about the technical algorithm, not the content. 

Rather than banning specific content, the plaintiffs sought greater parental controls, easier ways to delete accounts, better age verification procedures, and the elimination of notification clustering designed to ramp up habitual use. On the heels of this law suit, many state legislatures are drafting laws proscribing certain types of emotionally disruptive content from young users.  

The Law Blogger will continue to monitor this interesting and important litigation and legislation and alert our readres to significant developments in the cases and the laws.

 Post #636

www.clarkstonlegal.com

Wow, that was quick. After only four hours of deliberation, a federal jury in Manhattan returned a guilty verdict on all sever criminal fraud counts against Crypto King and FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried; SBF, as he is widely known.

During the month-long trial, the Crypto Circus came streaming into Gotham. The trial featured all manner of self-proclaimed crypto experts that waited prior to daybreak to be allowed access to the trial. 

The Crypto King was largely done in by three of his former colleagues and friends, all co-defendants in his case who turned state's evidence against Bankman-Fried. The co-defendants include FTX co-founder and former-Google employee Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, CEO of FTX "sister" company Alameda Research, and Nishad Singh.

All three co-defendants pled guilty last December but did not receive plea deals. Instead, they traded their cooperative testimony for consideration via what is colloquially known as a 5k motion from the Manhattan United States Attorney's office. 

This plea tactic calls for the prosecutor to file a motion under section 5k1.1 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Usually, the motion calls for a sentence that is under the guideline range; it is unclear whether this was done in the SBF case.

The maneuver calls for the US Attorney to write a detailed letter to the sentencing judge outlining the criminal conduct of each co-defendant as well as explaining how the co-defendants aided the government's case. The letter, however, makes no sentencing recommendation to the judge. In most plea deals, the prosecuting attorney agrees to request a specific sentence. 

During his trial, SBF elected to testify on his own behalf; an always-risky proposition. He attempted to shift blame onto other players, including: FTX lawyers, and his 28-year-old co-defendant and on-again, off-again girlfriend, Caroline Ellison. 

Asserting that he was an inexperienced businessman who got in too deep over his head, he relied on the advice of his laywers. This is known as the "advice of counsel" defense. Against this backdrop, jurors were informed about SBF's extensive blog posts, writings, and detailed interviews on all things crypto. 

The United States Attorney alleged that SBF diverted FTX customers' funds to his personal use; they also alleged he diverted the funds from the Bahamas-based FTX to cover huge losses incurred by SBF's other company, Alameda Research, a crypto hedge-fund. Details in the case revealed that most of the assets of Alameda Research comprised of a specific type of digital token known as FTT; a token created by none other than FTX.

SBF and his three co-defendants are all scheduled to be sentenced before United States District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan in March 2024. For their part, Wang and Ellison both testified on cross-examination that they are hoping for a sentence of probation. 

Over the years, we here at Clarkston Legal occasionally have represented clients charged with financial crimes in federal court. One of the primary factors contained in the federal sentencing guidelines considered by the federal judge is the amount of money the scam involved; the higher the amount of money; the longer the sentence guidelines. In this case, it is billions of dollars. 

So it does not look good for these co-defendants realtive to receiving a sentence of mere probation. Some prison time is almost assured. The sentencing judge will weigh the co-defendant's cooperation and trial testimony aginst the fact that they helped misappropriate billions of dollars of other people's money.

For his part, Bankman-Fried, only 31 years old, is almost assured a sentence for a term of years that will constitute life in prison. A dastardly fate for the MIT gradiate whose parents are both law professors at Stanford Law School.

Post #635

Clarkston Legal

Attorney Nicholas Somberg

This case is a throwback to the COVID days. An attorney, piqued that he was disallowed from posting a screenshot from one of his state district court proceedings in the Zoom era, filed a federal lawsuit claiming violation of his first amendment rights. 

The lawyer, Nicholas Somberg, posted the picture on his Facebook page and cast some shade on the assistant prosecutor with whom he was working in the criminal case. For their part, the prosecutor's office took great offense, and sought an order for the lawyer to show cause, asserting that photographing any of the court proceedings violated the rules of zoom court. 

In May of 2020, at the very dawn of the zoom court era, the court issued a policy whereby:

• No one may use a portable electronic device to take photographs or for audio or video recording, broadcasting, or live streaming unless the use is specifically allowed by the judge presiding over that courtroom through a written order; and 

• In areas of the courthouse outside the courtroom, no one may photograph, record, broadcast, or live stream an individual without their express prior consent. 

Although the district court did not grant the prosecutor's criminal contempt charge, it was "chagrined and troubled by the allegations." The prosecutor's office elected not to appeal the dismissal of its contempt petition. 

Somberg literally created a federal case out of his perceived snub a few weeks later when he alleged violation of his first amendment:

right to photograph, screenshot, audio/video record, broadcast, report, distribute, share, and publish photographic, audio and video recordings of public live-streamed Michigan court proceedings without threat of or an actual prosecution...

Attorney Somberg further alleged that he would seek to exercise his right to make such recordings in the future and that he does not wish to be subjected to fines or the contempt of court when doing so. 

After a few years of procedural maneuvers related to summary judgment and an interlocutory appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the prosecutor, on behalf of the State of Michigan, filed a motion for summary judment which was ultimately granted by Judge Gershwin Drain.

While recognizing that the public, and members of the bar, certainly have the right to access the courts of our state, this access, "does not require an unfettered access to government information." The federal court agreed with the prosecutor that courts constitute non-public forums; the zoom court rules are content-neutral; and the prohibition of recordings is a reasonable method for assuring the proper order and decorum in the court. 

Recognizing that the plaintiff-lawyer's claim was a "right to access" claim as opposed to a "freedom of expression" claim, it granted the State of Michigan's motion and dismissed the case. Here is a link to the court's entire opinion that was issued in September. 

Oakland County, where this case arose, has an interesting history regarding the use of recorded court proceedings. In the old days [i.e. prior to 2010], attorneys could order DVDs of court proceedings for $25 dollars per disc. That came to a screeching halt when one of the judges became the subject of an edited montage produced and posted to the Internet by one of our former clients. 

The client, having lost legal custody of his two children, went through a platoon of lawyers, and ended up representing himself in various post-divorce custody and parenting motions. He was irreparably disgruntled by the family court system and decided to take matters into his own hands. 

His solution was to sit through various motion calls and hearings of the targeted family court judge. Next, he ordered the DVDs for those hearings. He utilized his significant technical media skills to lampoon the judge in a one minute montage hatchet job. 

When the targeted judge became aware of the litigant's unflattering roast, he successfully and permanently changed the court's policy of access to court proceedings. Now, litigants and their attorneys are monitored when they review court hearings. They must agree not to record the recordings and have to come to the court administrator's office to view recorded proceedings. 

So much for obtaining DVDs of legal proceedings and taking them back to your office at your leisure. Prior to the change, our law firm took advantage of obtaining the DVDs and posted some examples of our representation in court to our web site. Here is a link to those videos.

Recently, former president Donald Trump's legal team has sought to have television cameras introduced into his federal court proceedings in the election interference federa; case in Washington DC. That was a flat-out "No", based on the long tradition of no camera access to federal court proceedings. 

Again, these are "right to access" questions as opposed to "freedom of expression" issues. Most state court proceedings are recorded and the public has limited access to view recordings of the actual proceedings, as they occurred. In federal court, the public, and the legal professionals alike, are limited to written transcripts. 

Post #634

Clarkston Legal