COVID-19 Court cases

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-24/ ... t/13187050

Reasons why Clive Palmer's bid to tear down WA's hard border was blocked by the High Court revealed

The High Court today released the reasons for its decision to allow the state's hard border, which billionaire businessman Clive Palmer unsuccessfully claimed was "unconstitutional", to continue.

The judgment stated there could be no doubt that a law restricting the movement of people into a state was a suitable way of preventing COVID-19 from entering a community.

The court accepted the Emergency Management Act empowered the state government to "direct or prohibit the movement of persons into an emergency area", which allowed it to block people from entering the state.

[RTH10260]

A judge has dismissed criminal charges in Holyoke Soldiers’ Home outbreak.

A Massachusetts state judge on Monday dismissed criminal charges against two administrators of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where an outbreak of coronavirus led to 76 deaths, reasoning that the actions of administrators did not lead to the infections.

The state’s attorney general, Maura Healey, had sought criminal charges of criminal neglect and permitting body injury to an older person against the two administrators based on their decision to combine two understaffed dementia units, crowding together infected and uninfected men.

But Judge Edward J. McDonough Jr., of Hampden County Superior Court, wrote in his dismissal that he believed the five veterans named in the case had been exposed to the virus before the two units were merged, so the administrators could not be held legally responsible.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/worl ... covid.html

[RTH10260]

A Texas court affirms a ruling against the governor’s mask mandate ban.

The chief elected official in Dallas County celebrated a victory Tuesday in his legal battle over the governor’s ban on mask mandates, after a state appeals court upheld an earlier injunction against the ban.

The ruling by Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas affirmed an August ruling by a district judge that Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning mask mandates impeded the ability of Judge Clay Jenkins, the top elected official in Dallas County, to protect his constituents from Covid.


https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/22 ... andate-ban