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General Law and Lawsuits

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Phoenix520
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#401

Post by Phoenix520 »

Isn't insurance usually for accidents?
Hmm. You have a point. Maybe it went something like this:
The couple is changing places in the car.

She: Oops, I slipped and landed on the gear shift knob!

He: Oh, baby, that’s not the gear shift knob!

(Shall I show myself out?)
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#402

Post by Kriselda Gray »

Phoenix520 wrote: Tue Aug 30, 2022 12:31 am
Isn't insurance usually for accidents?
Hmm. You have a point. Maybe it went something like this:
The couple is changing places in the car.

She: Oops, I slipped and landed on the gear shift knob!

He: Oh, baby, that’s not the gear shift knob!

(Shall I show myself out?)
:rotflmao: only if you come in again :mrgreen:
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#403

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

There are "umbrella" insurance policies which cover evertying. I had a client who was savagely assaulted. The defendant had an "umbrella" policy which paid the damages in full.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#404

Post by KickahaOta »

US v. Larry Johnson

In which the Tenth Circuit painstakingly answers the hot question on everyone's minds: Do you legally "possess" a gun by sitting on it?
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#405

Post by RTH10260 »

Former judges who sent kids to jail for kickbacks must pay more than $200 million

August 18, 20227:48 AM ET
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are "the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions."

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.

Ciavarella ordered children as young as 8 to detention, many of them first-time offenders deemed delinquent for petty theft, jaywalking, truancy, smoking on school grounds and other minor infractions. The judge often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to put up a defense or even say goodbye to their families.

"Ciavarella and Conahan abandoned their oath and breached the public trust," Conner wrote Tuesday in his explanation of the judgment. "Their cruel and despicable actions victimized a vulnerable population of young people, many of whom were suffering from emotional issues and mental health concerns."




https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/11181080 ... s-for-cash
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#406

Post by Slim Cognito »

As lawsuits go, this one seems interesting.

Here’s Why The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz Is Suing The FBI Over The Agency’s File On The Band


https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieport ... a70ed57319

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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#407

Post by RTH10260 »

Appeals court rules two Trump administration Gulf lease sales unlawful

BY ZACK BUDRYK -
08/30/22 2:10 PM ET

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled two Trump-era Interior Department oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico were unlawful.

In the ruling, Judge Gregory C. Katsas of the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals found the department in 2018 leased more than 150 million acres for oil exploration without properly analyzing the risk under the National Environmental Policy Act. The lease sales, 250 and 251, were among 11 proposed by the department in its 2017 five-year plan.

In a lawsuit following the sales, a coalition of environmental groups argued the Trump administration’s evaluation had erroneously presumed adequate endorsement of safety and environmental procedures in the Gulf. A D.C. court sided with the Interior Department on April 20, prompting an appeal by the plaintiffs.




https://thehill.com/policy/3621252-appe ... -unlawful/
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#408

Post by Slim Cognito »

Because of course they were.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#409

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... r-AA11pbG5
Wells Fargo ordered to pay $22 million for firing executive who alleged financial misconduct

The Labor Department ordered Wells Fargo to pay more than $22 million after ruling that the company retaliated against an executive who alleged financial misconduct.

According to a Thursday release, the department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that Wells Fargo violated whistleblower protection laws for "improperly terminating" an unnamed senior manager.

The Chicago area-based manager, who worked in commercial banking at Wells Fargo, was fired after voicing repeated concerns about what they believed to be violations of financial law – including allegations of wire fraud, price fixing and being instructed to falsify customer information, the Labor Department said.

"Even though the manager believed the conduct was illegal based on company-required training, they were terminated in 2019," the Labor Department wrote – adding that Wells Fargo later claimed the executive was fired "as part of a restructuring process."

Investigators later found that this termination "was not consistent" with that of other managers removed at the time, the Labor Department said. Alleging retaliation and violation of whistleblower protections under federal the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the executive then filed a complaint with OSHA.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#410

Post by raison de arizona »

‘Nirvana Baby’ Loses Child Pornography Lawsuit Against Band for Use of Naked ‘Nevermind’ Album Photo

The federal lawsuit accusing Nirvana of using “child pornography” on the cover of their groundbreaking album “Nevermind” has come to a final end with a denial. The so-called “Nirvana Baby” will not be permitted to go forward against the band or its late frontman now that a federal court has ruled against the plaintiff multiple times.

Spencer Elden, who was four months old in the disputed photo, but is now 30-years-old, was given one last chance to fix his complaint last January when a federal judge in California dismissed the lawsuit alleging that Elden had been subjected to “commercial child sexual exploitation.” Elden, who appeared as a naked baby chasing a one-dollar bill underwater on the album cover Nirvana’s iconic 1991 album “Nevermind,” called the cover photo “shocking” and “sexually seductive” and said he will continue to suffer lifelong damages from its use.
:snippity:
https://lawandcrime.com/entertainment/n ... bum-photo/
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#411

Post by pipistrelle »

I'd never have known about the album, the cover, the depiction, or the person if it hadn't been for this lawsuit. Well done.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#412

Post by keith »

I've got a copy of the album on CD, but I can't say I've ever been much of a Nirvana fan.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#413

Post by bill_g »

Come
As you are
As you were
As I want you to be
As a friend
As a friend
As an old enemy
Take your time
Hurry up
The choice is yours
Don't be late
Take a rest
As a friend
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#414

Post by W. Kevin Vicklund »

pipistrelle wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 1:26 pm I'd never have known about the album, the cover, the depiction, or the person if it hadn't been for this lawsuit. Well done.
Nevermind, Queen's At the Opera, and three Capital Steps albums were the extent of my music collection when I started college.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#415

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fo ... smsnnews11
For the first time in US history, victim and killer identified through relative's DNA

This is a historic case. The FBI said this is the first time in the country when both the victim and the killer have been identified by forensic genealogy.

"It was overwhelming," Agent Montgomery said.

"To me, it's incredible. Because as an agent, you live with these cases," he said.

Stacey was 19 years old when she went missing.

A body was found in December of that year, but law enforcement weren’t able to identify it.

In 2005, the DNA was entered as a Jane Doe into the missing person's database.

In 2015, her murder was assigned to the cold case unit.

In March of this year, Agent Montgomery finally got to call Stacey's family and tell them she had been identified through forensic genealogy, nearly 34 years after her death.

Late last month, her killer was identified the same way.

Law enforcement identified the killer as Henry Fredrick Wise – who went by Hoss and drove a truck all over the southeast.

He also worked as a stunt driver in South Carolina.

"He was killed in a stunt accident at myrtle beach speedway in 1999 and burned to death," Montgomery said.

Wise died before he could face justice for killing Stacey. He died 23 years before Stacey was ever identified.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#416

Post by raison de arizona »

OK, this one is a doozy. Last thing first, here is the complete ruling: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... 1.92.0.pdf

(I'm stealing quotes of texts from tweets below without directly attributing them to build the narrative, I'll link the twitter threads at the end.)
The crux of this case is whether requiring employers to provide coverage for PrEP drugs (preventing the transmission of HIV) violates the religious rights of employers under federal law (RFRA). So what happened? The judge is suggesting that the entire apparatus that governs health insurers is unlawful. This means health insurers could decline to cover a huge range of preventive care, including vaccines, cancer screenings, STI tests, pregnancy care, etc. The judge ruled that claims backed by zero evidence must be honored if religious people believe them to be true. This is a Big Problem.

Anyway, hopefully I haven't screwed up the explanation too much. Here are two twitter threads that explain it much better than I can.
https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status ... 6451614720
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1567536173853151232
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#417

Post by keith »

raison de arizona wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 2:25 pm OK, this one is a doozy. Last thing first, here is the complete ruling: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... 1.92.0.pdf

(I'm stealing quotes of texts from tweets below without directly attributing them to build the narrative, I'll link the twitter threads at the end.)
The crux of this case is whether requiring employers to provide coverage for PrEP drugs (preventing the transmission of HIV) violates the religious rights of employers under federal law (RFRA). So what happened? The judge is suggesting that the entire apparatus that governs health insurers is unlawful. This means health insurers could decline to cover a huge range of preventive care, including vaccines, cancer screenings, STI tests, pregnancy care, etc. The judge ruled that claims backed by zero evidence must be honored if religious people believe them to be true. This is a Big Problem.

Anyway, hopefully I haven't screwed up the explanation too much. Here are two twitter threads that explain it much better than I can.
https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status ... 6451614720
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1567536173853151232
FIFY
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#418

Post by pipistrelle »

Keeping people healthy violates religious rights?
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#419

Post by Frater I*I »

pipistrelle wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 10:35 pm Keeping people healthy violates religious rights?
Because they believe that "True Believers", {Trademark, Glory!] will awake in the bosom of Jesus!!!!


The rest will awake in Hell...where they belong...Glory!!!
"He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see, He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#420

Post by raison de arizona »

Steven Mazie @stevenmazie wrote: BREAKING: Supreme Court gives temporary win to Yeshiva University in its refusal to recognize an LGBT student organization
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#421

Post by KickahaOta »

raison de arizona wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 2:25 pm The judge ruled that claims backed by zero evidence must be honored if religious people believe them to be true. This is a Big Problem.
I hate the outcome. But it's not something that this judge pulled out of a hat. In fact, under current federal law and Supreme Court precedent, I'd say that the judge in this case is absolutely correct.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. Not to be taken internally. May cause drowsiness; alcohol may intensify this effect.

The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion. The meaning of this protection has been the subject of a great deal of debate and considerable legal swings over time.

What exactly is a religion? On the one hand, if we say that 'religion' is whatever beliefs someone wants it to firmly hold, then that makes the Free Exercise clause just a general statement of 'people can do pretty much what they want'. That clearly can't be right. On the other hand, if we confine 'religion' to some set of institutions with a certain amount of structure and dogma -- and in particular, if we let courts and legislatures have free rein to say 'Your institution is a religion and yours isn't', or 'Your individual beliefs don't matter because we don't think that they sufficiently align with your religion's beliefs', then the Free Exercise clause becomes meaningless, because the government can always just say 'Your religion doesn't count.' That can't be right either.

Likewise, what exactly is 'free exercise'? Again, it can't be 'whatever the government decides it is'. But it also can't be 'whatever a religious group decides it is, up to and including human sacrifice.' It has to be somewhere in the middle.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Supreme Court had swung somewhat far in the direction of 'the government can't regulate religious practices'. Most notably, in 1963, there was Sherbert v. Verner, in which Adell Sherbert (a Seventh-day Adventist) was fired for refusing to work on Saturdays, and South Carolina denied her unemployment compensation claim. The Supreme Court held that this infringed her religious freedom. In doing so it created what's been called 'the Sherbert test': a government can't pass a law that coerces an individual to forego a religious practice, unless the law passes strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny requires the law to fill a compelling state interest, and to be narrowly tailored (meaning that there's no reasonable alternative approach that would fill that same interest without burdening the religious practice). That's a quite difficult standard for a government to meet. So Sherbert gave a very sweeping meaning to the 'free exercise' part of the 1A equation. But it involved a truly core belief of the Seventh-day Adventists, who pretty much everyone would agree is a religion. The Court didn't have occasion to grapple with the 'religion' side of the equation.

Over the course of the 1980s, the Court started to swing things back in the other direction. This led to Employment Division v. Smith in 1990. Smith was fired for his use of peyote as part of Native American religious ceremonies. Smith's unemployment claim was denied by Oregon, because Smith was fired for use of an illegal drug. The Oregon Supreme Court found that this violated the Sherbert test, and declared it unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court reversed, on the grounds that the laws in question weren't directed at religion; they were "neutral laws of general applicability", and not motivated by religious animus. This swung things back to a much more limited interpretation of 'free exercise'. Again, this involved a strong belief of a group that everyone agreed was a religion; the 'religion' side of the equation didn't come into play.

Congress was not fond of that result. In 1993 it passed the RFRA, which effectively codified the previous Sherbert test, swinging 'free exercise' back to a very broad scope. This applied to both federal and state laws.

In 1997, the Court decided in City of Boerne v. Flores that the RFRA was unconstitutional as applied to the states, because Congress couldn't put that sort of sweeping limitation on state laws (not even through the 14th Amendment's due-process clause).

But there's no such problem with Congress putting limitations on its own federal laws. In 2006, the Court ruled that the RFRA was constitutional as applied to the federal government, in the cumbersomely-named case Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal.

All of this means that states means that states currently have considerable flexibility in how to manage the 1A 'what is free exercise' question. But the federal government must pass the Sherbert strict-scrutiny test.

In the meantime -- and I won't run through the cases, because this is already way too long -- the Court has also swung the 'What is a religion?' question rather far towards the 'whatever an individual sincerely decides it is' side.

The result is what we're seeing here.

Personally, I think that these vaccines are great, and that making them broadly and cheaply available is A Great Thing. But there's also no question that they're religiously controversial, and that 'I don't want to pay for things that might encourage sexual behavior' is a valid religious belief under the Court's current view of the Free Exercise clause.

The federal government could have made the vaccines available through federal agencies, or by directly using federal funds to compensate providers for the cost of the vaccines, or by giving tax credits to consumers. Instead, the federal government required health care policies -- even health care policies regulated by states and sold to private parties -- to cover these vaccines. That predictably runs straight into the RFRA and the codified Sherbert test. Even assuming that we all agree that the federal government has a compelling interest in making these vaccines available, it can't show that requiring private health care policies to cover them is a narrowly tailored response -- because, again, Congress could have done the job itself.

So if you think that this is a bad outcome -- and again, I agree with you -- then the cause of that bad outcome isn't this judge, or anything specific to these regulations. It's the RFRA, and to a lesser extent, the Court's current interpretation of the Free Exercise clause itself.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#422

Post by raison de arizona »

Thanks for the analysis! In my mind, the base problem here is that our health insurance in the US is tied up with our employers. It shouldn’t be.
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#423

Post by KickahaOta »

raison de arizona wrote: Sun Sep 11, 2022 4:22 pm Thanks for the analysis! In my mind, the base problem here is that our health insurance in the US is tied up with our employers. It shouldn’t be.
Agreed.

I should have also mentioned where the Appointments Clause came into this and invalidated a different decision to require coverage of 'PrEP drugs' (HIV prevention drugs).

The Appointments Clause says that some 'officers of the United States' in the executive branch must be nominated by the President and consented to by the Senate. In contrast, 'inferior officers' can be appointed by the President, or by someone else in the executive branch, without Congressional involvement.

The distinctions between 'officers' and 'inferior officers' can get extremely messy, as this opinion itself digs into. I'll just punt you over to Wikipedia on that.

For the purposes of this case, the crucial upshot is that an 'inferior officer' tries to do something that only an 'officer' has the constitutional power to do, and if the inferior officer hasn't been properly delegated that power by an 'officer', then the action is void (at least if someone challenges it).

But there's a catch. In many cases, if a decision is made by an 'inferior officer' who didn't have the power to make it, then an 'officer' can sometimes later come along and 'ratify' that decision -- say 'I've reviewed this decision myself, and I think it's fabulous.' At that point the decision becomes valid, sometimes even retroactively. But in order to ratify someone else's decision, the 'officer' has to have the power to make that decision in the first place.

There were three decisions, by three federal agencies, that came under Appointments Clause scrutiny in this case, all requiring insurers to cover various forms of medical treatment. In all three cases, an 'officer' in the Biden administration later came along and tried to 'ratify' the decision.

For two of those three decisions, the judge in this case ultimately ruled 'Yes, lower-level personnel in the agency made the decision; but that decision could also be made by the Secretary of the agency, who's approved by Congress and unquestionably an officer. The Secretary ratified the decision. The ratification was valid, and that means that I don't have to decide whether the lower-level personnel were authorized to make the decision in the first place.'

The third decision -- the one involving the PrEP drugs -- was more of a problem. The law surrounding that agency -- the PSTF (Preventative Services Task Force) -- says that a panel of suitably-experienced volunteers can review the safety and effectiveness of drugs and treatments; and if the panel gives a drug or treatment an 'A' or 'B' rating, then health insurance plans have to cover it. Importantly, there's no involvement of the Secretary of the agency here; if the panel gives the drug the right rating, that goes into effect automatically. And the Secretary of the agency can't simply approve a drug or treatment on their own. So the judge ruled 'Even though the Secretary later tried to ratify the decision, that's meaningless, because that's not a decision that the Secretary could make in the first place. That means that I do have to decide whether the panel members were allowed by the Appointments Clause to make that decision. And I ultimately find they didn't, so this decision is void.'

And yes, that probably blows away the PSTF mechanism completely, because the only constitutionally-valid way to fix it would be to change the law. And if Biden tried to change that law at this moment, then the response of the Senate would almost certainly be:

Image
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#424

Post by KickahaOta »

And two more things:

The fact that the PSTF is mortally wounded doesn't do too much damage to the rest of the Affordable Care Act, because those other agencies that don't have unfixable legal flaws can approve many of the same things. It's just slower.

Both Congress and the President really should have seen this coming when they drafted and passed the ACA. The legislative and executive branches have repeatedly shown fondness for 'independent agencies' that can 'operate without political pressure'. And that's often a laudable goal. But 'independent' means 'with limited oversight from Congress and from high-level executive officers'. And the Supreme Court (even before its recent sharp turn to the right) has repeatedly struck down laws that go too far in this direction, using language that can be summed up as 'What part of the Appointments Clause are you having a hard time understanding?'
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Re: General Law and Lawsuits

#425

Post by KickahaOta »

In lighter news:

I often peek at dismissed pro se lawsuits against the CIA. The CIA attracts some really interesting kooks.

And so we have Ronald Satish Emrit v. CIA.

Mr. Emrit's neatly-typed complaint makes the following request:
The plaintiff is seeking declaratory relief according to Rule 57 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) in the sense that the plaintiff is looking for the court to issue a statement of law regarding free speech and racial profiling as it relates to The World Factbook (CIA Almanac in the public domain), "There's Something Rotten in Denmark" (by Jeremy Kuzmarvov of Tulsa Community College and uploaded in digital commons of Florida International University (FUI), and Bloodlines of Illuminati, i.e. a book by Fritz Springmeier which is also in the public domain as protected free speech as it is available for sale on Amazon.
Why is Mr. Emrit seeking justice against these three publications, two of which are written by parties not named in the suit, and one of which reflects plaintiff's eclectic interpretation of "public domain"?

Well, says Mr. Emrit, let's not rush to get to that part. Let's discuss other important matters first.
In addition, the publication known as The World Factbook has been outsourced to a private company "doing business as" (d/b/a) Skyhorse Publishing which reminds the plaintiff of the Horsehead Nebula, Cat's Eye Nebula, Tarantula Nebula, and Crab Nebula which has a crab pulsar, i.e. a neutron star that is formed when a white dwarf star reaches its Chandrasekhar Limit of 1.4 solar masses and can no longer withstand gravity notwithstanding the electron degeneracy pressure keeping the star from collapsing. In the field of marine biology, a seahorse has been known to change its gender and the plaintiff had a seahorse screensaver on his computer in Bowie, Maryland around 2005.
After 20 paragraphs of... something, we finally arrive at the Statement of Facts. Surely now we'll find out the CIA's dastardly plots! Well, not quite yet:
Like the case of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish which ended the Lochner era of economic due process and laissez-faire economics, the plaintiff could not work very long for Win Kelly Buick Pontiac GMC due to the fact that he was being paid a "draw" or salary which was lower than the minimum wage and was only being paid according to commission without a base salary. The plaintiff could not work for the Central Payment Corporation of Larkspur and San Rafael, California for the same reason that he could not work for Win Kelly Buick Pontiac GMC, i.e. the plaintiff was considered to be an independent contractor or 1099 employee who was not paid a base salary and received no commission. Nevertheless, the plaintiff reached a settlement and/or stipulation with Central Payment Corporation on or around 2014. The Central Payment Corporation would sell Magtek Readers and other credit card processing equipment that would necessarily involve Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR).
Three paragraphs later, the CIA finally rears its ugly head!
The plaintiff mailed a letter to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Office of Public Affairs while he was working for Win Kelly Buick Pontiac GMC in Clarksville, Maryland and the plaintiff also received an email from george10@ucia.gov about a plaintiff's inquiry about the role of CIA in building the Panama Canal.
And later:
To clarify, the plaintiff had to go to the U.S. Embassy in Panama City, Panama because of the fact that he and his friend Edna Carrasco Caballero were having disagreements and Edna no longer wanted the plaintiff to stay at her apartment complex.
Dastardly!

What is Mr. Emrit actually trying to do? Maybe paragraph fifty-one will tell us!
Furthermore, the plaintiff is trying to get a design patent or utility patent for the idea that all four forces in nature are unified at the gravitational singularity of the supermassive black hole in the region of Sagittarius A* at the active galactic nucleus (AGN/ACN) at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Earth and solar system are in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way Galaxy far from the active galactic nucleus of Sagittarius A* in which the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy in the Hubble Sequence and Galaxy Morphological Scheme which includes lenticular galaxies and elliptical galaxies in addition to spiral galaxies (not barred) like the Sombrero Galaxy.
Believe it or not, I'm actually skipping some of the best stuff! I'm not even going to spoil the stuff about Cleopatra!

But WHAT ARE YOU SAYING THAT THE CIA ACTUALLY DID, MR. ERMIT? ANSWER ME THIS INSTANT.

Sorry. That wasn't polite.

Paragraph 62:
The plaintiff argues that the sole defendant CIA committed the intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) by racially-profiling the plaintiff as Al Queda and ISIS/ISIL without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause other than the fact that the plaintiff's middle name is "Satish" which is Hindu and not Arabic.
And so on for Invasion of Privacy through Intrusion on Seclusion, Invasion of Privacy through Misappropriation, Invasion of Privacy through False Light, and Negligence.

In what way did this alleged action by the CIA, which sadly is actually rather plausible, actually harm Mr. Ritin, in a way that would justify the requested award of $80000 in damages, let alone the requested legal analysis of free speech principles as they apply to an Amazon publication?

How dare you ask. It isn't even worth Mr. Emrit's time to mention that.

Oh, wait! There's also a count of Malicious Prosecution! Surely the CIA maliciously filed a meritless criminal charge! That would be heinous!

Well, after a rousing eight-paragraph exposition on the tort of malicious prosecution and how it relates to Mr. Emrit's Cuban fiance:
The plaintiff argues that the sole defendant has committed the wrongful institution of legal proceedings or malicious prosecution even though the plaintiff has never been indicted before a grand jury or by information by a U.S. attorney, district attorney, or attorney general because of the fact that "racial profiling" a black man as an Arab or Muslim is enough to commence an action for the tort of the wrongful institution of legal proceedings and/or malicious prosecution.
Brilliance!

Once again, I have to emphasize that I haven't even mentioned some of the best stuff here.

Can you believe that it took the district court only four days to dismiss this (RECAP)? And for namby-pamby reasons like "The complaint fails to state a plausible claim on which relief may be granted" and "Plaintiff has filed no fewer than 200 civil actions in federal district courts since 2013"? Or that the Fourth Circuit just spent two boring pages bouncing it too? Such a waste! This is gold! This deserves to be savored!

EDITED: Correct description of plaintiff.
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