Tomorrow night (May 31), from 6 to 10 p.m., the Honorable Dan Sosa, Jr. will be honored at the National Hispanic Cultural Center at its first annual Trailblazers en el Camino Award Ceremony (click on the link for more information, or to buy tickets). The Las Cruces Sun-News recently published this story about the event.
Justice Sosa served on the New Mexico Supreme Court from 1975 to 1991. For more on his background, read this interview from 2008.
Tom Goldstein, the founder of the indispensable SCOTUSblog, recently delivered the Hooding Address at the University of New Mexico Law School’s 2013 commencement ceremony.
In his entertaining address, he actually promised to take one lucky member of the graduating class with him to a taping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
You can, and should, watch his address here. Hat tip to How Appealing for bringing this to my attention.
New Mexico Rule of Civil Procedure 1-011 serves the same function as Federal Rule of Procedure 11 — to deter baseless filings. Such sanctions are rarely imposed, so the Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Bernier v. Bernier makes for an interesting read.
A highly simplified version of the facts is that a brother and sister had a dispute about some corporate stock, and agreed to place the stock certificate in the custody of their uncle, whom they both trusted, until the dispute was resolved. At some point, the brother unilaterally demanded that the uncle turn the stock certificate over to him, and sued the uncle when he declined to do so, in disregard of the prior agreement.
Judge Sutin’s opinion held that the sanction was supported by the evidence, but here are some aspects of his opinion that I think are more interesting: Continue reading →
At her terrific Appellate Daily blog, Michelle Olsen has this post about the four federal circuit courts of appeal that do not yet post audio files of oral arguments on their websites. The Tenth Circuit is one of them. To obtain a copy of the audio of an oral argument, the Tenth Circuit requires that one file a motion, albeit such motions are routinely granted. (By the way, I highly recommend following Ms. Olsen on Twitter, @AppellateDaily, because she tweets frequent updates about the federal appellate courts).
Unfortunately, New Mexico’s state appellate courts also do not post audio recordings of oral arguments online, though one can obtain a CD of oral argument audio by paying a small fee (e.g. in March I obtained a CD of an oral argument recording from the New Mexico Supreme Court for $1). I do not know what technical challenges would face the state courts in making the audio recordings available online, but let’s hope those can be overcome soon.
Birth Control Pills, Photo in the public domain at Wikimedia Commons.
Tomorrow afternoon, in an unusual procedure, the en bancTenth Circuit will consider Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, a challenge to a Department of Health and Human Services regulation requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacient drugs, despite the fact that it violates the religious and ethical beliefs of many employers. The Tenth Circuit’s orders granting initial en banc argument and setting the date are here and here.
Numerous challenges to the regulation have been filed around the country, and in most cases, the challengers have prevailed in persuading courts to grant injunctions against the mandate. A two-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit, however, erroneously denied the Hobby Lobby’s request for an injunction in this decision last year. The Tenth Circuit now has a chance to correct its error, and join the majority of courts that have, thus far, properly granted injunctions against the mandate.
When a case like this arises, most immediately think of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. While the HHS may indeed violate the First Amendment, the courts may never reach that question because a federal statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), provides greater protection to religious liberty than the First Amendment. RFRA was passed in 1993 by a Democratically-controlled Congress, and signed into law by President Clinton. Continue reading →
The New Mexico Court of Appeals has held that the 300-day statute of limitations for age discrimination claims under the New Mexico Human Rights Act begins to run when the plaintiff suffers an adverse employment action, not when she discovers that a younger replacement has been hired.
Judge Hanisee’s opinion in Slusser v. Vantage Builders, Inc. notes that there are two rules in American jurisdictions. The majority rule holds that the statute of limitations for an age discrimination claim begins to run when the plaintiff is injured by an adverse employment action, regardless of whether the plaintiff is aware that the employer may have acted from a discriminatory motive. The minority rule holds, by contrast, that an age discrimination claim accrues only when the plaintiff becomes aware of the employer’s discriminatory motive. Continue reading →
The Conference will be held on August 29-31 at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs. Reservations at the special conference room rate are now available.
Yesterday the New Mexico Court of Appeals issued two decisions dealing with workers’ compensation claims:
1. Laughlin v. Convenient Management Services, Inc.In an opinion by Judge Wechsler, the Court held that the Workers’ Compensation Judge correctly determined that a worker who had previously achieved maximum medical improvement, but who then decided to undergo surgery, was no longer at maximum medical improvement. The worker’s change in condition was not barred by judicial estoppel or the law-of-the-case doctrine.
2. Ruiz v. Los Lunas Public Schools. In an opinion by Judge Vigil, the Court, among other things, reversed the Workers’ Compensation Judge’s rulings that the worker had engaged in “injurious practices” by failing to complete a home exercise program, and that she was not entitled to temporary total disability benefits. The Court also reversed the WCJ’s ruling that the employer failed to make a timely offer of settlement.
President Obama has named Judge Carolyn McHugh of the Utah Court of Appeals to the Tenth Circuit, according to this report in the Salt Lake Tribune. The White House’s announcement is here. Judge McHugh’s Wikipedia page, which seems more informative than her official biography, is here.
The New Mexico Supreme Court’s Rules of Appellate Procedure Committee (of which I am a member) has proposed a change to Rule 12-215 that would require an amicus curiae to disclose when a party to the case, or the party’s attorney, has written any part of the amicus brief, or made a monetary contribution intended to fund the amicus brief. You can find the proposed amendment and committee commentary here.
The Supreme Court of the United States, and the federal courts of appeal, enacted a similar disclosure requirement several years ago. See U.S. Supreme Court Rule 37.6; Fed. R. App. P. 29(c). The disclosure requirement was motivated by several concerns: Continue reading →
