ClickCease

clearcast

Clear Counsel Law Group / clearcast

ClearCast #15: Our Friends at VidAngel May Have Some Trouble On Their Hands

Welcome to today's ClearCast! A fun one for Episode 15!

I feel like our audience will be divided into two groups: those whom are fully invested in this legal battle with no further explanation needed1)"Get to the lawyers already!" I hear you. & those of whom that have never even heard of VidAngel. If you are in the former group, please feel free to skip right to the great episode; I won't be offended in the slightest.

Now for the rest of you, (I'm in this group too don't feel bad), you have got to check out this VidAngel company. The marketing is hilarious! I've enjoyed it thoroughly.

In essence, this streaming service provides a means for consumers to censor movies in the way that they choose, whether it be censoring language or violence.

I'll let Mr. Flake and Mr. McArthur explain the specifics of how it works.

For those of my friends of the more liberal persuasion that likely are objecting to on the grounds of "censoring art," I have a couple of questions for your consideration.2)Mr. Flake and Mr. McArthur have some great ones of their own as you'll see

  1. Shouldn't parents be permitted to introduce their children to socially questionable material on their own terms instead of what Hollywood thinks is best? (as in, the majority of society has questions about certain behavior)3)Is this about Freedom?
  2. Wouldn't you at least concede the the violent imagery/language on tv/in movies is more extreme now than it has ever been?4)For those of you who say "then just don't watch it." Don't worry..

I don't have children, but these desires seem very reasonable to me.

Nor do I have a stake in this fight5)I have not nor would likely use the service, but I certainly pity the good folks over at VidAngel. From what I've seen, I really think they meant well.

Thanks for watching!

-Brian

[End note]

..There's been an update! The 9th Circuit ruled; see below.

Jordan Flake: Welcome to Clear Past. I'm attorney Jordan Flake and I'm really happy to be joined by Matt McArthur. He's an attorney in our firm who practices in bankruptcy. Even though this video isn't about bankruptcy, you'll see that Matt has some experience that makes his viewpoint on this subject relevant. What we're gonna talk about today is in response to this New York Times article that's catching a lot of interest. It says here, "Hollywood: Faith Goes to the Movies." What the article addresses is the streaming video service called VidAngel. Now, I know a lot of my Facebook friends and family have used VidAngel. We've had conversations about it. I'm sure you're the same.

Matt McArthur: Sure.

Jordan Flake: Have you used VidAngel before?

Matt McArthur: I have.

Jordan Flake: Okay, so you're a consumer of VidAngel.

Matt McArthur: Yeah

Jordan Flake: Tell us why you wanted to use it, how it works. A lot of you probably already know, but just by way of review Matt'll talk to us about how it works and then we'll get into what's happening with the lawsuit. Go for it.

Matt McArthur: The way VidAngel works is you go through their services, through their website or their app and you purchase the digital rights to a movie or a television show, and it's akin to a cross between Redbox and Netflix where you can stream the video content that you're purchasing and still have the option of being able to keep it for a short period of time, sell the digital rights back after a day, and still be able to recoup the vast majority of the expense of actually buying the movie. In the past, my recollection is a little fuzzy here, but it was about $1.50 or something in that neighborhood to be able to watch a movie for 24 hours and be able to give those rights back to VidAngel.

Jordan Flake: Great, and so what happens then is you buy a video off of VidAngel, you purchase it for a good reasonable fair market value, they have a digital copy which they've purchased that corresponds with your copy. In that sense the studios are being made whole by the fact that there's an actual copy corresponding with the copy that you purchase in your home?

Matt McArthur: Correct.

Jordan Flake: Why VidAngel? What's VidAngel?

Matt McArthur: The neat thing about VidAngel is unlike Redbox or Netflix, by using the VidAngel app you're actually able to edit the content that you're consuming. If you wanted to filter out all of the F-words in a movie or all of the graphic violence or nudity, you can filter that right out of the movie and be able to watch a movie that you are otherwise unwilling, or perhaps your children were unable to watch.

Jordan Flake: Brian's off camera here. Brian, did we get some of Matt's beautiful children in this?

Brian: They are in the shot you bet.

Jordan Flake: Are they in the shot? Okay, because we have here Davis, and Allie and Dex. We don't necessarily want these little children of yourself watching some of the content, but at the same time there's some really great stories out there. I don't know if Davis is ready for Last of the Mohicans or something like that, or Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings being a great one. There's just a few things that might be too scary for kids his age.

Matt McArthur: Sure. You're able to consume the vast majority of-

Jordan Flake: Do you remember what VidAngel movie you watched? Maybe you don't remember.

Matt McArthur: I do remember. We watched Argo. I didn't watch that with the kids, but I watched that with the wife and that was a movie that we would have otherwise not watched. My wife's appetite for that type of material in movies is perhaps not as high as some others.

Jordan Flake: Argo's a great example because you take a few language elements and there's really nothing super violent about it, there's nothing inherently inappropriate from a sexual, nudity standpoint. You win. You're winning because you're bringing in this movie in the home. From VidAngel's perspective they're winning because when they sell you the movie and buy it back, they get to pocket the dollar or $1.50 or whatever from the transaction.

Matt McArthur: By the way, if you decide that you like the movie so much, you can retain the digital rights.

Jordan Flake: You don't have to send it back. It's $19 or whatever. From VidAngel's perspective, they would also say, "Hey, the studios are winning because we bought a copy to correspond with the copy that we sold to the McArthur family. Now, obviously they're upset. The studios are very upset at this. I think the reason's they're upset probably go beyond the scope of my understanding of the industry, frankly. At a bare minimum, we know that the studios make these contracts with Netflix, with Redbox, with Amazon, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Blockbuster, whatever. The VHS at Blockbuster. Bryan's dying off camera here. Basically, they want to be able to control the digital content. I wouldn't be surprised if in the final analysis, in the smoke-filled room where the diabolical studio executives are sitting, just kidding. The real question here is one of how to control the digital content, not just for this one little VidAngel slice of our story, but also prospectively in the future. How do we make sure that we control this?

Matt McArthur: I was just gonna follow up on that presumption you're making. Do you think it's more of a artistic license freedom issue or is it a monetary issue, or both?

Jordan Flake: Both because I think there's a situation where the movie creators, the creative minds, they get done meditating in the morning and having their chai latte. I'm so full of stereotypes today. What's going on? The point is they say to the studios, "I want creative control over this." If the guy who produced Argo, which I think is an excellent movie, if he comes along and the studios say, "Hey, by the way, one of the ways that Argo's gonna get disseminated out to the public is by way of VidAngel, and they're gonna take your movie and make it appropriate for five year olds." They're gonna say, "Well I'm not gonna do business with you, studio, because I have my artistic standards and I want my work to be protected." I definitely think that there's a creative, protect the creative process, "my movie is a work of art and I want it to be put out in the marketplace the way that I intended it to be put out there, not in some other diluted form."

When this originally happened with CleanFlicks, another prior company that underwent a similar lawsuit, Steven Spielberg took great exception to his masterpiece, Schindler's List, being totally neutered by CleanFlicks, turning it into a story about a really nice business guy who hooked up some victims with an additional life. The violence, for Steven Spielberg, was a necessary element to show the horrific suffering of the Holocaust on the one hand, and the extreme magnanimity of Schindler in purchasing and doing what he did to preserve these lives on the other. To him, it was a huge affront to take this and gut it, from a creative angle.

Matt McArthur: I get where you're going with that, but at the same time, if you look at what TNT or TBS does when they're replaying movies for the general TV audience, there's censoring.

Jordan Flake: Or what they do on airliners, right?

Matt McArthur: Sure. That can't be the whole story.

Jordan Flake: They're responding to a market need. That's all the VidAngel are trying to say is, "We're just responding to a market need here, and one of our needs is the McArthur children. We want to bring quality films like Argo, take out the few objectionable parts and makes it so that Misty McArthur can enjoy viewing that movie. I understand that. That's the creative side. The money side is obviously they don't want Jordan Flake purchasing 10 digital copies of a movie and then going to my friends and saying, "Hey everybody, I'm gonna create Jordan Flake's digital streaming platform, and I'm gonna rent these movies out to you, and you guys are gonna give me three bucks back."

Matt McArthur: They're being completely cut out of the deal.

Jordan Flake: Cut out of the deal because I'm the guy, it's sort of a Napster except for Napster was illegal downloads, this would be legal downloads, but unanticipated hosting, me capitalizing off of somebody else's hard. Those are kinda the big questions. VidAngel, I've seen their videos, their ads are funny. They run a very good defense of what they're trying to accomplish and what they're trying to do. Let's talk a little bit about one of the cases right now. Right now there has been an injunction issued against VidAngel.

Matt McArthur: Take a step back. Big studios are suing to stop VidAngel.

Jordan Flake: Studios are suing to stop VidAngel and saying, "This represents a huge end around of our entire industry. It threatens the creative side, it threatens the monetary side, and we gotta shut VidAngel down." VidAngel's waving their hands and saying, "How can you tell me I can't buy a Pablo Picasso. I can buy a Pablo Picasso and I can tape other little figures in the Pablo Picasso or I could cover parts of it with sticky notes because it's mine. I own the Pablo Picasso, I can put sticky notes on it. Then I can go back to the art dealer and say, "Hey, the sticky notes didn't do any damage cause it was on the outside of the frame. Now I'm gonna sell you this Pablo Picasso back and you get to keep some of the money from the transaction. How can you tell me what I can and can't do with your art that comes into my home?"

This is where the streaming rights, it gets very complicated, the monetary angle, what the studios are allowed to do, what they're not allowed to do. The studios have agreements in place with the creative minds that we won't let certain things happen with your content. That's where it becomes an issue and they sue to shut VidAngel down. They did something called an injunction. Although that's not my area of expertise, civil litigation, my understanding is that an injunction is basically saying, "Hey listen, Your Honor. We need to shut these guys down now." It might take two or three years to resolve this case, but in the meantime VidAngel shouldn't be allowed to operate because they're doing irreparable damage to us by not allowing us to capture the profits that we would otherwise. They're probably hurting our relationships with Netflix because one VidAngel tagline is 'See this movie before it becomes available on Netflix,'" which must have the studios pulling their hair out.

There's the irreparability angle, and also there's a likelihood of success of the merits angle. It's probably pretty hard to get a California court that are traditionally very liberal, traditionally very everybody has their day in court, to issue this injunction unless there really was a likelihood of success on the merits. Right now there's an injunction in place and they're saying, "You can't go show these movies." I guess, Bryan, was there a violation of the injunction?

Brian: My understanding is that Neal kept putting movies up on VidAngel after the injunction was put in place.

Matt McArthur: Neal is the owner of VidAngel, correct?

Brian: Yeah, he's putting up new films as well. Sully, and two other films.

Jordan Flake: Just the mere fact that we're saying Sully, I can see the directors and creators of Sully saying, "That was a family movie to begin with. Why am I subjecting it to this filtering service?"

Brian: Maybe Tom Hanks is saying, "I want as many people as possible to see my movie."

Jordan Flake: Exactly, maybe he's saying, "Let it go with this. I want the McArthurs, who for whatever reason they object to the use of this word or that word, they're still getting the main idea of the film. They're still getting to appreciate a nobility of the character, etcetera. That's this current legal status. Do you have any thoughts about what's likely to happen, how it's gonna go down, what you hope happens?" Just give your take on that.

Matt McArthur: I can't say that I used VidAngel a lot, but the times that I did use it, I was very impressed. It really opened doors to us that were otherwise shut, either because me and my wife were unwilling to watch a movie with content that we didn't really appreciate, or because I wasn't going to subject my children to certain types of content. For me, as a market consumer, it gave me more options and more content. Quite frankly, it was really convenient. It was like I didn't even have to go down to the Redbox and rent the blue-ray. I could just stream it from my own home, and have a really nice, cheap on-demand type service, or I could just stream the movie. From my perspective, I would love to see VidAngel be able to overcome this lawsuit and be able to continue it. Whether it's working out some sort of arrangement with the production companies to where they're being cut in, or winning outright.

Jordan Flake: I think that's where consumers probably would, if they're thinking about this clearly, that's what we would all hope for.

Matt McArthur: There's some kind of room for a middle ground where everybody can win.

Jordan Flake: There's gotta be a way that says, "Hey, listen, studios. Why don't you create VidAngel, brought to you by the studios?" Then I think the hangup there is that the creative side might not appreciate that, but then you have the TNT, TBS, airline exceptions. Why don't those things come into prevalence? This is obviously a big bowl of fish hooks. I think one thing I can say is we can't have a situation where regular consumers are setting up movie hosting sites that undercut the studios. The reason why I say we can't have that situation is because if the studios can't make money off of streaming, they'll stop creating movies and then it'll be incumbent on the individual users to create movies, the individual hosting sites to create movies. That's something that VidAngel is facing right now. Netflix is coming up with original content. Honestly the Netflix original content is probably a surprise for most people. Wouldn't have thought that Netflix was going to be doing its own shows.

Matt McArthur: Yeah, they had some ... They had some big hits there.

Jordan Flake: Several years ago, they've had some really good hits. Maybe that's one angle, is VidAngel can do its own content. Maybe there is some comprise to be had between the studios and VidAngel. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I definitely hear you on the content things. Under any circumstances, the McArthurs certainly are not going to change their mind about allowing certain content in the home. It's just not gonna happen.

Matt McArthur: Quite frankly, if the movie companies are being cut in on some of these rental profits that VidAngel's currently making, it's simply broadening our horizons.

Jordan Flake: We're very interested. We know we have viewers out there who, like Matt, have tried VidAngel and were very curious to see where you stand on this. We'll keep you posted if there are any interesting developments in this story. In any event, it's very interesting to see how this'll progress. Thanks so much for joining us for Clear Cast. Definitely let us know how you feel about this. Thanks.

Matt McArthur: Bye, everyone.

 

[Endnote]

The 9th Circuit denied the emergency petition from VidAngel. (The 9th Circuit is essentially "the California circuit". Hard to imagine them weakening the copyright protection of Hollywood, yes?)

Next week I'm going to explain why as a Nevadan, you should be concerned if they don't add a ninth justice to the Supreme Court.

How do you feel about living under California law?

Stay tuned..

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 "Get to the lawyers already!" I hear you.
↑2 Mr. Flake and Mr. McArthur have some great ones of their own as you'll see
↑3 Is this about Freedom?
↑4 For those of you who say "then just don't watch it." Don't worry..
↑5 I have not nor would likely use the service
ClearCast / Estate Planning / General Interest - 01/05/2017

It's Time for Your 2016 Awards! Fun!

We had quite the year here on the legal blog! Thanks for joining us for the ride!

In 2016 we doubled down on our approach to produce marketing content that benefits the Nevada community, and dare I say, it was a resounding success.1)Only meaning that our growth in web traffic validates this course of action

To show my appreciation for all of our new viewers, I prepared a Special 2016 Awards!

Because you deserve a little bit more than regurgitating information we already published, I tried to mix things up.

As to my methodology, presume an immense of amount of undue influence/corruption. This is entirely biased.2)These results aren't even final.

With that, (I assume you are donned the appropriate long-tail jacket), we begin!

The 2016 Awards: ClearCast of the Year!

ClearCast Episode 4 wins hands down. To this day, I have yet to see anyone else beside Jonathan articulate the difference between 'free speech' and 'workplace rights'.

Sure Kaepernick can kneel..but his employer could likely fire him for it as well (Not in this case, as Jonathan notes, the NFL is collectively bargained).

Fun!

The 2016 Awards: Entrepreneur(s) of the Year

It was a tie! And unfortunately we still don't have time for a recount.

First, our friend3)I regret forgetting his name selling wares outside of President Obama's rally in North Las Vegas.

..I really should have purchased that McGovern poster when I had the chance. Darn.

Trump Obama Vegas

Yes, all that man does is win. One can only guess how he is winning the post-election.

..Like I said, there was a tie. Our friend above tied with anonymous bloggers of Macedonia that learned how to make a living off of Donald Trump clicks.

There's been much too much written about fake news post-election (you better believe I got in on the action), but not nearly enough on why people want to click on headlines like "Hillary eats people." I hope to explore that more next year..

The 2016 Awards: ClearCast I That Needs More Attention If I Do Say So Myself..

ClearCast Episode 5 on San Francisco federal court taking gun rights away from Nevadans!

This is terrible precedent established by the 9th Circuit earlier this year. In essence, they ruled that if a Nevadan (remember, this is a California-based court) possess a medical marijuana card, (just the card! they don't need to prove anything else..like actual consumption) she may not purchase a gun.

Think about that for a second. Her firearm licenses is dependent upon her medical condition?

..See! What did I tell you!

The 2016 Awards: 'Who Wore It Best?' Award Winner of Campaign 2016:

Duh?

This one looked like it would be a barn-burner between the good Senator from Vermont and our friend Jeb!,(did he wear the same sweater 4 days in a row?), Bush.

But unfortunately, as it turns out, Jeb!'s4)Yes, that's correct entry came in late December 2015..tough year for our friend from Florida. I don't think we've seen the last of Jeb! just yet..

The 2016 Awards: Best 2016 Election Content

Tie again!5)There's no way they will let me run this election again next year..this just isn't possible

Both, however, tried to move the conversation forward regarding Question 2, marijuana legalization.

Nevada marijuana

First, we went on location with the president of the Nevada Dispensary Association, Andrew Jolley, to give him an opportunity to explain why he supported passage without all the name-calling/exaggeration.

Folks seemed to have appreciated the straight talk. Happy to help!

Pat Hickey, Question 2, Las vegas, marijuana

Next, we sat down with a prominent opponent of marijuana legalization, Pat Hickey, and he was kind enough to spend 30 minutes explaining why feels so passionately about the subject.

We've been in talks with Pat (After popular demand!), and hope to have him back to discuss education policy/ESAs in the near future.

The 2016 Awards: Content That Could Improve Our Quality of Life6)Man I love this show..all I do is win

Clearly to my 'Not-Very-Modest Proposal' to update Nevada's election laws!

Please do this, Nevada electeds. The post lists 10 very good reasons why, including how much safer/easier voting would be for our senior citizens (Not to mention over 80% voter participation!).

And while you're at it, how about a state primary? We don't need to go through that silly caucus stuff again..

The 2016 Awards: The Best ClearCast About Clowns

This category..not as close as some of the previous. We've got to give the award to Episode 8.

I'm sure there were at least two other instances where Jordan asked me, "Is that a clown question, bro?," but neither was as clowny as Episode 8.

(Those were the days).

The 2016 Awards: Browbeat of the Year

Las vegas water laws, 2016 awards

Can't say I was as excited to win this award as much as a couple of the previous, but alas, here we are.

Over the summer, a neighbor of ours7)I'm not here to name names was watering their grass during the very hot/sunny daytime hours.8)Violating the law

How did I respond? With more than 3000 words explaining how with behavioral economics, we can understand why the water law is inefficient.

(And yes, they turned the sprinklers off.)

Joking aside, we want to thank you all for a wonderful year.

We appreciate the love and support of the Las Vegas Valley ; know that we aim to do even better in 2017!

Thanks for reading. Seriously.

-Brian

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Only meaning that our growth in web traffic validates this course of action
↑2 These results aren't even final.
↑3 I regret forgetting his name
↑4 Yes, that's correct
↑5 There's no way they will let me run this election again next year..this just isn't possible
↑6 Man I love this show..all I do is win
↑7 I'm not here to name names
↑8 Violating the law
ClearCast / General Interest / Las Vegas / Nevada Law / News - 12/28/2016

ClearCast #14: In Response to the Rob Graham Matter

[Editor's note]

Welcome to today's ClearCast!

A quick word about today's video.

If you are unfamiliar with what is being alleged, you can read more here about one of the victims. This is a horrible story about a local probate lawyer allegedly misappropriating client funds; it could be for even more than 13 million dollars.

If you are a client (or prospective) of Clear Counsel Law Group, we understand that it's important that you trust us with your most valuable assets.

In turn, we produced this video to explain how your money is protected.

Of course, if you have specific inquiry (or just need a little reassurance, certainly understandable), please reach out to us at (702) 522-0696.

Thank you and Merry Christmas!

-Brian

[End Note]

 

ClearCast Episode 14: Answering Your Questions Regarding Rob Graham

Jordan Flake: Hi, I'm Jordan Flake and I'm here with my partners Jared Richards, Jonathan Barlow. The three of us are the managing partners are Clear Counsel Law Group, and welcome to another ClearCast. Today we're going to be talking about something that has kind of rocked the legal community. We've had friends and family who've asked us questions about this news story. Through this ClearCast and potentially others, we hope to respond to some of these questions we receive, but I'm referring to the Rob Graham issue. Rob Graham is an attorney here in town. He practices in the areas of guardianship, probate, trust administration. The allegations right now are that he stole money from his client's trust account, basically that he misused that money. A lot of my friends and family have asked me, "What's a trust account? How did this happen? Why can an attorney all of a sudden steal a lot of money?" The allegations are that he stole $13 million, potentially, of his client's money is missing.

First of all, before we even get into those questions, we just roundly wholly 100% condemn any type of misuse, any type of unethical illegal access to clients' funds. That should never, ever, ever happen and we'll talk a little bit more about that. We all feel horrible and we spend a lot of time talking about the clients who are victims in this situation, and our heart goes out to them and their families. We'll talk about that a little bit more too as well, that we feel really, really bad. It's the worst possible way to spend the holidays, knowing that there was money that was being held and entrusted in an individual and now that money has essentially been stolen.

First, Jonathan, you're the one who, in our firm, in the three of us, you take a little bit more of a lead role in managing the trust account. Can you talk to us and some of our viewers about what is a trust account and difference between a trust account and operating account, how that works. There's a chance that people viewing this may actually be our clients and have money in our trust account right now and they'll want to know what's going on.

Jonathan Barlow: What we're doing. In short, there's two types of accounts that a law firm generally holds. One is what we call the operating account. That's money that we've earned. It's our law firm's money. We've earned it through fees, through clients paying us money to perform our services. That's our money as a law firm. We use that to pay our employees, we use it to pay our rent, and all the other expenses of operating the law firm. That's our operating account.

The story about Rob Graham doesn't really have to do with his operating account as far as the missing funds. What the missing funds came from was that second type of account that's called a trust account. A client trust account. Attorneys in various types of practices will have a reason to be holding money in a bank account that is not our money. For instance, just like Mr. Graham did probate work, we do probate work. That's when a deceased individual leaves behind assets that need to go through a process before they're distributed to the heirs. In doing that probate work, we'll collect a bank account. We'll close a bank account that the deceased individual had and we'll bring that money and deposit it to our client trust account.

Though that account at the bank is held with our law firm's name on it, it'll say "Clear Counsel Law Group" on the account statement as a designation IOLTA interest on lawyers' trust account, it's not our money. It's not ours. We are responsible to ensure that it goes to the right places, that it's applied appropriately. We are strictly prohibited from reaching into that client trust account and using it to pay anything other than the client's expenses.

Jordan Flake: Let me just stop you there and make sure that everybody's understanding. Grandpa John passes away and there's a bank account just in his name at Wells Fargo. There's $48,000 in that account. We get a probate started and we can go and we can liquidate that $48,000. We can't turn around and use that $48,000 to pay our employees, to buy Christmas presents for our family. We can't do anything like that because it's actually the family that Grandpa John left behind, that's their money we're just holding in trust. Can I shift over here to Jared? Jared does personal injury. Can he talk to us a little bit about the mechanics of a trust account in the personal injury context?

Jared Richards: Right. In a personal injury context, we go and we gather money for an injured person. When we gather the money, we put it into our trust account. Again, the moment it hits the trust account, it is somebody else's money. We then are responsible for making sure that that money goes to the right places. The money will often need to go to pay for medical providers. Sometimes it'll need to go to pay back, say if Medicare or Medicaid had paid medical bills. Sometimes that happens and we have to repay the government. Then we have to pay our clients. Out of that, we also get paid a fee.

At the end of a case, when we are going to distribute money, before we distribute money to ourselves for certain, we will send the client an accounting so the client knows where all the money went, where if we had to advance money for filing fees with the court or to pay to go depose another party's expert and we advance that money, we also account for that money when we get paid back for that amount. At the very end of the case, the client knows where every penny has gone and then gets the money that the client deserves.

Jordan Flake: There's a $50,000 vehicle insurance policy, $50,000 policy. You make a demand and say, "Hey, insurance company, your guy, your insured hit Tommy, our client." We give us the $50,000 and we hold that in trust because Tommy has medical bills that need to be paid out of that purse.

Jared Richards: Right. For example, as you said, let's say that Tommy got hurt and there's a $50,000 insurance policy. We make a demand on the insurance. The insurance company agrees and they pay $50,000. That $50,000 would go into our IOLTA trust account, the trust account we hold for clients. We then do an analysis of are there medical bills that need to be paid out of that account? Are there contractual obligations that our client has that we need to honor in that account?

Jordan Flake: If we just gave that money to the client ...

Jared Richards: Then it would be a problem because then we may be breaching the client's contractual obligations. We may be breaching our own contractual obligations, and we may actually be violating the law that require us to, say, pay back Medicaid.

Jordan Flake: Right, and if we use that $50,000 to run off and pay our own expenses ...

Jared Richards: Then we've got major problems. We've just stole the money.

Jonathan Barlow: Then a similar issue related to that is several law firms have several different actual trust accounts with different account numbers. We hold all ours in one account. We got Mr. Jones's money in there, we got Ms. Smith's money in there. It's all in there. Just like we can't use the trust account to pay our expenses, I can't use Mr. Jones's money to pay Ms. Smith's medical bills for her case.

Jordan Flake: Which is why from an accounting standpoint we have sub-accounts that we keep track of who has what share of that account.

Jonathan Barlow: What we do is we have every single case that we have, every single client that we have, we separately distinguish, this is their money, this is where it went, this is where it's going. Because I can't dip into this account or this person's money to pay the other person's money. That's essentially how a trust account works until it's determined, like Jared said in the personal injury context, this is where all the money's going. Similarly, we do that in the probate or trust context of determining where it's going to be distributed.

Jared Richards: We're all very careful to not make mistakes. However, if the attorney does make a mistake with that money, the attorney is personally responsible for that money. While that money is in the attorney's trust account, that attorney's on the hook for all of it.

Jordan Flake: Right, and that's been my experience since starting our law firm, is that when we have our trust account checks and I'm signing a check and that check's going out the door, I look at that and I say, "Am I sure that this money is money that is under the law ready to be legally paid out?" There's no other considerations here, because if I did send out a check that I shouldn't have sent out, then I personally am on the hook for that. I would go to Jonathan and I'd say, "From operating account you need to reimburse this client because we mismanaged some trust funds and we need to put it back immediately." If that ever happened.

Jared Richards: Not that that does happen because we're careful, but if it were to happen, that's exactly what would happen.

Jonathan Barlow: In the Rob Graham context, one of the big questions is it's $13 million, and that's a significant and sizable trust account.

Jordan Flake: Clear, I'm going to lawyer this one. To be clear, we don't know. We don't have any personal knowledge about what went on with Rob Graham. We just read the same newspapers everybody else does and we hear the same allegations. When people are hurting and they lost their money and it appears that an attorney abused a position of trust, we're all human first and we are rabid and we want justice, but Jared, I think what you're getting at is facts are going to come in and we need to be careful.

Jared Richards: The allegation is right now that he stole $13 million, and if that's true, then [crosstalk 00:09:56].

Jonathan Barlow: My only point is the price tag is shocking, the amount.

Jared Richards: It's a huge amount.

Jordan Flake: What is alleged to have happened here, if you guys want to go into that at all? Did Rob Graham one day open up his online trust account and see that there was $13 million and think, "Okay, this is my chance to write a check to myself?" What's the allegations say?

Jared Richards: I think that what happens in situations like this, you have two possibilities. Either the attorney makes a conscious decision to liquidate the entire trust account and run away with it, which I don't know of any actual incident where I've heard that happening, but I'm sure it has happened before. I think that the allegation here is that Rob Graham was not running as efficient and as successful as a business as he wanted to project, and that he was using client money to supplement his own business, his own money, which is just as illegal and just as wrong. It's just a slower and more slippery slope.

Jordan Flake: So there wasn't a $13 million check?

Jared Richards: Probably here. We don't know.

Jonathan Barlow: I don't think that's the allegation. I think the allegation right now is that over the course of time, he started dipping into some client funds and then continue to dip in to try to make that right. Sort of a Bernie Madoff type of a transaction.

Jordan Flake: Ponzi scheme.

Jonathan Barlow: Almost a Ponzi scheme.

Jordan Flake: Almost, where he's using the money that's there today to meet those obligations.

Jonathan Barlow: Exactly.

Jared Richards: And hoping that the money tomorrow will come in to pay yesterday's obligations.

Jordan Flake: The money that he's waiting to have come in through the door in this situation appears to have not been his money, and that's the major, major problem. If we're just running all of our expenses out of the operating account, that's business. That's just the way it's done. If an attorney were to ever dip into the trust account and say "I need to make payroll this month. Shoot. I only have $15,000 in my operating account and I have $4 million in my trust account. I could use some of the $4 million to pay my payroll since I don't have enough in my operating account." That's kind of what might have happened here.

Jonathan Barlow: Who knows if thinking, "I'll pay it back."

Jordan Flake: I'll make it back and I'll ...

Jared Richards: The only difference between the allegation of him stealing all $13 million in one fell swoop or him dipping in month after month for a number of years is the dipping month after month, we can more humanize it, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

Jordan Flake: Right, because the end result is the same, which is a tragedy of thinking, "My Grandpa John died. He had $48,000 in his Wells Fargo account. We hired Rob Graham to go and liquidate that $48,000 account and we were going to split it up three ways."

Jared Richards: Exactly.

Jordan Flake: "We were hoping to be done around the holiday season so we could all have that extra money to go out and buy Christmas gifts or whatever for our family." Now that money's gone. That's horrible.

Jonathan Barlow: It's devastating.

Jordan Flake: It's devastating to the families.

Jonathan Barlow: There's a couple other allegations that raise points that are red flags in the way that a lawyer handles his trust account. Apparently, according to allegations, it appears that Mr. Graham was the only person at his office who really controlled the trust account, who had any access, knowledge of the trust account. That sure makes it easier to hide some things that you don't want other people to know about. One good protection, and particularly with the three of us here, is to have multiple people who have control of the trust account, who have eyes on the trust account, and who review that trust account and realize, "What's this payment coming out?" And can question those things if necessary. That's been a good thing for us, is that the three of us can have that equal access to it, equal control over it. Heaven forbid one of us try to do something wrong. You have two people who are going to watch over it.

Jared Richards: Exactly. You have at least multiple partners that have oversight that can track it. Also, something that we do that I think more firms ought to do is we have a bookkeeper that is the employee of a separate accounting firm who helps us keep track of our books. If there are abnormalities that happen in the books, the bookkeeper would be alerted and the partners would be alerted. Those two things are safeguards: multiple partners with oversight, and somebody outside the firm that's connected to a separate accounting firm that has oversight as well.

Jordan Flake: To that point, you have the bookkeepers keeping their books and we're keeping our books and they have to match up every single time. That's all done internally. One of the problems with the Rob Graham case, the allegation is that his mother-in-law was the bookkeeper, and so those conversations and those huge red flags that needed to pop up in this context apparently never did.

Jonathan Barlow: Right. If our books that we keep here on my computer don't match with the accountant's books, then we make the correction as necessary.

Jordan Flake: Do either of you expect to see more regulation from the government or the state bar? State of Nevada, or the state bar?

Jared Richards: The problem is that from time to time, you will hear the Nevada bar reprimand somebody for overdrawing their trust account. Because any bank, the rule is the banks, if they hold attorney trust account money, if the check bounces, if the account is overdrawn, the bank is required to notify the state bar so the state bar can do an investigation as to why. The shocking part of Rob Graham is yes, it appears that he may have stolen some money. I know, I'm a lawyer, I'm being all cautious. That's why they're smiling. Because we don't know. The allegations may have some ...

Jonathan Barlow: It'll come out.

Jared Richards: Yeah, the allegations will come out and the facts will come out in their own due course. The two things that are utterly shocking about this case is the size of the alleged theft and the prominence of the attorney. In the probate estate planning community and those people that watch, I can't remember what news channel Rob advertised on, but Rob Graham's a known name. We all know the name. Between those two things of a large amount stolen by a noted, prominent attorney, it may jar the rule makers into making more rules.

Jonathan Barlow: I wouldn't be surprised, really, to see something else change. Really, the only time that the state bar, and this is why I think there probably will be some changes, the only time the state bar will come and look at your client trust account and make sure to get a truly outside from the government or state bar or whatever, is if there's a complaint made against one of our attorneys, that doesn't even necessarily have to do with a client trust account. Say one of our attorneys messed up a case. Client gets upset and they file a complaint with the state bar.

Jordan Flake: I'm going to lawyer that one too. We don't do that.

Jonathan Barlow: Right, it hasn't happened because we haven't ever been audited. Anyhow, in the context of the state bar coming in to investigate, "Why'd you mess up this guy's case?" They will audit the book at the same time.

Jordan Flake: Just as a matter of course.

Jonathan Barlow: As a matter of course, almost. That's about the only time that they independently come in to audit books. I wouldn't be surprised to see some audit requirements coming out of this.

Jared Richards: The problem you have with that is the sheer number of attorneys out there handling [crosstalk 00:18:06].

Jonathan Barlow: Trust accounts, yeah. It's a monumental task.

Jared Richards: It would be a monumental task to send in auditing standards for everybody.

Jordan Flake: Right, but if that task is necessary to restore the community's faith in our profession, which is one of the goals of the state bar, then they'll have to do it.

Jonathan Barlow: One of the good things to that point is what's happening with Rob Graham's client. As discouraging as it was to see a very prominent name like this happen, we have observed the rest of what we call the probate bar. The other probate attorneys have rallied around this issue, not to pour dirt on Mr. Graham's grave, but to try to get his clients back to where they need to be. That was primarily led initially by Jason and Brandy Cassidy, excellent probate attorneys here in town, who took the initial task of .. What the state bar's asking them, "Cassidies, would you do this?" They took those client files and they've been trying to sort through those files. They've done an excellent task of doing that. Now, I've seen multiple attorneys who have offered to help and who will be probably taking on some of those cases, including our law firm. We'll be taking on a large handful of these cases to help them move forward.

Jared Richards: With the understanding that the money for those cases already seems to have been embezzled.

Jonathan Barlow: Almost in every case, the attorneys will be doing that pro bono, including our firm. Meaning without payment.

Jordan Flake: Without payment. You're right. This is just a small silver lining on this sad story, but it is nice to see that the attorneys all recognize how wrong this is and what a tragedy it is for the clients involved, and to the extent possible we're trying to mobilize our resources, and especially good shout out to Jason and Brandy Cassidy, who are really taking on the bulk of that project, and we're all here to help. Any last closing thoughts on this from either of you? On this whole situation and what you would want to tell our viewers.

Jonathan Barlow: It's shocking to see a story like this. It shocked us to see a story like this about an attorney. It'll shake confidence. A lot of people don't have good opinions of attorneys in the first place, so it'll certainly shake some confidence of them. If there's any hope behind this, is the fact that this is such a rare occurrence. I've been practicing 10 years and nationwide, this is the first story that I've seen of this size or nature. Just happened to happen in our backyard with somebody we know. It's such a rarity to see something like this happen that you can take some comfort in knowing there's a lot, 99.9% of the attorneys out there are doing this the right way, including our firm trying to do the right way the best we can.

Jordan Flake: Great, any last thoughts?

Jared Richards: No, I think Jonathan covered it.

Jordan Flake: I think the only last thing I'd say is really with any regulations, the biggest and best regulation is just be extremely trustworthy. To know why we're doing this and to know that there are real people, our clients are real people and that they deserve trust, respect, and especially when it comes to valuable assets and things of that nature. Thanks so much for joining us for ClearCast. If you have any thoughts on this ClearCast, please link us, comment us, ask us any questions. If you would like to see us answer questions in a future ClearCast, please let us know. Jonathan, Jared, thanks so much for joining us today and we'll see you next time.

 

ClearCast / Estate Planning / General Interest / Las Vegas / Nevada Law / News / Probate / Probate Videos - 12/21/2016

ClearCast Episode 10: Parentage & The Prince Estate's Tricky Probate Matters

[Editor's Note]

Welcome to today's ClearCast!

I don't know about you, but thought the world of Prince and so saddened to see him pass away last April.

You may not believe this, but the man worth between $100-300 million dollars didn't even have a will, let alone an estate plan.

As you guess with an intestate estate of this size, there have been complications. Namely: two women have come forward purporting to be Prince's niece and grandniece, asking for their share of the estate.

The hearing in Minnesota is scheduled for today. We get you all prepared. Plus, we will give you a sense of how this would work out in Nevada.

Thanks for watching.

-Brian

[End Note]

 

[End Note]

The Prince Estate: When Parentage and Probate Laws Mix

Transcript:

Jordan Flake: Hi. I'm Jordan Flake, and I'm an attorney with Clear Counsel Law Group. Welcome to another ClearCast. I'm here with my partner, Jonathan Barlow. He's also a expert in the field of probate and trust disputes and litigation. Back in the news this week is Prince, the musician who died of an overdose last April. Maybe you were a big fan. Basically there's some really sticky probate issues that they're dealing with off in Minnesota. He was a resident of Minnesota. Essentially, what I understand from the situation is that Prince didn't have any surviving children or parents.

Jonathan Barlow: Not married also.

Jordan Flake: Not married, and he passed away without a will, which means intestacy laws apply. Which in that case what would happen is it just goes equally to Prince's brothers and sisters. However, if Prince has a predeceased brother or sister then that share would pass down to that brother or sister's children. Basically we have a situation where two women, one claiming to Prince's niece and another claiming to be Prince's grandniece have come along and said, "Hey, our dad, Dwayne, was Prince's brother. Dwayne passed away five years ago in 2011, and therefore we're entitled to Dwayne's share of the estate because he was Prince's brother." By the way, the estate is a pretty big estate. Rounding out possibly as high as, this is speculation, but possibly as high as 30 million dollars or even more. It's not a small amount of money that we're talking about here.

Jonathan Barlow: It's worth fighting about.

Jordan Flake: It's definitely worth fighting over. The niece and grandniece have come along and said, "Hey, listen. We're entitled to this because Dwayne was Prince's brother, and he's predeceased Prince, and this is the share." What are the complications here?

Jonathan Barlow: Well, it all sounds very reasonable.

Jordan Flake: It sounds great.

Jonathan Barlow: All things being equal the niece and grandniece would be exactly right. They would be entitled to that one share. The complication comes in because Prince's other siblings are saying that Dwayne, who you mentioned, the father of this niece and grandniece ... That Dwayne was not Prince's biological sibling, nor he was Prince's adopted sibling. Meaning, Prince's parents did not legally adopt Duane, and Duane was not their biological child.

Jordan Flake: Duane could've just been a guy.

Jonathan Barlow: Duane was just some guy.

Jordan Flake: Just some guy ...

Jonathan Barlow: Sorry, Duane.

Jordan Flake: ... who as young, little bundle of joy just showed up in Prince's family's household. Is that what happened?

Jonathan Barlow: Something like that. I wish we had known. Maybe Prince wrote a song about this. I don't know.

Jordan Flake: "Raspberry Beret", that's what it was referring to.

Jonathan Barlow: Dwayne's daughter and his then granddaughter, the niece and grandniece of Prince, are saying, "Hold on a minute aunts and uncles. We think you're aunts and uncles even though you don't think we're nieces of yours." They're saying, "Hey, wait a minute. Dwayne's and Prince's father brought Dwayne into his house," essentially that's what they're saying. Brought him into his house, treated him like his child, raised him as his child, always treated him as a child, and for all purposes he was never treated as if he wasn't. In fact, even Prince himself later in life and more recent years had acknowledged Dwayne as a half-brother or brother of some sort.

Jordan Flake: Prince's dad was saying, "Hey, these are my kids. This is Prince over here. He's really famous. This is my son, Dwayne. He's okay." I'm kind of the Dwayne of the family, by the way, in my own family, but anyway ...

Jonathan Barlow: We all have one of those.

Jordan Flake: We all have a Dwayne in our family. Basically Prince's dad was saying, "Yeah, Dwayne is my son." To what extent is that a legal hook?

Jonathan Barlow: It's interesting. Most states have adopted this law called the Uniform Parentage Act, and we have that here in Nevada, which gives us an interesting interplay in what's going on in Minnesota and Prince's estate right now. The Uniform Parentage Act basically says, in a very short way to say, just as Prince's father had done with Dwayne, if you bring a child into your house and treat that child as your child, even if you don't adopt them, even if it's not your biological child, and you hold them out to the whole world as your child, and for all purposes treat them as you child the law will say that person is that person's legal child for all purposes. Including for inheritance. Including for child support. Any purpose of establishing parentage it will establish that, so what's the niece and grandniece are saying is that parentage has already been established.

There was actually any interesting case in Nevada just last year in 2015 that dealt with the Uniform Parentage Act in a probate proceeding. Similar to this situation occurred a woman named Joyce was raised by her parents. Robert was her dad, but it sounds like it was never really clear whether Joyce was his biological child. On Joyce's birth certificate did list Robert as her father, but apparently it was not clear. When Robert died Joyce's, same thing, her aunts and uncles, came along and said, "No. Everyone knows Joyce is not Robert's biological child. Everyone knows that Robert did not adopt her, and so if we want Joyce wants to claim something she's got to have a DNA test." Essentially they wanted to exhume Robert and force a DNA test, which is horrible in itself to think that they would do something like that.

Anyway, the Nevada Supreme Court came along and said, "No, no, no. Sorry, under the Uniform Parentage Act," that law, the Uniform Parentage Act, "it says that if you're going to challenge somebody's paternity that is established in this way you have to do it within three years after that person turns 18 years old."

Jordan Flake: In application to the Prince case, they would've had to challenge Dwayne's being Prince's father's son, and also Prince's brother by the time he was 21?

Jonathan Barlow: Essentially. That's correct.

Jordan Flake: That would've been back in the '60s, or '70s, or whenever it was.

Jonathan Barlow: Sometime a long time ago, and so the law says-

Jordan Flake: Otherwise it's conclusively established?

Jonathan Barlow: It's done. In fact, those third parties, the aunts and uncles, the brothers and sisters, whoever it is they are legally prohibited, they're barred from contesting that paternity that has been established under the Uniform Parentage Act.

Jordan Flake: Is the niece and grandniece going to win in Minnesota then?

Jonathan Barlow: That's a good question. We never predict, right?

Jordan Flake: Right. Yeah, we don't.

Jonathan Barlow: Minnesota's going to do what Minnesota does, but interestingly the Nevada case, the Nevada Supreme Court case last year cited to a case that happened in Minnesota several years ago.

Jordan Flake: I'm sure there's not a lot of case law anywhere in the country on this type of topic.

Jonathan Barlow: Really unique interplay of parentage in probate. If they follow what the Nevada Supreme Court said they're going to have a very hard time disproving that this niece and grandniece are not entitled to inheritance.

Jordan Flake: Wow.

Jonathan Barlow: They're likely going to ... Without knowing Minnesota law really closely myself, if I was to guess they're going to receive a share Prince's estate.

Jordan Flake: I would love it if we could get ahold of one of the attorneys in this matter to come and smack us down, and tell us why we're wrong. We may be. If anybody out there knows. This is kind of interesting-

Jonathan Barlow: Which reminds me, I have a greeting card that I got from Prince a couple years ago. It said, "Hey, brother." I think I need to show up at hearing on Friday and see.

Jordan Flake: He probably has a song where he says, "You're all my brothers and sisters," or something like that.

Jonathan Barlow: He was talking about us.

Jordan Flake: He was talking about us, exactly. This is also interesting because if you're out there in the world right now and you suspect that your parents are holding out a non-biological sibling/child as an actual child then you have to get on top of that business before that individual turns 21.

Jonathan Barlow: It really sets up a really strange circumstance where essentially essential siblings that have been raised together-

Jordan Flake: "We're the real siblings."

Jonathan Barlow: That's right.

Jordan Flake: They get together and they say, "You're a fake sibling. We're going to get a court order," or what? How do they ...

Jonathan Barlow: That's theoretically what would happen. When that child turns 18 or 19 you can throw them into court to disprove that they have parents.

Jordan Flake: Do you see what a weird law this is? Because who is going to actually come along and challenge that unless there's a death in the interim.

Jonathan Barlow: Right, which is very rare.

Jordan Flake: Which would be very, very rare, so it's a very bizarre law, but this is why we enjoy being probate attorneys. We enjoy being estate planning attorneys. We love it when stories like Prince hit the national media because as always it highlights the need very good estate planning.

Prince was worth 30 million dollars, speculatively. He could've afforded an attorney to prepare a simple estate plan.

Jonathan Barlow: Even a simple will.

Jordan Flake: Even a simple will would've clarified.

Jonathan Barlow: A $99.00 will could've solved this whole thing. For all we know Prince would've wanted Dwayne's children to receive.

Jordan Flake: Right. Absolutely.

He may have wanted that. In any event, as we always do, we invite you to leave any thoughts, or comments, or additional information in the comments section, or on our Facebook, wherever we post this video.

Thank you so much for joining us.

 

ClearCast / News / Probate / Probate Videos - 10/21/2016

ClearCast Episode 6: Does Nevada Need a Tough Vaccination Law Like California?

{Editor's note} Welcome to Today's ClearCast!

We appreciate you stopping by on your busy day. The feedback from our past episodes has been great; thank you so much for taking the time to write and share your opinions!

We will continue to try to contribute the best we can to the ongoing discussions of Nevada public policy.

Today, we take on the laws pertaining to vaccination of your kids.

A little background..

Last year, Gov. Brown1)Yes, the same one! of California signed into law one of the toughest vaccination requirements in the nation by removing the previous exemption for religious/personal beliefs.2)It seems from afar that the measles outbreak in 2015 freaked out everyone

There are still many parents in Southern California that do not want to comply with the new law, one of the few doctors catering still to these folks is Dr. Sears.

Unfortunately for "Dr. Bob," he is now at risk of having his medical license revoked. At issue3)not the only issue is his willingness to write doctor's notes for parents to excuse them from vaccines. (Read the full complaint here).

As Nevadans, we are very concerned about any serious disease outbreak in SoCal, given how many folks travel between destinations.

More important for Nevadans though, we need to consider if Nevada needs to adopt the tough, new California law that does not permit exemptions for vaccines..

Thanks for watching; all the best.

-Brian

{End note}

Should Nevada Adopt California's Tough Vaccination Law?

Transcript:

Jordan Flake: Welcome to Clearcast. I'm Attorney Jordan Flake, and I'm here with Attorney Taylor Waite, and we today, in our continued effort to steer clear of anything that's the least bit controversial, we thought we'd talk about vaccinations, so that's obviously something that people feel very strongly about. Mostly because it brings in a lot of issues of caring about our kids, caring about public. Sometimes it brings in issues of science versus religion, but the reason this is back in the news, and the reason why we wanted to tackle it today somewhat, or I should just say touch on it today, because there's so much in our Clearcast is because recently a doctor in California, Dr. Bob Sears, has been accused of gross negligence in connection with a child, J. G., was the child's initials, who he's been seeing. Just a little background on Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob has a following because he has been very outspoken critic of the California Law, which says, "You must vaccinate your children." It's a misdemeanor not to do so, and your children must be vaccinated, even if you have a religious opposition to vaccinations. It doesn't matter in the State of California.

Dr. Bob met with this kid and his mother, and the mother said, "Well, when he was two and he got some vaccinations, then he couldn't urinate. He couldn't pass food. He basically was sick. He was lethargic." Dr. Bob wrote this medical recommendation saying, "Okay, well, this kid doesn't need to get medical treatment anymore." I'm sorry. "This kid doesn't need any future vaccinations. He's exempt from these." He's tried to give basically a doctor's exemption, but the Medical Board came down really hard on him and said, "Whoa. You didn't take any real data. You didn't collect any type of samples, and you didn't send this off to other labs to determine why this kid had the reaction that he did."

The Medical Board in California has basically sued Dr. Bob to potentially revoke his license, and it kind of just brings up a lot of these issues about the extent of which kids can ... Parents can protect their kids, and make decisions about their kids' health. I guess the question for us today, Taylor, and what I want you to weigh in on here, right now, Nevada says that, "You can have a religious exemption to vaccinations?"

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: Should we adopt the California Law? Should we continue with the Law that we have? Should we say some kind of a compromise, where it's like if you have a kid who has a religious exemption to vaccinations, that's fine, but you can't be in our public schools. How would you start to think about some of these issues? Maybe take us back a little, and what are some of the fundamental issues here at play?

Taylor Waite: It really is a hard question, because fundamentally, as parents, we believe that we're entitled to do the best by our children. They're our children. We know what's best for them. They obviously share some traits with us, so things that worked for us, we share our religious beliefs with our children, so those are important considerations. At the same time, and again, those beliefs go way back. The idea that we're going to allow people to have children at all, suggests that we are willing to let them parent their children, which should include, to some degree, their ability to make health decisions for their children.

Jordan Flake: The people who oppose vaccinations are extremely passionate in saying things like, "Listen. You would not let somebody inject your kid with poison."

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: The last time that my son got a vaccination, I watched as I wondered if he was going to pass away, because for basically two days, so I'm very, very sympathetic.

Taylor Waite: Yes.

Jordan Flake: To the idea that you should be able to protect your children.

Taylor Waite: Absolutely, but I

Jordan Flake: Share your religious beliefs.

Taylor Waite: Yes.

Jordan Flake: With your children.

Taylor Waite: Fundamentally, even speaking religiously though, I think we do teach as well to our children, that our individual choices still do affect others, and now there is a limit to our ability to choose to do whatever we want to do. What I choose to do in my home, within the walls of my home is one thing, but when that begins to affect my neighbors, begins to affect the people across the street, the neighborhood kids down the street, then it does have to open a broader discussion about what we are willing to do in a society where we've decided to come together in public schools, and things like that. It is a difficult question.

Jordan Flake: Yeah, so we have basically, our country acknowledges the right to raise your children however you want, provided it doesn't hurt anybody else, and the difference between people who are pro-vaccination versus anti-vaccination, is the anti-vaccination crowd maybe doesn't recognize, or believe in, or subscribe to the idea that whether or not I put these chemicals in my children actually affects the kid down the street.

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: Whereas, the scientific community, by in large, is supportive of the idea that, "Listen. You have to vaccinate your kids, because that will affect the kids down the street." Look at the outbreak of, I believe it was Measles in Disneyland.

Taylor Waite: Yes, in Disneyland. Obviously the anti-vaccination. We've read some of that stuff. They suggest that there wasn't enough scientific data to determine that that actually was related to non-vaccination, given the number of foreigners that were there, and everything else. I mean, there are other arguments, but absolutely.

Jordan Flake: Right.

Taylor Waite: It does affect others. Like our willingness to vaccinate or not vaccinate.

Jordan Flake: It's my understanding, vaccines is limited, but it's kind of my understanding that my one child not getting a Measles vaccination is not going to have an effect, but implementing a policy where everyone can say, "Well, I don't want to be the one to vaccinate-

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: "My child, because it could in the margins be harmful." It's very interesting. It's kind of we're trying to all make the deal that, "Listen. We know on the very margins, some vaccinations might interact badly with some people, potentially." The science on that is hit or miss, but we're all agreeing, we're all buying into the system where we say, "Hey, we all vaccinate-

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: "Because we don't want these many diseases." Let's talk specifically about the Nevada Law then. How do we start to think about whether or not to permit the ... Continue to permit the religious exemption? That's tough, right?

Taylor Waite: I think it is tough, but it think it has to be a consideration for parents that are willing. It is problematic, I think, for someone like Dr. Sears, assuming that a doctor could come forward with a legitimate rationale. Medical background, that was one of the concerns when you read through the information we have, is that his recommendations were not necessarily based entirely in actual-

Jordan Flake: It's almost-

Taylor Waite: Diagnosis.

Jordan Flake: It's almost like Dr. Sears, he had a big opportunity, "Like, oh, man."

Taylor Waite: Yes, to prove his point.

Jordan Flake: To prove his point.

Taylor Waite: Yes.

Jordan Flake: I read that as maybe he didn't want to go and actually run the tests, and get the data, and support. He didn't want to go through the arduous, but well-recognized process of supporting his concern that the vaccination caused this in the child, because maybe he was worried that it would have been something else. I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's I know a cynical view of Dr. Bob here, but I'm concerned that he was just sitting there thinking. I mean, it doesn't add a ton of credibility that he tried to treat an ear infection with garlic.

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: Color me slightly skeptical. Don't get me wrong. I'm sympathetic to parents who want to control their children's lives, but if your doctor ... This I will stand by. I will take a slight position here. If your doctor isn't willing to go through the well-recognized processes for diagnosing, recording all the information properly, going through the testing procedures, that's a big red flag.

Taylor Waite: Yes.

Jordan Flake: If you're going to be an anti-vaccination doctor, be my guess. That's your right to academic inquiry. Go for it.

Taylor Waite: It still has to be based. If we're going to press the conversation, then both sides have to agree that we're going to do it in the context of actual medical evidence.

Jordan Flake: Right.

Taylor Waite: If they want to come forward with alternatives, we'll listen to those, and we need to listen to those. There is progression. Right. The anti-vaccination, we have to be willing to listen to those, but we can't just come in, and pound our fists, and say, "We're not going to listen to your science."

Jordan Flake: It's funny, because on the one hand, we're demanding standards, scientific standards, but on the other, when it comes to religion, it's like, "Hey, I just started the Church of Jordan, and the Church of Jordan actually only has one tenet. Basically, you can be a bad person in all the ways you want, but you just don't vaccinate your kids." Do you know what I mean? Sorry, religious exemption, so we have medical standards on the one hand.

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: Then we just kind of throw those out the window, and we say, "Okay, any person for religious exemptions."

Taylor Waite: Religious exemptions.

Jordan Flake: That makes the medical community here in Nevada kind of pull their hair out, and say, "Well, then why do we have standards at all if we can just say religion?"

Taylor Waite: Correct.

Jordan Flake: Church of Jordan"4)Now accepting applications! people can just be like, "Oh, one tenet of the Church of Jordan is to not vaccinate the kids." There's no standards for that.

Taylor Waite: There's always concern when we build exceptions into the law that they will swallow a law [entirely 00:10:13], when that's always a concern.

Jordan Flake: Yeah.

Taylor Waite: If we set a rule, then we can live by that, but if we start to add exceptions, then we start to go through who is, so how do we define who is, and is not entitled to that?

Jordan Flake: Like normal, I think, we're just raising more questions than we have answers for.

Taylor Waite: Right.

Jordan Flake: As always, we invite our listeners, and viewers, and readers out there to give an opinion about, I guess specifically any opinion you have on anything we discuss. Feel free to correct us. We're not experts on this. We're happy to hear you out.

Taylor Waite: Absolutely.

Jordan Flake: I think we are very interested to see, should Nevada continue to allow this law, which states, "That if you are religiously opposed to vaccinating your kids, then you're exempt." Is that okay to continue that? Second question we didn't really get to, but we'd love to hear what you have to say on it, is if we do exempt kids from vaccination for religious purposes, would it be okay then to say, "That they can't attend public schools," or, "That they can't go to the same daycares that require vaccination efforts," et cetera, et cetera? Anyway, thanks for joining us for Clearcast. We barely just scraped the surface of this issue, but we'd be more than happy to hear what you have to say on it. Thanks so much, and please join us next time.

Taylor Waite: See you.

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Yes, the same one!
↑2 It seems from afar that the measles outbreak in 2015 freaked out everyone
↑3 not the only issue
↑4 Now accepting applications!
ClearCast / Las Vegas / Nevada Law / News / Politics - 09/13/2016

ClearCast Episode 5: A Federal Court Says Nevadans May Not Buy a Gun If They Possess a Medical Marijuana Card

6 September Update:

[Editor's note] Thanks for all the responses we received!

I'm going to take a few minutes here and address some of the concerns brought to my attention1)because we care!. The points are not related, but I present my points in list form so it is easiest to read.

First, here is the video for you to enjoy:

 

 

If you scroll down, you will see a transcript from the conversation, along with my original analysis from last week.

1. "She claims she wasn't using, but I don't buy that."

This is the most discussed angle of the case, which I just find a little silly, given that there are many an issue in dispute from this Order. This is not one of them.

Some of you may not be versed in the intricacies of appellate law2)Come on, get it together, but you should know that the 9th Circuit panel accepted Ms. Wilson assertion that she does not consume marijuana as true. And it was not an option. Let's go to the text:

However, taking Wilson’s allegations as true, as we must
on an appeal from a motion to dismiss, Usher v. City of Los
Angeles, 828 F.2d 556, 561 (9th Cir. 1987), she is not
actually an unlawful drug user. Instead, she alleges that,
although she obtained a registry card, she chose not to use
medical marijuana for various reasons, such as the difficulties
of acquiring medical marijuana in Nevada, as well as a desire
to make a political statement. Regardless of her motivations,
we agree that Wilson’s claims do not fall under the direct
scope of Dugan.3)p. 12(emphasis added)

Ah, there it is. What's going on? There is a (good) rule in appellate law, that the reviewing court accepts all of the allegations of the appealing party as true in a motion to dismiss.

This is necessary because none of these three, 9th Circuit judges were not present4)or even in the state of Nevada when the evidence was introduced. Appellate judges just aren't in a position to evaluate Ms. Wilson's claim.

Therefore, in order to give her appeal its full weight, they accept the allegations as true.5)If they would have decided for Ms. Wilson, they could have sent the case back to Nevada district court to have the evidence issues fully litigated. Ms. Wilson was never even given a chance for a trial. Her claim was dismissed even before the summary judgment phase.

Even if are still inclined to disbelieve Ms. Wilson6)You do you!, just know that the 9th Circuit here did not decided against her because they thought she was lying about consumption. They accept her allegations that she only possess the card but doesn't consume and still denied her gun rights just as a medical marijuana card holder.

 

2.  What's the Deal With This Term "Unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance"?

Great question! Wouldn't "unlawful user" be sufficient?7)in English, yes, but this is the law What would you say if I told you "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" is actually of term of art, in law?8)I know; contain yourself

Because I care for you, dear reader, I dissected the Code of Federal Regulations9)You are not the only person asking, wait, what is this? I will explain because we are all about empowering you. Most everyone is familiar with the 'Separation of Powers' under our Constitution. The legislature writes the laws, the executive enforces the law, the judicial branch evaluates. It is not practical for the legislature to write out every detail of new laws, so often the rule making (that is, how the law will be put into effect. For example, the legislature will say "No drug users can buy guns," but how that law is enforced (will the federal government assign an agent to every gun store? Maybe an open letter would be more efficacious) will be assigned to the appropriate executive department, in this case the ATF. and found the definition. I will reproduce it in full so you may see it in all its glory:10)Remember as you read, people classified as an "unlawful user" may not buy a gun in Nevada

Unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance. A person who uses a controlled substance and has lost the power of self-control with reference to the use of controlled substance; and any person who is a current user of a controlled substance in a manner other than as prescribed by a licensed physician. Such use is not limited to the use of drugs on a particular day, or within a matter of days or weeks before, but rather that the unlawful use has occurred recently enough to indicate that the individual is actively engaged in such conduct. A person may be an unlawful current user of a controlled substance even though the substance is not being used at the precise time the person seeks to acquire a firearm or receives or possesses a firearm. An inference of current use may be drawn from evidence of a recent use or possession of a controlled substance or a pattern of use or possession that reasonably covers the present time, e.g., a conviction for use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year; multiple arrests for such offenses within the past 5 years if the most recent arrest occurred within the past year; or persons found through a drug test to use a controlled substance unlawfully, provided that the test was administered within the past year. For a current or former member of the Armed Forces, an inference of current use may be drawn from recent disciplinary or other administrative action based on confirmed drug use, e.g., court-martial conviction, nonjudicial punishment, or an administrative discharge based on drug use or drug rehabilitation failure.11)source (emphasis added)

Thoughts on what the bold section above means? Where did I put my Wittgenstein12)Doubtful, we want to be having a function vs. essence discussion with legal code (Drudge-esq) alarm13)Must have left it in the sandbox again..darn?14)It's "not limited to...within a matter of days or weeks before"

I have now read that sentence at least 6 times. It makes less sense with each rereading. The problem is the word "recently," which Merriam-Webster defines as "during a period of time that has just passed15)Did they really split the infinitive? Oy.

Above, we have the government applying the word "recently," then denying the word's definition. How can something be "recent" if it hasn't happened in weeks?16)That's how it's done Ron Darling

I don't have much else to add on this point other than, if you don't like this, write your congresswoman.

One last point on this section of the CFR. Did you notice that they made a distinction in the definition for members of the armed services17)In theory, I'm not against this?

Would the case have turned out differently if she was retired from the Air Force? Should it?18)I can see both sides

This is not useful for gun sellers that want to obey the law.

This is the open letter19)the link in the opinion is broken cited in the Opinion that the ATF sent to the gun sellers.

..It's pretty obvious why the seller denied Ms. Wilson a firearm. Can't blame him; the man is just trying to run a small business without federal interference.

[End Update. Thanks for coming back. Just wait until Friday when I drop 2000 words about the legal ramifications of misnaming a Wade Phillips'20)Apparently "dog" is a defense? "Blitz"... -Brian]

Are We Going to Allow a Federal Court to Distinguish Away Our 2nd Amendment Rights?

[Editor's note] Hello and welcome to your Labor Day Weekend ClearCast!

Did you hear what a California federal court did your 2nd Amendment rights?

Our friends in the media have only begun to notice what happened in San Francisco earlier this week.

Yes, you read that right. A federal court said that Nevadans may not buy a gun if they are a registered medical marijuana patient.

(I can hear the chorus of objections of all sides...not to worry folks, that's what we are here for.)

Unfortunately, Mr. Flake and Mr. Barlow had/have client obligations this week, and asked me to supplement this ClearCast.

First, you need to understand that Nevada is under the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit, as you can see below:

circuit map

Now you understand why a ruling from San Francisco can affect your gun rights. On to the show!

Beneath the video I added aides to help with the discussion.

[Still noting]

Here is a link to the opinion. And here is a link to the ATF form discussed (the question is "e"). Here is how the DEA schedules different drugs.

I think Mr. Barlow and Mr. Flake have the global analysis of this case exactly right: that one of our fellow Nevadans wanted to use the federal courts to expand the scope of the 2nd Amendment (count me in the group that think's Ms. Wilson's protest is reasonable), and said protest went horribly wrong, and in fact, they achieved the exact opposite of the desired result.21)This is has been a horrific Summer for fans of conservative jurisprudence [and I'm not talking about North Carolina, that nonsense isn't conservative, it's just racist partisanship], or at least as the media describes it. Recall the reproductive rights case handed down by the SCOTUS a few weeks ago? They essentially cemented access to an abortion as a fundamental right. It seems, from afar, that the conservative strategy to undermine abortion was to distinguish away the rights in small phases. For example, see the difference between the rights articulated in Roe v. Wade verses Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In this year's Texas case, the anti-abortion folks got a little too overzealous, and decided to run that Texas law (requiring abortion clinics to have all the same medical equipment as a hospital, without justification [except that they don't like abortion, which doesn't count]) all the way up the chain. Instead of getting the abortion prohibition [which always seemed unlikely], the Supreme Court drew a bright line for how far abortion restrictions can go. The court would have never commented on abortion without prompting; now, (from my humble perspective) they will need a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion.

I see something similar here. It seems absurd that a medical condition would prevent someone from buying a gun; so the lawyer here thought he was onto something. However, these constitutional challenges are not free (literally in terms of cost, but also in terms of political risk) because you are at risk of a judge taking your facts and making the law he wants. This means if you are going to bring a constitutional challenge, especially because it affects everyone, you have a duty to argue this case correctly. I agree with my employers, the lawyer here made a huge error of omission of not questioning the government's assertions that medical marijuana has no medicinal value and/or medical marijuana users are more inclined to be violent. We, as Nevadans, would be better off if they would have never brought this legal challenge. Please don't challenge constitutional law if you are unable to/won't prepare sufficiently. It affects all of us.

Before you head off for your Labor Day fun, I want to show my liberal friends why I support my 2A brothers and sisters. I am going to quote a graf22)Yes, I just did that from Wilson:

Because the degree of fit between 18 U.S.C. § 922(d)(3), 27 C.F.R. § 478.11, and the Open Letter and their purpose of preventing gun violence is reasonable but not airtight, these laws will sometimes burden–albeit minimally and only incidentally–the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are reasonably, but erroneously, suspected of being unlawful drug users. However, the Constitution tolerates these modest collateral burdens in various contexts, and does so here as well. For instance, the Fourth Amendment allows an officer to burden an individual’s right to be free from searches when the officer has “reason to believe” the person is armed and dangerous, see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27 (1968), a standard comparable to the “reasonable cause to WILSON V. LYNCH believe” standard of § 922(d). Moreover, as previously noted, there are various ways for individuals in Wilson’s position to minimize or eliminate altogether the burdens that 18 U.S.C. § 922(d)(3), 27 C.F.R. § 478.11, and the Open Letter place on their Second Amendment rights. Accordingly, 18 U.S.C. § 922(d)(3), 27 C.F.R. § 478.11, and the Open Letter survive intermediate scrutiny, and the district court did not err in dismissing Wilson’s Second Amendment claims.23)pp 18-19

You see now, liberals? Yes, that's right. The constitutional amendments are stronger, together24)sorry. They are using that awful Terry decision (where the Supreme Court gutted the 4th Amendment under specious reasoning)25)This is only my opinion to justify why the 2nd Amendment does not mean what we all understand it to mean in a post-Heller world.

ALL of us need to support ALL constitutional rights, or we ALL will be sorry..

Thanks for watching!

-Brian

Transcript:

Jonathan: Welcome to ClearCast, today's episode of ClearCast. Today, we've got Jordan Flake, and myself, Jonathan Barlow, we're attorneys here, and there's a super-interesting case that came out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that's based in California, yesterday, and it ducktails two very hot-topic issues in the law and society today. It dealt with gun rights, under the Second Amendment, and Medical Marijuana use, and the rights of those who hold Medical Marijuana cards under State law. The Ninth Circuit is a part of the Court of Appeals that covers nine Western States, including mainly California, is the largest one, of course, but it also covers Nevada, which is where we are.

Jordan, you have to tell us a little bit about what this case said, and what it does?

Jordan: Well, first of all, the very second that you mention Second Amendment rights, Gun Rights, and Medical Marijuana, hopefully, everybody is just filled with opinions, and filled with all kinds of angst, and that’s fine, that’s what we’re here for. We’re very interested in advancing the discussion.

Let me just run down what happened: A woman in Nevada in 2011 went to go purchase a gun, and Brian’s our off-camera support here; he’ll help us and correct us if we get any of the facts wrong

Brian: Hi, everyone!

Jordan: She went to go purchase a gun in 2011, and she was denied, because she has a Medical Marijuana Card. She is confused; she says, “Well, I have a right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, and the mere fact that I have a Medical Marijuana Card shouldn’t be a big deal!” In fact, she said she didn’t even use marijuana …

Jonathan: She just kept the card?

Jordan: She just kept the card because maybe it made her feel cool … Made her be able to hang with the cool kids, and show the card, and be like, “Yeah, I don’t really smoke, because I don’t like it …” Anyway, she was denied purchasing a gun, so she brought this lawsuit, essentially saying, “Listen, this is not valid grounds for restricting, and taking away my Second Amendment rights to bear arms and purchase a gun.”

The government came along and …

Jonathan: The Federal Government …

Jordan: The Federal Government, yeah, it’s really important to know, what we’re talking about here is the Federal Government, because the Federal Government classifies marijuana as a “Schedule 1 drug.” A Schedule 1 drug is a drug that is deemed by the Federal Government not to have any practical medical uses; that’s a hot topic for a different day, because I know a lot of you out there will be saying, “Well, Medical Marijuana has been shown to have …”

Jonathan: It’s legal!

Jordan: It’s legal, and it has been shown to have good uses. Well, one of the frustrating thing about this case, jumping ahead in the story a little bit, is that we missed an opportunity to put some of these arguments about how Medical Marijuana helps people in front of the court. That’s one of the things that’s frustrating about it.

Basically, what happened here, is because it’s a Schedule 1 drug, ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Federal Agency, sent out a letter to all the gun sellers in the country, and said, “Listen: If a potential purchaser of a gun has a Medical Marijuana Card, they can’t purchase the gun, because we have restrictions against people with substance abuse issues purchasing guns.”

Jonathan: The interesting thing for this lady is that that the law, or that mailing, came from the ATF, says it doesn’t matter if they don’t even use marijuana, because the gun seller is required to infer … Something along those lines, the gun seller is supposed to infer that the person, because they hold a card, is a user of Schedule 1, regardless of whether they actually use or not.

Jordan: Right, so the purchaser comes running and screaming into court, screaming “My Second Amendment rights have been taken away!” Whenever rights are taken away, whenever constitutionally-conferred rights are taken away from an individual in this country, the court looks at that with what’s called a “Standard of Review,” which can be kind of like, “Does the law that takes it away, is it somewhat reasonable?” There are different levels of scrutiny there, there’s something called “Strict Scrutiny” that says it has to be … Absolutely, the law has to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling purpose, and that’s not really what they said here.

They instead looked at something called “Intermediate Scrutiny,” which is essentially just, “Is the law generally able to fulfill this important, not narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling interest, but just kind of somewhat tailored to fulfill an important interest …” It’s kind of a weird distinction. You’re the Con Law scholar …

Jonathan: Right, and the woman thought she was going to come in here and expand gun rights; that’s what she really was trying to do, was expand gun rights, and the Court did a 180 on her, and actually shot her in the foot, so to speak …

Jordan: The Court came back and said, “Listen: This thing that the ATF has done, and this thing that the Federal Government has done, is basically okay … It’s only moderately restrictive, because guess what, young woman? You can actually go, shred that Medical Marijuana Card, and then go out and get a gun. It’s not like we’re totally taking away your Second Amendment rights, here; we’re just saying that, if you have a Medical Marijuana Card, you can’t get a gun … But you can get rid of the card, or you can purchase a gun in September, and get a Medical Marijuana Card in October …” You know what I mean?

That’s how the Court looked at it, and they said, “It’s not extremely restrictive; it’s not like we’re saying ‘women can’t purchase guns ever,’” because then it’s like … The woman’s like, “Well, I can’t change who I am,” you know what I mean? This is more … The government’s like, “Listen, this job is somewhat generally tailored towards this objective,” but the real issue here, and the thing I was referencing, and I think the last point that we’ll make here is, the plaintiff’s attorney, the attorney who was representing the young woman, really missed an opportunity to shove a bunch of evidence in front of the court, saying “Things have changed with marijuana since the 1980’s.”

They didn’t present any evidence to show that most of the users of medical marijuana are legit, low-crime, oftentimes high-demographic, socioeconomically speaking, way less likely to commit crimes, oftentimes … The typical example would be your 85-year-old grandmother who is using medicinal marijuana because she has glaucoma. The plaintiff failed to make all of these arguments, and unfortunately, that probably resulted in the door being slammed shut on this situation, and who knows when the Court will bring it back up for review.

Jonathan: That’s the interesting last note, is that we have what? Twenty-five or so states that allow Medical Marijuana use. Again, this Ninth Circuit decision only applies to the nine states in the Ninth Circuit, so theoretically, one of the states that’s not in the Ninth Circuit, you could have a similar case come up in the Sixth Circuit …

Jordan: In that case, hopefully, the attorney would bring forth the mountain of evidence that has justified the use of Medical Marijuana in nearly half the states, and basically use that to have a more robust conversation. What happened here was, the attorney didn’t offer the evidence, so the Court just kind of said, “Okay, well, they’re not offering any evidence here; we’re just going to accept the notions and assumptions we have about drugs, based on studies from the 1980’s, which notions and assumptions have been drastically altered through study, and usage, and things of that nature.

Kind of interesting …

Jonathan: Totally. If you live here in one of the nine states in the Ninth Circuit, and you hold a Medical Marijuana Card, and you want to go and purchase a handgun, now you have a decision: If you want to keep your Medical Marijuana Card, you get no gun; if you want a gun, you’ve got to get rid of your Medical Marijuana Card. That’s the state of law right now in these nine states.

Jordan: Right. As we always say to close these things out, we are very interested in your opinions on Medical Marijuana, and Gun Control, and especially this case. I think that, on our blog, we’ll have a link to the decision. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter, or our blog, or Facebook, and let us know what your thoughts are on this.

Thanks so much for joining us for ClearCast.

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 because we care!
↑2 Come on, get it together
↑3 p. 12
↑4 or even in the state of Nevada
↑5 If they would have decided for Ms. Wilson, they could have sent the case back to Nevada district court to have the evidence issues fully litigated. Ms. Wilson was never even given a chance for a trial. Her claim was dismissed even before the summary judgment phase.
↑6 You do you!
↑7 in English, yes, but this is the law
↑8 I know; contain yourself
↑9 You are not the only person asking, wait, what is this? I will explain because we are all about empowering you. Most everyone is familiar with the 'Separation of Powers' under our Constitution. The legislature writes the laws, the executive enforces the law, the judicial branch evaluates. It is not practical for the legislature to write out every detail of new laws, so often the rule making (that is, how the law will be put into effect. For example, the legislature will say "No drug users can buy guns," but how that law is enforced (will the federal government assign an agent to every gun store? Maybe an open letter would be more efficacious) will be assigned to the appropriate executive department, in this case the ATF.
↑10 Remember as you read, people classified as an "unlawful user" may not buy a gun in Nevada
↑11 source
↑12 Doubtful, we want to be having a function vs. essence discussion with legal code
↑13 Must have left it in the sandbox again..darn
↑14 It's "not limited to...within a matter of days or weeks before"
↑15 Did they really split the infinitive? Oy.
↑16 That's how it's done Ron Darling
↑17 In theory, I'm not against this
↑18 I can see both sides
↑19 the link in the opinion is broken
↑20 Apparently "dog" is a defense?
↑21 This is has been a horrific Summer for fans of conservative jurisprudence [and I'm not talking about North Carolina, that nonsense isn't conservative, it's just racist partisanship], or at least as the media describes it. Recall the reproductive rights case handed down by the SCOTUS a few weeks ago? They essentially cemented access to an abortion as a fundamental right. It seems, from afar, that the conservative strategy to undermine abortion was to distinguish away the rights in small phases. For example, see the difference between the rights articulated in Roe v. Wade verses Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In this year's Texas case, the anti-abortion folks got a little too overzealous, and decided to run that Texas law (requiring abortion clinics to have all the same medical equipment as a hospital, without justification [except that they don't like abortion, which doesn't count]) all the way up the chain. Instead of getting the abortion prohibition [which always seemed unlikely], the Supreme Court drew a bright line for how far abortion restrictions can go. The court would have never commented on abortion without prompting; now, (from my humble perspective) they will need a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion.

I see something similar here. It seems absurd that a medical condition would prevent someone from buying a gun; so the lawyer here thought he was onto something. However, these constitutional challenges are not free (literally in terms of cost, but also in terms of political risk) because you are at risk of a judge taking your facts and making the law he wants. This means if you are going to bring a constitutional challenge, especially because it affects everyone, you have a duty to argue this case correctly. I agree with my employers, the lawyer here made a huge error of omission of not questioning the government's assertions that medical marijuana has no medicinal value and/or medical marijuana users are more inclined to be violent. We, as Nevadans, would be better off if they would have never brought this legal challenge. Please don't challenge constitutional law if you are unable to/won't prepare sufficiently. It affects all of us.

↑22 Yes, I just did that
↑23 pp 18-19
↑24 sorry
↑25 This is only my opinion
ClearCast / Las Vegas / Nevada Law / News / Politics - 09/02/2016

Do the Dog Bite Laws in Nevada Need to Change?

Hello and welcome to Episode 2 of ClearCast!

We are sure you have heard about the horrific story of the child in Las Vegas that was killed by a pit bull. The fact that the dog had a previous violent incident has many folks in the Valley upset1)and not unreasonably.

In turn, two of our partners sat down for a few minutes to discuss the current state of the dog bite laws in Nevada.

Good information for all Nevada families!

Thanks for watching.

Analyzing the Current State of Nevada's Dog Bite Laws

Transcript:

Jordan Flake: Hi, I'm Jordan Flake, and this is Attorney Jared Richards. His is a personal injury attorney. Welcome to today's Clearcast. We're talking about a really sad event that occurred just very recently here in Las Vegas. Imagine this scenario: A nine-year-old boy was going to visit his friend's house. As soon as he showed up at the door, the owner's pit bull jumped out of the house and attacked the child, a nine-year-old, and ended up killing him. There was a fatality involved with the pit bull.

We brought Jared on today because he's a personal injury attorney, and he knows a lot about what we would colloquially refer to as dog bite law.

Let's talk about this for a second here. Just kind of, let's start really broad and general. Every time a dog bites a person, is the dog owner liable or how does that how does the law kind of even start to work on this? Before we even get to the fatality, if you're just jogging along and somebody else is jogging with their dog the opposite direction, and that dog bites your ankle?

Jared Richards: Right. First of all, tragic, tragic occurrence, and our heart goes out to the family of the boy. In general, we don't have any specific statutes that address the negligence aspect of dog bite liability. We have some criminal statutes, but it's not for general negligence, which means we just go under general negligence law which we call just General Negligence Common Law.

Jordan Flake: There is not some statute that says, "This is dog bite law, NRS1774 in Nevada. There is just we go under what happened in previous cases?

Jared Richards: Right. Kind of.

Jordan Flake: Okay.

Jared Richards: There is a criminal statute, and if you violate the criminal statute then you automatically are going to be liable for damages that are done when you violate the criminal statute. You don't have to violate the criminal statue ...

Jordan Flake: In order to be held ...

Jared Richards: In order to be held responsible.

Jordan Flake: Okay.

Jared Richards: Right, but if you violate the criminal statue your [inaudible 00:02:16].

Jordan Flake: What is ...?

Jared Richards: What it is is everybody has the duty to act as a reasonably safe and prudent person. It's my duty, it's your duty, it's everybody's duty at all times.

Jordan Flake: Which is why we can't drive recklessly.

Jared Richards: That's why we can't drive recklessly, we can't drive drunk, we can't drive distracted. We have to follow the basic safety rules of society as a reasonably prudent, safe person would do. Now, if we breach that duty and as a result of us breaching that duty somebody gets hurt then we're on the hook for the damage that we've caused.

In the case of a dog the question is going to be up to the jury of what would a reasonably prudent and safe person, as an owner, have done in that situation?

This is where we get into questions about whether the one bite rule would apply or not? The one bite rule is a traditional common law doctrine where the owner isn't going to be responsible until the animal has actually attacked somebody at least once before because they don't know that the animal is dangerous.

I don't know that would actually apply here. What's really a jury is going to at and say was there sufficient notice to this particular owner that this particular dog was dangerous?

Jordan Flake: Just so everyone knows out there, the background also on this is that that dog was previously cited for attacking another dog.

Jared Richards: Right.

Jordan Flake: The question is, does that constitute sufficient notice so that the owner of the dog would have said, "You know what if a guest is coming to my home or if the front door is open and we're just dealing with the screen door I better make sure this pit bull is restrained because somebody could come to the door and freak my dog out."

Jared Richards: If you're the person who owns the dog or if you're the insurance company, like the homeowner's insurance that's backing up the dog, you've got to be careful about that because you're going to have a lot of juries out there that might think that. If it's already attacked another animal then it might attack a human. But, there might be juries that think the other way around. It really is going to depend on what the ultimate juries believe. What they think was proper notice to the owner that this was a potentially dangerous animal.

Now, the criminal statute is a little bit different. The criminal statue defines animals under two different varieties, under dangerous and vicious. Dangerous means that when it's provoked it's going to get defensive. Vicious means ...

Jordan Flake: It goes out looking for trouble.

Jared Richards: Yeah, it goes out looking for trouble. You don't need to provoke it. Once it's been either cited as a vicious animal or you observed it be a vicious animal and you've seen it go out and bite then you have seven days, you can't transfer it and you have seven days to get rid of it. If you don't do that and somebody gets hurt then you've committed a misdemeanor. You've actually violated criminal law and you are, what we call, negligent to per se. You are just ... The law's going to assume that you've breached it.

Jordan Flake: That's if they're vicious?

Jared Richards: If the dog is vicious.

Jordan Flake: It seems, kind of, actually light because if you know your dog's basically a weapon ...

Jared Richards: Yeah, and that makes sense. If you've gone to the point where you're actually committing misdemeanors then you're going to be held viable. You don't have to actually get to the point of committing the misdemeanor to be held liable. You don't have to know that you're dog is vicious. You have to know that the dog is vicious before you get criminally cited. To be civilly liable all you have to know is ...

Jordan Flake: The dog is dangerous.

Jared Richards: You have to act as a reasonably sane person would act.

Jordan Flake: It's interesting, the records show in Clark County that there's been like 154 complaints made against dogs and only nine have been characterized as dangerous of those 154 that we kept records of and zero have been classified as vicious. I think it's a pretty rare, apparently, a pretty rare classification.

Jared Richards: That's interesting. Does that mean that there just aren't that many vicious animals out there or ...

Jordan Flake: Do the standards need to change to where ...

Jared Richards: Or do the people who are enforcing the standards just not actually enforce them?

Jordan Flake: Right and that's going to be the issue going forward here is people are going to look at this case and they're going to say, "Well, what went wrong? This dog was already cited as having bit another dog and we have a ..." The thing that we have here is a deceased child. That's a total tragedy.

Jared Richards: Right, that kid is dead.

Jordan Flake: It's just ... When I heard about this story I was just shocked. He's nine. He's a nine-year-old kid killed by a dog.

Jared Richards: What's interesting is that for a while there was a movement, again in various states, when you have a vicious breed of animal like a pit bull, an ultra-aggressive breed of animal or at least the public might perceive as ultra-aggressive that the owner is just going to be assumed to be already on notice that this is a dangerous animal and so they're going to be liable in tort the first time the thing attacks because they're going to assume they're already on notice.

Jordan Flake: You buy a pit bull you know you're buying a pit bull and you know what you're doing.

Jared Richards: There's been a counter movement in the past couple of years where you've had certain states that pass anti-discrimination laws against breeds of animals. I know that Nevada has also implemented that to a certain extent in the criminal statue. It does make you wonder how that would play in the tort. Can a jury still assume that, I don't know if you buy a Rottweiler or you buy a pit bull, you buy a mountain lion, that at some point you have notice that the animal you bought does pose a danger to others just because of it's breed.

Jordan Flake: It's very, very interesting and I think very fertile for academic discussion is it's obviously very unethical to look at race in human beings as a measure of whether or not there's a potential for them to a commit a crime.

Jared Richards: We tend to anthropomorphize, I'm going to screw up the word, these animals and although ... Listen, I like animals too. I like dogs. They have feelings too. However ...

Jordan Flake: The stats don't like. Pit bulls kill humans. They do. I just looked at the stats. It's incredible. Pit bulls are the ones that ... It's overwhelmingly 70% children but they're being by a lot of pit bulls and ...

Jared Richards: Significantly more pit bulls have killed ...

Jordan Flake: Than Golden Retrievers.

Jared Richards: Or Poodles.

Jordan Flake: Or Poodles or Chihuahuas. It turns out there ...

Jared Richards: Not that many Chihuahua deaths.

Jordan Flake: Okay, so maybe last point here, the kid’s name was Derion Stevenson. If the Stevenson's were to come into your office and talk to you about this case and they said, "Hey listen, we're going throw unimaginable pain and suffering. We have his funeral costs and it's just been horrible for us. What are our prospects for recovering in this case. What insurances are out there?"

Jared Richards: That's an interesting question because the natural insurance that you would assume would apply would be the homeowner's insurance. Most people in the State of Nevada or the United States of the world don't really have enough assets to cover an injury like this. My goodness, the boy is dead. Unless you're Wal-Mart you're probably not going to have the kind of money to really truly compensate this family, not that money can. You won't have the kind of money to truly compensate.

What you'd look at first is the homeowner's insurance. The problem you're going to have and something you have to look at is there are certain homeowner's insurances that specifically exclude coverage of what the insurance company defines as vicious animals.

Jordan Flake: Which may be different that the state definition, by the way.

Jared Richards: Right. If I'm going to rely on statistics I'm probably going to rely on the statistics of insurance companies excluding then the state because ...

Jordan Flake: Absolutely.

Jared Richards: Insurance companies are, sorry, cold heart less data driven beasts where this state ...

Jordan Flake: The odd makers and actuaries know their stuff.

Jared Richards: The state does as well.

Jordan Flake: The state, yeah, a lot of interest and so forth.

Jared Richards: A lot of political interest going on. The first danger is is this specifically excluded by the insurance policy and if it is, and this is research I haven't done, is it even allowed to exclude this then there may be additional umbrella insurance. After that you need to make the decision, do you go after the actual personal assets of the family and if you did would they just file bankruptcy? At that point even though you've lost a child, which is horrible, trying to take away all the property of somebody else also ruins their life. It may not make your life better. Those are all things that are difficult to weigh and sometimes it's right and sometimes it's not. Those are all things that that person, they need an attorney. They just need one.

Jordan Flake: Absolutely.

Jared Richards: Whatever attorney they go to they should go to one that has experience in personal injury, preferably experience in animal tort and that is compassionate enough they could actually try to walk them through some of these very, very difficult choices and issues that they're going to have to deal with.

Jordan Flake: Absolutely. Thank you for joining us for Clearcast. Let's just do a few little takeaways.

First of all, Jared is a great personal injury attorney. He's my partner but still he's a great personal injury attorney. If anybody out there has a question about a dog bite case or some other personal injury please seek his expertise. He will do a free consultation.

Second, is we would love to hear what you think. If you could chime in on the blog or on Twitter or Facebook and let us know what you think about pit bulls, about whether or not the laws are too lax, whether or not there's any justice in this situation, what you know ... You may know something about this story or have an opinion that we don't. We love going back and reading over those comments.

Three, just thank you so much for joining us for Clearcast and we'll hope to see you here in the future.

Thanks so much.

Jared Richards: Thank you.

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 and not unreasonably
ClearCast / General Interest / Las Vegas / Nevada Law / News / Personal Injury - 08/24/2016
Clear Counsel Law group

What we offer

Contact Info

1671 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy Suite 200,
Henderson, NV 89012

+1 702 522 0696
info@clearcounsel.com

Daily: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Saturday & Sunday: By Appointment Only

Copyright 2019 Clear Counsel Law Group® | Nav Map

Nothing on this site is legal advice.