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Recent Blog Posts
Teens and Distracted Driving: 25 Percent Admit to Texting While Driving
In Wisconsin, the use of a mobile device while driving is considered a primary offense. This mean a driver can be ticketed for texting while driving or for using a cell phone, even if hands-free, while driving without first being pulled over for another type of traffic violation.
There are several types of distracted driving that put people on the road in danger, including:
- Eating and drinking;
- Reading maps;
- Grooming; and
- Using a navigation system.
However, the frequency of mobile device use can be directly linked to increased distracted driving accidents. According to Distraction.gov, as of this time last year, over 153 billion text messages were sent each month and a high number of those were sent while driving. Additional statistics from the website show that a quarter of teens respond to texts once or more every time they drive.
Traffic Stops: When Police Get the Law Wrong
Police officers have a fairly large amount of discretion when it comes to making traffic stops, but their discretion is not unlimited. Instead, officers must have a reasonable suspicion of a crime before they can pull someone over. This is not usually an issue because many traffic law violations are quite obvious, like speeding or running a red light. However, there are quite a few traffic laws, and it would be impossible to expect police officers to know all of them by heart. That means that courts need to know what to do when a police officer pulls someone over, believing that he or she is committing a crime, when in fact what he or she is doing is lawful.
Heien v. North Carolina
The U.S. Supreme Court recently handed down a decision in a case, Heien v. North Carolina, where that sort of stop had occurred. A North Carolina police officer observed Heien's car on the road with one broken taillight. The officer used that as justification to stop the car, genuinely believing that driving with a single broken taillight was a violation of North Carolina law.
Statute of Limitation: A Time Limit on Your Case
Filing a lawsuit quickly after a traffic accident occurs is important because the sooner the process starts, the sooner the victim can be compensated for his or her medical bills and other injuries. However, there is another important reason to file a lawsuit quickly: the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations is a time limit that the law puts on filing a case. Wait too long and a victim's opportunity to recover damages for the harm that he or she suffered can vanish. While this may seem like a harsh rule, there are good reasons for it to be in place, and it is important for people injured in accidents to understand these statutes.
The Statute of Limitations in Wisconsin
Statutes of limitations are time limits that vary depending on the type of case. A suit for breach of contract may have a different time limit that a suit for medical malpractice. Under Wisconsin law the statute of limitations in a personal injury case, the type of case arising from a traffic accident, is three years. This means that people have three years from the date of the accident to file a lawsuit over it.
Corporate Crimes: Charging Companies with Criminal Activity
Advances in technology have allowed modern corporations to develop a size and reach that are historically unprecedented. This poses problems because corporations are made up of people, and consequently are just as capable as ordinary people are of committing crimes, and charging corporate crimes presents unique considerations. Certainly, some of those can be avoided by charging the managers and directors of companies with crimes, but it is also possible to charge a corporation with a crime, if the prosecution can prove a few extra things. Of course, even when corporations are convicted of a crime, punishing them still presents particular problems.
Unique Considerations
Charging a corporation with a crime presents unique issues because companies are legal fictions. They are just legal devices that allow groups of people to coordinate responsibilities and contract together. The only way that they can act through the real world is through their agents, like their directors and employees.
How a Personal Injury Lawsuit Progresses in Wisconsin
Despite the fact that many people may likely end up involved in a lawsuit at some point in their lives, most people do not understand the way that a lawsuit progresses. It can be a good idea for people who are about to file a lawsuit to understand the phases it goes through. This enables them to understand the progress being made on their case as it happens, rather than feeling like the court is just leaving them in limbo. A personal injury lawsuit, like the kind that follows a car accident, can be broken down into three broad sections: pleading, discovery, and trial.
The Pleadings
The pleadings are the earliest part of the personal injury lawsuit. They begin with a legal document called the complaint. The complaint is filed by the plaintiff - the person injured - and it lets the court know generally what the lawsuit is about. Usually it provides a summary of important facts, as well as the legal claims being made. Once the complaint is filed, it must be “served” on the defendant. This means that a copy of the complaint is sent to the other side, along with a summons telling them to appear in court.
Drones for Aerial Surveillance by Police
Technology's forward progress is usually reason for celebration. New technologies can cure disease, make work easier, or improve people's quality of life. Still, new technology can also breed controversy, and one of the most controversial pieces of new technology to appear lately has been unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. Much of the controversy has centered on drones as used by the military, but as the technology has become cheaper, local police forces have begun to invest in drones for aerial surveillance. This raises new concerns about people's privacy and their right to be protected from unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment.
Aerial Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment
The limits of the rights of citizens under the Fourth Amendment are often determined by cases that go before the U.S. Supreme Court. That Court has yet to hear a case about drone surveillance, but it has heard multiple cases on aerial surveillance and manned aircraft. The cases on searches by manned aircraft have tended to center on cases in which the police flew over a person's land and spotted marijuana plants from above. In response to these cases, the Supreme Court created the Flyover Exception to the Fourth Amendment. The Flyover Exception states that a person cannot have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” with regard to things that are clearly visible to anyone flying over in a plane. Without a reasonable expectation of privacy, the Fourth Amendment does not apply, so the police do not need a warrant to perform aerial surveillance.
Types of Car Accident Claims
Lawsuits arising out of car accident claims are about assigning fault to the person who caused them, so that they can compensate the victims of the accident that they caused. When most people think of who caused an accident, they assume it must have been one of the drivers, but that is only one of the possibilities. With over 100,000 crashes in Wisconsin every year, there are also other potential causes. For instance, some accidents are the result of poor design or manufacturing on behalf of car makers. Other accidents can be caused by poor design of the roads themselves. Each of these causes requires its own legal theory during the lawsuit.
Negligence
The legal theory of negligence is the most common of the three legal theories. It applies in cases where the accident was caused by the carelessness of one of the drivers. Prevailing in a lawsuit based on negligence requires the plaintiff to prove four things. First, the plaintiff must show that the other driver had a duty to use due care to avoid harming other drivers, which is almost always true. Second, the plaintiff must show that the defendant breached that duty in some way. These breaches are examples of careless driving, such as speeding or driving while distracted. Third, the plaintiff must show that the accident was caused by the defendant's carelessness. Fourth, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the injuries that they are suing for resulted from the accident. If the injured driver can show those four things, then they can likely prevail on a negligence claim.
What to Do If You Spot a Drunk Driver on the Road
While there are many dangers present on the road, one of the biggest is the presence of drunk drivers. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 10,000 people were killed by drunk drivers in 2012, which makes them responsible for almost one in every three traffic fatalities. While other drivers cannot keep people from drinking and driving, they can keep themselves safer. It is important for everyone on the road to know how to identify a drunk driver, as well as what to do when they encounter one to avoid a traffic accident.
Identifying a Drunk Driver
Identifying a drunk driver is largely a matter of spotting erratic driving, especially when it occurs late at night. However, there are certain poor driving behaviors that drunk drivers are more likely to engage in as a result of alcohol's specific effects on the body. One of the most common of these sorts of behaviors is making turns that are overly wide. Alcohol affects people's ability to properly judge distances, so they may end up taking up more space when they turn. Similarly, this inability to judge distances, combined with poor reaction time, may result in a drunk driver braking erratically.
Revenge Porn in Wisconsin
The recent trend of posting revenge porn has proven to be a significant problem for law enforcement officials. Revenge porn is the posting of naked pictures of a former significant other online following a breakup. While some states charged the crime as harassment, many states have passed laws specifically designed to criminalize the posting of revenge porn. Wisconsin has now joined those states. The law, which went into effect in the middle of last year, authorizes heavy penalties for people found to be violating it. However, it also has several exceptions that are important for people to understand.
The Revenge Porn Law
Wisconsin's revenge porn law is based around the idea of a “private representation.” Private representations are pictures or videos of a person that depict nudity or sexually explicit conduct that the person depicted intended only to be viewed only by the person who took the picture or by someone who the person in the picture gave the representation to. That legalistic definition is basically designed to encompass private, sexually explicit selfies and photos taken by a significant other. The law makes it a crime to post a private representation online or publish it in any form without the consent of the person pictured. Doing so is a Class A misdemeanor with penalties of up to nine months in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.
Don't Wait Until it is too Late - Avoid Identity Theft Now
By Attorney Raymond Dall'Osto
According to a recent article in the New York Times, on January 12, 2015, President Obama proposed that Congress strengthen laws against identity theft by requiring notification to consumers when their confidential information is hacked and by providing greater annual access to credit scores, in addition to being able to obtain annual credit bureau reports. The President also called for stricter laws and more vigorous prosecution for those committing cyberattacks on businesses and government, with substantially increased criminal penalties.
Under current law, individuals can request their credit bureau reports each year, free of charge. This right was enacted into law in the 2003 Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), and allows individual consumers to obtain credit reports from the three major national credit bureaus - TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. President Obama’s new proposal would expand this free access to also include a person’s credit score.
