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New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

innocenceproject.org

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Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#191

Post by wayoutthere »

petertodd wrote: post #165
austincheney wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is already how it works in US civil litigation.

No it's not. Both because courts don't always give you costs, and because even when they do award costs, actually collecting is tough, and finally, because courts don't always award the full amount of your costs. Source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/attorney-fees-does-l... "To further this goal, the losing side doesn’t usually pay the winning side's attorney's fees. In the United States, the rule (called t…

I have an outstanding judgment for over $100k against a home builder that my lawyer told me I have about a 1% chance of ever collecting on. This isn’t even a situation where I can file a lien; the company is out of business because of their shoddy business practices and the former owners are broke.

Meanwhile I had to pay my lawyer. I would have been better off doing nothing, and in hindsight I would not pursue the case.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#192

Post by ramphastidae »

austincheney wrote: post #187
jmull wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of qualified immunity is to permit officials to carry out their discretionary duties without fear of personal liability or harassing litigation. Shouldn’t we all be able to carry out our lives without undue fear of personal liability or harassing litigation? It makes no sense to provide a special civil liberty for government employees and no one else. If we need to reign in law suits, then let’s do that…

Sure it does. I don’t want paramedics prematurely giving up on saving peoples lives because there is fear of a lawsuit. Software developers don’t have this fear, so we get to kill people through releasing buggy bloated applications without any fear of personal liability.

Pure nonsense. Cite these cases where software engineers have built a decades-long track record of abusing power and murdering innocents under the guise of civil service and directly abusing qualified immunity to get away with it. Or maybe tone things down.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#193

Post by ceejayoz »

austincheney wrote: post #184
ceejayoz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, it does. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/they-get-a-get-out-of-jail... > “In such cases, when the court declines to establish whether police used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, it avoids setting a clearly established precedent for future cases, even for the most egregious acts of police violence,” the report said. “In effect, the same conduct can repeatedly go unpunished.” > For…

Those are both irrelevant to the issue at hand: wrongful arrest. Wrongful arrest occurs when either the incorrect person is detained or when a person is detained without merit. In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest, which includes Maranda warnings, or have a signed warrant.

It shields them from civil liability for wrongful arrest, as the courts will apparently go "there's no established law that you can't arrest someone for no good reason on Thursday at 9:53pm on Third Street".

We have friendly prosecutors who "could indict a ham sandwich" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich#Cultural_impact) mysteriously failing to get an indictment to handle the criminal side of it.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#194

Post by pessimizer »

mike_d wrote: post #90
devwastaken wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified immunity was made up by courts, their legislating from the bench should have no merit, and therefore revoking qualified immunity is the right thing to do under checks and balances. We need a replacement, one written in legislation, that puts fixed narrow limits on how immunity applies. If you break the law - you should receive no protections. There is no excuse for enforcers of law to not know the law. This…

> Qualified immunity was made up by courts That is how our whole system works. The first amendment for example doesn't have an explicit "yelling fire in a movie theatre" exemption, yet the courts have defined tests that determine if speech is protected. > We need a replacement [...] If you break the law - you should receive no protections That is exactly how it works today. Once you have been found guilty in a crimin…

> The first amendment for example doesn't have an explicit "yelling fire in a movie theatre" exemption

Always remember that this was an argument to imprison people for passing out flyers opposing the WWI military draft.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#195

Post by ruph123 »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #189
ruph123 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But cost of healthcare is astronomical in part because malpractice insurance is expensive, because too many people abuse it. You pulled the “trigger a European” card. This is not why the US healthcare is astronomically high. The reason is: practically no meaningful regulation and thus free roaming oligopolies of a few providers with insane billing practices (which hospitals are covered, etc.). And much more...

And some of the meaningful regulation drastically increases costs. Mostly for good reasons.

Why would that be? In countries with universal health care (which would be pretty high up on the regulation scale) costs for medical procedures are significantly lower. [0] Americans have to understand that they are drastically overpaying for almost everything medical including drugs. There is no way around it.

[0]: https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2012/03/comparing-health-ca...

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#196

Post by GavinMcG »

austincheney wrote: post #179
petertodd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. Both because courts don't always give you costs, and because even when they do award costs, actually collecting is tough, and finally, because courts don't always award the full amount of your costs. Source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/attorney-fees-does-l... "To further this goal, the losing side doesn’t usually pay the winning side's attorney's fees. In the United States, the rule (called t…

You are over complicating the issue and misunderstanding it. Quite simply the loser of a law suit typically bears the costs of court fees and legal expenses for both parties unless a different arrangement is negotiated. How high those expenses are are irrelevant to this issue and are generally not known before or during trial.

Nonsensical as it might be, "costs" does not mean net expenditures, but rather costs associated with filing fees, document production, etc. The loser may well pay "costs," but attorney time, which is by far the biggest expenditure in a lawsuit, is not included.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#197

Post by gremlinsinc »

chrisseaton wrote: post #175
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cops will be less inclined to show up to a call or do anything to fight crime, because it could bring too much legal responsibility Police report to elected governments. They are checked the same way the rest of the state is: through elections. Police pay is high across America because they're widely seen as bringing value to the community. Their strikes are feared by politicians; the cops turning on the mayor sign…

> Police pay is high Lol what?

Police earn more than teachers, and the median income in America.

Training to be a cop often is less than to become a Teacher.

Cops aren't even in the top 20 most dangerous job in America. Loggers, Sailors, Fishers, pilots, construction, oil-industry, roofers, drivers, farmers, etc are all more dangerous jobs.

Honestly, cops should be paid somewhere around what a security guard at a bank is paid.

Below is a list of the top-10 highest-paying states for police officers:

source: https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-stat...

- national average: $67,600

- California average police officer salary: $105,220

- Alaska average police officer salary: $87,870

- New Jersey average police officer salary: $86,840

- Washington average police officer salary: $80,200

- Hawaii average police officer salary: $78,720

- Illinois average police officer salary: $78,350

- New York average police officer salary: $77,490

- Colorado average police officer salary: $75,720

- Delaware average police officer salary: $73,740

- Nevada average police officer salary: $73,660

Compare with teachers, the highest state (New York) averages $85,889 with national average $61,730.

Source : https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-stat...

"As of 2018, the average U.S. household income was $87,864, while the median household income was $61,937.

When the median is considerably lower than the average, it means that there are outliers on the top end. In short, a few people who make a lot of money boost the average. So $61,937 may be a more accurate representation of typical household earnings."

Source: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-us-income/

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#198

Post by im3w1l »

katbyte wrote: post #38
coolspot wrote: post #17

I think that the Game theory suggests that cops will be less inclined to show up to a call or do anything to fight crime, because it could bring too much legal responsibility. Eat donuts, ignore the radio and you will be fine.

the cops who worry about this are the ones we don't want to be cops. Its like my male friends who complained about the MeToo movement "how will i date when i have to worry about consent" - uh shouldn't you already be confident theres consent before doing anything? lol

According to psychologists, there is a personality trait called neuroticism. Neurotic people worry about everything. They worry about getting sued. But they also worry about whether they look fat in these clothes, whether they will forget their uncles birthday, 5g radiation, microplastic partles in the air and whether the guy on the ground is dying or not.

What I'm hinting at is that a neurotic police force would be less likely to harm people. But also take less action in general, solve less crime.

Re: New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity

#200

Post by petertodd »

austincheney wrote: post #186
petertodd wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have sued someone in the US and had this discussion with my lawyers. What you are saying simply is not true in the US. It's such a well known feature of the US legal system that it's even called "American Rule": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...

Did your attorneys discuss fees with the opposing party prior to the suit? If not that’s why. This is common practice. It’s also why Google sent Oracle an extremely large legal bill when Oracle lost its first lawsuit over Java APIs.

You replied to:

> In Germany, all costs associated with a lawsuit have to be paid/reimbursed by the losing party.

with:

> That is already how it works in US civil litigation.

An optional agreement between parties is absolutely not the same as a mandatory, by-default, loser pays system. And yes, in my case getting an agreement like that was certainly going to be impossible.

Also, re: Google and Oracle, the payment was after petitioning the judge - as often happens - and those costs were awarded because the lawsuit was particularly pointless. Yet even then they did not include millions of dollars in discovery costs, so Google got much less than 100% of their legal costs: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/25667/oracle_must_pay_google_... I do not believe you are correct in saying there was any prior agreement.

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