Facebook “Facts”

A Long Island judge has dismissed a $6 million defamation action filed by a teenager against four former classmates who set up a Facebook page on which they joked that the teen used heroin and contracted AIDS by having sex with animals in Africa. The judge ruled that no reasonable person could believe that the allegedly defamatory statements were facts. "A reasonable reader, given the overall context of the posts, simply would not believe that the Plaintiff contracted AIDS by having sex with a horse or a baboon or that she contracted AIDS from a male prostitute who also gave her crabs and syphilis, or that having contracted sexually transmitted ...

Constitution Cannot Keep Special Ed Students in School

In a recent little noticed unpublished First Circuit decision, former USSC Justice Souter held that "whatever the scope of a school’s responsibility towards its students . . . there is no apparent constitutional obligation to impose physical restraint upon teenagers not at immediate risk of harm to themselves or others." This case was brought by mothers of teenagers who were not physically restrained by school officials from leaving their schools during instructional hours. The mothers brought action under state law as well as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and § 1988 seeking monetary and injunctive relief for violating Fourteenth Amendment due process, ...

Kansas Passes State “Masha’s Law”

Almost 5 years ago, the Marsh Law Firm was instrumental in enhancing the federal civil legal rights of children who are victims of child pornography. Borrowing from intellectual property law, our firm helped draft, introduce and pass—in just seven months—a comprehensive update to a long-forgotten federal law which gives victims the right to sue anyone who produces, distributes or possess their child sex abuse images. Masha’s Law provides statutory damages of $150,000 for each violation of federal child pornography provisions and was incorporated into the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act signed by President Bush on July 27, ...

Improving the Legal Representation of Children

In October 2009, the U.S. Children’s Bureau named University of Michigan Law School the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). The QIC-ChildRep, is a five-year, $5 million dollar project to gather, develop and communicate knowledge on child representation, promote consensus on the role of the child’s legal representative, and provide one of the first empirically-based analyses of how legal representation for the child might best be delivered. The Center, which is run by the legendary child advocate Don Duquette, has a great website and promises to answer the ...

Current Restitution Law is Failing Child Pornography Victims

Legislators and courts have long recognized what common sense makes clear - children depicted in child abuse images[1] are harmed not only by the sexual abuse captured by the images, but also by the subsequent distribution, possession, and viewing of the images of their abuse.[2] Legislators and courts have similarly recognized the importance of awarding restitution to victims who are harmed by crime to help make them whole, and to aid in their recovery.[3] Thus, it seems a straightforward proposition that children depicted in child abuse images should be awarded restitution from their offenders, including those offenders who possess and view their ...