Extraordinary Outpouring of Amici Support Amy in the United States Supreme Court
Today, twenty-one national and international advocacy organizations, the Dutch National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings and Sexual Violence Against Children, the attorneys general of thirty-four states and one territory, and a bi-partisan group of seven United States Senators, filed amicus curiae briefs in the United States Supreme Court supporting Amy in her five-year battle to secure federal criminal restitution for victims of child pornography.
Here are the amici, briefs, and lawyers which contributed to this extraordinary effort to support Amy's case in the ...
Amy’s Brief filed with the United States Supreme Court
Amy's Brief on the Merits is filed with the United States Supreme Court in Marsh Law Firm's groundbreaking child pornography restitution case.
After Five Years – Supreme Court Brief Finally Completed!
Over five years ago, I began an unprecedented effort to obtain criminal restitution for victims of child pornography and online exploitation. A few minutes ago, our United States Supreme Court brief was finally delivered to the printer. The oral argument in this groundbreaking case is scheduled for January 22, 2014.
When I began this journey, I didn't really realize or appreciate how long and how difficult it would be. Earlier this year I counted the number of words in just the appellate briefs and motions which are well over 600,000. Long days, endless nights, someti...
Novel Federal Civil Child Pornography Case Advances: Prejudgment Attachment Ordered and Stay Denied
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On Friday, November 1, 2013, the federal court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle issued a groundbreaking ruling in a novel civil child pornography case which the Marsh Law Firm filed ten months ago on behalf of our client “Amy.”In this remarkable order, Judge Richard Jones granted our motion for prejudgment attachment of convicted sex offender Joshua Osmun Kennedy’s real and personal property. The claims of another of Kennedy’s victims known as “Vicky” were consolidated with Amy’s case, and her joint-motion was also granted.
The ...
Another Teen Sexually Assaulted
The recent Rolling Stone piece "Sexting, Shame and Suicide" tells the story of a teenage girl from Saratoga, California, who got drunk at a party, passed out, and woke up the next morning covered in Sharpie marker drawings. She frantically pieced together the story: she had been carried to a bedroom where three boys stripped her, fingered her, drew all over her skin in Sharpie—all while capturing the whole thing on camera.
As the images spread around her high school, the victim found herself publicly shamed and abandoned by her friends, lamenting in a Facebook ...
Calculating Damages in Negligence Lawsuits against Departments of Human Services
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Governments, be they city, county, state, tribal or federal, administer a wide range of social welfare services and have a duty to properly discharge those obligations. Professionals hired by government agencies, regardless of the tasks they do, are expected to exercise a reasonable degree of skill and care in their work. When a department of human services is legally negligent in delivering or overseeing those services, our tort system is designed in some cases to allow victims to make claims against it. Of course, negligence is a technical legal concept; not every ...