Declarations
Abuse of the Court System
“There is a good argument here that these companies don’t have any business in bankruptcy.”
— Patrick Jackson, a restructuring lawyer with Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath based in Delaware, said about the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by three companies affiliated with radio host Alex Jones’s Infowars website. The three small entities are seeking to use bankruptcy to set up a trust to pay damages that may be won in court by relatives of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. The relatives of Sandy Hook victims won key court rulings in Connecticut and Texas against Jones after he called the shootings a hoax, and future trials will determine the size of the damages.
Stop the Photos
“While this provision made sense at the time it was enacted, today we have better ways of preventing insurance fraud that are far more cost effective.”
— New York Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski (D-Rockland) said about a bill that would make it possible for customers to obtain automobile comprehensive and collision insurance coverage without the photo requirement. Currently, state law makes photo inspections mandatory in order to obtain comprehensive or collision coverage. The industry contends the law enacted in the late 1970s no longer serves a purpose. The Auto Insurance Consumer Relief Act (S.6028) passed the New York State Assembly with bipartisan support. It awaits Senate action.
JUUL Suit
“JUUL put profits before people. The company fueled a staggering rise in vaping among teens. JUUL’s conduct reversed decades of progress fighting nicotine addiction, and today’s order compels JUUL to surrender tens of millions of dollars in profit and clean up its act by implementing a slate of corporate reforms that will keep JUUL products out of the hands of underage Washingtonians.”
— Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson commented on his successful lawsuit against the vape company, which was ordered to pay $22.5 million total over the next four years.
Light on the Horizon
“We began in a dark moment, but it’s getting brighter and brighter every day.”
— Rev. Gerald Toussaint of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, one of three Black Baptist churches in rural Louisiana where rebuilding is underway after an arsonist set fire to the structures in 2020. A would-be “black metal” musician pleaded guilty in 2020, saying he set fire to the churches in late March and early April 2019 to promote himself in the heavy metal subgenre. Mount Baptist’s new sanctuary and fellowship hall are a few deliveries and final inspections short of being finished, Toussaint said.
Dismissal Challenged
“That is up to a jury to weigh those facts and decide what actually happened in this incident.”
— Brian Coffman, an attorney representing the family of a Black man who was fatally shot by a white Indiana police officer in 2019, said of the family’s challenge to a federal judge’s dismissal of their wrongful death lawsuit. Eric Logan’s family filed an appeal in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, arguing the judge was wrong to dismiss the suit and that he should have considered evidence regarding former South Bend police Sgt. Ryan O’Neill’s credibility and policing standards. Logan’s family sued the city of South Bend and O’Neill over the June 2019 shooting. O’Neill said the 54-year-old Logan refused his orders to drop a knife as the officer investigated a report of a person breaking into cars.
‘Squatting Truck’
“The pedestrian, rather than striking the front of the vehicle and rolling off, was actually caught underneath the car and was killed.”
— A Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, policeman talking about an accident involving a “squatting truck,” which had its front end lifted so much that the driver could not fully see the road. Lawmakers in North Carolina and Virginia have outlawed the jacked-up vehicles, but a bill in the South Carolina General Assembly may not pass before the legislative session ends May 12.