Britney Spears Billboard Deemed Too Nuts
From Schimmer Legal:
A Florida radio station ran billboards showing Britney Spears and one of the station’s DJs, suggesting that she and DJ were ‘nuts.’ Ms. Spears contested the use. The radio station is pulling the billboards. Unfortunately, the Smoking Gun has printed only one of Britney’s lawyers letters, not the one that contains ‘many legal authorities.’ However this letter does site Florida statutes and law. Interestingly, the two cases cited do not apply to media defendants.
There is some precedent for media defendants to utilize someone’s name or likeness if the person was the subject of the media’s product. In Velez v. VV Pub. Corp., the Village Voice used an unflattering photo of local politico Ramon Velez (a subject of Voice exposes), in an advertisement for the Voice. The use of the photo fairly represented the Voice’s news coverage. 135 A.D.2d 47, 50, 524 N.Y.S.2d 186, 187 (1st Dept. 1988) (“[T]he incidental use in an advertisement by a news disseminator of a person’s name or identity does not violate the statutory proscription, if it had previously published the item exhibited as a matter of public interest.”
In Montana v San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper sold posters of Joe Montana following a Super Bowl victory, which posters were held to have news value due to their ‘relatively contemporaneous’ publication. Because the use was in connection with merchandise rather than a mere advertisement for the newspaper, this ruling seems like a bit of an outlier. 34 Cal.App.4th 790 (1995).
See more discussion by Stanford University Library here.
If you’re aware of Florida caselaw that would suggest how a media defendant using a name or likeness in advertisement for its services might fare, send it on in.
No Sex Offenders with Candy on Halloween
Trick or treat, give me something good to eat.
Unless you’re a sex offender, in which case you’re going to jail.
There’s a law in New Jersey that forbids sex offenders from giving out candy on Halloween. That means Lester down the street won’t giving out chocolate yum-yums this year.
Don’t think this law is only going to affect a small number of people. Did you know there are 2,200 sexual crime offenders registered in the state of New Jersey?
It makes you think though, how many of these sex offenders used candy to lure children? Did any of them poison food or candy and then give it to them? Did they somehow put some sort of date rape drug in candy or food?
It seems the main goal is to prevent the contact between children and sex crime offenders. It’s a very reasonable concern. Most parents are already wary of their children coming into close contact with strangers, now add the fact that these strangers are convicted sex offenders and that concern raises to another level. People nowadays are scared to let their children out alone and if they know a convicted sex offender is out there then they’re even more scared.
Do sex crime offenders commit their crimes again? If they’ve paid their dues to society shouldn’t they have the same rights as everyone else?
Let’s get some facts. The term for repeat offenders is recidivism and the rate of repeating the crime is recidivism rate. The problem with getting accurate numbers here is that the rate for actual reporting sex crimes is very low. Victims of sex crimes are twice as likely to tell friends and family than they are to go to authorities, like the police. And then we look at the actual sex offenders. A study performed lie detector tests (polygraph) on sex offenders in prison who had committed their crimes on less than two known victims. The researchers discovered that these offenders actually averaged 110 victims and 318 offenses. So there is a major problem with under-reporting sex crime offenses.
How are they going to keep tabs on these sex crime offenders to make sure they aren’t giving out candy?
There will be at least sixty parole officers and members of the 12 district officers patrolling and checking on the offenders. Sixty officers versus 2,200 sex offenders? Hmm, seems like there’s a number disparity here. But with police departments already stretched so thin, it’s a tough situation for police departments. Officers have to be patrolling other areas where public safety may be at risk also.
Classic Public Service Announcement Video:
You Can Get a DUI Even If You’re Not Driving
An appellate court ruled that a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol can be imposed on someone who isn’t driving but is behind the wheel.
Say what?
Well, David Montalvo, 36, was sleeping in his GMC pickup truck in the parking lot of a Market Place Deli, apparently sleeping off the effects of his drinking from the night before. A police officer from the Hamburg Police Department knocked on his pickup truck window at 5am in the morning. When Montalvo awoke, the officer instructed him to take a Breathalyzer test due to suspicion of drinking, but Montalvo refused to take the test.
Montalvo was arrested and entered a forced conditional guilty plea. His lawyer, Evan M. Levow, argued that the officer had no reasonable grounds to suspect a criminal activity on a guy sleeping in his truck. One key piece that may have affected the situation is that his car was running, although it was parked. The temperature was 25 degrees Fahrenheit so he apparently had the heater running.
The appellate court disagreed with Montalvo and Levow.
“From the perspective of the officer on the scene, I don’t find at all that what he was doing was unreasonable. In fact, I find it would have been unreasonable to have stopped his inquiries at any point short of what he did,” said Superior Court Judge Thomas Critchley Jr. “The officer wanted to make sure the driver was ‘okay,’ nothing was wrong with the businesses and that the truck was operating properly. We are convinced that under the facts as observed by Officer Aaronson defendant was lawfully subject to limited inquiry based upon an objectively reasonable exercise of the officer’s community caretaking function.”
Now the sleeping motorist has a DUI on his record, a “driver responsibility” tax of $3000, miscellaneous fines and fees of around $1000 and legal bills to take care of.
Doesn’t seem right to me. Wasn’t he doing the right thing sleeping off his drunkenness in a parking lot?
I can see both sides of it.
On one hand, the police officer has a duty to keep drunk drivers off the street. How can he be assured that half an hour later he’d wake up and still being intoxicated drive around and smash into something or someone?
On the other hand, it’s much better to have a drunk driver sleeping it off in a parking lot than trying to get home drunk. Do you think maybe this ruling may cause more people to drive home drunk because they’ll be scared a cop will give them a DUI for stopping somewhere to sober up? It’s a tough situation for sure.
Legal Filing: A-1303-06T5 STATE OF NEW JERSEY VS. DAVID MONTALVO
(SUSSEX COUNTY AND STATEWIDE)
