Image courtesy of Googliath.org

A woman from Adelaide, Dr. Duffy sued internet giant Google for calumny on a material posted on a website in 2007. She has gotten a partial victory on the matter that will continue to another trial at the South Australia Supreme Court.

An Australian academic, Dr. Janice Duffy has won a court ruling in her favor after a Judge found Google guilty of defaming her through its auto-complete, hyperlinks and search engine result.

Credit- GoFundMe
Dr. Janice Duffy

The former health researcher has been seeking justice on the matter for six years running after she claimed that a material posted in 2007 on the “Ripoff Report” defamed her character.

She claimed it has caused her psychological and financial damage as any would-be future employer would make use of Google search engine to know more about her, and this has left her unemployable.

She also claimed that Google gradually removed the material from their search engine after filing a civil proceeding against the company in 2011.

On their part, Google denied any knowledge of such publications. The internet giant also denied receiving any request from her to pull off the material from the search engine.

When the Judge ruled that defamatory materials concerning her were published by Google, she burst into emotions and wept in court. When she told the court that she needed more time to prepare for the trial as she was exhausted from the proceedings, she also broke down emotionally.

Justice Malcolm Blue, in his 144 – page judgment struck out most of the defenses put up by the counsel to Google. The Judge found out that the hyperlinks and auto-complete results either directed, published or republished a considerable number of internet users towards calumny comments.

The judge also ruled that the case will proceed to further trial to resolve the other issues at the South Australian Supreme Court.

The judge further stated that it would be necessary to proceed to trial on the other remaining issues that are time limitation and defense of triviality, the quantum of damages and causation, and the application for extension of time.

Dr. Duffy said she had no other choice than to file a complaint in court. She said she was not interested in a legal battle, and all she wanted from the onset was for the material to be taken down. She has remained jobless ever since and was forced to leave her health job in South Australia when her colleagues saw the defamatory material on Ripoff Report.

The post Legal Battle Between Internet Giant Google And Australian Academic Dr. Janice Duffy appeared first on NIR News / National Investigative Report.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently talked in front of the public to ask for a financial assistance with regard to his increasing legal fees. While his legal fees are now going up and up and the trial has become more personal, he decided to face the public and asked people to support him financially and he also wishes that there will be another judge to be appointed for the legal system.

Gage Skidmore/flickr

He wrote a letter, telling his supporters that he is not financially capable as of now, that he does not have the cash that he will use to pay the attorneys who are handling his case as of now. He does not have enough cash to support the monetary needs of his case. He also added that he feels that the immigrant rights groups are targeting him by filing a case against him. Their purpose for that is to put an end to what they call “racist policies” that target Latinos.

In the email that he wrote last Thursday, he said that he has to personally the attorneys so they will represent him in such cases. He also said that he does not have anything to shoulder all the expenses associated with these cases, losing his power to defend himself.
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio made a plea whilst he is awaiting a choice by the District Judge of the US, G. Murray Snow if he really broke and violated the law as he failed to carry out the 2011 court order that aims to abstain from bias against the minorities

Last Friday, the Arizona Sheriff requested the District Judge to take him off the case and he came up with a reason for that. He said that the judge is individually involved in the lawsuit for the reason that the former attorney of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio authorized a confidential investigation against the wife of Snow.

Caravan4Peace

He also said that there is no any reasonable person who has the knowledge about the facts can refuse that the District Judge is currently investigating and presiding on the issues in which his loved one is involved. It is what Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in his filing. These two people actually met one-day last month of April and the Sheriff had hit a rarely conciliatory tone along with the District Judge. It happened when the 83 years old sheriff responded his first 2 questions in his actions after he was obliged to discontinue racial profiling through his department.

Snow ruled in the year 2013 that the office of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio had methodically racially profiled the Latinos in the regular traffic & immigration patrols of it. Arpaio wants to apologize to the District Judge and it was his statement last month. Legally, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces the greatest challenge in his life against another national judge in the name of David Campbell, who ordered an urgent stop to the enforcement of the identity theft laws in the state which penalize those immigrants within the nation that are illegally seeking for a job opportunity.

Snow and Arpaio will meet once again in June and it is expected to be significantly affected by his filing.

The post Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Asks for Financial Help from the Public appeared first on NIR News / National Investigative Report.

Wikipedia/RWS

Some gamblers ended up winning $1.5 million at a casino. But, after the casino realized that the win was because the cards got shuffled they ordered the gamblers to return the money back.
Judge Donna Taylor from the State Superior Court sided alongside the Golden Nugget casino situated in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In this dispute, the 14 gamblers who were involved claim that it wasn’t their fault and that they should be permitted to keep the money the won.
The game which fell on the issue is mini-baccarat which was played back in April 2012. The casino had paid a manufacturer to pre-shuffle the cards, but it was later discovered that they have not been shuffled. The players started to realize the pattern in which the cards were coming, and they increased their bets from $10 right to $5000 and won 41 straight hands.

The ruling which was issued on Monday got publicized by the casino on Thursday. In it the judge determined that the games considered illegal under state law because they were not according to the rules and regulations of gambling.
The judge wrote that the dealer was in fault as it did not pre-shuffle the cards right before the beginning of the play. Thus, the cards were not pre-shuffled according to the regulations. He further stated that that this act was a violation of the Casino Control Act and, therefore, was not authorized. She ruled that any cash paid to the gamblers by the casino and any outstanding chips in their possession should be returned. In return of that, the gamblers would be refunded the money they first put up to play.

Wikipedia

The court’s ruling pleased the Golden Nugget and Tom Pohlman, the casino general manager said, “We believe it was the right decision.”
The ‘so called’ pre-shuffled cards were purchased by The Golden Nugget from a Kansas City manufacturer. In court, the manufacturer acknowledged that it failed to shuffle them. The casino accepted that the lawsuit with the manufacturer has been taken care of, but due to a confidentiality agreement, they can’t reveal the details.
This ruling by the judge was the latest in a long series of decisions which have been swinging between favoring the gamblers and favoring the casinos. Tillman Fertitta, Texas billionaire and the owner of the casino made the decision that the players keep their winnings. But this offer was dependent on the fact that the gamblers should drop their claims which they made against the casino, but they declined to do so.

For the disputed games, around $1 million chips remain outstanding, plus the casino paid out around $500,000 in winnings.

The post An Order Passed by the Judge; Gamblers Should Return $1.5 Million appeared first on NIR News / National Investigative Report.

A campaign to raise funds for North Charleston, South Carolina police officer Michael T. Slager, who was charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man during a routine stop, has been blocked by crowd funding site GoFundMe.

Photo Credit: Facebook

The release of a cell phone video on Tuesday shed new light on the death of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old father of four who was gunned down on Saturday. Slager was fired from the North Charleston Police Department on Wednesday, and the chief of the department said he was sickened after viewing the video of the shooting.

As protesters gathered outside the North Charleston City Hall calling for justice for Scott, others attempted to organize support for Slager in the form of an online crowd-funding initiative — even as the local police association decided not to provide funding for his legal defense.

In the video, Slager, 33, is clearly seen shooting Scott in the back eight times while he runs in the opposite direction. According to police reports, Scott was stopped because of a broken brake light.
“I have watched the video and I was sickened by what I saw. I have not watched it since,” Police Chief Eddie Driggers said Wednesday during a press briefing on Wednesday.

“It is a sad day for us all when a police officer makes what appears to be a very bad decision that resulted in an unnecessary death,” Alphin said. “The swift decision to charge the officer demonstrates that law enforcement will not tolerate the tarnishing of the badge and oath we all take so seriously,” read a statement from the group.

A Twitter account associated with the attempted fundraiser, dedicated to raising money to offset Slager’s forthcoming legal costs, noted that GoFundMe rejected the campaign and directed people to a similar fundraiser on Indiegogo. It is unclear who is behind the campaign or whether funds were ever raised.

The page carried the following message:

We’re campaigning to show our Support for Officer Michael T. Slager! We believe in all of our LEOs and want to publicly support them! Although he may have made missteps in judgment he was protecting the community. Michael is a former Coast Guardsman with two stepchildren and a wife who is expecting a child, served for more than five years with the department without being disciplined. Please help in any way you can. He has served five years with the department without being disciplined.

Photo Credit: Facebook

The person or people behind the campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

GoFundMe confirmed that the page had been removed, due to a violation of the site’s terms and conditions after it was reviewed by the team.

A spokesperson was unable to comment on which of the site’s terms and conditions were violated or how much money had been raised on the page prior to it being shut down. Yet Slager has been formally charged with murder, a crime that may fall under the site’s ban on “campaigns in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts,” which is explicitly stated on its user page

Some Twitter users called for Indiegogo to follow suit and shut down the campaign on its site.

An Indiegogo representative told that the site “allows anyone, anywhere to fund ideas that matter to them and just like other open platforms — such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter — we don’t judge the content of campaigns as long as they are in compliance with our Terms of Use.”

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