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| How could you not accept this guy's friend request? |
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| Don't be a dipsh*t. |
Broward County Circuit Court's Jeffrey Streitfeld really took home the "activist judge" belt when he presided over Lucinda Naugle's 2009 lawsuit against Big Tobacco. 
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The sister of a former Fort Lauderdale mayor, Naugle was a smoker whose 25-year habit led to emphysema. She asked the court to put Philip Morris legally on the hook for the damage, and a jury agreed, handing the plaintiff a eye-popping $300 million settlement. Yup, that's a lot of zeroes -- the largest tobacco settlement on the books.
But Streitfeld seemed to have gotten a little too nervous about his court entering the history book as the site of Big Tobacco's first serious bloodletting. He slashed the settlement figure down to a blue light special discount of $36 million. His justification was that the jury was just too emotional at the time to think straight. Reportedly, it was also that time of the month for some of the women on the jury, and some dudes were a little too nervous about the Hurricanes' ACC standing. See, no one was thinking right.
Unfortunately, that cop-out from the bench was basically allowed to stand this week when the matter when before an appeals court.
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Arguments were heard in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in Florida's appeal of a lower court Thursday on the decision halting enforcement of a 2011 state law mandating drug tests of applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Basically, the law says that those who apply for welfare benefits must not only take and pass a drug test, they also have to pay for it.
Last year, District Judge Mary Scriven temporarily blocked the law, saying essentially that it may violate a constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The drug testing program was challenged by the ACLU of Florida on behalf of of Luis Lebron, an Orlando Navy veteran, a single father who had applied for temporary assistance in July of '11 to support his 4-year-old son.
The state appealed the decision, arguing that the drug testing promotes family stability and child welfare. ACLU says that drug testing is not only a violation of the Fourth Amendment but that it assumes all people on welfare use drugs.
More » |
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| Bowman and Harper, whose case involved a court-appointed private lawyer. |
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| "Evidence." |
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| He's been busy. |
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| Howard Forman, who now has to pay people to hide information from you. |
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| via PBSO |
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