California Business Litigation Blog

On Cinco de Mayo, students wearing T-shirts with the American flag on them were asked by the assistant principal to remove them. That controversial move made national news and is now headed to federal court. The parents of three of the students attending Live Oak High School filed federal civil rights lawsuits in US District Court in San Jose. Students say they are fighting for their First Amendment Rights.

The students and parents in the case want a judge to rule that the incident that occurred on May 5th was a violation of their First and Fourteenth amendment rights and that the school district's policy on student speech is not clear. The suit also asks for nominal damages and attorney fees to be paid by the school district. Named as defendants in the case are Morgan Hill Unified School District, the principal Nick Boden and assistant principal Miguel Rodriguez.

The incident involved Rodriguez asking the three boys to take off their t-shirts with the American flag on them or to wear them inside out on Cinco de Mayo. He believed wearing them on the holiday was incendiary. The boys thought this was disrespectful and called their parents. The boys are all part Latino. The case quickly hit news media around the country.

The Superintendent of the school district made a statement the next day that the school district does not prohibit or punish students from wearing clothing that is patriotic nor that students should be disciplined for wearing it.

While the actions of the assistant principal seemed wrong, the school does not have a policy that is in violation of the rights of students. First Amendment Coalition in San Rafael executive director Peter Scheer stated that the federal lawsuit may not be valid since the students do not have a "case or controversy" in policy. The school district claims it made a mistake. This means the controversy is now in the past and may not be able to be a part of a federal lawsuit.

When Craig Kleffman received 11 email messages offering broadband phone services from Vonage and noticed that they came from a variety of domain names, he found a lawyer and filed a lawsuit. Kleffman felt that these emails were spam (also known as junk emails) and as such a violation of a California spam law that prohibits marketers from sending messages with misleading headers.

While the emails might be annoying, the California Supreme Court ruled this week that they were not spam, and did not violate California law.

Justice Ming W. Chin wrote on behalf of a unanimous court: "We find that a single e-mail with an accurate and traceable domain name neither contains nor is accompanied by 'misrepresented … header information' ... merely because its domain name ... is 'random,' 'varied,' 'garbled' and 'nonsensical' when viewed in conjunction with domain names used in other e-mails.”

He continued: "An e-mail with an accurate and traceable domain name, makes no affirmative representation or statement of fact that is false."

And concluded: “…we hold that, on the undisputed facts of this case, sending commercial e-mail advertisements from multiple domain names for the purpose of bypassing spam filters is not unlawful under section 17529.5(a)(2).”

The ruling (which may be viewed HERE) will likely make it more difficult for internet users to sue email marketers in California, which has an anti-spam law that is broader than the federal Can-Spam law. Generally, the federal law (which bars individuals from suing for spam violations) overrules most state spam laws. There's an exception for state laws to be used when dealing with fraud.

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A lawsuit was filed on behalf of three girls who were subjected to a strip search. The strip search was conducted at Atlantic High School in Atlantic, Iowa. The lawsuit names the school district and two school officials who were part of the strip search, allegedly. The incident occurred on August 21, 2009.

The three students, Matthew Jacobsen, Lisa Ferguson and Lee Lank were accused, along with two other students, of stealing $100 from a student's purse in the girl's locker room. The lawsuit states that the then assistant principal and athletic director, Paul Croghan ordered the guidance counselor Heather Turpin to strip search a total of five female students. Croghan waited in the adjacent room while the counselor made the girls remove their clothing, one at a time, to various degrees. No money was discovered on them at that time.

After the event occurred, Croghan was placed on administrative leave and in November of 2009, he resigned his position. Turpin is still employed with the school district.

According to one of the girls' attorneys, Edward Noethe, the attorneys had tried to make several attempts with the school district to settle the case out of court, to no avail. He also believes that the circumstances will make it difficult for his client to live in the small community. He did not provide specifics on the types of steps he took to resolve the matter out of court, nor the amount of money the plaintiffs were seeking.

The lawsuit states that the search of the girls "constituted an unreasonable search" under the 14th Amendment. Further, it states that this type of code is part of the Atlantic Community School District's code, which the two officials were following when they performed the search. The lawsuit states that the search was a violation of the US Constitution.

Also, the petition filed in court states that the Constitution of Iowa also includes a provision that does not allow for such unreasonable searches to be conducted and therefore the school was in violation. The Iowa Student Searches Act was violated by the school and further the student's privacy was invaded during the search.

In Scranton, PA, a teenage student is suing the principal of Tunkhannock Area high school, the school district, the county, prosecutors and a detective in the case. The student's phone was searched in a sexting case, which has recently been ruled on by a Federal Appeals Court.

More information on that decision may be found HERE. In a nutshell, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the district attorney may not pursue felony charges against a teenage girl for "sexting".

According to the lawsuit, the teen, who is now 19 years of age, states that the principal illegally searched her phone during the incident, which occurred in January of 2009. Through the search, the principal found nude photos the student had taken of herself. The principal then took the phone and gave it to prosecutors. In the lawsuit, the student states that the photos were never meant to be shared, but were for herself and perhaps her long term boyfriend.

However, due to the nature of the photos, the school's principal, Gregory Ellsworth turned the phone over to the then district attorney of Wyoming County, George Skumanick Jr. After reviewing the images, Skumanick threatened, the lawsuit states, for the student to take a class on sexual violence or to face charges of child pornography, which would be felony charges.

Within the lawsuit documents the plaintiff states, "I was absolutely horrified and humiliated to learn that school officials, men in the DA's office and police had seen naked pictures of me." The student's name is not being released and in court documents she is named only as N.N.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania is representing her in court and through the lawsuit seeks unspecified damages against numerous individuals who were part of the case. The lawsuit also seeks immediate destruction of all remaining images.

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