Counts Law Group

There is a trend here. Free speech rights continue to be upheld in situations where police and/or public officials and camera-wielding citizens tangle in public places.

The town of Weare, New Hampshire, settled a lawsuit last week for $57,500 with a woman arrested for videotaping a police officer, adding to the growing list of settlements stemming from police officers’ restriction of video and audio recordings in public places.

In Gericke v. Begin, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston (1st Cir.) upheld a lower court opinion that Carla Gericke was within her First Amendment rights to record a police officer at a traffic stop. Following the ruling, the parties settled.

In a U.S. district court case in Maryland, Sharp v. Baltimore City Police Department, police arrested a man taking video, deleted his recordings, and subpoenaed his medical and cell phone records.

The court ruled the plaintiff had a right to make the recording, quashed the subpoena and awarded him $25,000 in damages in addition to covering legal fees exceeding $200,000

In another recent case, the city of Boston paid attorney Simon Glik $170,000 after he was arrested for recording police officers make an arrest at a public city park.

In Georgia, Nydia Tisdale is involved in litigation in both federal and state court after she was ejected by Cumming Mayor Ford Gravitt while trying to tape a city council meeting. Tisdale sued the mayor and city for infringing on the state’s open meetings law and her First Amendment rights. Attorney General Sam Olens is pursuing the case against the city in state court.

The Counts Law Group has successfully pursued similar cases, including one where a client, Mary Kirkendoll, won an $85,000 settlement against the city of Smyrna after she was arrested for uttering an expletive during a Town Council Q&A session.

        The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has begun examining Internet security firm Tiversa Inc.’s dealings with federal agencies.

        The lawmakers are investigating the Federal Trade Commission’s use of Tiversa, whose data formed a key point its current case against Atlanta-based LabMD, a medical testing firm the FTC has accused of allowing a massive file of patient data to leak.

        Disclosure of the congressional probe came this week in a hearing on the case the FTC filed against LabMD regarding the alleged data leak. It prompted a delay in the FTC case.

        LabMD has vigorously challenged the FTC’s contentions and has argued that the data Tiversa found was not available to the public and that no data breach occurred. The company further contends that Tiversa hounded LabMD to sign a service agreement under which Tiversa would remedy the security breach it discovered in exchange for significant fees. LabMD declined and its CEO, Michael J. Daugherty,has since written a book about his experiences with Tiversa – “The Devil Inside the Beltway.”

         Tiversa subsequently sued Mr. Daugherty and LabMD for libel and sought to prevent publication of the book. The Counts Law Group is representing Mr. Daugherty in the matter.

http://www.ajc.com/news/business/labmd-ftc-privacy-case-delayed/ngC2R/

The “right to be forgotten” case decided by the European Court of Justice will have significant worldwide implications for large news aggregators. If you want to get behind the headlines, this is a good first cut at some of the issues the case raises, and how news organizations might solve them.

Another license plates case. This one is in New Hampshire, and once again the finding is in favor of free speech! You have to admire the chutzpah if not the wisdom of this effort.