
|
A word about the Google ads being added
to this site.
Over the years,
I have received hundreds of phonecalls and emails for
recommendations of and referrals to family-law and civil rights
attorneys and self-help groups across this nation, 3500 miles wide and
1500 deep plus Hawaii and Alaska. Clearly, it is impossible
for me to be responsive to these requests.
Sooooo . . . not only can the few dollars from the ads pay for the expenses of this website, you, too, can also benefit: you can learn on your own which attorneys and which self-help groups in those areas of the law are available to help you. Hoping that the ads will give you sufficient information to satisfy your requests for recommendations and referrals, I have been reformatting the files on this website to accommodate the maximum number of ads that Google's policy allows per file. By the way, I have no control over which ads appear. They are chosen by Google according to the content -- I think -- in each file. HELP: Any HTML programmer know how to get rid of the extra <> below the Google ads at the top of the files and the <> in the upper right-hand corners of the Google ads on the right-hand side of the screen? i've wasted hours, if not days, trying to figure out WHY they are there in some files and not in others . . . and how to get rid of them. THANKS!! |
|
can be heavily fact-laden. on a case-to-case basis. |
|
|
![]() |
||
| Immunity
protects whoever has it
from prosecution in a civil or criminal case. There are many
types of immunity: sovereign
immunity, absolute immunity, qualified
immunity, quasi-immunity
(quasi-judicial
immunity), discretionary function
immunity.
Judges have absolute immunity: you cannot sue one. A constitutional attorney has written that judges are vulnerable. "Such cases," he says, "will usually be brought by pro se litigants. Neither the politics nor economics of law practice permits lawyers to pursue such cases nor makes them affordable except to a small elite of citizens." Mandatory reporters -- doctors, psychologists, social workers, rape counselors, teachers -- have absolute immunity given to them by statute, or statutory immunity. Essentially the legislature concluded, Hey, if we require them to report a case child abuse or rape of child only even if its only a hunch, we cannot allow the accused person to sue the reporter if the hunch wasn't a good one. District attorneys and assistant district attorneys have qualified immunity, which means sometimes you can sue and sometimes you cannot sue them. As a general rule, the act of prosecuting a rape of child case is not one of those acts for which you can sue a DA: the act is within the scope of the DA's employment. Search on "qualified immunity" in the legal databases and familiarize yourself with the cases. Court-appointed workers, such as family service officers, would have quasi-judicial immunity. "Quasi judicial" officers have been given absolute judicial immunity "because they are involved in an integral part of the judicial process and thus must be able to act freely without the threat of a law suit." LaLonde v. Eissner, 405 Mass. 207, 210 (1989). There appears to be no case in which quasi-judicial immunity had been extended to a private party not working at the behest or direction of a court. However, courts has stretched the meaning of "behest" and "direction." Department of Social Services
employees
and police
officers in Massachusetts decide "`whether, when, how, and whom to
investigate'
and whether and when to initiate court proceedings." Sena v.
Commonwealth, 417 Mass. 250, 255-259 (1994) (setting
out
standards
for applying the discretionary function immunity exemption for police
officers)
and Suarez v. Belli, 1997 WL 39918, 189179
(Mass.Super.Ct.
1997). "The discretionary function immunity applies as a matter
of
law to the allegations of negligence by Department employees."
Id. [Put "qualified immunity" in the Search Tool at the bottom of
this page and see the several files on this website where Barb
discusses qualified immunity in detail.] The Court of Appeals for the
Tenth Circuit
addressed qualified immunity in two
March 2008 cases. That court
held that there is no qualified immunity for the act of removing a
child
from its home without a proper showing of just cause: the child has a
Fourth Amendment tight, too. [Note:
See, FourthAmend-
ment.com.]
|
|
|
|