Matthews R Bark Attorney – When Abandoning Your Child Is Legal

Posted on December 22, 2015 Updated on December 22, 2015

Source    :  Above The Law
By            :  Toni Messina
Category : Matthews Ryan Bark, Matthews R Bark Attorney

I grew up Roman Catholic, lived in Rome for many years, and have seen enough presepios (nativity scenes) to fill a small museum (they actually did fill a small museum). So I was intrigued by the story of the newborn found last month wrapped not in swaddling clothes but in a purple towel, umbilical cord still attached, carefully placed inside a manger scene in a church in Queens. Imagine the shock of the custodian as he went about his business sweeping the church floors then heard the cries of baby coming from the creche he’d set up earlier that morning. It was a miracle, some parishioners said. Others interpreted it as child abandonment and thus a criminal act. So where is the line between safe-haven abandonment and full-out child neglect or abuse?

We saw the case a few years back of a Danish couple in New York City who left their sleeping toddler in a stroller just outside the cafe window where they ate. They hadn’t abandoned the child and she was constantly in their view, but nonetheless they were arrested and prosecuted for child endangerment. In the Queens case, however, the mother is safe. Although police have identified the woman who left her baby in the manger, she will not be prosecuted. Why? She is protected by the Abandoned Infant Protection Act, colloquially known as the safe-haven or Baby Moses law that decriminalizes the abandonment of an infant up to 30 days old if left in a safe place. Such places includes hospitals, police stations, firehouses, and yes, churches. The New York law originally permitted the safe abandonment of an infant only in the first five days of life, but in 2010, the time limit was extended to 30 days in order to include more babies and give more overwhelmed parents an out.

All 50 states have similar statutes enacted to promote the public policy goal of infant safety over say, infanticide and abortion. In most states the abandonment can be done anonymously — no strings attached, no questions asked. Although the person who abandons the child is supposed to alert some authority to guarantee the child will be quickly found. Apparently the first state to pass such legislation was Alabama in 1999 following a string of infanticides. Since the law’s passage, that number has dropped. Nebraska had a problem with its law by not defining child narrowly enough. According to news reports, over a four-month span, parents dumped 35 teenagers in hospitals hoping to be covered. The state later refined the law to include only infants up to 30 days old. It’s theorized that the woman in Queens, seen on video going into the church with what appeared to be a bundle then leaving moments later empty-handed, knew the church well. She knew it was well-tended, had a thriving parishioner base, and that the child was likely to be found within a short time and cared for appropriately. It’s hard to imagine what it took for that mother to abandon a child so fragile and so new in an empty church. But for once, the law did not punish (as it does in most cases), it protected.

Read More : abovethelaw.com/2015/12/criminally-yours-when-abandoning-your-child-is-legal-a-christmas-tale/

Matthews R Bark Attorney – Texas Boy’s Family Hires Legal Counsel to Get Clock Back

Posted on September 24, 2015 Updated on September 24, 2015

Source     : NBC News
By            : Elizabeth Chuck
Category : Matthews Ryan Bark, Matthews R Bark Attorney

The family of the 14-year-old Muslim boy who was led out of school in handcuffs has hired attorneys to get back the homemade clock that administrators mistook for a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed was suspended after showing his clock to a teacher at his Irving, Texas, high school last week. His case sparked an outcry on social media and attracted the attention of President Obama and a number of tech companies who invited Ahmed to visit. His family said in a statement Wednesday that it had pulled Ahmed and his two siblings out of the Irving school district “because of religious persecution,” and had decided to home-school the kids.

Two Dallas attorneys, Thomas Bowers and Reggie London, have been hired “to pursue Ahmed’s legal rights and regain his science project from the Irving Police Department,” the statement added.  Bowers has handled high-profile cases before, including a sexual assault allegation against Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and a family dispute between billionaire T. Boone Pickens and his son Michael.

The family said it is suing because Ahmed has been “severely traumatized,” and they hope no one else will experience what he did. The Irving Independent School District confirmed to NBC News that the family withdrew Ahmed on Tuesday afternoon. “All along we had said he was certainly welcome to stay in our school. We believe he can receive a quality education here in Irving,” Lesley Weaver, director of communications for the district, said. “But we certainly respect the family’s right to withdraw him.” No charges were filed against Ahmed, who on Tuesday visited Google’s campus and this weekend will go to a United Nations summit. He also has been invited to the White House.

Read More : nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ahmed-mohamed-family-boy-arrested-clock-hires-legal-counsel-n432366

Matthews R Bark Attorney – Is Your Fantasy Football League Legal?

Posted on September 1, 2015 Updated on October 15, 2015

Source    :  Forbes
By            :  Marc Edelman – Contributor
Category :  Matthews Ryan Bark, Matthews R Bark Attorney

More than 30 million Americans will draft fantasy football teams for the upcoming season.  Many will join cash leagues on websites such as CBS CBS +0.00%, Yahoo YHOO -3.13%, or the Fantasy Football Players Championship.  Meanwhile, others will enter private, in home contests where entry fees and prizes are managed by the participants themselves.

Many would agree that playing fantasy football adds to the excitement of watching NFL games. However, a frequent question I receive this time of year is “is playing fantasy football really legal?”

I explore this question in depth in a number of law review articles, including “A Short Treatise on Fantasy Sports and the Law” and “ Navigating the Legal Risks of Daily Fantasy Sports.” But for the more common fantasy football fan who just wants a quick and easy answer, here are five key takeaways:

1. In many cases, playing fantasy football for money is entirely legal under federal law.  The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 includes an explicit carve-out for fantasy sports games that meet three criteria: (1) the value of the prizes is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of fees paid; (2)  all winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants; and (3) the fantasy game’s result is not based on the final scores of any real-world games.  Based on this language, most traditional versions of fantasy football seem to comply with federal law, presuming these contests are indeed games of skill.

2.  However, in some states playing fantasy football may violate gambling laws.  As a general matter of state law, fantasy football contests are illegal if they involve three elements: consideration (e.g., an entry fee), reward (e.g., a prize) and chance.  Here, the precise definition of ‘chance’ varies by state.  In a majority of states, play-for-cash contests are only illegal if they involve more chance than skill (“predominant purpose test”).  By contrast, in a few other states, fantasy football contests are illegal if results are based even in the smallest part on chance (“any chance test”).  Some examples of states where fantasy football is likely illegal if it involves any chance at all include the following: Arizona; Arkansas; Louisiana; Montana; Iowa; Tennessee; and Washington.

3.  In every state, playing fantasy football without entry fees or prizes is legal.  Nevertheless, remove either the entry fee or prize from a fantasy football contest and the contest will almost certainly be legal, irrespective of the state of operation.  This is because a contest without an entry fee would lack “consideration” and one without a prize would lack “reward.”  Thus, even if a fantasy football contest were a game of chance the three elements of illegal gambling would not all be met.

Read more here: forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2015/08/31/is-your-fantasy-football-league-legal-2/

Matthews R Bark Attorney – Where ‘speeding’ is legal: A map of maximum limits across the U.S.

Posted on August 18, 2015 Updated on August 18, 2015

Source    :  Washington Post
By            :  Emily Badger
Category :  Matthews Ryan Bark, Matthews R Bark Attorney

The Great Plains, with all that flat, wide-open and sparsely populated land, has long had the most generous — or audacious — speed limits in the country. Cross the Minnesota border into South Dakota, and the default statewide speed limit on the interstates there, as of this spring, is now 80 miles an hour. Idaho, Wyoming and Utah have also pushed their legal limits that far. Texas, meanwhile, has a toll road that tops out at 85. Which, as we all know, means there are drivers there traveling 90. The Missouri River, as it turns out, is a kind of speed-limit fault line: Most states west of it consider legal what Virginia, Ohio and Illinois would call “speeding.”

The above map, from MetricMaps, illustrates that abrupt division using local speed limit data collected by Navteq (which powers a lot of in-car navigation tools) and provided by the mapping platform Caliper. That map shows the maximum local speed limit for any local roads or highways in each Census block group in the U.S. (that’s a unit of geography smaller than many neighborhoods). If a highway passes by your house, in other words, your neighborhood may look dark blue.

The nationwide contrasts are striking, but so are the local ones: Zoom in to an individual city like Los Angeles, and the darker arteries effectively outline highways. Zoom into Washington, D.C., and low-speed local roads dominate. Even massive highways that run through the city, like Interstate 395, are relatively slow at 40 miles per hour. Outside the city, the outline of the Beltway emerges:

New York City, which lowered its default speed limit to 25 miles per hour last year (after this data was collected), is also mostly composed of slower local roads :

Contrast that picture with Houston, where even the slowest parts of town aren’t that slow, relative to New York or D.C.:

These maps, through the lens of speed limits, reflect the hierarchy of how we build roads, from local residential streets, to busier boulevards, to limited-access arterials and high-speed highways. Each environment demands different standards. But this national map also raises a question central to “vision zero” campaigns trying to end pedestrian deaths and make roads safer: Does it make sense that a residential neighborhood in Houston would allow faster traffic than a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn?

Sure, there are cultural differences between one part of the country and another, as well as contrasts in topography and development patterns. But the cost of collisions — what happens when someone is hit at 25 miles per hour vs. 30 or 40 — holds constant across the country.

Read More: washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/17/where-speeding-is-legal-a-map-of-maximum-limits-across-the-u-s/

Matthews R Bark Attorney – Illegal immigration a dominant theme at Republican forum even without Trump

Posted on August 4, 2015 Updated on August 4, 2015

Source     : Reuters
By            : Steve Holland
Category : Matthews Ryan Bark, Matthews R Bark Attorney

There was no Donald Trump but his top issue, illegal immigration, was a dominant theme on Monday for 14. Republican presidential candidates who tested their messages at a New Hampshire forum to start a pivotal week on the campaign trail. Facing their first face-to-face debate on Thursday in Cleveland, the candidates got in some warm-up action at the Voters First Forum. The event lacked the punch of an actual debate but allowed participants to talk up their policy beliefs in answer to questions from a moderator. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina got in what was arguably the zinger of the night when he declared himself uniquely qualified to take on Democrat Hillary Clinton in a general election matchup in November 2016. Clinton is currently the front runner among Democrats seeking the presidential nomination. “I am fluent in Clinton-speak,” Graham said, proceeding to bring up the Monica Lewinsky scandal that jeopardized Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1996 and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while conducting official business as secretary of state.

“When Bill says he didn’t have sex with that woman, he did,” Graham said. “When (Hillary Clinton) tells us: ‘Trust me, you have all the emails you need,’ we haven’t even scratched the surface….I understand this crowd,” he said. Trump, who leads polls of Republican voters in the 2016 race for a presidential nominee, declined to appear at the event out of pique over an editorial written about him by the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper, one of the sponsors of the event. But the issue he has repeatedly railed about, illegal immigration, was one of the most talked-about at the forum, and all the candidates who addressed the issue said a solution must be found. All stressed the need for ensuring the U.S. border is secure before taking other steps to deal with the issue, which most agreed should lead to a legal guest-worker program. While Democratic President Barack Obama says great strides have been made in securing the border, former Texas Governor Rick Perry begged to differ.

“It’s like a serious wound. You want to staunch the flow,” said Perry, whose state shares a long border with Mexico. Even Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who favors comprehensive immigration reform, said limits should be placed on “chain immigration,” the ability of new U.S. citizens to bring in a variety of their relatives from other countries. Instead, he said, new immigrants should be brought in based on their ability to help propel the U.S. economy into stronger growth. Ahead of the forum, Bush on Monday released a six-point plan to combat illegal immigration that includes offering 11 million undocumented workers “a rigorous path to earned legal status.”

Read More :  reuters.com/article/2015/08/04/us-usa-election-republicans-idUSKCN0Q80AR20150804

Matthews R Bark Attorney – Facebook’s legal team goes after defunct Yale class project

Posted on July 23, 2015

Source     : Arstechnica
By            : Joe Mullin
Category : Matthews Ryan Bark, Matthews R Bark Attorney

A school project created by two Yale undergraduates in 2011 has unexpectedly become a target of Facebook’s legal team. The social networking giant has demanded that the two developers, Bay Gross and Charlie Croom, abandon the website they created at whatsherface-book.com. The site featured a game that showed people pictures of their Facebook friends, then quizzed them on which pictures they could recognize. “You should not sell, offer to sell, or transfer the domain name to a third party and should let the domain registration expire,” states the letter, signed by “Ethel” of Facebook’s legal department. “Please confirm in writing that you will agree to resolve this letter as requested.” The missive from Ethel had unusual timing, since the game stopped working earlier this year after a Facebook API update. But the two friends, who created the website as a project in their Law and Technology class at Yale, still felt they shouldn’t have to remove their website. While the game stopped functioning, the site still showcased the results of the quizzes that had been taken. Plus, the site had a real point to make about Internet privacy and how it’s at odds with Facebook’s massive data collection. Instead of tossing their project in the digital trash bin at Facebook’s request, Gross and Croom, who have since taken jobs at Google and Twitter respectively, turned to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer responded (PDF) to Facebook on Friday, telling the company that Gross and Croom are now his clients, and they have no intention of taking the site down. In a blog post explaining the decision to help the undergraduate project, Nazer writes that it isn’t clear if the Facebook letter is simply an example of “mindless over-enforcement” or an attempt to intentionally censor a critic. “Either way, this kind of demand undermines online expression,” Nazer says. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the letter to Croom and Gross.

Project’s point: Don’t “friend randos”

The “whatsherface-book” site featured an interactive game that showed people pictures of their Facebook friends and then asked if the users could recognize them. More than 5,200 people played the game, and it turned out that on average they knew just 72 percent of their “friends.” Those results got Gross and Croom some press attention, like a 2011 article from Forbes entitled “As Facebook Timeline Rolls Out, Find Out How Well You Know Your Friends.” “The quiz purveyors suggest that I get ‘unfriendin’,’ noting that people I apparently don’t know have the right to share my information with third party apps,” wrote the article’s author, Kashmir Hill. “We wanted to try and make people aware in a more direct way just how little they often knew about the people who were able to give out their information,” said Croom in an e-mail exchange with Ars. He continued:

For instance, that one guy you met at a party 4 years ago? He works at Goldman now and could scope out any photos or posts that might sway the hiring committee one way or the other. Even if he just installed the wrong app, that malicious app would now have your details as well.

Facebook has since banned the kind of third-party data grab that whatsherface-book used to make its friend quizzes. When apps access your friend list, they can now only access friends who also use the app. Still, Croom says the team wanted to keep the site up because even though the “app hole” was addressed, the implications of the quiz results still matter. “Friending randos still gives them access to your information (in my case, phone, email, etc.), so we feel it’s still important to remind people of that.”

Is this spam?
It was Gross who fielded the Facebook letter, which he initially thought was a phishing attempt and considered marking as spam. “It was phrased as oddly intense and kept reiterating how ‘famous’ the Facebook trademark was,” he told Ars via e-mail. The links and headers checked out, though, and the e-mail had enough specific information that he thought he shouldn’t ignore it entirely. “As with any Internet emergency, I sent out a tweet,” he wrote. “I immediately got some inbound from our old professor who practices law and a former classmate who works at the EFF. I think both saw the absurdity/irony of the situation and wanted to help out.” Nazer is hoping the case can make big companies at least consider fair use before they send out automated, or near-automated, letters demanding that websites fold up shop. “We think cases like this push back against trademark owner narratives that any ‘use’ of a [trademark] needs permission,” he said. “We also want to push them to at least consider fair use before sending cease and desist letters.”

Read More : arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/facebooks-legal-team-goes-after-defunct-yale-class-project/