Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

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Burning Petard
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Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Burning Petard »

Was there a blizzard?

I just saw a brief a news headline that SCOTUS has announced a unanimous decision in Morgan v. Sundance that rules FOR the ordinary worker!

No real details from that on-line news service. I hope somebody with an 'Esquire' after their name can tell us more.

snailgate

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Know what else they decided this week? That the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel isn’t compelling anymore and it’s okay if an actually innocent human being is executed by the state because it’s more important that we respect trial outcomes.

This SCOTUS is an aberration.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Sorry, but the sooner we can take scumwads like Charlie Manson, or Dylann Roof, or Payton Gendron (the shooter in Buffalo NY), or anyone who rapes and kills one-year-old children, or kidnaps and traffics a fifteen-year-old girl — and turn them into worm food, the better.

In fact, in Gendron's case, since he was so focused on his whacko "replacement theory" bullshit that he live-streamed his attack, once he's found guilty (with his own self-shot video being "Prosecution Exhibit A"), let's strap him to a plank and feed him — face up, feet-first,and fully conscious — into a wood chipper and live-stream THAT!!

Morbid?  Yes.  Ghoulish?  Sure.  But once criminals start to see proof that a death sentence means we're gonna execute you sooner rather than later, maybe THAT will begin to be a deterrent to someone producing a pistol and pulling a trigger because they got pissed off over a barroom argument.
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Big RR
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Big RR »

Personally, I'd prefer a quick death to a life behind bars.

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Sue U
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Sue U »

As to the actual OP:

This was a wage-theft case litigated in the Supreme Court by Public Justice, an advocacy organization I'm proud to support and which has provided me with substantial advice and assistance in a couple of my own cases. The issue here was whether the employer could keep the case out of court (and hidden from public view) by forcing it into "private" arbitration. Forced arbitration has been a huge issue in denying people access to the courts; it's another one of the anti-consumer objectives of "tort reform." Here's the email I got yesterday:
I wanted you to be among the first to know: This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous victory in our suit on behalf of Robyn Morgan, a Taco Bell franchise employee who fought all the way to the highest court in the land after she learned she and her co-workers were being denied overtime pay – and were then faced with the possibility of being denied their day in court, too.

As Reuters noted earlier today, this sweeping victory, which struck down the lower court opinion forcing Robyn to arbitrate even though her employer had been litigating the case in court for months, “potentially allows more class actions against companies to remain in court.”

We are all so proud of Public Justice Senior Attorney Karla Gilbride, the co-director of our Access to Justice Project, who argued Robyn’s case at the Supreme Court. Karla’s masterful argument brought all nine justices together in a rare unanimous decision, proving that progress is possible with the law – and a great lawyer – on your side.

And make no mistake: You made this possible, too. Your support of Public Justice’s work to ensure our courts work for everyone meant that we could take on Robyn’s case without worrying about the cost to do so.

In fact, today’s decision marks our third Supreme Court victory in recent years – and marks our second unanimous victory for workers, following our 2019 win on behalf of transportation workers fighting arbitration. That incredible track record is a testament to the talent and tenacity of our team and to the steadfast support you have shown for our work over the years. We couldn’t be more grateful.

Because of Robyn Morgan’s determination, Karla’s incredible legal work and your help, we just made America’s workplaces a little fairer – and we just made it a little harder to change the rules mid-game in an attempt to deny hardworking employees like Robyn their day in court.

Today, we celebrate. And tomorrow, we go back to work, and back to the courts, again.

I hope you’ll keep standing with us as we keep up the good fight...together.

Thank you for being part of the Public Justice team,

Steve Ralls, VP, External Affairs


And here's their summary of what the case was about:
Morgan v. Sundance, Inc.

Public Justice is co-counsel in Morgan v. Sundance, Inc., an overtime and wage theft case on behalf of former Taco Bell employee Robyn Morgan against Sundance Inc., a company that owns more than 150 Taco Bell franchises throughout the country. Co-Director of the Access to Justice Project Karla Gilbride will argue for the plaintiff before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.

Morgan worked at a Taco Bell franchise operated by Sundance for several months in 2015. In September 2018, she filed a complaint under the Fair Labor Standards Act in the Iowa federal district court, alleging that Sundance failed to pay her and similarly-situated workers for all their work, including overtime premiums.

The complaint alleges that Sundance’s wage and hour practices violate federal law by keeping employees from earning overtime pay, including a scheme in which the company had a policy of “shifting” hours to ensure that the total number of recorded hours in any given week would never exceed 40. Furthermore, Sundance regularly instructed workers to clock out and continue working off the clock meaning that Morgan and other crewmembers were not paid for all of the hours they worked, including overtime pay for when they worked more than 40 hours in a single week.

Although Sundance’s employment agreement form contains an arbitration provision, the company did not invoke that provision at the “earliest feasible” point in the case, as Eighth Circuit precedent requires. Instead, it filed a motion to dismiss Morgan’s collective action under the first-filed rule, arguing that it should give way to another FLSA collective action, Wood v. Sundance (a 2016 case already pending in the Eastern District of Michigan), and that if the court dismissed the collective claims, Morgan could “refile her claim on an individual basis before this court.” After the district court denied Sundance’s motion to dismiss, the company filed an answer listing fourteen affirmative defenses, none of which mentioned arbitration. Only after an unsuccessful mediation session—which if successful, would have allowed Sundance to settle both cases—did Sundance first invoke its arbitration provision and move to compel Morgan’s claims into individual arbitration.

Morgan argued that Sundance had never mentioned arbitration, and that if it wanted to compel arbitration, it should have done so before proceeding with litigation inconsistent with its right to arbitrate. The district court agreed, ruling that Sundance’s moving to dismiss and otherwise participating in the litigation for over eight months, waived any right to arbitrate. However, in March 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed the lower court, ruling that the company’s motion to dismiss was not directed to the merits of the case and that because no discovery had occurred and no dispositive rulings had been made, Morgan failed to show that Sundance’s delay in moving to compel arbitration prejudiced her or the crewmembers. Three federal courts of appeal and supreme courts of at least four states do not include prejudice as an essential element of proving waiver of the right to arbitrate.

Pointing to this circuit split, Public Justice filed a cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in August 2021, challenging the arbitration-specific waiver doctrine and arguing that arbitration should be treated like any contractual right where a showing of prejudice is ordinarily not required. Sundance argued that because all courts consider prejudice to be a factor, there was in fact no circuit split that needs to be resolved.

In November 2021, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and will settle the circuit courts’ split over the standard for waiver of the rights to arbitrate under the FAA in 2022.

In December 2021, the legal team filed its opening brief.

This case builds on Public Justice’s past work regarding arbitration waiver issues and raises several important issues that will be considered before the Supreme Court, including the role of prejudice in determining waiver of the right to arbitrate and whether the requirement to show prejudice violates the equal treatment principle under the Federal Arbitration Act, in which arbitration agreements are on “equal footing” with all other contracts and should be treated no differently.

Public Justice is participating in this case as part of its Access to Justice work in ensuring employees’ rights aren’t violated when it comes to corporate and government wrongdoing. Given the frequency with which this sort of corporate gamesmanship occurs, winning this case would send a strong message to corporations and corporate defendants that arbitration clauses will be treated like all other contracts and not given most-favored contract status to obtain a strategic advantage in litigation. A favorable Supreme Court ruling would also lessen significant delays in reaching the merits of cases by removing the additional hurdle of proving prejudice in cases involving arbitration clauses that don’t occur in other types of contractual waivers.
GAH!

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Sue U
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Sue U »

Bicycle Bill wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 10:35 pm
But once criminals start to see proof that a death sentence means we're gonna execute you sooner rather than later, maybe THAT will begin to be a deterrent to someone producing a pistol and pulling a trigger because they got pissed off over a barroom argument.
The death penalty has exactly zero deterrent effect in general crimes of violence.
GAH!

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Joe Guy
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Joe Guy »

My daily exercise routine includes the running zigzag to dodge bullets move. I don't know if it'll do any good but I'm doing the only thing I can do to increase by a couple percentage points my chance of living if a shooter has really bad shooting skills.

Jarlaxle
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Jarlaxle »

Bicycle Bill wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 10:35 pm
Sorry, but the sooner we can take scumwads like Charlie Manson, or Dylann Roof, or Payton Gendron (the shooter in Buffalo NY), or anyone who rapes and kills one-year-old children, or kidnaps and traffics a fifteen-year-old girl — and turn them into worm food, the better.

In fact, in Gendron's case, since he was so focused on his whacko "replacement theory" bullshit that he live-streamed his attack, once he's found guilty (with his own self-shot video being "Prosecution Exhibit A"), let's strap him to a plank and feed him — face up, feet-first,and fully conscious — into a wood chipper and live-stream THAT!!

Morbid?  Yes.  Ghoulish?  Sure.  But once criminals start to see proof that a death sentence means we're gonna execute you sooner rather than later, maybe THAT will begin to be a deterrent to someone producing a pistol and pulling a trigger because they got pissed off over a barroom argument.
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How many innocent people are you willing to kill to sate your bloodlust?

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 9:23 pm
Know what else they decided this week? That the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel isn’t compelling anymore and it’s okay if an actually innocent human being is executed by the state because it’s more important that we respect trial outcomes.

This SCOTUS is an aberration.
A very good explanation of that decision and its likely consequences on HuffPost. Essentially the argument that you had bad lawyers at the initial trial is a good one; but if you have bad lawyers arguing that case, you're up shit creek.

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Sue U wrote:
Wed May 25, 2022 12:19 am
Bicycle Bill wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 10:35 pm
But once criminals start to see proof that a death sentence means we're gonna execute you sooner rather than later, maybe THAT will begin to be a deterrent to someone producing a pistol and pulling a trigger because they got pissed off over a barroom argument.
The death penalty has exactly zero deterrent effect in general crimes of violence.
I'll take your word for it, Sue, but we gotta do SOMETHING.  Twenty more dead because some wacko in Texas got two assault rifles and went on a killing spree in an elementary school.  Fortunately he was put down at the scene like the rabid dog he was, but not before the damage was done.
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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Jarlaxle wrote:
Wed May 25, 2022 2:23 am
How many innocent people are you willing to kill to sate your bloodlust?
How many innocent victims are you willing to sacrifice otherwise?  Twenty more today in Texas.
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Gob
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Gob »

Sue U wrote:
Wed May 25, 2022 12:19 am

The death penalty has exactly zero deterrent effect in general crimes of violence.
I've not seen anybody who has had the death penalty commit a murder again.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

Burning Petard
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Burning Petard »

And to expand your data, Gob, I have seen no example of anyone convicted of murder who has not, at some point prior to their crime, eaten mashed potatoes.

So does society need to preemptively execute all who eat mashed potatoes?

I have seen evidence of individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. Under the USofA criminal justice system, as legally required combined with as actually practiced, evidence of an individual wrongfully executed is very difficult to come by. No resources for that activity since the wrongful death cannot be reversed.

EVERY mass shooter in the USofA has died in prison, was killed on the spot, or is now in prison for life without parole. BB's hypotheticals just do not happen.





snailgate.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Cameron Todd Willingham was an actually innocent person executed by the state of Texas. His children died in a house fire sparked by a faulty space heater. The podunk law enforcement in his shitty Texas town didn’t like the looks of him because he was poor and imperfect and they didn’t know Jack shit about fire science. Even before Texas killed him the foremost forensic fire scientists in the country had declared his conviction wrongful because there was zero evidence that the fire was anything but an accident. Texas killed him anyway. I am certain beyond any doubt that he is not alone in the category of innocent people wrongfully convicted and murdered by the state.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-iss ... y-innocent
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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

A lot of shooters know they are going to die either by their own hand (e.g., Columbine) or in the ensuing gun battle (we don't yet know how the Texas killer died but the suggestion so far is that he was killed by authorities). Does not seem to have stopped them.

Big RR
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Big RR »

Absolutely, somehow I don't see a mental defective like Ramos sitting down and saying, "No, I guess I won't shoot up that school because I can be executed for it." That's the silliness of the deterrence argument.

And Gob, LWOP would pretty much guarantee the same thing; if authorities are concerned about the detainee killing another prisoner, there's always isolation and super max.

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Long Run
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Long Run »

Burning Petard wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 8:55 pm

I just saw a brief a news headline that SCOTUS has announced a unanimous decision in Morgan v. Sundance that rules FOR the ordinary worker!
If that is indeed what the brief news headline read then you need new news sources. You can read through Sue's lengthy descriptions, but it came down to basic statutory interpretation and as is often the result in such cases, the justices agreed on what Congress intended. An employer can still require employees to sign arbitration clauses, but they can't do substantial litigation on the matter in court and then decide later they want to arbitrate it. They have waived their right to arbitration in such case. So can this be characterized as a win for "the ordinary worker"? Maybe yes, maybe no. More employers will now be inclined to arbitrate at the outset which will reduce the chances for an employee to "get their day in court." On the other hand, an employer will not be able to start litigating a case and then decide they could do better in arbitration. This will also have a much broader impact as this applies to any arbitration clause covered by the Federal Arbitration Act. At the end of the day, though, the decision had nothing to do with the little guy against the big guy.

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Gob
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Gob »

My point still stands, no one executed for murder ever commits another.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Crackpot
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Crackpot »

But people executed for murder have been found innocent after the fact.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Gob
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Re: Did I miss a weather bulletin from Hell?

Post by Gob »

I don't deny that. The point still stands though.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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