In court can you ask someone for all names they go by? How would question be phrased? In a hearing the plaintiff has reason to believe that the defendant may have some type of pseudonym or sometimes use a variations of his name (like going by his middle name and leaving out the first). What questions can the plaintiff put to the defendant to find the full enumeration of all of his names? I don't even know what some types of names are called, like &quot;Catholic Confirmation Name&quot;. Must the defendant answer, or could a judge decide if this is relevant? It could make a difference to evidence, for example if a letter was directed to &quot;Joe Blow&quot; but the defendants legal name is &quot;Jim Joe&quot; but they are one in the same person.
This is a perfectly common question. &quot;What is your full name?&quot; &quot;Do you have any aliases?&quot; &quot;What other names do you go by?&quot; Like any other question, though, it must be relevant, and you should be prepared to explain why it is relevant. If the court allows the question, the defendant must answer.
You're only required to show up for a settlement conference. You're not required to do or say anything at the conference. Nothing you say or do or fail to say or do can be used at trial, and every that happens there is kept strictly confidential. The judge is there just to give advice to both parties and for procedural reasons. The judge will not order you to respond to any questions the defence may have. From &quot;Important Information About Your Settlement Conference&quot; by the Superior Court of Justice, Office of the Chief Justice: A settlement conference is an informal, confidential meeting between the parties in the presence of a judicial officer (a judge or deputy judge). The judicial officer at your settlement conference will not be the judge at your trial. You may feel free to discuss your case openly at your settlement conference. What you say cannot be repeated at trial. Your discussions at a settlement conference are strictly confidential, and will remain so. Unless you consent, the matters discussed at the settlement conference, and during any negotiations, shall not be disclosed to anyone. You must never mention the settlement conference during the actual trial. Note that normally there is no discovery process in Ontario Small Claims Court, but there is one exception. The judge at a settlement conference can make an order requiring you to produce documents, but this will only be for documents that you yourself would want to provide as evidence at trial and have failed to provide to the defence as required before the settlement conference. Unless you have some document listing your employment that you would need to rely on to win your case, you won't be required to provide anything to the defence that would reveal where you work.
How are such no-show-no-tell boundaries established They largely stem from the rules of evidence which are complicated, vary from state to state and knowing which is a big part of what litigation attorneys are paid for. Parties to litigation become aware of all the evidence/topics that their counterparts wish to broach in the courtroom well in advance — during discovery. They will usually disagree whether some bits and pieces can be presented to the jury. In this case the court will hold admissibility hearings — again, well in advance before the trial. Despite all the preparations, some of these disagreements arise during the trial, and then they are resolved in place by way of voiced objections. The attorneys and the judge talk about them using professional jargon of the rules of evidence — having themselves seen all the evidence in advance. does the jury get to know them No, the jury doesn't need to follow the professional talk. In fact, they should hear as little as possible of it — which is the reason why admissibility disagreements are resolved in advance as much as possible. If serious issues arise during the trial, the judge will ask the attorneys to speak to them in chambers — away from the jury. Or they will ask the jury to take a break while the professionals talk. The jury just needs to listen to the evidence that is allowed in, and disregard any evidence the judge say they have to. is this also in the public record somehow? It is in the court record. It may be accessible to the public if the court allows. If someone wishes to see the record they need to apply to the court, provide reasons and a judge will decide if anything can be released.
Is this normal? Pretty much. Witnesses lie in court all the time (in my experience, defendants, law enforcement officers and medical doctors are the most likely to lie). Dealing with a witness who lies in court under oath effectively is one of the most challenging tasks lawyers face. It is an inherently challenging hurdle to proving or defending a case. The facts as presented in court often differ in some material way from reality. It is a pretty tough thing to accurately measure, but my gut estimate would be that this happens in a least 30%-40% of cases that produce contested trials, although not infrequently, a judge or jury will not find the false testimony to be credible. On the other hand, it isn't at all uncommon (probably at least 10% of the time) for a judge or jury to believe the liars to be telling the truth, and to find the people who are telling the truth to be less credible. There is absolute immunity from civil liability for lying in court testimony, although it could, in theory, give rise to contempt of court sanctions from the judge in some circumstances, or to a prosecution for perjury. But, perjury prosecutions are, in practice, very rare, and a good share of them arise from false statements made in documents under oath, rather than from courtroom testimony. There is probably less than 1 perjury prosecution per 1000 provable lies made under oath in courtroom testimony on material issues that end up influencing the outcome in a case. I totally sympathize with how frustrating this situation is having been there in cases that I am litigating many, many times. But, in short, life isn't fair.
If no one objects to a leading question, then the judge does nothing. A judge does not generally pro-actively police the rules of evidence at trial. Also, there are circumstances when a judge has discretion to allow a leading question even when it wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to move the trial along on largely undisputed points or to allow in inarticulate witness to testify. The exception to judicial passivity in the absence of an objection at trial is "plain error" that is not "harmless error", which a judge has a duty to prevent or address even if no objection is raised by a party. But, offering a leading question when one is not allowed by the rules of evidence almost never constitutes plain error, and would almost always be considered "harmless error" even if it was objected to and the judge ruled incorrectly, unless the use of improper leading questions was pervasive and there was a contemporaneous objection by counsel. For example, allowing a prospective juror to serve as a juror, despite that juror saying in the jury selection process that he can't be impartial because the defendant committed adultery with his spouse, because neither the prosecution or the defense attorney moves to strike the juror for cause, rather than striking that juror for cause of the court's own accord, is the kind of conduct that would often be considered "plain error" that is not "harmless error."
Names clearly are personal data and so a good question to ask for GDPR compliance is: Do you need to do what you want to do in order to offer your product or service? For your scenario a common answer seems to be that websites ask for the users first and last name during account creation. The reason is that they need this information to confirm the identity of the account creator. But the public profile only displays a user name that the user can pick freely. In general there is no good reason to publically show the legal names of users so websites don't do it. So for your website ask yourself, why do you want to publically show the names of your users? If you have a good reason to do that specify it in the user terms and go ahead. If you don't have a good reason don't do it.
Your ability to assert your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is not limited to cases where you are on trial or have been accused of a crime. Your ability to assert that right is also not an absolute bar against being ordered to testify: if you are given immunity, you can be forced to testify. Alice cannot hold Bob in contempt – only the judge can. Bob can explain to the judge why a simple truthful "yes" or "no" answer is not possible, if he knows how to do that (does he understand the notion of a false presupposition, or unclarity?). He could for example assert truthfully that he does not understand the question (pointing to the distinction between "Charlie's body falling on the vase, causing it to fall and break", and "Charlie acting with apparent intent to break the vase", since it's not patently obvious that the former scenario constitutes "breaking the vase"). However (changing the scenario a bit), he has to understand that if the question is "Did Charlie shoot Delilah?" and the fact is that Ethan forced Charlie to shoot Delilah, saying "No" based on a theory of blame is not reasonably interpreted as truthful testimony. Taking the 5th, without setting forth your basis (not understanding the question) runs the risk that the prosecution will grant immunity from prosecution, and therefore you don't get to avoid answering the question. Immunity covers various things except that it does not cover prosecution for perjurious testimony. See US v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115: the Fifth Amendment does not prevent the use of respondent's immunized testimony at his trial for false swearing because, at the time he was granted immunity, the privilege would not have protected him against false testimony that he later might decide to give. Immunity is conferred under the control of some applicable statutory law, such as 18 USC 6002 which says that no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order.
In the case you link, this was given as an opening statement by the defense. Opening statements do not contain evidence. The defendant may or may not testify on their own behalf during the trial - this testimony, if given, counts as evidence, even if it is somewhat self-serving. And anything which tends to casts doubt as to the defendant's guilt is evidence that they didn't do it, even if it isn't proof. If there is reasonable doubt, then &quot;he didn't do it&quot; is not illogical. And it would seem unfair to allow the prosecution to say &quot;he did it&quot; but not allow the defense to say &quot;no he didn't&quot;.