How can one validate an assertion that &quot;X&quot; is not legal? How can one determine if an alleged legal requirements in the form of "this is not legal" or the "law requires this" is valid? Is there a quick and effective spot-check similar to Google that would enable a non-lawyer to determine 'bluffing'? Is the effective tactic to request citation from the originator? CLARIFICATION: this is question is not intended to explore a particular legal scenario. It is intended to learn / understand how to examine an alleged requirement and determine if it is indeed rooted in a state statute. The challenge is that the individual is frequent bluffs their way through discussion
Finding Certainty There is only one way for certain: Do the supposedly unlawful thing Get sued (civil) or prosecuted (criminal) Go to court - if you win it wan't illegal If you lose, appeal to the next appellate court in the chain In one of those courts refuses to hear your appeal - it was illegal Repeat as necessary until you reach the Supreme Court - if you win it wan't illegal If you lose or the Supreme Court refuses to hear your appeal - it was illegal. Of course, this whole cycle will take a few years and quite a lot of money. Not certain but persuasive Consult a lawyer: their area of expertise is knowing what the law is and how it will likely apply to your circumstances. Of course, they can be wrong about this because - see above. Why is this so hard? Common law jurisdictions, of which Florida is an example, do not have a "Code of Laws" where you can look things up and see if they are legal or illegal. The Common Law in Florida is partially enacted law (by the US, Florida, County, City and finally your housing corporation) and partially unenacted law (decisions made by courts about both the enacted and unenacted law). In fact, enacted law is usually quite ambiguous until it has a body of unenacted (or case) law that surrounds it and provides guidance on how the courts will interpret it. Part of a lawyers skill is knowing (within their area of expertise) what the relevant case and statute law is with respect to the specific facts of the case, or knowing how to research them. Publish and be damned! You can always take the Duke of Wellingtons approach. In common law jurisdictions, everything is legal unless there is a law (enacted or unenacted) that makes it otherwise. If you do not believe that the action you wish to take is illegal then advise the other party that you will give them 24 hours to come back with a court injunction to prohibit it, otherwise you will proceed. You can't call a bluff harder than this!
You would be amazed at how vanishingly few the number of cases are where a signature is disputed. Signatures are easy, quick and don't require you having inky fingers all the time. They are so useful that to throw them out to deal with infinintesimally small fractions of disputes over their veracity (bearing in mind that 99.999999999% of contracts never have a dispute that gets to a court [or at all]) is ridiculous. When it does happen, handwriting analysis is probably not going to be put into evidence anyway. Testimony like "I saw him sign it" is way more likely to be used.
I believe that you have misinterpreted the case, not least because the Hudgins v I.R.S case involves this only peripherally. The original case Diviaio v Kelly was dealing with a request for the number of photographs taken of the plaintiff and if these had been disseminated outside the CIA. This is in no way shape or form a request for records (the records were found to be legitimately exempt). I see no problem in your FOI request. In fact, I can foresee the response: These, http://www.maine.gov/legis/ros/meconlaw.htm, are the laws we use to justify these actions. In a common law jurisdiction, a person (including the government) does not have to prove they are abiding by the law. The onus is on you to prove they aren't; they do not have to help you make your case.
I haven't reviewed the filings, but I can tell you that it's perfectly routine for lawyers to describe the other side's position as &quot;plainly without merit,&quot; with no regard for the actual merits. The lawyer's job is to make his client look good, in court and in public; the existence of this question shows that he's doing a good job at least on the latter half of that equation. But in truth, it's such a generic thing to say that no lawyer who hears it will actually think it means anything. In all likelihood, the filing is like most others, in that it makes a good case on some points and a bad case on others, and the opposing lawyer's job is to argue that all of them are bad. In the rarer case that a filing is actually &quot;plainly without merit,&quot; courts can and sometimes do impose penalties under Rule 11, which allows for sanctions against parties and attorneys who make factual assertions that are not supported by reality or arguments that are not supported by the law.
It has as much legal standing as the evidence that supports it. See a lawyer to evaluate your position, obviously. But if the evidence is clear that there is no infringement, then the cease and desist letter doesn't mean much.
In such a case the person who bypasses the terms knows that use of the site is conditioned on agreement to the terms, and has taken an explicit action to continue past the terms and use the site. I suspect that if a dispute were to arise where this is relevant, it would be held that taking such action was legally equivalent to clicking "I agree". But I don't know of any court case on this point, and i can't be sure what a court would do. If having intentionally bypassed the terms, such a person tried to raise his or her lack of consent to the terms as a defense to some obligation imposed by those terms, such equitable concepts as "unclean hands" and estoppel might be raised, since such a person, in effect, leads the other party, the site owner, to believe that s/he has accepted the terms, I suspect that such a person will be treated as having accepted them. If this becomes at all common, I suppose that the designers of such sites will in future store a record of such consent being given, and not allow the user to proceed unless it has been.
Collateral estoppel is inapplicable in both scenarios. The first scenario leaves no room for issues of collateral estoppel. Whether or not charges for "no-registration" proceed would strictly depend on whether the statute sanctions an offender's mere intent not to register his or her new address. If the elements of the claim require both (1) actual change of address, and (2) intent not to register it, the fact that the woman in your hypothetical scenario did not actually move precludes any claims about her failure to register what she [unavailingly] alleged to be her "new" address. In the alternative, where mere "intent not to register" meets all the prima facie elements for the new charges, her relocation (if any) as well as the prior judgment on grounds of the Fourth Amendment are irrelevant to these new charges. In the second hypothetical scenario, collateral estoppel is precluded from the standpoint that issues are not identical and therefore do not involve double jeopardy. See Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436,, 444, 448 (1970). HHS's prior failure to produce FOIA records did not involve litigation, does not negate, and is not essential to the fact, that the physician committed fraud. VanDEVENTER v. MNB, 172 Mich.App. 456, 463 (1988) ("Collateral estoppel conclusively bars only issues "actually litigated" in the first action."). Edited to add/correct reference (see comments) Beyond these hypothetical scenarios, it should be obvious that collateral estoppel may apply to criminal cases. This is reflected, for instance, in footnote 4 of Yeager v. U.S., 129 S.Ct. 2360; 557 U.S. 110 (2009): Although the doctrine of collateral estoppel had developed in civil litigation, we had already extended it to criminal proceedings when Ashe was decided. Another treaty of interest might be Kennelly, Precluding the Accused: Offensive Collateral Estoppel in Criminal Cases (cited here).
As George White says, it's hard to prove a negative, but in this instance, there's quite a bit of evidence supporting you. First, the ABA has standards for legal commentators but they are very weak. They say pretty much what you would expect, and, they are non-binding: they explicitly say they &quot;not intended&quot; to provide grounds for &quot;professional discipline.&quot; Second, there are articles by lawyers indicating there are no state bar standards. Taken together, the weak ABA standards and the articles should give you enough evidence to prove your case in the &quot;court of buddy opinion.&quot; The ABA rules on legal commentators were issued in 2013 as part of a Fair Trial and Public Discourse Black Letter. The letter covered public comments on cases by lawyers involved in the case, lawyers not involved (ie, commentators) and judicial and judicial employees. According to the ABA, the standards are: intended to provide a guide to best practices for lawyers who provide public commentary or consult on criminal cases in which they are not personally involved; (Standard 8-1.1(a)(ii)) To explain what it meant by a &quot;guide to best practices,&quot; the ABA included the following caveat about the applicability of the standards: While these Standards are intended to provide a basis for the formulation of internal guidelines within lawyers’ offices...they are not intended to serve as the basis in and of themselves for the imposition of professional discipline...(Standard 8-1.1(c)) In other words, the ABA's rules truly are just a guide to best practices. As for the guidance itself, it does not come close to requiring &quot;due-diligence.&quot; A lawyer who is serving as a legal commentator should strive to ensure that the lawyer’s commentary enhances the public’s understanding of the criminal matter and of the criminal justice system generally, promotes respect for the judicial system, and does not materially prejudice the fair administration of justice, in the particular case or in general. To that end, a legal commentator should: (i) Have an understanding of the law and facts of the matter so as to be competent to serve as a commentator; (ii) Refrain from providing commentary designed to sensationalize a criminal matter; and... It may be that some states provide more stringent restrictions, but a quick search suggests they don't. Otherwise, there would not be a law review article arguing &quot;The Legal Profession Must Broaden Ethical Standards for Legal Commentators,&quot; or an ABA Journal article (from this June) giving advice on becoming a legal commentator without mentioning state bar restrictions. I'm sure if you look, you can find more evidence.