Can I successfully sue a municipal consultant who prejudices a town official against me using false or incompetent advice? Can I successfully sue a municipal consultant who prejudices a town official against me using false or incompetent advice? For example, let's suppose I am a developer and I want planning board approval to develop a parcel. The planning board then hires an engineer to advise concerning my development. Now suppose the engineer then makes recommendations against my development and the planning board then rejects my proposal based on the engineer's recommendations. Now, suppose that the engineer's recommendations are provably incompetent, can I then sue the consultant for harms to my project? By &quot;provably incompetent&quot; I mean that the engineer not only makes false conclusions in his report, but draws conclusions that are outside of his area of competency. For example, suppose in his report the engineer (who is a civil engineer) says things like &quot;the project would cause environmental harms&quot; even though as a civil engineer he is completely unqualified to be making remarks about the environment. Assume for the purpose of the question I can put an expert biologist on the stand that will contradict the engineer and characterize his report as incompetent in regards to its conclusions concerning the biological environment.
No Since you have no contract with the engineer, your only recourse is to sue in the tort of negligence. However, such a suit will fail. The engineer does not owe you a duty of care given their overriding duty to their principal. That is, their duty to their client overrides any theoretical duty they owe to you. The issue might be different if you can prove the engineer acted with malice towards you. Of course, if you can prove that the advice the body relied upon to make their decision was flawed, you might succeed in an appeal against that decision. However, that depends on the scope of the appeal. In common law jurisdictions, appeals are not usually heard de novo; that is, the appellate body does not consider the case from the beginning, they only decide whether the approval body followed the rules in making their decision; not whether that decision was right or wrong. To illustrate: if the law requires that the approval body must consider an engineer's advice it would appear that they have done so and their decision will stand even if the advice was incorrect. Similarly, if the law allows you to make submissions on the advice and you did so, pointing out that the engineer had ballsed up the advice, then, providing the body considered your submission, they are free to decide that they prefer the engineer's advice notwithstanding. Only if they did something they shouldn't have done or didn't do something they should have (based on the record) will they be found to have breached the law. Of course, specific laws can have different requirements in appeals from the common law standard and may allow the review to reconsider various facts but this would need to be spelled out in the statute. The legal rationale for this limitation is that the legislature has decided that the approval body is the administrative decision-maker and it is not for the court to substitute their own decision instead. If the decision-maker decided the matter in accordance with the law, they are entitled to have made the &quot;wrong&quot; decision. The recent Novak Djokovic cases in Australia illustrate this: the courts inquiry was limited to if the administration had followed the law, not on if the decisions were correct.
Is it acceptable for person A (representing themselves) to refer to person B as &quot;their neighbor&quot; instead of by their name, or would that cause the suit to be dismissed? Omitting the neighbor's name in the pleadings &amp; proceedings cannot singlehandedly cause the dismissal of a defamation suit. The matter would result in dismissal only if the plaintiff repeatedly disobeys court order(s) (if any) to disclose that information. Before the proceedings get to that point, the plaintiff will have had one or more hearings to dispute the defendant's alleged need for identifying a non-party by name. When opposing to that disclosure, the plaintiff's goal is to establish that the false narrative about robbing a neighbor at gunpoint is defamatory regardless of neighbor's name. Keep in mind that the focus in a claim of defamation is the defamed person, whereas the relevance of details such as who the non-parties are pertains to context and evidence. Lastly, the fact that a party to the suit is a pro se litigant is irrelevant from both substantial and procedural standpoints.
There are two cases to consider. If there is some evidence that the city intends to enforce the ordinance, then the business can go to court for an injunction preventing the city from doing so, if they can show that such enforcement would harm them (e.g. by making them impose a records policy they don't want). They don't have to risk arrest by actually violating the ordinance first. In granting the injunction, the court would likely rule that this particular ordinance is unconstitutional, which seems to be the &quot;voiding&quot; that you're looking for. If the city shows no signs of wanting to enforce the ordinance (e.g. they are well aware that it is unconstitutional and not legally enforceable), then a request for an injunction would likely be dismissed as not ripe. Courts do not want to waste their time on cases where there is no real dispute between the parties, or on issuing orders for an entity not to do something that they weren't going to do anyway. It's understandable that the business might wish for an explicit ruling anwyay, in case they fear that the city will change its mind tomorrow and start cracking down, but unfortunately for them, courts do not agree that this is worth doing. Note in either case the ordinance will remain on the books until such time as the town council (or other relevant legislative body) should vote to repeal it. Courts have no power to make that happen, no matter how unconstitutional the ordinance might be. So the business might find it more effective to petition the council for a repeal.
Repeating a defamatory statement is itself defamatory This is known as the repetition rule and is illustrated in Brown v Bower &amp; Another [2017] EWHC 2637 (QB). In essence, the &quot;local news site&quot; is responsible for the reputational damage suffered by their publication and you are responsible for the damage caused by your amplification of that publication. So if the local news article was seen by a few dozen people locally, the damages might be relatively modest. If your publication caused it to be seen by millions of people and caused nationwide or worldwide damage to the person's reputation so that they are at risk of losing income or opportunities in the future, the damages can be vast. How you shared it is important. If you endorsed it, which includes forwarding it without commentary, then it is likely defamatory. If you were more circumspect and said something that shows an open mind to the allegations like &quot;This is an interesting story, I can't wait to see how it plays out&quot;, then it's likely not defamatory. Of course, if the allegations are true then you have nothing to worry about; truth is a complete defence to defamation. You can prove that they are true, right? I mean with real evidence like a conviction for fraud. Or, at the very least, pending or actual charges from the police. Or, failing that you have good evidence that you yourself have been scammed specifically by this person. Or that you have had people who have been scammed tell you personally exactly how it happened? No? Well, I wouldn't count on a truth defence if I were you.
Bob has to sue in a court of competent jurisdiction To enliven jurisdiction, there has to be some connection between the parties or the event and the jurisdiction. Since Bob, the manufacturer and (presumably) the harmful incident all took place in County X, of State Y or Country A then they are the only jurisdictions that might be competent. The courts of County Z, State M or Country B are all going to say &quot;not my problem&quot;. For the USA, there are only State courts and Federal courts. States may have courts that are called county courts but they are enlivened by the state sovereign - counties and cites are self-governing administrative districts, not sovereign states. Federal courts have jurisdiction where the subject matter is about a Federal Statute, the Constitution or a treaty. This dispute would appear to be based on tort or contract law which is a state matter. Federal courts can have jurisdiction if the parties are in different states and the amount in dispute is more than $75,000. This would not appear to be the case. So, as a state matter, the plaintiff can bring the case to any competent court. The defendant can apply to have it moved to a more convenient court. Arguments will be heard and, at some cost, you'll probably end up where you should have started.
I'm not familiar with the lawsuit, but generally speaking, a court's finding that a lawyer falsified evidence would not directly result in the lawyer being disbarred, as the trial court does not have authority to regulate the practice of law. Instead, a court that reached that conclusion -- either by a verdict, or because a judge was persuaded by the evidence without reaching a verdict -- would likely report that outcome to whatever organization is responsible for licensing attorneys in that jurisdiction.
Short Answers Does the Coroner have the final say on cause of death? No. The trial judge (or jury) has the final say. Can police pursue an investigation independent and contrary to that of the Coroner? Theoretically, yes. But I would expect that would happen only in unusual circumstances. Like, maybe an internal investigation. Standard procedure is for the prosecutor, police and medical examiner to work together to investigate crimes and prosecute criminals. Does a District Attorney (when not the Coroner) have the means and/or authority to conduct an independent and contrary investigation? Yes. But it's unusual. See answer to number 2. Or do any other offices have the right to investigate a death to look for evidence of homicide in opposition to a verdict of the Coroner? Same answer as #2 and #3. Explanation They work together on the same team The medical examiner is a state employee and usually works on the side of law enforcement. If a medical examiner were to report a cause of death that did not support evidence of a crime, that information would have to be made available to any potential defendant. In the hands of any competent attorney that should be sufficient basis to create reasonable doubt and achieve an acquittal. I doubt many prosecutors would ever consider hiring an outside examiner in this case except under highly unusual circumstances like an internal investigation as mentioned above. The defendant must create reasonable doubt In the alternative scenario, when evidence of a crime is supported by the M.E. report, it would be up to the defendant to produce reasonable doubt by cross-examination or producing expert testimony that contradicts the M.E.'s conclusion. This might or might not include hiring an independent third party forensic pathologist as an expert witness. Dr. Cyril Wecht is a famous one. All opinions are subject to error, disagreement and cross-examination All that said, the "cause of death" reported by the Coroner is just a medical opinion and is subject to error and disagreement like any other opinion. It's just that it's unlikely that disagreement would come from the side of law enforcement in most cases. For further reading, here is a link to the Coroner's Handbook. At the bottom of page 11, it acknowledges: Causes of death on the death certificate represent a medical opinion that might vary among individual medical-legal officers.
Now the party in question is threatening to sue (but of course refuses to point to which sections he believes are libelous) ... do we have to pay the $$ to &quot;lawyer up&quot; if we want to be safe? If you get sued, you will definitely want a lawyer. If you don't get sued, well, in that case you're safe. So your first question is whether the supposedly aggrieved party will actually sue. Your second question is, if they sue, do they have a good case? That question will be useful in deciding whether to settle. If the threats are empty then you might want to hire a lawyer to call their bluff. Otherwise you may have to endure the continual empty threats. This is especially true if the libel case is weak. Your lawyer can write a letter that explains why there is no case. If they do sue, they will have to identify the specific libelous statements, so you will at that point be able to refute the claims. But you'll also want a lawyer at that point, so you won't have to be directly concerned with the details; your lawyer will take care of them. As suggested in a comment, do keep in mind that a true statement cannot be libelous, by definition. To the extent that you can prove that every statement in the piece is true then you don't have much to worry about. But even then you'll want a lawyer's advice, because even if you know yourself that everything is true, you don't know what it will take to prove that in court. (Another aspect of the element of falsity is that statements of opinion are generally not defamatory.) To learn for yourself about the elements of libel you can start with Wikipedia or a bit of internet searching. To get a thorough analysis of the facts of your case in light of the laws of the relevant jurisdictions, you will need to engage a lawyer. It might not cost as much as you fear.