Possibility of obtaining copies of court documents I recently read about the court case Reed v. Cognitive Media Networks Inc., et al., Case No. 3:15-cv-05217, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. This case is referred to as Vizio Smart TV Tracking Software Class Action Lawsuit on this site. In this lawsuit, plaintiff Palma Reed of California accuses Vizio and their partner Cognitive Media Networks Inc. of hiding tracking software inside Vizio TVs. This was done with the intent to monitor in real time what programs consumers are watching and then reporting this information to a server operated by Cognitive Media Networks Inc. I would be interested of obtaining copies of the court records but I am not in any way related to this case. Additionally this case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but I live in Florida. So if there is a way to obtain the documents, it would have to be done either online or by postal mail. Is it possible to obtain copies of these court documents, and if so, how can I do it?
TLDR: Install RECAP, use PACER. Beware of costs, which run up quickly. FULL ANSWER PACER is the place to get these documents, but PACER is not free, and the sign up is pretty horrible. If you do sign up, the costs work roughly like this: Some things are free, some are not. Sometimes you'll be presented with the price before purchasing something, sometimes you'll simply be charged with no recourse. Things like PDFs cost 10¢ per page, capped at $3 per document. Search results cost 10¢ per &quot;page&quot; retrieved. Some searches have a $3 cap, others have no cap, meaning that a query with many results can cost literally hundreds of dollars. (Be VERY careful what you search for). Dockets (long tables listing the documents in cases) cost 10¢ per &quot;page&quot; with the now-familiar $3 cap. There's $30 free per user per calendar quarter (January-March, April-June, etc). Exceed that amount you get charged the full price; stay under that amount and it's free for that quarter. Search results and dockets are priced by the &quot;page&quot;, but if you dig deeply, few people within even PACER itself know what a &quot;page&quot; of a docket or search results is, because those are just web pages (how many pages is this webpage??). If you dig deeply enough, you'll eventually learn that web pages are priced by the amount of data retrieved from their back end database, at a cost of 10 cents per 4,320 bytes of data (it took me two weeks to get that answer). The Judicial Branch makes about $140M/year this way. All is not lost however! I run a 501(c)(3) non-profit called Free Law Project that makes a free browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox called RECAP. If you install this before you log into PACER, you will send us copies of anything you buy and we will give you a free copy of anything somebody else has ever bought. Finally, you need to know that PACER isn't a single system, but rather is about 200 separate installations of the same system, one per courthouse, each with its own website. The one you want is the Northern District of California.
It is not "perfectly legal" to transcribe music for personal use. It is pretty likely that you can get away with it. The first thing to understand is that the act of transcribing is the creation of a derivative work (see the definitions part of Title 17). The core protection is section 106, which states that the owner of copyright has the exclusive right to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work. So it is not permitted to prepare derivative works, e.g. transcriptions, without permission from the copyright owner. There is a big however: section 107 provides a possible loophole, "fair use". If you were to be sued for violation of copyright in making an unauthorized derivative work, your attorney might well advise you to set forth a fair use defense. This question and answer summarizes the basics of the fair use defense. Probably the most important factor would be the 4th factor, the effect on market -- in the circumstance that you describe, the effect is likely to be low. If you do this as a paid service for others and not just for personal amusement, then a fair use defense becomes a stretch.
Maybe I'm reading Walsh wrong, but it seems to me to be saying that Stout might apply in some cases, but it doesn't in that specific case. I think you are indeed reading it wrong. In the Walsh case, the court says: We have not had occasion to decide the question up to this time, but now that it is presented, we not only reiterate the doubt which we expressed in the McAlpin case (supra), but we think that the question of the defendant's negligence was erroneously submitted to the jury in the Stout case, and that we ought not to follow it as a precedent. It's clearly repudiating Stout here, and not just as it applies to that case. It literally says they think it should not be followed as precedent.
Boggs v. Merideth was a pretty big case involving private drones and the privacy of neighbors. Happened in Kentucky, though. I would suggest taking a look at that.
How does John protect himself from false claims (e.g. if the woman decides to roll down the stairs and blame him)? It would be very helpful if John has evidence of Oxana making false statements about him or others, and/or of Oxana threatening to make them. False accusations are common --and hardly ever prosecuted-- in a context of divorce. Examples of that are police reports (here and here) and excerpts of court proceedings that ensued during my father's (desisted) proceedings to divorce his 2nd wife (for additional excerpts, see also at 22:49-24:29). According to one of those police reports, my father's 2nd wife allegedly extorted him with "You'll have to pay me even until my ring!" (see page 15 of the pdf file) at the time they were going through the divorce proceedings he filed. Based on your description, it is not far-fetched that John could end up experiencing a similar mess as reflected in these police reports. Note: I don't know whether the poorly written quote from page 15 of the pdf was my father's translation of their interactions or whether he merely transcribed them to the police. Is there any downside to basically putting a camera in every room of the house except hers? John is strongly suggested to check Ohio law to avoid criminal charges. For instance, Michigan statute MCL 750.539d(1)(a) prohibits to "Install, place, or use in any private place, without the consent of the person or persons entitled to privacy in that place, any device for observing, recording, transmitting, photographing, or eavesdropping upon the sounds or events in that place.". As a wife, Oxana would be reasonably entitled to that privacy in rooms other than --and including-- her room. Moreover, placing cameras in every room will not preempt false accusations. For instance, Oxana could still calumniate John by falsely alleging that he and the daughter went to a hotel to have intercourse. How do you find a good divorce lawyer? Before you even decide to retain a lawyer, see this report about New Jersey Family Court, where judges and attorneys allegedly are in the habit of dragging divorce cases for as long as it is profitable to the lawyers (obviously, at the expense of the parties pursuing the divorce). I don't really follow --and have never litigated-- divorce matters, but the multi-year divorce &amp; custody case of Tsimhoni --formerly presided by Michigan infamous judge Lisa Gorcyca-- illustrates that NJ is not the only state where parties fall prey of legal malpractice. John should search for Ohio court opinions related to divorce matters and get acquainted with the applicable concepts, laws, and doctrines. For that purpose, one free, very useful resource is http://www.leagle.com/leaglesearch . Court opinions usually cite relevant statutes, whence John can get an idea of what laws are decisive on divorce matters. Is it reasonable to ask for some sort of record of past outcomes (are there standards to provide full and complete records like for financial companies)? It is reasonable, but no, there are no such standards at all. An attorney will most likely allege grounds of attorney-client privilege, the extensive time that would be needed to redact court documents, and possibly other excuses to deny John's request. Instead, John should go to the court in his county and study as many files of divorce cases as he can. A number of courts display some information of cases in their website. For example, some Michigan trial courts have deployed Odyssey (see here and here), whence a party could search from home whether an attorney has litigated cases in that court and how long they've taken. To see the contents of complaints/motions/etc., John can read them only in the courthouse, unless the county court has configured Odyssey (or its equivalent) to allow the public to read the contents from elsewhere. I don't know what progress Ohio courts have made on this. Regardless of the attorney's transparency to share with John any redacted records about his performance, another important variable is the judge. In this regard, see the next item. Is it reasonable to ask to pay way less if the lawyer fails to get certain terms? Unfortunately, that is neither reaonsable nor realistic. Just from meeting with John, it is impossible for the attorney to know aspects such as: whether John is truthful and the meritorious party; how much trouble Oxana will cause during the divorce proceedings (see the aforementioned police reports); how vexatious the opposing counsel will be; whether John will weaken or sabotage his case during an unforeseen situation or lose control as a result of exasperation; whether the case will be presided by a judge who follows the law (instead of incurring personal bias or influence trafficking); if the judge engages in influence trafficking instead of following the law, whether the attorney is in cozy terms with that judge; whether the opposing counsel is in even cozier terms with that judge; in the event that the matter is appealed, any of the three previous items may apply; whether the parties settle (or John desists for whatever reason). Given the multitude of unknown/uncertain variables and possible outcomes, no person (attorney or otherwise) could establish beforehand the semi-contingent pricing that you have in mind. Do the lawyers even do anything other than fill out paperwork? Yes, they do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what their work is any effective. Even if the lawyer is diligent, the court might negligently fail to enforce its own orders.
Laws are different around the world and you didn't bother to state your location, but typically no- this is not how the system works. What would be the point? There's no defendant. You, the plaintiff would argue against thin air and then what? The court rules in your favour, declares this illegal, and nothing happens because there's no defendant. Is it so you can use this ruling if you find out later? Pretty sneaky. Let's look into how this would actually work. You bring up a case- Jackson vs a mannequin or something. You make your arguments. The defense makes literally no defense. The judge rules in your favour, with a result of nothing as there is no defendent. Next, you find the culprit and bring a case against them. You point out that this is illegal because we came to that decision last week. What's that defendant? An argument against it being illegal? Too bad, the decision has been made. When I posted this answer, it was before the &quot;Nyah, I was ranting about government spying but was deliberately vague- aren't I clever?&quot; comment and I assumed it was against, say, a neighbour but it doesn't really matter. You cannot have a system that makes a judgement without a defendant so it can be applied later.
Expunction may be possible for instance if you are acquitted, later proven innocent, pardoned, and various other things that fall short of being convicted and doing the time. The entire law is here (Texas code of criminal procedure 55.01). There is also the option of an order of non-disclosure, overviewed here. A requirement for such an order is that you were placed on and completed deferred adjudication community supervision, which from what I can tell is not what happened. "Background check removal" may range between simply taking your money and doing nothing, to doing what you could do yourself to get free of traces via radaris, intelius, spokeo, and so on to "request removal" from that web site. This will not make your record unavailable, because these websites don't have any special powers to reach into and manipulate state records.
Likely an extremely hard or impossible question to answer, and may very well be one that may, barely anyone would go to appeals for a sub-1 day sentence, and it searching superior court decisions is far from well-digitized, and there are over 3,000 counties in the U.S.. Since they generally have no binding effect on future cases there is no incentive in digitizing older cases at all. I would not be surprised if during the history of the U.S., certain courts would have lost their past records for example in fires, earthquakes or other acts of God, including of such cases that no one remembered at the time, and no other record existed of any more. If you're lucky, some historian may have somehow answered this question, and is somewhere as a trivia. Also, I have never heard a sentence to be expressed in hours, minutes or seconds, so likely the answer will be a single day which plausibly could have happened where other remedies were not appropriate (defendant not having money and incapacitated from being able to do community service or engage in labor or service in servitude per a sentencing). UPDATED — There is record, in fact, of a 1906 case where a judge sentenced a man for 1 minute in jail for &quot;being drunk and disorderly&quot; &quot;what was probably the lightest sentence ever given a prisoner, that of one minute in the county jail[;]&quot; (The One Minute Jail Sentence) but of course, even less than a 150 years in the existence of the Union, they could not assert that with certainty.