Can someone&#39;s legal name be all lowercase? Can a person's legal name be all lowercase or all capital letters or some strange mix, or are there restrictions about it? Or maybe capitalization is not even part of the name, it is just a part of grammar for proper nouns, with traditional/linguistic exceptions for names like &quot;McDonald&quot; or &quot;von Neumann&quot;? (This is just a curiosity question so it doesn't matter to me which countries/states the answers are based on.)
Or maybe capitalization is not even part of the name That's pretty much it. No court would fail to recognize the name &quot;John Doe&quot; in the string &quot;JOHN DOE&quot;; similarly, if someone established or claimed to establish their legal name as &quot;john doe&quot; then the only violations committed by someone writing it as &quot;John Doe&quot; or &quot;JOHN DOE&quot; would be violations of style, perhaps, or of etiquette. Now, just in case this is related to the crackpot conspiracy theorists from the &quot;sovereign citizen&quot; or &quot;freeman on the land&quot; movements, a few words are in order. If you don't already know about this, you might find it interesting. In general, this is a school of thought that attempts to establish the illegitimacy of government authority by employing a number of illogical and willful misinterpretations of (often obsolete, foreign, or otherwise irrelevant) legal texts. Among these is the idea that the capitalization of a name is significant. From Wikipedia's article on the sovereign citizen movement: In a criminal case in 2013, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington noted: Defendant [Kenneth Wayne Leaming] is apparently a member of a group loosely styled &quot;sovereign citizens&quot;. The Court has deduced this from a number of Defendant's peculiar habits. First, like Mr. Leaming, sovereign citizens are fascinated by capitalization. They appear to believe that capitalizing names have some sort of legal effect. For example, Defendant writes that &quot;the REGISTERED FACTS appearing in the above Paragraph evidence the uncontroverted and uncontrovertible FACTS that the SLAVERY SYSTEMS operated in the names UNITED STATES, United States, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and United States of America ... are terminated nunc pro tunc by public policy, U.C.C. 1-103 ...&quot; (Def.'s Mandatory Jud. Not. at 2.) He appears to believe that by capitalizing &quot;United States&quot;, he is referring to a different entity than the federal government. For better or for worse, it's the same country. From its article on strawman theory: One argument used by proponents of the strawman theory is based on a misinterpretation of the term capitis deminutio, used in ancient Roman law for the extinguishment of a person's former legal capacity. Adherents to the theory spell the term &quot;Capitis Diminutio&quot;, and claim that capitis diminutio maxima (meaning, in Roman law, the loss of liberty, citizenship, and family) was represented by an individual's name being written in capital letters, hence the idea of individuals having a separate legal personality. Proponents of the theory believe the evidence is found on the birth certificate itself. Because many certificates show all capitals to spell out a baby's name, JOHN DOE (under the Strawman theory) is the name of the &quot;straw man&quot;, and John Doe is the baby's &quot;real&quot; name. As the child grows, most legal documents will contain capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver's license, his marriage license, his car registration, his criminal court records, his cable TV bill, correspondence from the IRS, etc., pertain to his strawman and not his sovereign identity. (Note that there was no distinction between majuscule and minuscule letters in the Latin alphabet in ancient Roman times; this distinction arose in the 8th century, a few hundred years after the fall of the western empire.) And finally, from Meads v. Meads, 2012 ABQB 571 (CanLII): [323] Given the obsessive focus of the OPCA movement for documentary and procedural formalities (real or imagined), it is unsurprising that they have developed a wealth of arbitrary name-related rules. For example, Canadian courts have evaluated and rejected the following nomenclature-related schemes: a person is not immune from court action if that person identifies himself by an entirely different name, for example, “Mythlim‑Axkw” instead of “Kazimierz Chester Crischuk”: R. v. Crischuk, 2010 BCSC 716 at paras. 31-32, affirmed 2010 BCCA 391, 2010 D.T.C. 5141; Shakes v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2011 CanLII 60494 at para. 11 (I.R.B.); Services de financement TD inc. c. Michaud, 2011 QCCQ 14868 at para. 6; structuring a name in the format of [Firstname]-[Middlename]: [Lastname], i.e. “David-Kevin: Lindsay”, does not mean one is a separate person from “David Kevin Lindsay”: R. v. Lindsay, 2006 BCCA 150 at para. 3, 265 D.L.R. (4th) 193; R. v. Lindsay, 2008 BCPC 203 at para. 7, [2009] 1 C.T.C 86, affirmed 2010 BCSC 831, [2010] 5 C.T.C. 174, affirmed 2011 BCCA 99, 302 B.C.A.C. 76, leave refused [2011] S.C.C.A. No. 265; structuring a name in the format [Firstname] of the [family] of [Lastname], i.e. “John Donald of the family Sargent”, does not mean one is a separate person from “John Donald Sargent”: R. v. Sargent, 2004 ONCJ 356 at para. 29, [2005] 1 C.T.C. 448; there is no legal distinction between a name in upper case and lower case letters, and a name all in capital letters: R. v. Linehan, 2000 ABQB 815 at para. 13, 276 A.R. 383; R. v. Loosdrecht, 2008 BCPC 400 at para. 36, [2009] 4 C.T.C. 49; R. v. Lemieux, 2007 SKPC 135 at paras. 45-46, [2008] 2 C.T.C. 291; a claim that the person named in litigation is incorrectly identified by a “war name” or “nom de guerre” is irrelevant: Canada v. Galbraith, 2001 BCSC 675 at paras. 25-29, 54 W.C.B. (2d) 504; and a name all in capitals is not a “legal fiction” and not different from “a flesh, blood and bone man”: Ontario (Director, Family Responsibility Office) v. Boyle, [2006] O.J. No. 2181 (QL) at paras. 3-5, 149 A.C.W.S. (3d) 127 (Ont. Sup. Ct. J.).
I know of no legal restrictions on using the title of Doctor in the United states. I know next to nothing about Canadian law and can't speak on that. Falsely claiming to have a license to practice medicine is probably illegal, depending on circumstances, and practicing medicine without a license is most certainly illegal, and there a numerous federal and state laws that would apply. But simply styling one's self as Dr. is unlikely to be held by a court as a claim to hold a medical license, or a particular degree. It's, of course, misleading and generally frowned to use the Dr. prefix unless one has earned an MD or PhD. Some holders of honorary doctorates use it as well, though some debate whether that's acceptable or not.
They can still be sued - they just can’t be found liable For example, as an adjudicator, I have immunity for acts and omissions done in good faith as an adjudicator. A suit could be brought alleging lack of good faith and/or acting as other than an adjudicator. If these were proved (and barring corruption it’s a very high bar) the adjudicator would be liable. However, adjudicators are often joined with the claimant (usually the Respondent is the plaintiff) and the ANA (Authorised Nominating Authority - the organisation that appointed the adjudicator, who also have immunity) not so they can be held liable but so that they can be subpoenaed and forced to give evidence - if they aren’t parties to the suit they can refuse to do this. My standard response when this happens is to write to the court saying “I submit to the decision of the court save as to costs” meaning I am not going to contest anything unless you try to make me pay costs - which I don’t have immunity from.
There's really no difference. Quoting from here, What if I change the person's name? To state a defamation claim, the person claiming defamation need not be mentioned by name—the plaintiff only needs to be reasonably identifiable. So if you defame the &quot;government executive who makes his home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,&quot; it is still reasonably identifiable as the president. What does the whole thing depend on? It depends on how easy it is to identify the pseudonym-using plaintiff. They don't have more recourse, per se - nor do they have more protection under the law - but it may be harder for them to win the case. On the upside, the statement might not cause them as much harm when compared to a person using their actual name.
No law in the US requires that parent and child have the same last name. It is usual that a child's name match that of at least one parent, but not required. A parent can change his or her name, without changing the names of any existing children. Also, when a child is adopted, the child's name need not be changed to match the name of the parents, or either of them. I have read of cases where a widow remarries, and takes the name of her new husband, but an adolescent child retains his or her birth surname. I suppose this would also be possible legally if it is the husband who changes name on remarriage, but i have not read of such a case. I think, but I am not sure, that a child's name could be changed to a different name than the name of either parent. It may be that this would only be done if the child is old enough to understand and agree to the change.
There is no US law licensing journalists or people who report the news, or requiring such people to identify themselves by legal name. Nor can there be under the US First Amendment. There is also no law requiring a person to identify himself or herself by legal name online. Some sites, including Wikipedia, have policies against having multiple undisclosed user IDs for the same person, but that is a matter of the site's own rules, not a matter of law. Any US law mandating this would again run afoul of the First Amendment to the US Federal Constitution. This article on Anonymous Speech reviews and cites a number of US Supreme court cases on the subject of anonymity, mostly in political contexts. This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) discusses the same general subject. Both articles mention that The Federalist (analyzing and advocating for the then-unratified US Constitution) was originally published under the pseudonym "Publis". The EFF Article "Court Recognizes First Amendment Right to Anonymity Even After Speakers Lose Lawsuits" discusses the 6th Circuit case of Signature Management Team, LLC v. John Doe in which it was held that an anonymous blogger who lost a copyright infringement suit could nonetheless remain anonymous. This page apparently from a Harvard course, lists and briefly describes several cases on the same subject. In Doe v. Cahill, 884 A.2d 451 (Del. 2005) an elected official sued an online poster for defamation, and sought to force the ISP involved to disclose the poster's identity. The Delaware Supreme Court ruled against this, setting a standard offering greater protection for such anonymous online speech than previous cases had. This answer is very US-centric. Laws in other countries are different. The OP has not specified a country or jurisdiction.
Is it true that there has never been a single case It is tough to prove a negative. I am not going to completely parse the quote but please notice that the quote states "we couldn't find" and concludes that "it doesn't happen." Given these two pieces of information I do not conclude that there has never been a single case. Rather I conclude that the speaker in your quote could not find a case therefore he concluded that there has never been a single case. It's largely impossible to determine that there has never been a single such case. We can search published opinions but that barely scratches the surface of lawsuits that are filed. It is entirely possible that someone filed a suit which was quickly dismissed. The Act provides a defense, it does not bar lawsuits. Someone might get sick from food and not know where the food came from so they sue the provider. If this happens the provider may raise the Emerson Act as a defense and escape liability to the extent applicable. But again, we will never know because it's impossible to examine every lawsuit filed in this country.
Legally, nothing Grammatically they mean what parenthesis always mean, that the parenthesised words are less important i.e. parenthetical. Organisationally they serve to group legislation together. This is particularly common in regulations and other subordinate legislation where the tradition is that the regulation takes the name of the Act it is created under. Where there is more than one, the specific function of the regulation is put in parentheses. For heavily legislated areas, like Housing, some parliaments do the same thing for Acts.