What does &quot;credible&quot; mean? Looking at the recently delivered findings and conclusions in Brandt et al. v. Rutledge et al., full text here. On pp. 56-57 of the PDF, one of the expert witnesses is discussed (emphasis added): Dr. Levine was the State’s only expert witness who has experience treating patients with gender dysphoria. In his practice, he has enabled minor patients with gender dysphoria to access hormone therapy on a case-by-case basis. (Tr. 785:3-6, ECF No. 246 (Levine)). Dr. Levine does not support banning gender-affirming medical care for adolescents with gender dysphoria. He has concerns about Act 626’s impact on youth who are currently receiving gender-affirming hormones. Dr. Levine testified that doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care to adolescents with gender dysphoria encourage patients to identify as transgender and provide hormones immediately without assessing patients and addressing other mental health conditions or informing patients and their parents of the risks and the limitations of the evidence regarding treatments. Id. at 809:18- 810:4; 811:21-812:10; 824:5-14 (Levine). He offered no evidence that treatment was being provided this way in Arkansas or anywhere in the United States. Dr. Levine conceded he has no knowledge of how most gender clinics provide care and, thus, does not know how common it is for care to be provided in the way he described. Id. at 887:19-888:25 (Levine). He further does not know how care is provided by doctors in Arkansas. Id. at 888:24-891:16 (Levine). The Court found Dr. Levine a very credible witness who struggles with the conflict between his scientific understanding for the need for transgender care and his faith. From p. 60: The legislative findings in Act 626 assert that there is insufficient evidence of the efficacy of gender-affirming medical care for minors. Some of the state’s expert witnesses—Dr. Levine and Dr. Hruz—offered opinions to that effect. (Tr. 833:12-16, ECF No. 246 (Levine); Tr. 1274:15-25, ECF No. 249 (Hruz)). The Court does not credit these opinions because it finds that the evidence showed that decades of clinical experience in addition to a body of scientific research demonstrate the effectiveness of these treatments. p. 71: The State argues that minors with gender dysphoria will desist with age. They contend that there is a significant risk of harm to a minor who elects to undergo gender hormone therapy or surgery because they will eventually identify with their sex assigned at birth and regret the treatment they sought as a minor. The State offered the testimony of Dr. Levine to support this argument. The Court found Dr. Levine’s testimony to be inconsistent and unreliable in this area. To the contrary, the evidence proved that there is broad consensus in the field that once adolescents reach the early stages of puberty and experience gender dysphoria, it is very unlikely they will subsequently identify as cisgender or desist. (Tr. 310:13-25, ECF No. 220 (Turban)). In this context, what does it mean to describe a witness as &quot;very credible&quot;, and yet not to credit their evidence? The court clearly had significant doubts about the accuracy of his testimony, the findings note his lack of knowledge on key points, and that his testimony was in some areas &quot;inconsistent and unreliable&quot;. How do those reconcile? Does &quot;credible&quot; here mean &quot;comes with good credentials&quot; (e.g. his experience treating trans children) rather than &quot;gave evidence that should be credited&quot;? Or is there some other nuance here? (I'm not looking for discussion on the merits of the case, only on how this description of a witness reconciles with the assessment of his evidence.)
Credible means &quot;not lying&quot;. But someone who is telling the truth to the best of their ability may still lack the knowledge to be a strong witness on the matters that the court has to make a decision upon. For example, if a witness testifies that there was a fight involving a large man and a woman, but is legally blind and didn't get a good view of the people involved, the witness's testimony can be credible, while still not proving the case that a particular person was the large man in question. &quot;Credited&quot; means that the evidence provided by someone provided an important factual basis upon which to resolve a disputed issue of fact.
There is no specific statute in Missouri that prohibits a teacher from saying &quot;ADHD&quot;. There is a specific federal statute that obligates the school district to make accommodations if a student is diagnosed with ADHD (also a state law). A teacher is not technically qualified to diagnose ADHD. Finally, the teacher is an employee of the school district and is required to follow the policies of the district. Those are the 4 legal cornerstones on which the teachers response must rest. The unquestionably weakest cornerstone is understanding the realities of district policy. There may be district-policy type reasons that motivate reticence to recommend testing, but such &quot;abundance of caution&quot; is not motivated by a legal mandate imposed on the teacher, it is more likely to be the result of a fear of reprisals (for triggering extra expenditures by the district). Such a fear is not legally warranted, except insofar as if you don't know what the law says (many people don't), fear is a kind of reasonable response. But ignorance of the law is no excuse. It might be useful to know that it is not required to get a doctors diagnosis of ADHD, so the teacher's evaluation might carry more weight that you would expect, were that a requirement.
It is not legal for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sex anywhere in the US (see http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm). Exemptions exist where the discrimination is for bona fide occupational qualifications and, irrelevantly, religious reasons. It is completely legal for a consumer to discriminate on the basis of anything they want to. It is also legal for a business to assist the consumer in that discrimination. Bona fide occupational qualifications generally only apply to instances in which the BFOQ is considered reasonably necessary to the normal operation of a particular business. Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ defence, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc. and Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co.. Therefore, customer preference for females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight attendant. However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a BFOQ—for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies. Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,' that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service provided." None of the occupations you mention would, on the face of it, meet the requirements to be BFOQ. Allowing their customers to express a preference for a specific gender may impact on the capacity for the business to deliver on that preference but it would not generally allow a BFOQ defence if this impacted their hiring policies. A possible exception is if the business catered to that preference exclusively, for example, an all female gym with all female staff but I am not aware that this has ever been tested and if a male personal trainer wanted to take them on he may very well win. As an aside, there is no BFOQ defence for racial discrimination except for artistic works where the first amendment rights overrule the anti-discrimination laws.
Most judges went to law school Therefore, my null hypothesis is that they have next to no knowledge of statistics and couldn’t tell a median from a mean on their best, let alone, their average day - mean, median, or mode. Courts turn to experts to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. If they are asking the wrong questions, then it is the expert’s job to, respectfully, tell them so and guide them to the right questions. However, you shouldn’t guess what the right question is. “Excuse me, your honour, the term “statistical significance” can’t be applied to a data set, only to the result of an a priori null-hypothesis tested against that data set.” Feel free to explain p hacking if necessary. Ask the judge to explain, in layman’s term, what they want from you. Feel free to admit that just like you don’t understand their legal jargon, you don’t expect them to understand your statistical jargon; if everyone speaks plain English, you can go and do your statistics thing and they can go and do their law-talking thing.
Yes. Making statements in a legally protected confidential context is not publishing them, and in most jurisdictions, defamation must be published to create a cause of action. In such a case the patient might well have a cause of action against the therapist for violation of patient confidentially, and a complaint to the relevant authority could get the therapist's license revoked, or perhaps a censure from the licensing authority, whatever it is the the jurisdiction. Note &quot;published&quot; does not have to mean putting them in print, but does mean making them in such a way that general circulation of them is plausible. In addition, such statements may be coered by a qualified privilege. In Marchesi v. Franchino, 283 Md. 131, 135, 387 A.2d 1129 (1978) the Maryland Supreme Court (reviewing a case from the Court of Special Appeals) held (at 135-136) that: ... the common law recognized that a person ought to be shielded against civil liability for defamation where, in good faith, he publishes a statement in furtherance of his own legitimate interests, or those shared in common with the recipient or third parties, ... The Maryland court went on to quote the Restatement (Second) of Torts, (Scope Note preceding § 593 (1977)) which states that if a privilege were not granted: information that should be given or received would not be communicated because of [the] fear of . . . persons capable of giving it that they would be held liable in an action of defamation if their statements were untrue. It would seem that a statement by a person to his or her own therapist, as a part of therapy, and intended to be held in confidence by the therapist, ought to fall under this definition of privilege, although I cannot find any actual case with this exact fact pattern. If the person knew or had reason to know that the therapist was likely to repeat the statement, that would be different. If the person and the therapist were not in a practitioner/patient relationship, with its normal expectations of confidentiality, that also would be different.
Maybe, but probably not, although this would be a question of fact to resolve on a case by case basis under broad legal standards by a jury, and would also depend upon the state where it took place, and upon the nature of the employer of the paramedic. The hypothetical facts in this case are rich enough and ambiguous enough that the case could go either way depending upon how it was presented and what could be proven at trial. This is a case it would be good to take to a medical malpractice/personal injury lawyer in the jurisdiction where it happened to be evaluated. Usually a PI lawyer would not charge you for doing so or would ask for only a nominal fee. Additional factual investigation would probably also be necessary regarding some of the key facts identified below. It's complicated and there are multiple issues presented in this case where the law is not uniform from state to state. The general rule is that a medical professional has to carry out the delivery of medical care to a patient with the reasonable care that would be taken by a medical professional of that type. If the medical professional fails to take reasonable care, and that negligence failure to do so causes injury, then there is civil liability for medical malpractice. A threshold issue would be whether a medical professional-patient relationship was established. This would be a question of fact for a jury and would be a question upon which various potentially applicable state and federal laws would often not be uniform. On these facts, it could easily go either way. In federal court and in a majority of state courts (although there is variation from state to state) you need to know the name of the paramedic you dealt with who provided the bad advice to bring a successful lawsuit before suing. In a minority of states, you could sue first and get the name of the paramedic in discovery through the court process from the hospital after the lawsuit was commenced. The standard of reasonable care liability in this case would be judged by the standard of a reasonable paramedic, not a reasonable doctor. But, often states would have statutes that would limit the liability of paramedics in these situations to liability for gross negligence (which the facts in the question would probably not suffice to show), but not for ordinary negligence (which a jury could come out either way upon and which would hinge heavily on expert testimony). These tort reform type laws differ considerably from state to state. Whether or not particular conduct was negligent or grossly negligent, is a question ultimately decided by a jury under very broad and general legal standards after the fact in a trial, based largely upon expert testimony, on a case by case basis, unless the facts are unequivocally clear one way or the other, which is rarely the case. With my layman's level of knowledge about what a reasonable paramedic should be able to diagnose, I could see this determination going either way. Two cases with identical facts in front of the same judge in separate trials, in which juries are presented with exactly the same evidence could come out differently. The resolution of one case of the question of whether a particular act constituted negligence giving rise to liability is not binding as precedent and is not admissible as evidence in another case (subject to a narrow exception called &quot;collateral estoppel&quot; which applies when the same individual is sued by multiple people for the same conduct in different lawsuits that have resulted in final orders resolving key questions of fact that the lawsuits have in common). Many states would require that someone suing the paramedic have a medical professional certify that the paramedic's actions constituted legal negligence before the suit could go forward in a court. If there is a medical professional-patient relationship, and if the medical professional was found to have negligently caused injury, the medical professional's employer would have vicarious liability in some (but not all) states under a respondiat superior doctrine. Usually, the paramedic at an ER would be an employee of a private EMS ambulance company or a municipal fire department, and not of the hospital that runs the ER. But, some hospitals have their own in house paramedics. Also, some hospitals are run by for profit or nonprofit private companies, some are state or local governmental agencies, and some a federal government agencies. Usually only a small minority of the medical professionals in a hospital are employed by that hospital, and most of them merely have &quot;privileges&quot; to provide medical services for which they bill patients separately while working for their own professional corporation through which they are self-employed. Legally, the hospital itself is more like a hotel or a WeWork office space than to being a firm that directly provides medical services, although it isn't quite that black and white. Holding the ER directly responsible for failing to have good triage policies, as opposed to holding the paramedic responsible and assigning vicarious liability to the employer of the paramedic, would be very difficult, although not necessarily impossible if the ER had official policies that fell far below the standard of care for emergency room triage. It would be very uncommon for an ER to have bad policies of this type. Typically, ERs are only held directly liable for bad triage policies when, for example, they have a policy of not evaluating at all someone who does not have health insurance, which is a practice expressly prohibited by federal law. If the paramedic's employer was a government entity such as a fire department or a government owned hospital, the paramedic would be entitled to absolute immunity from civil liability under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, unless an exception applied. Usually there is an express exception to absolute immunity for medical malpractice liability by a medical doctor who has established a doctor-patient relationship with a patient, when the medical doctor is employed by a state or local government, usually there isn't when the doctor is employed by the federal government. But these laws differ from state to state in fine details that matter in a case like this one regarding whether the exception to immunity from liability is limited to medical doctors or applies also to paramedics. Causation would also be an important factual issue for trial. There is liability only to the extent that taking a non-negligent action could have prevented the harm. If you are infected with COVID, one common consequence is a stroke, and if someone had a stroke while infected with COVID, the case that taking them to the ER would have prevented the stroke from doing serious damage in the long run is weaker. On the other hand, guessing that a stroke was really something else, might or might not be reasonable. The injured person would also have to prove that the EMS response occurred at a time within the roughly 1-2 hours after the start of a stroke when it is possible to take medical action that could do something about a stroke. If the stroke had already happened an hour and a half later and it was rush hour and would have taken half an hour to get to the nearest hospital, causation might be absent and there would be no liability. There would be a legitimate question of fact over whether there was an actual diagnosis and treatment, or whether there was a refusal to get treatment. The reasonable care test is a balancing test. It takes into consideration not just the potential benefits of taking action, but also the cost that would be incurred if action was taken, and the downside risks of a proposed action. The paramedic's concerns about getting a COVID infection at the ER when the person responded to didn't appear to have it at the time would make the cost of a false positive diagnosis higher and would thus influence what would constitute reasonable care in this situation as the jury applies the relevant legal test. Liability would be evaluated based upon what the paramedic reasonable understood he was being told. This would be a question of fact for the jury. It is likely that different people who were present understood what was being said differently. Even if bystanders understood what was being said and meant, what matters is what the paramedic reasonably understood was being said and meant. Given the communication difficulties involved, that question could go either way.
Even before the police have any idea who did it, Bob is guilty of whatever wrong he did. However, if you want this to be a legal question and not a moral one, we should assume that you really want to know "Can Bob be convicted of murder, if the evidence proves that he did do it?". Yes, he can. See Morris v. State, 214 S.W.3d 159. The critical question was whether the defendant understood the charges (he did) and whether he could assist in his defense (he could). The desideratum of being able to assist in your own defense only goes so far. On the other hand, maybe no, per Wilson v. US. A government expert witness "testified that appellant had permanent retrograde amnesia and would not be able to aid in his own defense in terms of remembering any of the acts alleged in the indictment". The crucial difference seems to be whether one just has loss of memory, vs. loss of memory connected with some other mental disorder. [Addendum] Per Dusky v. United States 362 U.S. 402, competence to stand trial depends on whether the accused has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding -- and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him. I am not aware of any exceptions e.g. whether this is not the case with strict liability crimes like statutory rape, and since it is generally held that "competency" is a requirement mandated by the due process clause, I don't think there could be an exception.
When it can be “reasonably read both to impart a defamatory inference and to affirmatively suggest that the author intended or endorsed that inference.” Which is the standard the New York appeals court endorsed in 2014 for “defamation by implication”. So, on the face of the statements, they have to imply fraud and they have to show that the speaker intended to imply fraud. Whether they did that is up to the jury.