Statute of limitations if law changes Let's say the statute of limitations on wrongful death is 3 years. 5 years pass. Then, the statute of limitations is completely removed. Can the lawsuit be filed now? Does the statute permanently invalidate the case the first time or does it depend on current law?
Stogner v. California, a criminal case, held that &quot;A law enacted after expiration of a previously applicable limitations period violates the Ex Post Facto Clause when it is applied to revive a previously time-barred prosecution&quot;. In 1798, in Calder v. Bull, SCOTUS long ago decided that the Ex Post Facto Clause does not apply to civil cases. In that case, Calder had been entitled to property under a will, and the Connecticut legislature changed the law. The Supreme Court held that the legislative act was not an Ex Post Facto law. Chase's reasoning, which relies on the distinction between ex post facto law and retrospective law, is this: In my opinion, the true distinction is between ex post facto laws and retrospective laws. Every ex post facto law must necessarily be retrospective, but every retrospective law is not an ex post facto law. The former only are prohibited. Every law that takes away or impairs rights vested agreeably to existing laws is retrospective, and is generally unjust and may be oppressive, and it is a good general rule that a law should have no retrospect; but there are cases in which laws may justly, and for the benefit of the community and also of individuals, relate to a time antecedent to their commencement, as statutes of oblivion or of pardon. They are certainly retrospective, and literally both concerning and after the facts committed. But I do not consider any law ex post facto within the prohibition that mollifies the rigor of the criminal law, but only those that create or aggravate the crime or increase the punishment or change the rules of evidence for the purpose of conviction. Every law that is to have an operation before the making thereof, as to commence at an antecedent time or to save time from the statute of limitations or to excuse acts which were unlawful, and before committed, and the like, is retrospective. But such laws may be proper or necessary, as the case may be. There is a great and apparent difference between making an unlawful act lawful and the making an innocent action criminal and punishing it as a crime. The expressions &quot;ex post facto laws&quot; are technical; they had been in use long before the Revolution, and had acquired an appropriate meaning, by legislators, lawyers, and authors. So, yes it can.
Are arbitration agreements subject to a 6 year statute of limitations in NJ? Yes. Remember the precedents from NJ that I cited in response to one of your recent posts: a state may not &quot;subject an arbitration agreement to more burdensome requirements than those governing the formation of other contracts&quot; This implies that the statute of limitations for arbitration agreements is the same as for contracts in general. If it were otherwise, that departure would constitute a greater burden on whichever party happens to oppose the enforcement of the arbitration agreement.
There have been instances where the US Supreme Court has held over cases to the next term, and instances where they ordered a case re-argued in the next term. Brown vs Board of Education was a particularly well known case that was reargued. I believe that such occasions are rare, and that the court makes a significant effort to decide each case in the same term where certiorari is granted. Once exception is when the Court has a vacancy and is waiting fora new Justice to be confirmed, and the Justices in office are tied. Then cases with 4-4 splits are often held and re-argued. More often, the Justices decide, after granting certiorari, that this was a mistake, and dismiss the case altogether. The phrase used is that the writ is &quot;dismissed as improvidently granted&quot; or &quot;DIGed&quot;. This has the same ultimate effect as if certiorari had never been granted -- the lower court decision is left standing, and no Supreme Court precedent is created. This is still fairly rare. To the best of my knowledge there is no rule requiring decision within any specific time, but I have never heard of a case held over for more than one term.
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.
Is this something for small claims court Yes. The explicitness of your prior leases overrides the statutory variations that might exist among jurisdictions in this regard. And the total of 50$/month for six or seven years indicates that you would have to pursue recovery in small claims court (at least if the landlord refuses to reimburse you). In Wisconsin, the statute of limitations for breach of contract is six years. See 893.43. Statute of limitations means the lapse of time upon which claims of certain type are no longer actionable. Thus, you would only be able to recover the fees of the latest 6 years except for this year's lease, since your current lease no longer specifies that the landlord will cover that cost. For more information on small claims courts, see chapter 799 of the Wisconsin statutory law.
The important question is: was the £200 a fine (which is paid to the state) or compensation (which is paid to you)? Assuming it was a fine He doesn't (at the moment) owe you anything. However you can sue him for damages. Usually a claim for damages is time-barred after six years (and it is now seven years). However you weren't able to sue him yourself until you were 18, so you may have a couple of years left. However the clock may have started ticking immediately after the attack, on the grounds your parents or guardians could have sued. Talk to a solictor about this possibility; they should give you a free 30 minute consultation, and would probably take a case on a contigency fee (no-win no-fee) basis if it has any chance. In principle, you could have applied to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board for compensation - but you are too late for that; you have to apply within two years (there are some exceptions, but none seem to apply to you). Assuming it was compensation He owes you £200. Now you need to enforce that payment - and again, the problem may be the six year clock. You will definitely need to talk to a lawyer about that. My gut feeling is that the £200 was probably a fine rather than compensation.
He is mistaken. The statute of limitations for suing someone for a car accident, and for enforcing an oral promise, are both far longer than 3-4 months. You could get an estimate of the damages, report it to his insurance company, and, if the insurance company does not cooperate promptly, bring suit in a court of limited jurisdiction or a small claims court. Even if you don't retain a lawyer to take on the case for you fully, if you need to sue, you should hire a lawyer to coach you on the high points of how to represent yourself in this case, particularly with regard to how to fill out the Complaint, how to serve the other driver with process, and what evidence you need to present in what manner a trial.
Interesting question. I routinely write wills that authorize the executor to destroy property that has no significant economic or sentimental value, but I've never encountered a case where a testator or testatrix has directed that property be destroyed and I've never seen a reported case (or even a news report) in which that has happened. To the extent that an estate is solvent, there is no reason that a creditor could complain and if the destruction was done in a safe manner (as opposed to burning down a house or something like that without consulting the fire department) I'm not sure that there would be a public interest in doing so either. There are many religions that had a practice historically of burying someone with grave goods, so there are reasonable First Amendment freedom of religion arguments for allowing such a practice if it had a religious basis. And, if no interested party objected, I don't see how anyone could stop the executor from acting, unless the property to be destroyed was, for example, evidence of a crime, in which case it would be a crime to destroy it and the provision of the will would be void because it was a crime to carry it out. If an executor sought permission from a court to carry out this instruction, the court might require a public notice of the planned destruction to give notice to any third party who might claim an ownership interest in the property allegedly belonging to the decedent. On the other hand, usually, all interested parties in an estate can agree to act contrary to a will by unanimous consent, in which case no one would have standing to fight for the provision in court (unless it was considered a charitable bequest, in which case a state attorney general or an advocate appointed by the court with the "will" as the client could defend it). Given the strong public policies in the law disfavoring "waste" (i.e. useless destruction of property) such a provision could be held to be void as against public policy (similarly, bequests contingent upon marriage decisions are now void as against public policy).