How can laypeople investigate an airline&#39;s allegation of &#39;extraordinary circumstances&#39;? Some airlines allege 'extraordinary circumstances', e.g. to deny liability and shirk compensating under Recital (14) of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004: (14) As under the Montreal Convention, obligations on operating air carriers should be limited or excluded in cases where an event has been caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Such circumstances may, in particular, occur in cases of political instability, meteorological conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned, security risks, unexpected flight safety shortcomings and strikes that affect the operation of an operating air carrier. How can passengers cost-effectively check if the airline's telling the truth, without and before a lawsuit? Doing so after the lawsuit looks foolish. as: a judge may not grant you a subpoena/witness summons. if you learned that the airline were truthful only after filing the claim, then you'd lose and must pay legal costs (e.g. in England &amp; Wales). the airline can falsify its records without a layperson's knowing it.
Assuming you have suffered a delay, you may complain both to the airline and the national enforcing body with this form. If you don't know your NEB, this will tell you where they are. This document spells out the procedure interaction between your NEB and the airline, specifically addressing the "extraordinary circumstances" question. If information provided by airlines is of a coherent and detailed character, NEB are left with a margin of flexibility and can apply a system of random checks, respecting the principle of proportionality. If information is only provided in a generalised manner not allowing NEB to draw sound judgements, each incident has to be followed up on individual case-by-case assessment requesting for example, as matter of proof, logbooks, incident reports, maintenance manuals etc. The airline may provide the NEB with sufficient evidence that there were "extraordinary circumstances", in which case you're probably not going to get compensation, or they were too vague and the NEB will follow up, and you either get compensation or you won't. If the NEB doesn't rule the way you'd like, you could sue (which is a risk) if you think there was a misinterpretation of the regulation, for example, if the NEB didn't get the message that care is always mandated and only compensation goes away. Or, it may be necessary to sue in order to get an official interpretation (such as what "arrival time" means), but such cases are rare (this seems to contain the applicable case law)/ This only goes to the question of whether the airline interprets the facts in accordance with the law, where the NEB will correct the airline if necessary. There is no cost effective way to test whether the facts reported to the NEB were falsified.
An adult is normally assumed to be competent to enter into a contract unless there is some reason to think otherwise. It is not usual to demand evidence of competency unless there is something in the appearance or actions of a party that raises such a question, or something about that party, such as a history of mental illness, known to the other party, that raises such a question. I have heard of a party being medically examined just before signing an important document, to provide evidence of competence, but generally in connection with a will, and generally when the signer is elderly and in poor physical condition, and even then such a procedure is rare. If competence is disputed, medical evidence is required to resolve the question, or more exactly to establish lack of competence. In the absence of such evidence, competence will be presumed. That was the conclusion of the MA Supreme Court in FRANCES M. SPARROW vs. DAVID D. DEMONICO &amp; another, 461 Mass. 322* (2011). The court held: without medical evidence or expert testimony that the mental condition interfered with the party's understanding of the transaction, or her ability to act reasonably in relation to it, the evidence will not be sufficient to support a conclusion of incapacity. It was a significant part of the court's reasoning in that case that a reasonable person might well have entered into the agreement in question, and that the party was represented by a lawyer, and acted in accord with the lawyer's advice. That does not, however, seem to be a requirement; merely additional evidence of the reasonableness of the action.
The Evidence Would be Admissible. Under the so-called &quot;good faith exception&quot; to the exclusionary rule the evidence would probably be admitted over Bob's objections in both cases mentioned in the question. Recent US court decisions have limited the exclusionary rule when police officers reasonably but mistakenly believe that a valid warrant exists, and find evidence acting under such an apparent warrant. However, if there is good evidence of intentional falsification by the police, the exception will probably not apply. As to the second case, where Bob is home and protests that an error is being made, police are not required to, and often do not, accept much that suspects or subjects of warrants say in their own defense. If anyone could simply claim there was an error and delay a warrant, perhaps giving time to dispose of evidence, many problems would result. However, the &quot;good faith&quot; exception only applies where the police reasonably and honestly believe that the warrant is valid, or that probable cause exists. If Bob says something such as: This warrant is for 1020 Anne street, where Alice Crook lives. But I live at 1050 Albert street. See the house number is 1050 right here. There must be a mistake. then a reasonable officer would probably double check the warrant, and if the officer unreasonably fails to do so, the search might later be suppressed. But this is going to be a very fact-sensitive inquiry, and none of the cases that I know of on the &quot;good faith exception&quot; rule are exactly on point for this situation. I cannot be sure how a court might rule in such a case. Leon and Evans Cases In United States v. Leon 468 U. S. 897, the US Supreme Court created a &quot;good faith exception&quot; to the exclusionary rule. In that case the Court held that when officers make an objectively reasonable, good faith decision to rely on a warrant later held to be invalid, the exclusionary rule does not apply, and evidence found during a search under such a warrant, or in the course of an arrest under such a warren, is admissible. The basic logic is that when the invalid warrant was the result of an honest mistake, suppressing the evidence would have no deterrent effect on future similar mistakes, as no one intended to make them in any case. In Arizona v. Evans 514 U. S. 1 (1995), this rule was extended to officer who rely in good faith on information mistakenly provided by Court employees. The underlying logic is much the same. Herring v. United States In Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135 (2009) this exception was further extended to officers who acted in good faith on the mistaken information of other officers. Evidence found in a search incident to an arrest, although there was no valid arrest warrant or other probable cause, was not suppressed. In this case a warrant had been issued but later recalled. however this recall was somehow not properly entered into the database of warrants maintained by a sheriff's office. When a nearby jurisdiction called to ask if there was an outstanding warrant on Herring, they were told that there was one. Herring was arrested, and drugs and an unlawful firearm found. Minutes later the officers were told that the arrest warrant was not valid. Herring was convicted based on the evidence from the search, and the US Supreme court upheld the conviction. The court wrote in Herring: When a probable-cause determination was based on reasonable but mistaken assumptions, the person subjected to a search or seizure has not necessarily been the victim of a constitutional violation. The very phrase “probable cause” confirms that the Fourth Amendment does not demand all possible precision. And whether the error can be traced to a mistake by a state actor or some other source may bear on the analysis. For purposes of deciding this case, however, we accept the parties’ assumption that there was a Fourth Amendment violation. The issue is whether the exclusionary rule should be applied. The fact that a Fourth Amendment violation occurred—i.e., that a search or arrest was unreasonable—does not necessarily mean that the exclusionary rule applies. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 223 (1983). Indeed, exclusion “has always been our last resort, not our first impulse,” Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586, 591 (2006), and our precedents establish important principles that constrain application of the exclusionary rule. ... the exclusionary rule is not an individual right and applies only where it “ ‘result[s] in appreciable deterrence.’ ... When police act under a warrant that is invalid for lack of probable cause, the exclusionary rule does not apply if the police acted “in objectively reasonable reliance” on the subsequently invalidated search warrant. 468 U. S., at 922 (Leon). We (perhaps confusingly) called this objectively reasonable reliance “good faith.” In a companion case, Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U. S. 981 (1984), we held that the exclusionary rule did not apply when a warrant was invalid because a judge forgot to make “clerical corrections” to it. ... in Evans, 514 U. S. 1, we applied this good-faith rule to police who reasonably relied on mistaken information in a court’s database that an arrest warrant was outstanding. We held that a mistake made by a judicial employee could not give rise to exclusion for three reasons: The exclusionary rule was crafted to curb police rather than judicial misconduct; court employees were unlikely to try to subvert the Fourth Amendment; and “most important, there [was] no basis for believing that application of the exclusionary rule in [those] circumstances” would have any significant effect in deterring the errors ... the abuses that gave rise to the exclusionary rule featured intentional conduct that was patently unconstitutional ... ... To trigger the exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system. ... In Franks v. Delaware, 438 U. S. 154 (1978), ... we held that police negligence in obtaining a warrant did not even rise to the level of a Fourth Amendment violation, let alone meet the more stringent test for triggering the exclusionary rule. ... We do not suggest that all recordkeeping errors by the police are immune from the exclusionary rule. In this case, however, the conduct at issue was not so objectively culpable as to require exclusion. In Leon we held that “the marginal or nonexistent benefits produced by suppressing evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant cannot justify the substantial costs of exclusion.” 468 U. S., at 922. The same is true when evidence is obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently recalled warrant. If the police have been shown to be reckless in maintaining a warrant system, or to have knowingly made false entries to lay the groundwork for future false arrests, exclusion would certainly be justified under our cases should such misconduct cause a Fourth Amendment violation. See the Wikipedia article on Herring and this Leagal Information Institute article on the case
Discovery Basically, you ask. If your opponent thinks your request is out of bounds they object, give their reasons to the judge, you give yours and the judge orders them to produce the evidence or not. A lot of people think court cases have big “ah-ha” movements when a witness reveals something unknown on the stand. This rarely happens because there are no secrets in litigation - both sides have to clearly explain their case before, usually well before, they go to trial.
NO If there were no extenuating circumstances (or they should not have been looked at as they were not presented), the losing party can petition for reconsideration and appeal the decision as a matter of law. The Judge/court of appeals then reviews the case and decides if the verdict stands. But you can't plead new facts at that stage, so if the losing side's lawyer messed up the case, that's up to them, not the judge. If it was a criminal case, the victim can't force the DA to appeal either, though they can try to get an injunction in related civil cases. But no person, or for the matter neither party, can sue the judge at all for misbehavior on the bench because judges have judicial immunity. Even when they did something so out of scope, such as a judge ordering from the bench that a lawyer shall be beaten up by police because they missed a court date, they get immunity as they acted as a judge (Miles v Waco). Indeed, let me quote from the first section of that SCOTUS case (emphasis mine): A long line of this Court's precedents acknowledges that, generally, a judge is immune from a suit for money damages. See, e. g., Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219 (1988); Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193 (1985); Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24 (1980); Supreme Court of Va. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 446 U.S. 719 (1980); Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478 (1978); Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978); Pierson *10 v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967).1 Although unfairness and injustice to a litigant may result on occasion, &quot;it is a general principle of the highest importance to the proper administration of justice that a judicial officer, in exercising the authority vested in him, shall be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself.&quot; Bradley v. Fisher, 13 Wall. 335, 347 (1872). ... Like other forms of official immunity, judicial immunity is an immunity from suit, not just from ultimate assessment of damages. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985). Accordingly, judicial immunity is not overcome by allegations of bad faith or malice, the existence of which ordinarily cannot be resolved without engaging in discovery and eventual trial. Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S., at 554 (&quot;[I]mmunity applies even when the judge is accused of acting maliciously and corruptly&quot;). See also Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 815-819 (1982) (allegations of malice are insufficient to overcome qualified immunity). In the example OP posed nobody, not even the police, becomes liable for the actions of Bob but Bob himself: Police does not need to help you, even if they know for a fact that something is happening right now. There's a huge error in the case as presented by OP You start to work up a case, and points 1 to 3 are fine. But you start to get off the rails starting in point 4: The evidence does not say that someone is to be locked up, it only indicates what the facts of the case (upon which is to be decided) might be. The decision if someone is to go to jail or not is only up to the verdict - which happened in dot 5. Dot 5 however indicates that the judge looked at extenuating circumstances which is also evidence, so point 4 is presented incompletely. Let me present a more complete version of point 4: Evidence from side A was presented, as was other evidence by side B. To the victim, it seemed that side A (either her attorney or the DA, not clear from OP) had the better evidence and might get a conviction on side B. But the Judge did weigh the evidence differently than the observer and declared a verdict favoring B in point 5 to the dissatisfaction of the victim The missing bullet between 5 and 6 (a motion for reconsideration or appeal) does not seem to happen. Assuming it did not happen, because months go by, the verdict becomes final and the case becomes res iudicata - the case is closed. Point 6 is a different and separate crime. The case files of the earlier case can get pulled to show a pattern of behavior, but not to re-adjudicate the earlier case. Finally: Point 7 does not matter before the law: If-Then hypotheticals can't be adjudicated. Because the counterpoint to the presented argument in this point is: Would the lawyer of Side A have filed for reconsideration and/or appeal, the verdict would not have become final and waiting for the verdict from the court of appeals, Bob might still await the next step of the trial. tl;dr As presented, the rundown of the hypothetical case does not present anything that the judge could be liable for but instead shows that side A did not take the necessary steps to ask for reconsideration or file an appeal to the verdict they didn't like. The separate incident opened a new case, the hypothetical that side B would sit in jail is conclusory.
It depends. International aviation law is tricky. One effort to set some standards down was the Tokyo Convention, also known as the Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed On Board Aircraft. Here are some excerpts: ARTICLE 3 The State of registration of the aircraft is competent to exercise jurisdiction over offences and acts committed on board. . . . ARTICLE 4 A Contracting State which is not the State of registration may not interfere with an aircraft in flight in order to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over an offence committed on board except in the following cases: a) the offence has effect on the territory of such State; b) the offence has been committed by or against a national or permanent resident of such State; c) the offence is against the security of such State; d) the offence consists of a breach of any rules or regulations relating to the flight or manoeuvre of aircraft in force in such State; e) the exercise of jurisdiction is necessary to ensure the observance of any obligation of such State under a multilateral international agreement. The commander of the aircraft is also given some powers to restrain the perpetrator or any other person that poses a danger to the aircraft and/or its occupants. S/he is given some other options, such as the choice of where to deliver the offender (though this by no means implies that the person will be prosecuted by that State). The Convention (and related documents) was ratified by numerous nations. As for the bonus question, there doesn't appear to be any special EU law regarding this. The EASA does not cover these sort of offenses, though it would be the closest to a Europe-wide regulatory body that would be relevant here.
Acme is bound by Bob's actions so long as they were conducted with "apparent authority" from the perspective of Client C and involved his work duties, even if he carried them out contrary to company policy - unless Client C knew for a fact that Bob was violating company policy and didn't have authority within the company to do so when he was doing these things. Acme, directly, or Acme's insurance carrier, in a subrogation suit after it has settled the claim from Client C, could probably sue Bob, especially if he willfully violated company policy for the purpose of harming client C. This is rarely done, but ultimately Bob owes duties to Acme which he violated which probably give rise to liability, although proving that and collecting the judgment would both be difficult. If Bob had authority within the organization to deviate from company policy, however, which he would have a good cause to claim that he did, this would be a full defense to such a suit, since Bob was always acting as a disclosed agent of Acme. Client C probably cannot sue Bob directly, whether or not it sues Acme. In contract matters (which this would include) a disclosed agent is not responsible for the acts he carries out on behalf of his principal. For example, an employee who signs a promissory note on behalf of a company in an official capacity as a disclosed agent of the company isn't responsible for paying the note. This is different than the rule in tort cases where the principal and anyone whose actions personally caused the tort caused the problem is liable. For example, if the employee got into a car accident that was his fault while he was driving on the job for the company, both the company and the employee would be liable to the person who was hurt. The circumstances that you describe sound more like a breach of contract than they do like a tort, so Bob would probably not have any personal liability to Client C. Could Bob or Acme (or both) face any criminal liability? Unless Bob was the CEO or other senior officer of the company, Acme wouldn't face criminal liability, because he is too far down the chain of command to cause Acme the entity to have the requisite criminal intent. Realistically, failing to "verify that equipment rental invoices match delivery records before notifying the client to approve the invoices for payment" does not amount to a crime no matter who does it. This might be careless or a breach of contract, but it is not fraud or theft because it lack the necessary criminal intent. If Bob actively photoshopped equipment rental invoices with a specific intent to defraud Client C, he would probably be criminally liable for fraud, although even that isn't an open and shut case as it still basically involves failure to perform a contract according to its terms and a mere breach of contract is generally not a crime unless you intended not to perform it in the first place, when you entered into the contract.
What you describe is essentially a Warrant Canary, which is legally murky. From a functional point of view, it is breaking the non-disclosure requirements of the NSL by omission. Proponents of warrant canaries would point to case law such as West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Wooley v. Maynard to suggest that the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment restricts the government from compelling speech. New York Times Co. v. United States could also be read to prevent the prior restraint unless the existence of the NSL was successfully argued to be &quot;crucial military information&quot;.