EOC - Week 10 - What do I think about the Supreme Court?

I think the Supreme Court is a necessary both only if the right people are in it. Who is it that determines who is right for the job? Should the United States of America allow someone who is highly religious views take a seat in the Supreme Court? Since the United States of America is suppose to have a separation between religion and state, why do we have laws that benefit people who marry when marriage in the old days was done for business benefits and the only reason they had a priest attend it is wish the married couple good luck in the name of god on the endeavors. So it brings up the question about the people being appointed to chief justice because they are perfect for the job or because Mr. President wants someone in his favor? Does the public are well aware of the cases that are brought on to the Supreme Court? The supreme court seems a little bit iffy when you got 9 old dudes (and dudettes) debating with each other about matters like what kind of legal grounds does pornography has.

However for the most part, it removes deciding power from the president so not one person has all the power and having nice chief justices should give variety of ideas and opinions which represent the people or at least majority of the public.

I wonder if there will be a period in the future where we would not need a supreme court. Imagine how that’ll be? Does the president have all of the deciding power? Or we are going to live in a stateless environment where people actually get along with each other and help one another. We can only hope people would live peaceful with each other! That is for sure.

Illicit

Illicit trade has numerous affects on me as an art student. One day, I would like to be able to produce my own intellectual property and sell it for a good price that I feel that is worth the time, effort and materials used that I put into it. However if these counterfeiter create a copy of my creation and sell it at a cheaper price to undermine my worth, I would not be able to generate income to make a living because people would rather buy a fake copy and brag to their friends and their egos on how awesome they were to deceive everyone. Do not get me wrong, some people are tricked into believing that the item they are buying is real. That only means there is a higher need of educating and sense of awareness of the dangers and highly problematic situations that illicit trade creates. Some people are just too impatient and would rather disregard the consequences to satisfy their greed or people are in a situation where they are desperate and would risk life and death to take the risk. For example if a family member needs medicine for their kidneys because they will fail if they did not have the medication to treat it. The desperate man seeks out help to save their loved ones and found con-artist who tells him he can help. The con-artist takes advantage of the situation and asks for extraordinary ransoms in order to obtain the medication. After con-artist can get whatever he could get from the man, he gives him some random pills and ran off. The man gave the pills to his sick family and they immediately die and now the man not only lost his family member but he lost everything he had ever owned.

EOC - Week 8

If you mentioned SPAM to someone twenty years ago, no one would think much about it other than being a tasty canned good. Unless you’re a Korean War Veteran, then you might be at my throat. SPAM today has taken a who new meaning when it comes to the World Wide Web because it is a term used for soliciting and unwanted e-mail. For many, their inboxes is majority filled out with SPAM. The danger of SPAM is not from the massive clutter it produces but the potential of fraud or malice. Any innocent person accidently clicking on it because of a wireless mouse jumping all over the screen due to a bad reciever which could lead the person to accidently purchasing something they didn’t want, give permission to bypass their security to steal information or upload a virus, Trojan, malware, spyware, or worm.

From a legal perspective, SPAM can cause millions of dollars of damage if the “right” people let it. For instance if the people that sends out these SPAM e-mails to a million of random people about a brain enlargement pills (that’s made out of sugar, salt, finely pulverized rock and shredded confetti cardboard), there is a chance that out of the millions of people fall for it. Lets say 1% fall for the scam, that’s 10,000 victims. One bottle of the pills cost $40 and they can make up some kind of B.S. about shipping and charge enough $10. The con-artist would end up making $500,000. The people who take the pills not only hurt their wallets and their self-esteem for falling for this but can seriously have health problems for taking unknown substances. If you even wonder about spam, just remember that “SPAM is good in your stomach but not in your inbox.” – (Richmond Pham)

EOC - Week 7 - What are the Landlords' Rights?

Although the land lords in the film was very restricted on what they could do to remove the trespasser, in real life circumstances, there are several steps they could have done to remedy their problem. For one instance, Carter Hayes enter the building without permission making him a trespasser and because he wasn not the real owner and was not properly leased, Drake Goodman could have easily removed him from the the property and even sue him for damaging his property. But for the movie and Hollywood sake, the story had ben embelished a bit. Never the less, another problem occurred the building was getting infested with pest. Because Goodman didn’t take action to effectively remove the pest problem at the source, making the building a danger to public health and safety and putting his tenants at risk which they could ultimately sue him for not doing his duty as land lord. In the beginning of the movie when they were filling out the paper works to purchase the house, they both embelished on several things like their income and Drake Goodman said that, “Everyone embelished a little. It is expected.”(Pacific Heights 1990). He could be sued for fraud for lying about his income and other information he made up. I think if he new his rights more and it was in a real life situation, he would have had an easier time removing Cater Hayes off his property. I thought it was pretty stupid that they could not do anything because possession is nine tenths of the law and Hayes was defending his possession. Ha! If they took the time to find out the duties and rights of being a home owner, they would not be in the situation they were in when decided to take the risky opportunity.

EOC - Week 6

Greed is never good. Too much of a good thing is bad because eventually you will get tired of what you are engorging yourself with and then move on to your next favorite thing and engorging yourself again without consideration or think about the consequences. Like the weight problem America is dealing with. Just because you can eat as much as you want, does not mean you should. Sure you are enjoying the savory delicious burgers as many times and as often as you want but you will be obese, have mobility problem, get diabetes, heart problems, and all the things that need adjusting. Greedy people who buy large amounts of land and declare it private so no one could enter that will never will never see, visit or use most of it.

I have never heard of anything good come out of greed other than having an advantage over another entity that is even greedier than you are. Greed causes people to be dishonest, disloyal, shrewd, uncaring towards your fellow man and surroundings. You do whatever it takes to be on top, have the advantage and make a profit.

If I could make a whack me doll, it would be the Greed and the Monetary System. I hate the fact that most of the things I do is majority based on or related to money. The idea that you can gather up large sum of money with little work and/or at the expenses of others only proved that what you gained by no real concrete effort on your part isn’t what you deserved. You can’t eat money, you can’t grow it and you can’t there’s no real value on it unless you believe it is valuable. Ethics is thrown out of the window just so you can make profit.

EOC Week 5

As vast as the US law is, even people have their own opinions about it. "I think the legal system has very good laws and they sound like we will be protected in many ways,..." (Polo, Diannehttp://vidaddesign.blogspot.com/) It is true that there are laws out there that are created to protect the public from abuse or being taken advantage by other individual, groups or companies. Such laws that are against murder, arson, fraud, larceny and so forth are all created to protect the people.

Even though the laws are there to protect our well being, there are still people who doubt or even complain about the legal system"… our legal system is flawed and I think the thought given by Mr. Liuzzo explains where a great deal of the problems come from." (Cross, William L.,,II http://c2animtions.blogspot.com/) Like some of our tort laws, when someone commit a libel or slander on us, if we can’t prove that it’s false even though we know it is not the truth, however is gossiping against you may continue to do so.

"There are times when I think of the law and it seems to be nothing but a hindrance to the way most of us live our lives. But from the other perspective, it is not that your freedom is squelched by the law, but your privileges are protected by it." (Thomas, David M. http://afrobirdproductions.blogspot.com/) This takes us back to my point at the top about laws protecting us. But it also shed light on this topic that depending on the perspective that the unlawful events are being viewed, people will always have different opinions on the matter. Like I always say, “One of the worst things that can even happen at an accident scene is having more than one witness observing the event.”

Used Cars - Crimes and Torts

Crimes
1. Assault- the guy accuses the kurt Russell things he might not have done
2. Battery- the guy in the bar slaps him and the guy fights him back
3. Fraud- Tampering with videotape
4. Illegal Gambling- betting on sports games
5. Bribery of a Public Official- while they were in the car
6. Bribery of the Attorney- other lawyer bribed others in the room
7. Obstruction of the Courtroom- disrupting the court, coming in late
8. Perjury- the girl lied under oath
9. Sexual harassment- the guy who sold the cars, grabbed the girls boob
10. Speeding- driving over the speed limit
11. Reckless driving-
12. Drug Dealing- on with the reefer
13. Unlicensed drivers
14. Driving on the the wrong side of the road
15. No registration/insurance
16. Illegal weapons/
17. Attempted assault with a deadly weapon
18. Battery with the chain when he was whipping him
19. Kidnapping/hostage- while that old man jumped on the car
20. Trespassing on private property- driving offroad
21. Driving on the shoulder
22. Cutting the car off the tow truck
23. Crossing a railroad crossing with a train in motion
24. Knowingly falsifying information to make a sale
25. Didn’t yield to the intersection while driving on the way to the lot
26. Speeding in a construction zone
27. Knowingly crashed through a police barricade
28. Damaging to federal (police) property
29. Leaving the scene of the crime
30. Jaywalking- in the end the guy who hates driving red cars
Torts
1. Damaging private property- in the bar, the guy threw the chair at the bar mirror
2. Damaging Private property- taking the girls umbrella, ruining their dinner
3. Cutting the car off the tow truck
4. Slander- accusing the judge of being crooked/ taking bribes
5. Violating the people’s dinner at the bar
6. Violation of personal property- tampering with tow truck
7. Violation of private property- letting the car loose
8. Damaging the car lot- kids crashing through warehouses

Group: David Resto, Andrw Veliz, Richmond Pham, Stacia Woody

What I think of the Legal System

There are many laws and regulations in the legal system in the United States of America. Not only there are hundreds of large books of just federal laws to go through but there is many different one for each individual state. Some laws are reasonably understandable. Others are outrageously strange. Maybe that is why they say that studying law at a prestigious school like Harvard will most likely make you kill yourself before you can graduate. Maybe the reason is that you’re in a highly competitive field where there are many outrageous information to tackle, competing with thousands of other hopeful law students in a school that might have cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The legal system in the United States is so vast, even my business law instructor recommends us to get a lawyer when dealing with it. I use to only have a vague understanding of the law. Most of the time when TV shows that brings up a law, they would not explain in any detail on what it means. Like how certain circumstances are needed to take place for it to become a tort law. What I like to call “laws I can sue you with” laws.

It was a quite shocking to find out that there was more than 12 courts in the US. Never the less, these courts help speed up the process on getting cases done. Unlike the old days, when cases were brought to the king where he arbitrarily decide how it would end. “No one person can possibly know the entire body of law. Even learned judges and lawyers tend to specialize in certain fields.” (Essentials of Business Laws, Liuzzo, pg.3) Here is my advice to you. Get a good lawyer. Let them do the tough thinking and researching.

Myspace Hoax - EOC Week 2

Despite the tragic outcome, there were no undeniable evidence that the proved that Lori Drew started the hoax as a means of harming Megan Meier. Ashley Grills, Drew’s assistant, under immunity that Drew, testified that she was the one who send the final message that lead Megan to her suicide. She also stated that Drew was the one who came up with the idea for the hoax and knew Megan has depression and suicidal.

“Josh Evans”, a 16 year old boy, identity was born after Drew created a myspace account with intention as a prank on Megan Meier. Other sources stated that the prank was a means of finding out if Megan had been spreading rumors about Drew’s daughter, Sarah. Using the fake identity, “Josh Evans” contacted Megan and began sending flirtatious message to each other.
After two weeks of creating “Josh Evans”, Drew wanted to stop the prank, Sarah claimed.

A prank soon ended wrong when the “…the world would be better off without her” was sent by Grills to Megan which 20 mins later, ultimately caused Megan to hang herself. Drew’s lawyer, Dean Steward stated that Drew did not encourage or participate in the hoax and was not aware mean messages were being sent to Megan, quoted from an interview by ABC News.

Even though there was an absence of malice but she could charged for negligence for starting the hoax of creating, a handsome 16 year old boy, “Josh Evans” identity on myspace.com and did not end it herself even when she later protest the prank. That only could possibly leave her openly for negligence for not taking responsibility for her actions. She definitely got away with a slap on the rest because from my perspective, she is indirectly leading to harmful results. Then again a little fun won’t kill anyone right?