Word: plaintiffs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rare award last week, a Parisian judge returned not only damages but the damaged property-a valuable piece of the plaintiff's anatomy-to a French girl named Claudine Perot. During filming of the movie Secret Paris in 1964, Claudine, who was then only 17, allowed a tattoo artist to decorate her buttock with a full-color rendering of the Eiffel Tower. Under the contract, the tattoo belonged to the moviemaker-Ulysee Productions-which probably wanted it for publicity purposes. Accordingly, Claudine had it removed by surgery and gave it to Ulysee. This year, older and a little wiser...
Spate of Rulings. The center uses tactics developed by civil rights groups. "First we find out in what areas of the law the poor are being shortchanged," says Albert. "Then we search for a plaintiff to represent." The organization has been responsible, in whole or in part, for the spate of recent Supreme Court rulings that have broadened the rights of welfare recipients. In 1966 the high court upheld a decision prohibiting Georgia from denying relief benefits to mothers whom the state deemed able to work. Other cases included a landmark decision against Alabama, which had sought to end payments...
Yeasty Independence. Today's directed verdict is usually a response to a request from the defendant. Before heeding such a request, a judge will customarily consider all the evidence favorable to the plaintiff, disregard all evidence to the contrary, and decide that even under those circumstances, no reasonable man could find for the plaintiff. Even if the dispute is so onesided that it amounts to "the word of a busload of bishops against the word of the town drunk," says Harvard Law Professor Richard Field, the question must go to a jury...
...time the newly independent U.S. began shaping its own law, another form of directed verdict, called a demurrer to the evidence, was in vogue. Before presenting his own evidence, a defendant could move that the plaintiff had failed to make a case. In some jurisdictions, it was a dangerous gamble. If the judge disagreed, the trial was over: the defendant lost without telling his story. Such a harsh penalty has now largely died...
...taxpayers argued that far more than three pence of their tax money was involved in a federal aid-to-education program that paid for tutoring in parochial schools. But their case was dismissed for lack of "standing." The gist of "standing," the Supreme Court once explained, is whether a plaintiff's personal stake in the suit is enough "to assure sharp prosecution of the issues." And a taxpayer's stake has been held too small to support a suit contending that a federal expenditure exceeded Congress' general powers...