Critic-Raiding Sheriff Settles With Bloggers Who Sued Him Over His Unconstitutional Actions
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Now that Terre Bonne Parish sheriff Jerry Larpenter has had his immunity stripped by a federal court, it appears he's ready to pay up to keep the damages from mounting. Sheriff Larpenter abused a terrible law -- Louisiana's still-on-the-books-for-some-reason criminal defamation law -- to harass a critic of his. On the way to getting slapped by the court, Larpenter went judge-shopping (bringing his warrant to an off-duty judge) for someone willing to sign his unconstitutional warrant -- a judge who later found the warrant with his signature on it to be perfectly legal.The state court of appeals shot down Larpenter's warrant. The inevitable civil suit that followed found Larpenter being de-immunized in successive decisions, leaving him to actually bear some responsibility for his act of censorship.Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports Larpenter is now making nice with Jennifer and Wayne Anderson, the couple targeted by the sheriff for their criticism. The Andersons had their home raided by Larpenter's deputies, who seized every electronic device they could find, including the Andersons' childrens' laptop.Larpenter has reached a settlement in the civil suit filed against him by Jennifer and Wayne Anderson, whose home was raided by Larpenter's deputies in 2016 after Jennifer blogged critically about the sheriff."I think the sheriff's finally learned that he can't bully people and violate people's constitutional rights," Wayne, a Houma police officer, told local station WWLTV. "In our case, he stepped on the wrong people's constitutional rights because we knew our rights. Hopefully, he thinks twice the next time he gets his feelings hurt." If Larpenter is going to think twice, it will be because a federal court -- in no uncertain terms -- told him he travelled far outside Constitutional confines and the boundaries of his job to harass a critic. The decision opened with this memorable line:Some qualified immunity cases are hard. This case is not one of them. It went on from there to explain there was no legal precedent that offered cover for his actions, pointing out no reasonable law enforcement officer could possibly believe abusing a statute already found unconstitutional could possibly be Constitutional.The Andersons have already received $50,000 from Terre Bonne Parish for its participation in this debacle. The amount of Larpenter's settlement is still undisclosed.Despite all of this, there's been no action taken by Terre Bonne Parish to punish Sheriff Larpenter for his actions. This will hopefully be corrected. $50,000 has already been transferred from the parish to the Andersons for his 1st and 4th Amendment violations, and it's unclear who will actually be paying for the most recent settlement. Someone who thinks they can use the powers granted to them by constituents to engage in foolhardy witch hunts against critics can't be trusted to impartially handle the job of law and order.
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posted at: 12:01am on 14-Sep-2017
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Chicago Bears Back Off GoBears Hashtag Dispute Over Trademark Concern With Cal
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With the trademarking of hashtags now in full swing, it's about time some light was shone on exactly what type of trademarks are granted on them. The trademarking of hashtags isn't in and of itself perplexing, although it does cause this writer some mild annoyance. Locking up language in general is something that should be treated carefully, but doing so specifically with social media language in an ecosystem designed for proliferation and sharing is ripe for conflict. One need only look at how the Olympics treats hashtags to see this, or how big businesses will greedily "protect" the use of hashtags, no matter any actual concern about public confusion over the use of the marks. The point is, the same general problem with the practical application of trademarks is exacerbated by social media: trademarks too often aren't specific or identifying enough.Recently, an example of this has emerged on Twitter in the form of a quickly-resolved dispute between the University of California and the NFL's Chicago Bears. Cal's mascot is "the Golden Bears", you see. The Chicago Bears somewhat irritatingly staked a claim to the hashtag #GoBears, such that the Chicago Bears logo appeared every time someone used the hashtag. The University of California holds a trademark on the hashtag, however, and the school's Twitter account registered its annoyance with the Chicago team in an admittedly congenial way.
Now, to be clear, what the Chicago Bears did was both dumb and irritating. Cal's response was not overly aggressive either. The end result of all of this was that the Chicago Bears backed off and the team logo no longer appears when the hashtag is used. There's no big bad villian in this story.But we're not going to let this go without pointing out that #GoBears simply is not a source-identifying hashtag for the Cal Golden Bears. It's just not. There are a ton of teams that use some flavor of "bears" as their mascots. Here in Chicago, when someone says "go Bears!", there is no confusion as to the reference and the University of California never even enters the mind. So, instead of being a trademark designed to act as a brand identifier, instead this is simply an instance of a university locking up the term in hashtag form. It's exactly the same as what the Chicago Bears did, in other words, when it placed its logo alongside any use of the hashtag: claiming ownership and limiting the use of the term for everyone else. Given that the term is a terrible identifier of the product being discussed, it seems obvious that it never should have been granted trademark rights.
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