SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Court lets telemarketers be sued in federal court By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court is keeping telemarketers and other businesses on the hook for nuisance phone calls, letting those annoyed by the disruptions sue in federal as well as state courts. The high court's decision Wednesday involves a lawsuit claiming a debt collector harassed a man with repeated recorded calls. Marcus Mims of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he kept getting the calls from Arrow Financial Services LLC, which was trying to collect a student loan debt for Sallie Mae. He sued for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed by Congress to ban invasive telemarketing practices. Mims' lawsuit was thrown out by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that Congress did not explicitly give permission for federal lawsuits in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, although the law does say people can file in state courts. Other federal courts ruled differently and let lawsuits move forward. The high court said in a unanimous opinion that federal lawsuits are allowed under the law. "Nothing in the text, structure, purpose or legislative history of the TCPA purports to deprive U.S. district courts of the jurisdiction they ordinarily have," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court. The case now goes back to the appeals court in Atlanta. The case is Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, 10-1195. Justices uphold copyrights for once-free work By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court upheld a law Wednesday giving U.S. copyright protection to paintings by Pablo Picasso, films of Alfred Hitchcock, music from Igor Stravinsky and millions of other works by foreign artists that had been freely available. The justices said in a 6-2 decision Wednesday that Congress acted within its power when it extended protection to works that had been in the public domain. The law's challengers complained that community orchestras, academics and others who rely on works that are available for free have effectively been priced out of performing "Peter and the Wolf" and other pieces that had been mainstays of their repertoires. The case concerned a 1994 law that was intended to bring the U.S. into compliance with an international treaty on intellectual property. Without it, American artists might have found it hard to protect their work in certain countries that lacked specific copyright arrangements with the United States. The law requires people to ask permission or pay royalties before copying, playing or republishing foreign works that previously could not have been copyrighted in the United States. The court ruled in 2003 that Congress may extend the life of a copyright. Wednesday's decision was the first time it said that published works lacking a copyright could later be protected. "Neither congressional practice nor our decisions treat the public domain, in any and all cases, as untouchable by copyright legislation. The First Amendment likewise provides no exceptional solicitude for works in the public domain," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her opinion for the court, referring to a provision in the U.S. Constitution. But Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for himself and Justice Samuel Alito, said that an important purpose of a copyright is to encourage an author or artist to produce new work. "The statute before us, however, does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work. By definition, it bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works," Breyer said. University of Denver music professor Lawrence Golan was the lead challenger to the law. He said the ruling will effectively prevent orchestras in small and medium-sized cities as well as high school and university ensembles from performing works by 20th century composers such as Shostakovich and Stravinsky because it will be too expensive. Works by Mozart and Beethoven, meanwhile, remain in the public domain and will not require prohibitively expensive fees each time they're performed. "This ruling just eliminated a big chunk of the repertoire, mainly the middle of the 20th Century," said Golan, who conducts the university's Lamont Symphony Orchestra and the Yakima Symphony Orchestra in Washington. Golan, a violinist, said he had hoped to have the Yakima orchestra open its next season with a celebratory Shostakovich concert but, following Wednesday's ruling, he plans instead to feature a work by Tchaikovsky not covered by the law. Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the case because she worked on it while serving in the Justice Department. Alabama death row inmate wins new hearing over mail mix-up By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Alabama death row inmate deserves a new court hearing because his lawyers at a top-flight New York firm abandoned him, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a case one justice called "a veritable perfect storm of misfortune." The court voted 7-2 to reverse a federal appeals court ruling that cut off appeals for Cory Maples, who was convicted of killing two men execution-style in 1995. Maples missed a deadline to appeal when court notices to his lawyers at the Sullivan and Cromwell firm were returned unopened and a local court clerk took no further action. The lawyers at the prominent New York firm had been representing Maples without charge. Deadlines usually are sacrosanct at the high court, where defendants also typically are held responsible for the mistakes of their lawyers. But Maples' case is different because he is facing execution and his lawyers didn't simply err, they abandoned him, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion. "Through no fault of his own, Maples, an inmate on death row, was left unrepresented at a critical time," Ginsburg said in an opinion that also criticized Alabama for using inexperienced lawyers and paying them poorly to represent defendants in death penalty cases. But Justice Samuel Alito, who often votes against criminal defendants, said in a separate opinion that Maples' circumstances were unique. "What occurred here was not a predictable consequence of the Alabama system, but a veritable perfect storm of misfortune," Alito said Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Scalia said the court should have stuck with its usual practice of holding defendants responsible for their lawyers' mistakes. "One suspects that today's decision is motivated in large part by an understandable sense of frustration" with Alabama's refusal to waive its deadlines in this case, Scalia said in an opinion joined by Thomas. The quality of Maples' representation was an issue from the start of his case. A jury convicted him of killing two men in Morgan County in northern Alabama and sentenced him to death by a 10-2 vote. One of Maples' lawyers told jurors the defense team "may appear to be stumbling around in the dark." His legal case appeared to brighten, however, when the Sullivan and Cromwell lawyers agreed to represent him for free in his appeals. The New York-based firm has 800 lawyers and offices in a dozen cities. From December 2001 until May 2003 not much happened in the case. But then an Alabama court rejected claims that had been prepared and filed on Maples' behalf by the firm's lawyers. The court sent a notice to the lawyers, as well as a local attorney in Alabama, starting a 42-day clock for appealing the order. What neither the court nor Maples knew was that during the previous summer both lawyers had left Sullivan and Cromwell, one for a job in Europe and the other to clerk for a federal judge. "The attorneys Maples thought were vigilantly representing him had abandoned the case. They did not inform Maples or the Alabama court of this reality," Ginsburg said. The notices sent to the firm were not passed to other lawyers but were returned to Alabama. The local lawyer did nothing, thinking the New Yorkers were on the case. The court clerk likewise did nothing when the notices came back indicating the lawyers were no longer at the firm, even though the lawyers' personal telephone numbers and home addresses were in the court's file on Maples. Only after the deadline passed did Maples find out what had happened. Other lawyers at Sullivan and Cromwell tried to continue the appeal, but both state and federal courts ruled that Maples was out of luck. Wednesday's decision leaves Maples on death row with his conviction and sentence in place. But it means a court will hear his claims that his inexperienced, poorly paid trial lawyers did such a bad job on his behalf that their work violated the Constitution's guarantee of representation for criminal defendants. The case is Maples v. Thomas, 10-63. Published: Fri, Jan 20, 2012