In Black Car Assistance Corp. v. City of New York, Justice Carol E. Huff of the Civil Branch of the Supreme Court, New York County, ruled Tuesday dismissing a lawsuit by livery cab owners against the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s (TLC) pilot program enabling riders with smartphones to summon yellow cabs for pick-up. Fares could also be paid electronically through the app. The program was adopted by the TLC in December 2012.

Livery-cab companies and black-car owners argued that the program would cut into their business of pre-arranged rides with customers. They also argued that the program could be discriminatory against elderly riders because they tend to lack smartphones. But New York State Supreme Court Justice Huff found the plaintiffs’ arguments without merit writing “Any experiment to determine whether an e-hail program will work in New York City would require extensive participation to determine, for example, effects on street-hail availability and whether there would be sufficient numbers of participating taxi drivers to meet demand.”

This decision is a victory for all the riders who want to decide for themselves what technologies and services they want to use,” said TLC Commissioner and former Brooklyn Law School faculty member David Yassky. “The market will ultimately decide which apps rise or fall and we have an obligation to give the riding public that choice. Thanks to today’s ruling, they have that choice.”

The ruling removes a big hurdle for the TLC and the Bloomberg administration whose proposals to reform the taxi industry have faced obstacles in the courts. In June 2012, Judge Arthur F. Engoron of the Civil Court of the City of New York, New York County issued a temporary restraining order in Taxicab Service Association v. The State Of New York to block their proposed outer-borough street hail plan which would have allowed 18,000 livery cabs to take street hails in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan. Two months later, Judge Engoron issued an opinion invalidating the state law that permitted the street hail plan on the grounds that its passage required “home rule” approval by the New York City Council aksing the Legislature to act on an issue concerning New York City. The case is now pending before the New York Court of Appeals. The TLC website states that the city currently has 3,237 yellow medallion cabs. A NY Times article reported that the cost of medallions hit a record high in 2011 when two were sold for $1,050,000 each. 

In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress has a post titled Official, Authenticated, Preserved, and Accessible: The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act about UELMA. This model legislation was drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws for state legislatures can adopt to designate their online legal materials as official. The intent behind UELMA is the authentication, preservation and permanent public accessibility to the most basic state-level digital primary legal resources, namely “state constitutions, session laws, codified laws, and administrative rules with the effect of law” by state actors designated as “official publishers” to carry out the provisions of the Act in those instances where state governments are delivering such legal materials in electronic formats.

The blog post states that: “Digital technology makes documents easy to alter or copy, leading to multiple non-identical versions that can be used in unauthorized or illegitimate ways. Unfortunately, the ease of alteration has introduced doubt in users’ minds about the authenticity of many of the digital documents they encounter (…)” “While not proscribing any particular preservation or authentication method or technology, the law establishes a digital preservation framework for official electronic legal materials moving forward.” “If legal material defined by the act is published only electronically it must be designated ‘official’ and meet the requirements of the act. If there is a print version of the legal material, an official publisher may designate the online version ‘official,’ but the requirements of the act to authenticate, preserve, and provide access must be met. Once designated ‘official,’ the Act requires the legal materials be:

• Authenticated, by providing a method to determine that it is unaltered;
• Preserved, either in electronic or print form; and
• Accessible, for use by the public on a permanent basis.”

The Brooklyn Law School Library New Books List for April 17, 2013 has 53 items including works on patent law, trial practice, constitutional law, same-sex marriage in Latin America, divorce settlements, wrongful convictions, and the right of privacy. BLS Faculty members can request a book by clicking on the “Faculty Book Request” tab in the SARA Catalog above the search box to submit a request. BLS Students can go to the open shelves to locate books and check them out at the circulation desk.

Because success in every law school course requires that students acquire and become expert at applying a set of skills that can be taught throughout the course, law professors and students may want to review David Nadvorney and Deborah Zalesne’s Teaching to Every Student: Explicitly Integrating Skills and Theory into the Contracts Class (Call #KF801.Z9 N337 2013). This guide aims to help professors modernize the curriculum and teach essential academic skills for case reading, note taking, and case briefing, as well as legal reasoning skills such as issue spotting and fact analysis, all within the curriculum of a first-year contracts course. The authors identify doctrinal units and the assigned cases that lend themselves to teaching each specific skill. Each chapter provides background on the role that each skill plays in legal analysis and its importance for law school exam writing, the bar exam, and practice. The chapter then suggests ways in which specific contracts cases can be used to teach that skill, and offers in-class and take-home writing exercises that include teaching notes. The book includes an entire section on teaching students to recognize different theoretical perspectives in judicial opinions and to notice the role of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation in judicial decision making. It includes an annotated sample syllabus, lesson plans, and a 35-page appendix of cases.

This April, members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are participating in consultations to choose a new Director-General of WTO.  The final candidates for WTO Director-General are:

Mari Elka Pangestu (Indonesia)
Tim Groser (New Zealand)
Roberto Carvalho de Azevedo (Brazil)
Taeho Bark (Republic of Korea)
Herminio Blanco (Mexico)

One of these candidates will be the new leader of the WTO before the December 2013 WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali. The candidates’ statements to the WTO General Council and videos of their press conferences are available at: WTO members meet the DG candidates.

Three of the finalists (Pangestu, Groser & Bark) also answered questions posed by a policy center, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.

Heads-up international trade researchers: a key enhancement is coming to TradeLawGuide.  This database is a highly useful tool for identifying pertinent WTO agreements and jurisprudence.  By summer 2013, there will be an annotated version of GATT 1994 available in TradeLawGuide.  Through TradeLawGuide, one can search annotated WTO agreements (by article of the agreement or by keywords) to identify relevant WTO jurisprudence.  One can then use TLG’s Jurisprudence Citator, review Dispute Settlement Body minutes, and scan pending WTO jurisprudence to complete the research process.

Feel free to ask me how to use TradeLawGuide and other WTO research tools.

Bar exam study passes will go on sale on Monday, May 20, 2013 at 9:00am at the first floor reference desk.  Passes are $50.00 each for non-BLS graduates unless the school the person graduated from charges more than $50.00 to BLS graduates.  In that case, the fee will be equal to the amount their school charges.  Bar study fees may be paid by cash, check or money order.  Wireless access is available for guests; however, computer lab access and printing are not available to guests.

For BLS graduates wanting to study at other law school libraries, as soon as we have information about their bar study fees and policies, we will post it here.

The Library’s Crea Reading Room will be closed on Friday, April 12th, from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm.

Sorry for the inconvenience.