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Full-Text Articles in Law
Maine's Overburdened Law Court: Has The Time Come For A Maine Appeals Court?, Peter L. Murray
Maine's Overburdened Law Court: Has The Time Come For A Maine Appeals Court?, Peter L. Murray
Maine Law Review
For the entire 178 years of Maine's statehood, its Supreme Judicial Court, “sitting as the Law Court,” has served as Maine's appellate court of first and last resort for all appeals from its trial courts of general jurisdiction. Over this time span, and particularly over the last three decades, the growth in number and complexity of civil and criminal appeals has placed the Law Court under an extremely heavy burden of cases. The sheer number of the appeals which the Law Court is expected to consider and decide risks exceeding the capacity of the institution for careful, thorough, and deliberate …
State V. Brackett: Does The State Have A Right Of Appeal?, Theodore A. Small
State V. Brackett: Does The State Have A Right Of Appeal?, Theodore A. Small
Maine Law Review
In State v. Brackett, the defendant was charged with kidnapping, gross sexual assault, burglary, and criminal threatening with the use of a dangerous weapon. The State of Maine filed an in limine motion to exclude any evidence relating to the victim's past sexual behavior, including evidence that the victim may have been a prostitute sometime prior to the incident in dispute. Although evidence of a victim's past sexual behavior is generally inadmissible. The State appealed. A divided Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, declined to rule on the merits of the appeal, holding that the appeal was …
How The Law Court Uses Duty To Limit The Scope Of Negligence Liability, Paul F. Macri
How The Law Court Uses Duty To Limit The Scope Of Negligence Liability, Paul F. Macri
Maine Law Review
The element of duty is the least understood and most amorphous element of negligence. One reason that duty is not well understood is that duty analysis combines consideration of fact-specific issues of foreseeability of harm, relationship between the parties, and seriousness of injury with analysis of the public policy implications of finding a duty in the specific case, including the burden that will be placed on defendants by imposing a duty. This is a delicate balancing act for most courts. Over the last eleven years, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, has employed duty analysis in …