Published on:

By

A family in Johnson County, Kansas has opened a case in federal court against the County, its Sheriff and seven deputies after some stunning events in 2012. The Harte family had their home raided in the early hours of the morning by a SWAT team searching for marijuana. The raid had been orchestrated for over seven months after officers noted Robert Harte making a purchase from a hydroponics store. After searching through the Harte family’s trash and finding a substance they believed to be marijuana the officers put plans for the raid into motion, and raided the family’s house on April 20, 2012 at 7:30 in the morning as the family was preparing for work and school.swat7-300x169

The Harte Family’s Case

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Lancaster, Ohio has recently put a temporary halt on field testing for drugs when examining a crime scene. This is in response to an incident reported in Connecticut last September, where 11 SWAT officers were all sickened after conducting a raid on a home. The officers threw a “flash-bang” device with the intent to stun anyone inside of the home, but instead, the explosion caused a high degree of fentanyl on a nearby table to go airborne.fentanyl1-300x168

Fentanyl is described by the CDC as a “rapid-acting opioid” that can alleviate pain without causing a loss consciousness. The drug can depress the central nervous system as well as a person’s respiratory functions. It is considered to be 80 times more potent than morphine, which is used as a medical anesthetic, and at least 100 times more potent than heroin. The drug, however, is not classified as a having a medicinal use, and is known only as a drug of abuse. When ingested, the drug severely inhibits a person’s ability to function. Fentanyl can be particularly dangerous because it can be absorbed through a variety of ways, including inhalation, oral ingestion, and even skin contact. It is classified as a Schedule I drug on both the federal and New Hampshire Drug Schedules.

Limiting Officer Interaction With Fentanyl

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Often when confronted with divorce, people fear the ugly divorces popularized by Hollywood films like the 1989 box-office hit The War of the Roses.  In that film, Danny DeVito, Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas give us a front-row seat to the worst of the divorce process and show an epic battle where spouses battle to “win” their divorce at all costs.   That film has become popular shorthand reference for today’s most bitter divorce battles. divorced-1

But now, many in Hollywood are showing a much better picture.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

It has been said that the wheels of justice turn slowly. Never more true than for people who are anxiously waiting to be divorced.   Many people going through a divorce just can’t get the process behind them fast-enough. They want to start dating again, and they don’t want to be celibate while they wait.divorce

Recently, the New Hampshire Supreme Court addressed the issue of adultery during the marriage and that which later occurred in a new relationship after the petition for divorce had been filed. For many, that case provided no comfort. In Ross v. Ross, 169 N.H. 299 (2016), the Court was confronted with a situation (not all that uncommon) where almost 1l months after the petition for divorce was filed the husband began a sexual relationship with his new girlfriend.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Imagine minding your own business at home, when suddenly, an explosion rocks your apartment complex. This shocking situation was a reality for the residents at an apartment complex in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. this past August. The explosion resulted in a fire that destroyed most of the apartment complex and caused many who were in the building at the time to fear for their lives. The explosion claimed the lives of seven people, and cause injury to over 40 people, in addition to the destruction of what many were calling home.apartmentfire

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Imagine trusting a newborn infant in the hands of paramedics, only to have the child suffer third degree burns during transport. This is the chilling tale of one Idaho family, who has opened a lawsuit against the city of Rexburg over the incident. The Porter family was home one evening, when something unexpected happened. Jenise Porter delivered the unexpected birth of her child, Londyn Porter. Paramedics were called in to rush Londyn to the hospital. What the Porter family expected was a safe trip for their newborn daughter. What happened caused them to take legal action against the city.warninggraphicd-300x168

The Porter Family’s Case

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Silver City, New Mexico was recently the site of a grizzly series of events that resulted in the murder of one woman, Nikki Bascom, and a subsequent suicide of the perpetrator, Mark Contreras, a police captain. This shocking and sad event was the culmination of a number of prior incidents involving Contreras’s repeated and bold harassment of Bascom following the end of their relationship.Negligence-legal-definition-258x300

Bascom is survived by two children, now living with Bascom’s mother, Karri Dalton. Dalton has since begun a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Bascom’s children. Dalton claims that neglectful policing led to the eventual murder of Bascom at the hands of Contreras. The case is against Silver City’s police department, citing the departments repeated demonstrations of ignoring Contreras’s history of violence and allowed his disruptive behavior to continue, and eventually allowed him to kill Bascom.

The Case

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

To succeed on a personal injury claim, you need to show that the person you are suing had a responsibility to keep you safe, did not follow through on that responsibility, and this caused your injury. One of the trickiest parts of a personal injury claim is proving that the person who hurt you had a responsibility to keep you safe, or at least a duty not to hurt you. While this is often difficult, there are also situations where it is quite easy, such as when someone was per se negligent. negligence

Negligence Per Se

There are many laws and regulations that dictate what we can and cannot do in the course of our daily lives. These laws exist to keep everyone safe by dictating how basic things are done in the United States. By acting uniformly in this way, we ensure that other people are not needlessly put in harm’s way.

These laws basically set a minimum standard of care for other people that we need to uphold.

Therefore, whenever someone violates one of these laws and ends up hurting you, it can be used as proof that they were negligent. This is because violating these laws is negligence per se, or intrinsically negligent.

This works by reading the law as setting the responsibility that had to be upheld, and then the violation of that law as proof that it was not.

An Example: Driving on the Right Side of the Road

An excellent, and all too common, example of how negligence per se works is New Hampshire’s law that requires drivers to keep to the right side of the road. Whenever someone veers over the center line and causes a car accident, they were likely per se negligent. The minimum standard of care that they had to uphold was to drive on the right side of the road. Crossing over the center line and causing an accident, therefore, is proof that they were not driving on the right side.

Implications of Negligence Per Se

Whenever there is a law, regulation, or statute that dictates how people should act, and then someone violates that rule and someone gets hurt from the violation, it makes it easier to get compensation from them in a personal injury lawsuit. Without having to argue as much over whether they had a responsibility to keep you safe and whether they violated that responsibility, the case becomes much more straightforward.

Personal Injury Attorneys at Tenn And Tenn

Even though negligence per se is a convenient concept for personal injury cases, it still often takes an experience personal injury attorney to make sure that it works properly. This is why hiring the personal injury attorneys at Manchester’s own Tenn And Tenn law firm is one of the best ways to ensure that you receive Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Many of the people who get arrested for a crime in New Hampshire every day have never been arrested before. Having never been thrown into the criminal justice system, these people do not fully know what to expect, beyond what they may have seen on TV shows or in the movies. Unfortunately, the media does not often portray the criminal justice system correctly, taking huge liberties to make things seem more dramatic than they really are.

A common source of confusion for people who have never been arrested before is how bail works, and why it exists.Bail-300x198

How Bail Works

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

New Hampshire, like all other states in the U.S., has an implied consent law that levies automatic penalties whenever someone refuses to take a blood alcohol content (BAC) test. In a 2005 survey, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had found that police requests for people suspected of driving under the influence (DUI) were refused at an astounding rate in New Hampshire. Updated statistics, however, show that New Hampshire’s refusal rate is on the decline, and is no longer top in the nation.police-breathalyzer-machine-300x210

Study Finds New Hampshire No Longer Refuses BAC Tests the Most

Back in 2005, the NHTSA wrote a report to Congress, detailing the number of times that BAC tests were refused by drunk driving suspects on a state-by-state basis. Among the 37 states that provided data on the issue, the national average refusal rate was less than a quarter – 22.4%. New Hampshire’s refusal rate, however, was far higher than any other state recorded, coming in at a surprising 81%. The state with the second highest refusal rate, Massachusetts, was only 41%, with Florida in third, at 40%.

Continue reading →