Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Nate The Lawyer" channel.

  1. 99%? Really, where precisely did you get that figure, because I'm pretty sure that none of the politicians running the city got 99% of the eligible voters to vote for them.
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  2. To be fair, if he had been born in America, it would have been that he's a man, and men just do that sort of thing to women.
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  3. Honestly, it appears to me that he honestly believed that fact that he was in his own home and they broke in entitled him to do anything he liked rather than something closer to the minimum amount of force necessary to protect himself. He really should have consulted with an attorney at some point in the process. It may or may not have saved the teens, but it would likely have kept him out of prison.
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  4. Squatter's rights are a way of dealing with abandoned property. If you've got a vacant lot that's been seemingly abandoned, squatters rights allow people to move in openly and treat it as if it's their property. After a period of time if the owner, or one of their agents, hasn't had them removed the ownership is transferred. Normally, this takes enough years that it's not much of a problem. This is different though, this is abusing the way that tennant rights work based on cops unwillingness to intervene in what could be a civil matter. What they should do is handle it like trespassing and burglary if there aren't any lease documents provided. That will probably lead to other issues, like forgeries, but that would itself be a felony that could include some sort of repayment of the lost rent.
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  5.  @theoverunderthinker  That's entirely possible. One of the unfortunate things about trials where one side is dead is that you don't ever get to the complete bottom of what happened. The moving the truck was a bad idea, as was darkening the basement, but neither is likely to be enough to support a 1st degree murder conviction as they were in his house. The recording and the admission though pretty much guaranteed a guilty verdict.
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  6. Yes, and that's a real problem. If the cops are called during the initial break in, that's something that they can and do arrest people for. If the cops aren't notified until after they've already moved in, they'll often try to treat it as if it's a civil matter, even if the squatter had to break and enter before changing the locks.
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  7. I'm not surprised I was almost kicked out of Western Governor's University because a couple women got upset that I was advocating for myself to receive the same services that everybody else in my program received. They even went so far as to edit out the university personnel's comments where they were making unprofessional comments about me that I was responding to in order to make it seem like I was being unreasonable. And then when I did have my hearing, they lied to me about what the consequences I was looking at were. Rather than an informal warning, they opted to include the defamatory comments in my transcript and any appeal would have gone to somebody else in the same department. Sadly, at this point, the colleges often times don't bother to set up proceedings so that a handful of people can't just rig the system to get themselves off the hook and I hope he gets the entire $110m or whatever the highest amount that the courts will allow for that type of claim.
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  8.  @carolkrone3610  So, training various war criminals in South America and supporting efforts to overthrow democratically elected governments, doesn't create an obligation? That's a weird way of looking at it. What ever happend to the pottery barn rule? You broke it, you bought it.
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  9. They're women, they're entitled to all the money that men get as well as the benefits that women generally get on top of that. I'm guessing that the settlement was an effort to buy them off so they'd shut up with the false allegations.
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  10. This isn't mercy, this is doing nothing because they might get yelled at.
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  11.  @DrFraiserCrane  If they catch somebody saying that to get out of jury duty, there's the possibility of a contempt of court charge. It's one thing if you've got a sincere, but very wrong, belief that that's OK, but jury nullification is 100% a miscarriage of justice and just means that the next defendant on a BS charge has to take the risk of being convicted in order to get the case heard. Any case where folks think nullification is appropriate is probably also one of the better cases to appeal as well.
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  12.  @CKM-gf3ik  It's worth bringing up, but I don't know how knowing another juror would lead to a conflict of interest. You'd still be barred from discussing the case outside of deliberations. When I was on a jury, two of the other jurors happened to work at the same company.
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  13.  @iandavidvillaloboswong5180  It's not absurd, he isn't going to prison for the rest of his life because he used a firearm to defend himself. He's going to prison for the rest of his life because he used excessive force in doing so. He literally admitted to using too much force, and there was a recording of him engaging in a coup de grâce as she begged for her life after having done the same to her cousin before hiding the body. That's murder, that's not self-defense.
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  14.  @thistles  Just goes to show that not all monsters get arrested.
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  15. The reason it's being debated is that they let Oscar Pistorius compete with those specialized prosthetics and insufficient research into whether or not it's an advantage. From what I recall, there were reasons that was an advantage and reasons why it was a disadvantage. Really, what ought to happen is they should move to something closer to what they do with boxing and wrestling where there are different classes based on things like the weight of the athlete. It would resolve a lot of this without having to get into the issues that come from having trans and nonbinary people competing.
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  16.  @Olsenator  That reminds me of the actor that fatally shot himself in the head with a gun full of blanks. He put the thing far too close and the discharge, without a bullet, was sufficient to kill him. The last thing we need is to have people that might not be familiar with these firearms messing with ones that an expert is supposed to have checked on a set where there's supposed to be no live rounds.
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  17. @Gary Goldstein The thing is that even if she did, then it would be a jurisdiction covering NY Marine as that would be the court that has jurisdiction over the matter in the absence of a court having jurisdiction over her or both of them. It's worth recognizing that somebody has jurisdiction over everybody and everything that goes on somewhere. There are places where the government is so weak that there's no enforcement action possible, but there's still jurisdiction there. Plus, some areas declare themselves to have universal jurisdiction over things related to their citizens. Even being in international waters, doesn't mean that you're not subject to the law, the law would be based on whatever flag the vessel is flying and where it's registered.
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  18. No, it doesn't. There are so many things that he did wrong that led to the conviction other than having and using firearms in self-defense. He went to prison because he used more bullets than the law allows and he was dumb enough to admit to doing so and providing a recording that contradicted his statement. Without the admission and the recording he probably wouldn't have been convicted. It's hard to say about the civil suit as the burden of proof is lower than it is in a criminal case.
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  19. @@theviewbot He moved the car, removed the lights in the basement and sat in wait for them to break in. He then uses more shots than necessary on the first victim, then moves and wraps the body with a tarp that was presumably already there before waiting for the second victim and then shoots her while she begs for her life. All without calling 911 one time. That is rather cold and calculated to those of us that aren't psychopaths.
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  20. They aren't supposed to. The way it's supposed to work is that they're supposed to be living there in defiance of the owner for some period of time. If they're doing it without the knowledge of the owner, that time doesn't typically count. It's supposed to be the equivalent of homesteading on somebody else's property where the owner has years during which to object and have them removed. The problem is that the police don't actually remove the people the way that they would if they were in a store. If the store owner/manager, says somebody isn't allowed to be at the store, the police will tell them to leave and if necessary arrest them. For some reason, that doesn't apply in cases like this, even if there are no documents to demonstrate that the squatter is leasing the unit.
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  21. Or do what I did last time just be honest about not being able to be fair. I didn't do it to get out of jury duty, I did it because it was the honest reality that due to the nature of the case, I would have no way of knowing whether I was being fair or not. I had already been on a different jury years earlier, so it's not like I had an inherent issue, I just am so dissociated that it wouldn't be fair to either party to have somebody that's broken bones without realizing it trying to calculate damages for physical pain.
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  22.  @milton7763  I'm not sure the distinction between race, that doesn't exist, and ethnicity, which does, is particularly relevant here.
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  23.  @charlesmurphy1510  It's common knowledge and there have been people with knowledge saying as much. You wouldn't want actors to be checking anyways as they're not required to be experts and telling dummy rounds from live rounds isn't always easy. Having a non-expert check the gun under those circumstances isn't necessarily going to make things safer. It just adds another set of hands to screw things up.
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  24.  @tony001212  That's a poor excuse. The reality is that it's much closer to 50%, but that doesn't actually help your argument. And BTW, yes, I know what hyperbole is. In this case, it's a lazy way of getting out of having to actually come up with a nuanced world view. You can just blame all the lefties, ignoring that a good chunk did not support this.
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  25.  @jordananthony6432  It's ignorant and misleading is what it is. This sort of rhetoric is not helpful in the slightest bit.
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  26.  @gawainethefirst  So, for whom do I vote if I don't want the status quo then? A candidate that is significantly worse? Because that's been working out rather well, just look at the MTGs of congress and tell me that's better.
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  27.  @slee2819  Which means that it only takes roughly 47% of the population voting for this kind of silliness in order to get it. Which is sort of the point.
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  28.  @inicolov  It's not complex, it was a stupid point and remains a stupid point. That sort of laziness doesn't really help change anybody's mind. In this case, it takes less than half the eligible voters to vote for a candidate for them to win. Rounding that up to that extent is neither informative nor useful. The fact is that there is a significant portion of the left leaning voter base that did not support these policies.
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  29.  @iandavidvillaloboswong5180  That's what forensic science is for, and if it was determined that you likely destroyed evidence due to the expectation of legal proceedings, they will add that to the list of charges. I personally think that's dumb just like it's dumb to expect somebody on trial to not lie on the stand, but I don't make the rules.
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  30. I think that's why he's not going to be expelled or have his Oscar taken away, I also would be surprised if he gets suspended just because of how many other folks would be at risk of suspension if slapping a fellow member was grounds for a suspension.
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  31.  @scudfarcus4343  Yes, and that's typical of most state laws on the matter. The issue here is that this isn't handled like trespassing. The woman that was arrested can't just come back later with a copy of the deed and have the man removed for trespassing, and probably burglary, she has to just leave it alone and file paperwork with the court.
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  32.  @thomasplummer8103  How much would you say is necessary given the degree to which the US screwed South America?
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  33.  @tomasfuchsbauer1536  TBH, that's the thing I'm curious about. We know retroactively what the verdict was, but prior to the verdict coming down that she did it intentionally, the insurance company had an obligation to put up a vigorous defense. So, I am somewhat curious as to why the other insurance company didn't have to shell out and then seek a refund from her for money that in retrospect they wouldnt' owe. It's sort of like if somebody's house burns down, the insurance would be required to pay for arson by a 3rd party, but if it turns out to be the owner or the owner paid somebody, then they wouldn't have to pay.
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  34. The problem there is that just because a lot of us vote for Democrats, doesn't mean that this is what we want. There's a number of reasons why we won't vote GOP, for example abortion, our out of control defense spending and a continued march towards no gun regulations at all. This is a minority of Democrats that go for this, they just happen to be influential and there aren't viable alternatives to either party at this point.
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  35.  @BerserkPublishing  Yep, if it were as simple as just switching parties, this wouldn't have gone on this long. The problem is that the GOP refuses to run competent and non-crazy candidates in places like San Francisco. I remember being pissed off at the Democrats years ago and specifically looking for a GOP candidate that I could vote for and even looking specifically to vote for one on the basis of not being a Democrat, they still couldn't get my vote because they were all poison pill candidates that were never going to win because they were absolute monsters. Now I only vote 3rd party if there is a candidate and against the incumbent if there is no 3rd party candidate. I don't know how long I'm going to do that, but given the negative progress that's going on in both parties right now, it's going to be a long while.
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  36. TBH, I"m not surprised. If folks are going to use software like that, they should be asking it to find cases and then looking the specific cases up and reviewing the available information. I've got gpt4all installed on my computer and I wouldn't trust it to give me a correct recipe out of my cookbooks, but I would trust it to tell me where to look for the recipe. It does a decent enough job, but I have noticed that it will make mistakes from time to time.
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  37.  @sikamaru666  Right now, no, that would take a version that's been trained on legal data and I can't imagine anybody that would be willing to take on the liability of providing such a tool to attorneys at this point. Specifically because of what happened in this case and other possible problems.
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  38. I don't think they will or should take the Oscar away, but I would expect something in the lines of a suspension or some other mediumish level of consequence. This was bad, but if they start tossing people from the academy for attacking other members, the awards would start to be rather devoid of people. Doing in publicly on live TV probably does warrant some sort of increase, but considering how many stories there are of other actors smacking each other around harder than this, I'm not sure they really want to set that precedent with this. Obviously, violence for anything other than self-defense is wrong, so there clearly need to be penalties that are substantial enough to send the message that the spoiled members of the club are not safe from punishment. Even if they do have a number of blockbusters on their IMDB profile.
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  39.  @dalepettit6799  That doesn't mean that there weren't dummy rounds in it. If you're going to film that angle of a pistol, you may well see that the gun isn't loaded if there isn't something in there, that's the whole point of having them for scenes other than when you're loading it. Shy of weighing them, I'm not sure how he'd know if they were real or not. Plus, there weren't supposed to be any live rounds on the set at all specifically to avoid having any of them wind up in the gun.
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  40.  @aaronjohnson8715  Everybody in the courthouse understands that and agrees with it, they just don't have the power to make it happen.
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  41.  @love2scoobysnack  If she's truly stateless, then the suit would likely be filed in the state where the insurance company is located. That would be the place which would have jurisdiction. Typically, you'd have to file suit where the defendant is located when there's multiple jurisdictions involved, but typically a place where either party is located can have jurisdiction.
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  42. It's worth also noting that he isn't necessarily not a murderer because he was acquitted. People keep suggesting that because he was acquitted that he's not a murderer and that's never been the case. He personally might not be a murderer as defined by the relevant bits of law, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he should be able to collect from people claiming that he's a murderer even now, as the civil standards for wrongful death are lower than for criminal ones related to homicide. There's plenty of people, like OJ Simpson, who were acquitted in a criminal case and were later found to be liable for wrongful death suits based on the same crime. People claiming that OJ is a murderer wouldn't necessarily be required to stop making the claims based on the criminal case, even though continuing to do so afterwards may not be a good idea from the point of view of a civil libel or defamation suit.
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  43.  @NickM_FirstofHisName  Yes, I'm kind of curious where else this money would come from.
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  44.  @bloodofthelamb13  There's also not a lot of roles by which other actors even have the opportunity to try. The roles get written with him in mind, and I'm not sure who moves to LA in order to act when the only roles available are already going to an established actor. In this case, there's 7 roles here and as such, pretty much guaranteed to go to at least 6 other actors that might not ever have a shot at it.
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  45.  @kittyearsheadbands8810  Honestly, if it weren't for the last century of purposeful vandalism and destruction of German culture in the US in response to WWI and then WWII, I wouldn't see anything at all wrong with it at all. But, I do take issue with people suggesting that it's somehow progressive to steal more Germanic things, as if there wasn't a period of time where we had "liberty cabbage" and "Salisbury steak" in an effort to "get the Hun." But, somehow when various white subcultures borrow things, it's cultural appropriation and wrong. Casting her as Snow White is the epitome of cultural appropriation and a little bit of self-awareness of it isnt' asking that much. Worse, there's not going to be decent roles for people of color, if all that happens is that white roles get reassigned to people with a bit more melanine in their skin. I wouldn't personally have an issue with it at all, if at some point, I thought there'd be some reckoning coming for the various racists that continue to lie about the wars. Yes, the holocaust really happened and was probably even more horrific than most people realize, but there were also tens of thousands of German civilians that were murdered by the Allies in the closing days of the war as retribution and thousands that wound up in American concentration camps in the US. Not to mention the language literally being banned for a period of time from public education. BTW, it's completely possible to think that the Nazis were evil incarnate without letting the allies off the hook for the evil deeds and ethnic cleansing that they did during that same period of time. It's a bit like the actual issue with the dwarves here where they were a fine feature of the original stories and when Disney did the animated film, but at some point, the characters should be brought to life in a way that's more nuanced and reflects that they have actual personalities beyond the one trait that inspires their naming.
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  46.  @BlackSuperman2099  You misunderstand the minstrel shows and should probably do some more research. Yes, they evolved into something quite racist, but they're based on a history that spans thousands of years back to the Greeks, if not further, when they would have men playing all the roles and using masks at various points to reflect different characters. You see the same basic thing going on in China with Chinese operas using painted masks to help convey the story. Perhaps folks should just take a chill pill and realize that nobody is in a particularly good place to be accusing anybody of racism in such a broad way.
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  47.  @SlyNine  Most people can't. I got a summons recently, it was like the 6th one and the 3rd that I was actually able to do. I'm not sure if I'll have to report, but in post-pandemic America, I just got a post card to register with the court and anytime between then and the 8th, I can be contacted by the court to report. They've got it down to the point where it's 1 day or 1 trial. But, that's still a lot for many people as they pay basically nothing. I'm fortunate that my employer will cover the difference between what I would have made and what the jury duty pays, but that's not legally required of any business. For what is one of the most important things that citizens are called on to do, it's an absolute scandal that jurors are left with no pay, I"m sure when the pay was established it was decent, but I make more in a half hour than what jury duty pays for an entire day. Last time I was on jury duty, I could easily spend more on food, if I chose to eat out, than I'd be paid.
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  48. Pretty much, that's generally how that works. If you compare the cost of employing women versus men, it tends to be more expensive to employ women than men when you consider the actual associated costs, even if you ignore fertility related treatments. Women are just more expensive.
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  49. I think these things get rather complicated and ultimately, the fix needs to start with fixing the K-12 system to ensure that all students get a quality education. College admissions to elite universities should not be a concern, as they really don't do much for the students other than set up networking opportunities. In California, one of the things you left out was that there was an increase in the number of minority students making the honor roles after they were placed in colleges that were more reflective of their actual abilities. I'd expect that you'll start to see more and more at those elite universities as well if the K-12 system gets fixed. There's also the matter of uneven home life where those with better education and more resources can better prepare their children for school, which leads to some students being behind even before their first day of kindergarten.
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  50.  @SH-jr6qt  I don't agree, but that's neither here nor there, it's going to depend upon what the jury finds, but I don't think that it's a clear cut case and decent attorneys should be able to deal with the issue. Without knowing how the rounds got into the gun and why they were even on set, it's going to be a harder case to try and win.
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