Supreme Court Case: Columbia Pictures V. Feltner

In 1991, Columbia Pictures terminated an agreement with C. Elvin Feltner, the owner of several television stations. The agreement originally stated that Feltner could broadcast episodes of "Who's The Boss," "Hart to Hart," "T.J. Hooker" and "Silver Spoons", however Feltner was late on payments, so they canceled the contract. 19 months later, Feltner was still broadcasting the shows, even after Columbia Pictures repeatedly told them to stop. Columbia Pictures sued them for copyright infringement, since Feltner no longer had the rights to the shows. In 1993 A district judge granted Columbia (represented by Henry J. Tashman and Eric M. Stahl of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP) their motion of summary judgement. At the bench trial the judge granted Columbia 8.8 million dollars in damages, which is about $20000 for each of the 440 episodes. Feltner took the case to the supreme court on the argument that a jury should decide the amount of damages that need to be paid. The court ruled in Feltner’s favor, saying that the seventh amendment does in fact grant the right to a jury trial in copyriht infringement cases. “During the trial, The irony of it is, maybe -- you may be better off if you lose, because a jury may come in with a bigger award”. This turned out to be correct. At the retrial in 1999, Tashman requested $70000 per episode in awards or 30.8 million, saying that the large amount was necessary to deter future offenses. Instead the jury upped the amount to 31.68 million, ten times the amount Feltner owed Columbia, and three and a half times the amount that the
district judge would have given them.
The article is a reflection of the seventh Amendment because It is a dispute over the rights of a defendant to have a jury trial in a specific type of civil case, and the seventh amendment is about how people have the right to a jury trial in civil cases where the amount in question is greater than 20 dollars. The article discussed a dispute between Columbia pictures and C. Elvin Feltner and the main question is whether a jury trial can be requested to decide the amount of rewards in a summarily ruled copyright infringement case.
In 1993 Christopher Simmons tied up Shirley Crook and threw her off a railroad bridge into a river. He was sentenced to the death penalty, but he took his case to the Missouri supreme court. They ruled that the death penalty could not be applied to minors, because that would violate the eighth amendment. This ruling went against a previous supreme court ruling, from 1989, where the supreme court ruled that executions were unconstitutional for people under 15, but were fine for people who were 16 or 17. However, when the case was brought to the supreme court, they overturned their own ruling, stating that the death penalty was unconstitutional for minors. The majority was written by Anthony Kennedy, and he was joined by John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter. In this opinion Kennedy acknowledged that the crime was committed by Simmons, and that it was discussed with friends prior to its commision, thus showing malice aforethought. However according to Kennedy, deciding whether a punishment is cruel and unusual is a process that must take in account the ever changing values of our society. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia all dissented, and decided to support the execution of minors. Justice Scalia stated that the Missouri court had messed up when they had decided to go against a previous supreme court ruling. He also wrote a scathing dissent stating that the ruling was against the founders beliefs that the country be run under a strict code of law. Justice O’connor also wrote a dissent, in which she stated that if the court did not have an obvious national majority opinion, the ruling should be left to the states, and that the ruling they made was simply a matter of the independent morals of the justices.
The article is a reflection of the eighth Amendment because It is about cruel and unusual punishment, a subject covered in the eighth amendment.
The article discussed a dispute between Christopher simmons and a missouri prosecutor and the main question is Whether or not the death penalty is unconstitutional for minors, and whether that decision is for the states or the federal government to
decide.

In 2006 Carol Anne Bond discovered that one of her friends, Myrlinda Haynes, was pregnant, and her husband was the father. Because Ms. Bond was a microbiologist she was able to obtain caustic chemicals and tried to use them 24 times to hurt Ms. Haynes. The feds got involved only because Ms. Bond had tampered with Ms. Haynes’ mailbox. Because she was using chemicals classified as chemical weapons, she was charged under the 1998 Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act. The matter went to the supreme court twice, the first about whether or not Bond could use the fact that the federal government may have overstepped its rights under the tenth amendment as a base for her defense. The supreme court ruled that she could, opening the door for citizens to be able to sue the federal government for tenth amendment violations; previously only states did this. The second time around, the Supreme Court was to decide whether or not this argument was correct, if the constitution allowed the federal government to charge Ms. bond with what was clearly a local offense. The court unanimously decided that the federal government had violated the tenth amendment, but they disagreed on the reason why. Many thought of this case as a chance to overturn Missouri v.s. Holland 1920, a case that involved prosecuting someone under laws related to enforcing a treaty about protecting migratory birds. This side of the court thought that the law did not apply to the prosecution of a single person on a local level, and that because of the massive amount of treaties the United States possesses, laws about them could not be applied to small state matters in general. The other justices looked at the more constitutional aspect of the matter. They thought that the constitution did not give the federal government the right to enforce treaty laws in the enumerated powers of congress. This represents a major change in the powers of the federal government, because it changes the extent to which they can prosecute based on treaty laws.
The article is a reflection of the Tenth Amendment because it involves the powers of federal v. state governments. The article discussed a dispute between Carol anne Bond and federal authorities and the main question is whether or not the federal government has the power to prosecute ordinary citizens based on federal treaty laws.