Supreme Court says that pitcher needed warning about Aluminum Bat

 Frank Osekowsky August 16, 2011

A jury had ordered Louisville Slugger company that produces a CB-13 Aluminum Bat to pay the family of 18 year old Brandon Patch $850,000.00.

The reason-the bat was defective they found. Not because it was manufacturer incorrectly but because Louisville Slugger had failed to warn that it could deliver hits at a higher velocity. The American Legion pitcher was killed by a liner to the head. A tape of the game shows that Patch had 0.376 seconds to react to the hit; experts say he needed at least 0.4.

Attorneys for Louisville Slugger tried to argue that there was no evidence the pitcher in a baseball game would observe and heed such a warning and Louisville Slugger had no duty to warn anybody other than the purchaser or user of a product.

The Montana Supreme Court said that companies have a duty to warn not just consumers of their products, but just about anybody who comes in contact with them. In the context of baseball, it seems, manufactures have a duty to warn anybody in range of a hit that an aluminum bat can impact “increased exit speed” to a baseball and that makes it dangerous, apparently more dangerous than merely speedy baseball hit off a wooden bat.

The court goes a step further and decides that such a warning would actually have some effect: No mention in the decision on whether the manufactures of wooden bats should provide a warning that their products impart “increased exit speed” compared to less popular, but eminently safer, foam-rubber bats.

Let me know what your thoughts and opinions are about this case.

Do law enforcement officers need to have a search warrant to search your cell phone during an arrest

As I was doing a research paper on searches and seizures I came across a recent California Supreme Court case involving whether or not police can search cell phones during any arrests.

First lets start with a definition of 4^th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

It states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describes the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Recently the California Supreme Court made a ruling in which they stated that a search of a defendant’s cell phone during an arrest without a search warrant was legal and constitutional.  The ruling apparently applies to the entire contents of your cell phone, including emails, passwords, voicemails and etc.

The California Supreme Court specifically ruled:

“We hold that the cell phone was “immediately associated with defendant’s persons” and that the warrantless search of the cell phone therefore was valid”.

In this case the defendant was arrested for selling Ecstasy to an undercover officer, they seized his cell phone. During interrogation, an officer searched the phone and found a text message that stated: “6 4 80” which the officer interpreted as an offer to sell 6 pills of Ecstasy for $80.

The trial text was used against the defendant in his criminal trial.  His defense attorneys attempted to have the text message evidence suppressed on the grounds that the search of the cell phone was an illegal search because there was no search warrant for the phone.

Justice Kathryn Mickle Werderer noted that the decision to permit police “to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because they device was taken from an arrestee’s person.”

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote for the majority” Objects failing under the banner of ‘closed container’ have traditionally been physical objects capable of holding other physical objects… Even the more basic models of modern cell phones are capable of storing a wealth of digitized information wholly unlike any physical objects found within a closed container.”

The only way that this issue will be solved is for the United States Supreme Court to hear this issue and make a final decision.

I look forward to hearing your comments or questions on this matter.

Frank Osekowsky

August 13^th, 2011