The relative ease of electronic delivery allows bullies to say mean things about others instantly and oftentimes, anonymously.  One may think that vicious comments communicated via a text message or e-mail is of little significance, but the effects of cyber-bullying are very damaging, especially to teenagers.  A recent New York case noted:

With changes in technology, the Internet has become the venue where widespread hurtful bullying is inflicted by and on young people. See Jan Hoffman, As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catch-up, N.Y. Times, Dec. 5, 2010, at A1 (examining the widespread nature of bullying on the Internet and difficulties schools have in stopping it); Schwartz, supra (discussing the suicides of three teens as a result of online bullying).

T.K. v. New York City Dept. of Educ., 779 F.Supp.2d 289, 299 (E.D.N.Y.,2011)

According to an article from The Daily News Journal, forty-three percent of teenagers are cyber-bullied per year.  Many teenagers experience negative effects from these statements, including depression and low self-esteem.  2011 WLNR 24052782.  As noted above, suicide is an extreme, but unfortunately not uncommon, consequence of cyber-bullying.  In September 2010, Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University, committed suicide after his roommate spied on him and another man with a webcam.  Other well-known cases that resulted in suicide include Megan Meier and Phoebe Prince.

RESEARCH REFERENCES

50-State Survey: Legislatures are starting to pay more attention to this issue.  Forty-eight states have anti-bullying laws and about thirty-eight of those have some mention of electronic harassment.  Eleven states specifically mention cyber-bulling.  Check out the  50-state survey (pdf) from the Cyberbullying Research Center.

Recommended Query for the Common Law: Try the followng terms and connectors / advanced query on Westlaw or WestlawNext:

adv: (bully! /s internet cyber computer electronic text-message! cell-phone “social media”) cyber-bully!

We ran this search in all state and federal jurisdictions on WestlawNext:

Much of the new code falls under the category of  “anti-harassment.”  To broaden this query, add harass!:

adv: (bully! harasss! /s internet cyber computer electronic text-message! cell-phone “social media”) cyber-bully!

We also narrowed the search to Causes of Action (COA) and found no results.  So, we targeted headnotes in the case law:

HE((bully! /s internet cyber computer electronic text-message! cell-phone “social media”) cyber-bully!)

As it turns out, there’s just one case:

Insofar as the Plaintiff’s counsel suggestion that the posts constitute cyberbullying, the Courts of New York do not recognize cyber or internet bullying as a cognizable tort action. A review of the case law in this jurisdiction has disclosed no case precedent which recognized cyber bullying as a cognizable tort action.

Finkel v. Dauber, 29 Misc.3d 325, 330, 906 N.Y.S.2d 697, 702-03 (N.Y.Sup.,2010)

Recently, I watched a documentary on Netflix called “The Medicated Child”. It was a Frontline exposé on the over-medication of children for conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). According to the program, ADHD is one of many mental illnesses whose levels have steadily increased in children since the late ’90s. The program focused on two of the more common drugs used to treat ADHD –  Ritalin and Adderall. Although many parents and doctors interviewed maintained that these drugs make it much easier to deal with children with ADHD, they all agreed that very unpleasant side effects, such as sleeplessness, anxiety and loss of appetite, can be presented.

This rise in prescriptions also means an increase in litigation surrounding this issue. For example, several failure to warn cases have been instituted against Ciba-Geigy, the maker of Ritalin. In one of these cases, a child’s parents sued because they claimed that the manufacturer of the drug and the child’s physician failed to warn them that Ritalin could cause Tourette’s Syndrome. The court ruled that Ritalin was an “unavoidably unsafe product”, but the defendants would only be held to a negligence standard rather than a strict liability standard and found for the defendants Witherspoon v. Ciba-Geigy, 1986 WL 2138.

Another case against Ciba-Geigy was a class action lawsuit claiming that the manufacturer failed to warn of certain side effects of Ritalin. Because the plaintiffs were not able to show that their children experienced any of these side effects, the case was dismissed for failure to state a claim Hernandez v. Ciba-Geigy 200 F.R.D. 285.

  In addition to the product liability cases, ADHD medications have also come up in cases involving educational matters. These types of claims are usually based on section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). One of the earlier cases, Valerie J. v. Derry Cooperative School District, 771 F.Supp. 483, involved an instance where a 12 year old boy’s parents did not agree with the school’s requirement that their son take Ritalin before being given a specialized educational plan called an “Individual Educational Plan” or IEP. The parents prevailed because the court ruled that a child could not be forced to take medication without parental consent.

To get a better idea of the legal trends surrounding this topic, look at the following searches:

WESTLAWNEXT

Content: All State & Federal

Search: ritalin or adderall and hyperactivity and children or adolescents

WESTLAW

Database: FILING-ALL,BRIEF-ALL,JV-ALL

Search: RITALIN ADDERALL /p A.D.D. A.D.H.D. /p CHILD MINOR YOUTH INFANT ADOLESCENT TODDLER & side-effect

Database: ALLCASES

Search – RITALIN ADDERALL /100 A.D.H.D. “ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER” /150 CHILD MINOR YOUTH INFANT ADOLESCENT TODDLER % ti(commonwealth people u.s. “united states”) sy,di(child-custody divorce)

 Database: TP-ALL

Search: RITALIN ADDERALL /100 A.D.H.D. “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” /150 CHILD MINOR YOUTH INFANT ADOLESCENT TODDLER

According to an article in the New York Times (2011 WLNR 13207962), on September 28, Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn of the Northern District of Alabama upheld significant portions of a controversial immigration law passed by the Alabama legislature this year.  Although Alabama is not the only state to pass such legislation in the last few years—Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and most notably Arizona have shared the limelight as states where harsh immigration laws have been passed—its law has been described as the most extreme so far. See AL LEGIS 2011-535.

Among the more objectionable aspects of Alabama’s law are its requirements that schools and businesses partake in the policing of illegal immigrants.  For example, public schools are required to determine the immigration status of their students as well as that of their families and report this information to the state.  And businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants now will operate under the threat of losing their licenses.  The law also makes it a crime to help an illegal immigrant—which puts churches and other charitable institutions at risk. 

The law has many supporters, to be sure, but its opponents have vociferously challenged the constitutionality of the law’s provisions.  The Justice Department filed a suit to enjoin enforcement of the law (11-cv-02746).  The American Civil Liberties Union sued Alabama declaring the new immigration law unconstitutional (11-cv-02484).  Because of the law’s effect on Good Samaritans, a group of four religious leaders, including an Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop and bishop, has filed yet another suit to block the law (11-cv-2736).

The judge’s ruling is by no means the final say on this issue.  Many of the civil rights groups and other plaintiffs are already preparing their appeals of this decision.  What have other courts been saying on this issue?  I did this search in ALLFEDS on Westlaw and got 1390 results:

  SY,DI,PR,HG,BG(“BEASON-HAMMON ALABAMA TAXPAYER AND CITIZEN PROTECTION ACT” IMMIGRAT! & PRE-EMPT! CONSTITUTIONAL!) & da(last 3 years)

As you can imagine, this is quite a hot topic in the news as well.  Try the following search in Major Newspapers (NPMJ):

IMMIGRAT! /5 LAW RULE STATUTE REGULATION /P CONSTITUTIONAL! PRE-EMPT!

To see a list of filings related to this issue in Alabama courts, do the following search in AL-FILING-ALL:

(immigrat! & constitutional! pre-empt! & da(last 2 years) )

WestlawNext also brings up all of these same materials—just select Alabama state and federal as your jurisdiction (You can do the same in News) and type the following:

constitutionality of Alabama immigration law

Change the “sort by” box from relevancy to date and the newest decisions will appear first.