Articles Posted in Legal Subject Area Guides

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Why should Oregon (and some other states) federal District Court cases be available only to people with access to paid subscription databases such as PACER, Lexis, Westlaw, etc.?

With all the loose (i.e. uninformed) talk about “it’s all online” and PACER possibly becoming free and open (with all those unredacted documents – maybe yours?), I expected to find all judicial opinions, or at least federal court opinions (they have bigger budgets than the states) online.

I started looking for something fairly benign, like our very own Oregon federal District Court judicial opinions and found that no, U.S. District Court of Oregon cases are NOT available on a free, public website. Not on Findlaw, LexisOne, PLoL, Justia, or anywhere else. You might be able to find a few selected cases, but not an official database (and authentic) with a complete sequence of up-to-date cases, searchable or otherwise.

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The list of Oregon law blogs is growing. Check out Justia’s Oregon Law Blogs list and my own sidebar list of Oregon law blogs. Neither is absolutely complete and non-Oregon bloggers also write about Oregon law.

I recently added to my sidebar list the NW HOA Law Center, which has an excellent blog where lawyers write detailed posts on condo and HOA legal issues.

One easy way to track blog posts on Oregon law is to go to the Justia Blawg Search, type in the word Oregon, and then click on Sort By Date (upper-right hand of screen).

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It takes skill to navigate a website, especially one chock-full of information and one under (re)construction.

You might think that if you go to OJD Judicial Opinions and then select Tax Court Magistrate Division that you’ll get the Tax Court Magistrate Opinions. But you don’t! At least not really, not yet, and not all of them in a nifty database. For that you’ll have to go to a different OJD Tax Court database, where you will find Oregon Tax Court cases back to 1999/2000.

We all have migration to new website issues to contend with, just as we did when we had to contend with print resources that changed format from loose-leaf, to bound, to legal size, to letter size, etc. It keeps us on our toes.

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Hard on the heels of my last post on legislative drafting, we have another story and example:

OLCC revisits restriction on happy hour ads, by Bill Graves, The Oregonian, August 20, 2009

Excerpt: ‘… The happy hour restriction annoys restaurants and bars and frustrates state officials who question whether it’s effective and find it difficult to enforce.

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Naught vs. Naughtiness: The OLR blog is not prudish, but spelling out certain words on the Internet attracts attention from unwanted quarters, e.g. spammers and other undesirables, so forgive my word replacement choices – it is for my own sanity.

This quote, in this article, Ashland city attorney to examine nudity ban (by the Associated Press, August 20, 2009) caught my attention:

“…Oregon does not have any laws restricting nudity or have a crime of indecent exposure. Instead, people can be arrested for public indecency, but that requires sexual arousal.

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Take a look at the Lane County Law Library Index to Legal Research Guides. It’s excellent and will just get better and better. They link to useful legal research guides from Northwest law libraries:

· Adoption
· Oregon Administrative Rules
· Bankruptcy
· Obtaining Birth Certificates
· Border Crossing Guide
· How to Find Oregon Appellate Court Briefs
· Consumer Information/Protection
· Criminal Law and Procedure in Oregon
· Debt Collection–Creditor’s Rights
· Foreclosure, Repossession and Liens
· Oregon Forms
· Landlord/Tenant
· How To Find A Lawyer In Oregon
· Oregon Legal Ethics
· Researching Oregon Legislative History
· Oregon Legislative Records
· Medical Malpractice Issues: Research Sources
· Name Changes in Oregon
· Using the Oregon Revised Statutes
· Finding Public Records in Oregon
· Small Claims Court and Procedures
· Traffic Violations

And, if you’re a Northwest law librarian with a legal research guide not included in this list, let the Lane County Law Librarian know!

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Finding the history of a judicial opinion or a statute is relatively straightforward, if only because we do that research so often. This is not the situation when researching the history of a regulation or other administrative rule, especially at the state level.

Also, most of the time we’re looking to update the law (regulation, case, or statute), that is finding out how the particular law reads today, not what it said 10 years ago or how it got to be what it is now, that is, what happened x years ago that made the rule change to what it is now.

So, how do you find the history of an Oregon administrative rule?

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Lots of people clip coupons, swallow pills, or spend hours scanning the “over-the-counter pharmacy” shelves at the store, without doing their homework first. How do you know that product is safe or if you really want that one rather than another one (or none at all)?

Consumer, or shopping, homework doesn’t just mean reading the ads or looking for “reviews” on the web. How do you know those reviews are for real? Who is comparing the product and to what? Is the price offered one that give you “good value?”

For example, the latest issue of Consumer Reports (September 2009) has articles that will definitely save you money and maybe your life or your health, your financial and your physical health.

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In the late 70’s through 1980’s Oregon county counsel attorneys prepared formal opinions on significant issues, sort of like Oregon Attorney General opinions. These opinions were open to the public, but used infrequently because many were soon out of date and potentially misleading to those who didn’t work with these sorts of documents on a regular basis.

If you need a particular county counsel opinion, ask a staff member in your county counsel’s office. They may have a list or an index of their opinions.

These “formal” opinions are different from other written memos, analysis, etc. that county counsel attorneys write. The latter are generally covered by the attorney-client privilege unless the client waives it. In most cases the client does use it publicly and waives – but that is determined on a case by case basis.

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The Pacific Northwest Paralegal Association (PNPA) is offering this course:

An ethics program, Confidentiality: A Responsibility of Legal Staff, presented by Beverly Michaelis, JD, of the Professional Liability Fund. The registration form is available at http://www.blogger.com/www.pnwpa.org. The registration deadline is Friday, August 14th, 2009.

(Always confirm date and time shortly before any scheduled event).

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