Sidebar by Courthouse News

Imagine stashing your hard-earned savings in a safety deposit box, only to find out the FBI has raided the place and your money is gone thanks to the controversial practice of civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to seize people's assets with little explanation. That's what happened to a number of Californians who stored their cash at U.S. Private Vaults in Beverly Hills.

Join us for this season's sixth episode as we tell their story and explore how their money got caught up in a vault at the center of a federal investigation.

The story doesn't stop there. We also hear from trucker Jerry Johnson, who also experienced civil forfeiture firsthand when his $39,500 in cash was seized by the Phoenix Police Department after he flew into the city to buy a big rig. It took years and help from the Institute for Justice to get his money back.

Special guests:

• Linda Martin
• Benjamin Gluck, an attorney with Bird Marella
• Steve Welk, a former assistant U.S. attorney
• Jeni Pearsons
• Dan Alban, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice
• Jerry Johnson
• Bob Belden, an attorney at the Institute for Justice

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

A note: this episode contains language that might make you or your nana blush. 

Pull up a chair as we bring you into the comedy club and beyond. Laughter may be the best medicine, but how does it hold up in court? Over the decades, courts carved out clear First Amendment protections for comics facing criminal obscenity and parodists taken a little too seriously. While the past informs the present, the rare joker can still find himself at the wrong end of the law over a Facebook post.

In our fifth episode this season, we break down how certain words are OK under the eyes of the law, courtesy of the infamous Lenny Bruce obscenity trials. We also delve into cases like Jerry Falwell's defamation lawsuit against Hustler magazine and the challenges of navigating social media and free speech. Spoiler alert: the First Amendment is not always so cut and dry, causing some parodists to find out the hard way that it does not protect all speech, funny or not.

Join us as we navigate the often amusing and sometimes controversial world of jokes and their legal consequences.

Special guests:

• Waylon Bailey, heavyweight boxer from Forest Hill, Louisiana.
• Douglas Linder, professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
• James Flynn, managing director at Epstein Becker Green
• Caroline Grace Brothers, an attorney with the Institute for Justice
• Anthony Novak, parodist from Parma, Ohio  
• Mike Gillis, lead writer for The Onion

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Blue laws. They are quirky and annoying outdated restrictions on activities to ensure Sunday is a day of rest and worship. Some go beyond dictating when you can or cannot get a drink, and sometimes they leave you scratching your head wondering, why in the world are they still on the books?

In this season's fourth episode, we dive into the history and impact of the laws. We explore the story of a Brooklyn nightclub suing New York for refusing to issue a special event permit for extended hours on New Year's Eve and the ongoing debate surrounding blue laws and their place in modern society. And we also look at the upside: how these laws give some workers the reprieve they need from a long work week.

Prepare for a joyride through a legal antique shop, just hope the lawman doesn't catch us!

Special guests:

• Polina Buckley, owner of nightclub Eris Evolution
• Jonathan Corbett, a civil rights attorney
• Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 60 million American households have pets. That is a ton of good boys and girls out there. But have you ever stopped and wondered about the laws that define pet ownership? Are there specific pets that you can't own where you live? How regulated is the pet trade? And what about exotic animals, where the sale and trade of such creatures is a state-by-state issue?

In this episode, we break down the wild and wooly world of pet law  —  from the protections granted (or not so much) in the Animal Welfare Act to the effect that Netflix's breakout pandemic hit "Tiger King" may have had on getting the Big Cat Public Safety Act passed and what's next for regulating primate ownership in the U.S.

And it's not just big mammals that need to be regulated to stop wreaking havoc on communities, but also pythons and feral cats. In Florida, the Burmese python population has exploded so much that the state has declared open season on them allowing them to be hunted year-round without a license or permit. And nationwide, the songbird population has declined by drastic numbers due to the skilled hunting of cats.

Special guests:

• Kate Dylewsky, assistant director of government affairs at the Animal Welfare Institute
• John Goodwin, senior director of the Stop Puppy Mills campaign at the Humane Society of the United States
• Tim Pylate, executive director at Armand Bayou Nature Center
• Zandra Anderson, animal law attorney

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Heads up for listeners: this episode contains explicit language. 

When legal battles come down to damages, most consider the final judgment to show who won the game and by how much. But in a highly specialized area of law, that judgment is just the beginning when the losing team refuses to pay. 

In our second episode this season, we introduce you to a few judgment enforcement attorneys, a small specialized group that only numbers in the dozens. Judgment enforcers are lawyers expected to file writs, subpoenas and anything of the like with the courts. But they are also private detectives, investigating where debtors hide their money. 

On the other side, Alki David. Born into a shipping family that owned Coca-Cola bottling plants, David has had a series of businesses himself, including a modeling agency, a video streaming website, and a marijuana company with boxer Mike Tyson called Swissx. He lives in a $20 million Malibu beach house, but not for long due to a court order to seize that house to pay for a sexual harassment judgment against him. 

Special guests:

• Joseph Chora
• Jay Adkisson
• Ron Slates

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Welcome to season three of Sidebar! You'll want to strap in while we bring you closer to the stars as new technology and more investors bring us deeper into space. Science fiction is rapidly becoming science fact. One thing rarely discussed in your favorite sci-fi movies is the laws that govern outer space.

If billions of dollars, dozens of political manifesto and decades of Trekkie dreams come to fruition, there is nothing protecting man's interstellar impression. Even Neil Armstrong's footprint on the moon could go unprotected.

And what about all that space junk? Thousands of active satellites, inactive satellites, pieces of rockets, debris and uncategorized things are out there, floating around our planet. All are governed by little more than the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. 

Special guests:

• Michelle Hanlon, co-director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi
• Kojiro Fujii, attorney at Nishimura + Asahi in Japan and executive committee member at Nishimura Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
• Skip Smith, space law attorney at Sherman & Howard
• Michael Dodge, associate professor of space studies at the University of North Dakota
• Kelli Kedis Ogborn, vice president of space commerce and entrepreneurship at Space Foundation
• Avishai Melamed, graduate student in Cornell University's Department of Government

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Season three of Sidebar, a podcast from Courthouse News, kicks off just around the corner. Join our hosts and reporters as they take you around the nation to break down lawsuits, the law and how they impact you and the life you live. Follow us on Twitter @SidebarCNS and www.courthousenews.com for more.

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

While some aspects of 2022 felt like a return to easier, simpler days, the news coming out of courthouses across the country did not stop.

In this episode, we look at the year's most memorable trials: the ones that made us laugh, the ones that made us cry and the ones that made us stop and question how we got here.

We take you back to the Alex Jones defamation trials in Texas and Connecticut, which garnered enormous damages for the family members of Sandy Hook victims and swamped our social media feeds. Jones wasn't the only right-winger to see his day in court: members of the Oath Keepers were held accountable for seditious conspiracy for their parts in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and in Michigan, a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, went bust.

It was also a big year for celebrity trials. R&B singer R. Kelly's child abuse conviction in a Chicago courtroom, film producer Harvey Weinstein's second sexual assault trial, a jury deadlocking on rape charges against "That '70s Show" actor Danny Masterson, and a certain defamation trial involving movie stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. The headlines didn't stop as trial after trial captured the attention of readers and reporters. 

Come on in, settle down and let us bring you back through the year as we take you through these cases and more until we are back in 2023.

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Bounty hunters. Figures from folk tales, fantasy and reality TV; free agents that work as an extension of the law. Whatever comes to mind, this latest chapter in vigilante justice is shaking things up even more at a polarized time in the country.

The enaction of Texas's Senate Bill 8 allows private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who provides or helps someone attain an abortion, with a possible award of at least $10,000 per lawsuit. Since then, California has passed a law modeled on Texas, allowing private citizens to sue gun law violators. 

How likely are they to catch on in the future?

These sorts of citizen enforcement laws aren't totally new, but the way SB 8 has played out is a lot different than a hired hand chasing after a bank robber who skipped town on bail.

What does it mean to put this kind of power into the hands of ordinary people who end up selecting themselves to take up the cause of policing or surveilling others' decisions?

We talked to experts in our penultimate episode to explore the implications of SB 8 and what it could mean for other constitutionally protected rights. And, to really understand what can happen with these laws, we go back in time to some of the darkest chapters in U.S. history: the enforcement of slavery and Jim Crow laws.

Special guests:

• David Noll, law professor at Rutgers Law School
• John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life
• Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the ACLU and director of its Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Pour yourself a hot drink, settle in beside the fire and get ready for a hauntingly good time as we bring you four chilling tales just in time for Halloween.

In our first chapter: McKamey Manor, arguably the scariest haunted house in operation, with an even scarier 40-page liability waiver. Among the things that you agree to possibly experience? Medieval torture devices. Nails removed from their nail beds. You may be subjected to extreme temperatures or have your head enclosed in a box with bees and wasps. These experiences aren't enough to stop over 20,000 fright seekers from joining the waitlist.

Next up on the demon docket: Stambovsky v. Ackley, also known as the Ghostbusters ruling. A man bought a house in Nyack, New York, that turned out to be so haunted that not only did he get out of his purchase, but the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court found that, "as a matter of law, the house is haunted."

A copyright case to turn your blood cold: the battle to keep "Dracula" out of the public domain and the classic silent film "Nosferatu" out of homes. Eventually, the fight landed before a German judge who ordered all remaining copies of “Nosferatu” to be burned, but it was too late — the movie and the infamous vampire live on.

We finish our tour of scary stories with one steeped in the occult: Mark Twain's return from the grave. Or, alleged return. Two mediums, Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola V. Hayes, claimed to speak with the spirit of Mark Twain. The famous storyteller supposedly tasked them with recording his next novel, "Jap Herron: A Novel Written From the Ouija Board.”

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens. 

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.