Legal News You Can Use

By Stephen T. Holzer

LAPD will no longer impound illegals' cars

            Up until the week of March 14, when the LAPD stopped a driver without a license, the police would impound the car.  No longer.

            As it turns out, the major reason that drivers lack licenses is that these people are in the State (and the country) illegally. The police have concluded that impounding the vehicles deprives these people of the opportunity to continue to get to work and thereby deprives them of a livelihood.   In legal parlance, the police are saying that the impounds have a "disparate impact" on people living here illegally.  People stopped by LAPD who lack drivers' licenses will now be given an opportunity to call a licensed driver to come to the scene and drive the car home.

            The rationale of why this impact is unfair goes something like this:  since California does not issue drivers' licenses to people here illegally, these people have no ability to get a license and the situation is therefore beyond their control.

            Critics of the new policy argue that of course the situation is within the illegals' control--i.e., they made the choice to come here and they can make the choice to go home.  Critics also point out that drivers here illegally are not likely to have automobile insurance and that the new policy, effectively allowing them to continue to drive, penalizes people who are legally here from collecting anything from illegals who are at fault in an accident. However, these critics have no constituency within LAPD hierarchy or, for that matter, within City government as a whole; so the new policy is surely here to stay. 

            Press accounts of the new policy do not address whether the cars driven by unlicensed drivers, if not registered with the State, will be reported to the DMV in order that the DMV can follow up and demand registration fees be paid.  If the car registration requirement is not enforced, either, this lack of enforcement may become more controversial than the policy regarding the drivers themselves, because the State will presumably be losing a lot of registration-fee moneys that can ill afford to be lost with a $26 billion annual Budget deficit.

New test for State power in an environmental context

            On April 19, 2011, the Untied States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, et al.  This is a case where several States and New York City are suing energy companies for the alleged damages caused in their jurisdictions from the companies' emissions of greenhouse gases.

            California is one of the Plaintiffs--even though none of the defendant companies have facilities in California.  California is arguing that it has standing to sue the out-of-state companies because, among other in-State ills caused by the emissions at issue, the emissions are producing global warming, thus melting the Sierra snowpack earlier than normal and adversely affecting the year-round levels of the State's water supply.

            Both the energy company defendants and the federal government oppose granting

the  Plaintiff governments standing to sue; the federal government contends that emissions limits are properly up to the feds, not local jurisdictions, to regulate.  The Supreme Court's decision in the matter should come no later than the fall of this year.

Correction to last week's column

            In my column last week describing the case, Network Automation Inc. v. Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc., I described the case as follows:  "One of the competitors, 'Systems', sold its software under the trademark 'ActiveBatch'. The other competitor, 'Systems', purchased the similar name 'Active–Batch' as a keyword which, when used in a search engine such as Google or Microsoft Bing, would take the user to Network’s website rather than to Systems’ site. Systems sued under the Lanham Act, 15 U. S. C. §1114, which, broadly speaking, prohibits unfair competition in interstate commerce."  The key sentence to make sense should have read "The other competitor, 'Network'. purchased the similar name...which, when used in a search engine... would take the user to Network's website rather than to System's site."

Stephen Holzer practices law at the Encino law firm of Lewitt Hackman Shapiro Marshall & Harlan, specializing in business litigation and environmental matters, and is the Immediate Past Chair of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley.  He can be reached at sholzer@lewitthackman.com or 818-907-3299 with any questions about this column.