Missouri Injury Lawyers Blog

Changing technology was the focus of another case recently decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District. The case, arising from a fatal car accident in Mexico, Missouri, is State v. Clampitt, WD73943. At issue, was text messages the accused sent on the day of the collision and for approximately one month following the event. The trial judge, the Hon. Gary Ravens of Chariton County, suppressed the evidence, writing that "the state was eavesdropping to see if the defendant would make an admission." And the Appellate Court agreed, holding that messages sent by cell phone deserve the same long-standing Fourth Amendment privacy protections afforded to letters and phone calls.

Continue reading "Missouri Court of Appeals finds that a prosecutor could not access a month's worth of text messages sent by a suspect in a fatal car accident" »

As technology advances, the law and its application to real life events are constantly evolving. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that the Government's attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. The case, United States v. Jones, is an appeal by Antoine Jones, who was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine after police installed a GPS device on his vehicle.

The Fourth Amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fourth Amendment is implicated when there is a violation of a suspect's reasonable expectation of privacy. In this case, the Government's physical intrusion by installing the GPS device for the purpose of obtaining information without a valid search warrant violated the defendant's rights under the Fourth Amendment.

Continue reading "The U.S. Supreme Court Rules That Police Officers Must Obtain A Search Warrant Before Attaching A GPS Device to a Suspect's Vehicle" »

Damages received as a result of a lawsuit are made to compensate victims for injury. Furthermore, these damages are designed to make the victim whole again, not as a form of enrichment that should be taxed as income. This is true regardless of whether the damages were the result of personal injuries arising from a tort or some other form of legal wrong.

The earlier IRS rule was that only those damages recovered for a "tort or tort type rights" were excluded from gross income for tax purposes. Treating damages that arise from tort-type rights differently than other damages resulted in inequitable treatment against victims of discrimination and those that live in no-fault states.
The new regulations deleted the requirement that to qualify for exclusion from gross income, damages received from a legal suit, action, or settlement agreement must be based upon "tort or tort type rights." The proposed regulations provided, instead, that the section 104(a)(2) exclusion may apply to damages recovered for a personal physical injury or physical sickness under a statute that does not provide for a broad range of remedies, and that the injury need not be defined as a tort.
A full copy of the new rule can be found here.

The lawyers at Tatlow, Gump, Faiella & Wheelan, LLC are long time members of the American Association for Justice (AAJ) formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). The organization was established in 1946 to safeguard the rights of the injured, strengthen the civil justice system, promote injury prevention, and foster the disclosure of information critical to public health and safety. AAJ advocated for the proposed IRS rule change. TGFW is pleased that the IRS has removed the tort-type rights tests from the taxable determination of damages.