Nov 2002 Newsletter - San Diego County Public Law Library

Watch out for Civil Procedure Changes!! Don't get caught snoozing on these important changes! The California legislature recently enacted two important changes to state civil procedure affecting: (1) the statute of limitations for personal injury; and (2) the notice period for summary judgment motions. The legislation originated as Senate Bill 688 and will take effect on January 1, 2003 (the standard effective date for new legislation in the absence of an urgency or postponement clause). The limitations period for assault, battery, personal injury, and wrongful death will move from CCP 340 to new CCP 335.1 and increase from one year (at present) to two years. Many civil rights suits brought in California under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 (e.g., excessive use of force by police) will also be affected by this change, since the federal limitations period for Section 1983 cases borrows from the state statute of limitations for personal injury. The new law also amends summary judgment procedure to give the opposing party more time to respond to a summary judgment motion. CCP 437c(a) currently requires the moving party to give 28 days' notice (plus extra time for service by mail) prior to the hearing on a summary judgment motion. Until now, an opponent has had only 14 days to put together a response, no matter how lengthy or complex the moving papers might be. Under the new law, the notice period for summary judgment motions will increase from 28 to 75 days. As a result, the opposing party will get an extra 47 days to prepare a response. This change corrects a source of procedural unfairness in the current law. Moving parties sometimes spend months preparing complex and lengthy summary judgment papers that their opponents can't effectively overcome within the present time limits. A moving party can also tactically delay its motion so that the hearing takes place only 30 days before the scheduled trial date -- making it difficult or impossible to get a continuance to allow extra time to work up the opposition. The enlarged notice period will help to defuse that type of tactical abuse.

New Law Enhances Paid Family Care Leave Act A recently signed bill ( SB 1661) will enhance family leave in California, allowing up to six weeks of wage replacement benefits to workers who take time off to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, parent, or domestic partner. It also allows paid time off to bond with a new child, including adopted, foster, or stepchildren. However, you won't find the text of this law incorporated in the California Family Rights Act (officially known as the Moore-Brown-Roberti Family Rights Act), which resides in the Government Code at section 12945.2. Instead, it adds new sections 3300--3305 to the Unemployment Insurance Code.

Time for Membership Renewals! As of Nov. 1st, members who have not renewed their annual dues will have their borrowing privileges suspended. If you'd like to pay your dues, are not sure whether you are a member, or if you'd like to become a member, please call Access Services at (619) 531-3900.

Cartoon of the Month- New Feature! We are proud to introduce a new feature this month, the cartoon "Stu's Views". Stu is an entertainment lawyer here in San Diego who represents mostly visual arts creators. As he says in his bio on his home page, "To put it simply, Stu is the lawyer for cartoonists and the cartoonist for lawyers." Hope you enjoy the monthly offerings!

Legal Links- Finding Agency Decisions Every issue of our e-newsletter contains information about useful web sites that we run across in our daily reference activities. As professional researchers, law librarians are quickly able to evaluate the usefulness and authenticity of web sites and pass that information onto you. The theme this month is agency rules and regulations. They have the force of law but can be hard to find. Here are links to city, state, and federal agency rules. San Diego City Council Resolutions and Ordinances- An ordinance is a law adopted by the City Council. Ordinances usually amend, repeal or supplement the Municipal Code; provide zoning specifications; or appropriate money for specific purposes. Most ordinances require two hearings: an introduction, followed later by the final adoption. A resolution is a formal expression of opinion or intention of the City Council. Resolutions usually become effective upon their adoption. (Text taken from the City Council's web site). This is an electronic archive of Resolutions from March 31, 1981 to June 30, 2001 [R-253922 (R-81-1712) through R-295089 (R-2001-1705)] and Ordinances from July 6, 1981 to June 30, 2001 [O-15538 (O-81-257) through O-18957 (O-2001-152)]. DLSE Manual- Finally, this is on-line! This is a manual of the policies and procedures that the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement use to adjudicate wage claims, investigate discrimination and public work complaints, and enforce Labor Code statutes and Industrial Welfare Commission orders. However, due to some coding problem, if you want to open this manual using Netscape, you must use this link: http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/dlse%20manual/dlse_enfcmanual.pdf Federal Register The Federal Register is the official daily publication for Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as Executive Orders and other Presidential Documents. Database coverage begins in 1995 and continues through current year (Volumes 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66 and 67). If you have useful and free legal links you'd like to share, e-mail them and we will consider them for publication in next month's edition!

Hunting for Grants Seeking funds for the Law Library is a year round effort. In addition to our annual fundraising dinner, the Bernard E. Witkin Award Dinner, the library's staff apply for grants and donations from various agencies and companies. Here is a short summary of what we have received so far this year: WestGroup Beginning in September 2001, Thomson WestGroup partnered with the Law Library in order to bring a computer lab to Main and our branches. WestGroup provided us with six notebook PCs, a large printer and some furniture for use in the computer lab. WestGroup assisted us in setting up a smaller computer lab at Vista, which included donations of notebooks, a printer, furniture and some LAN drops. And finally, they provided a notebook PC, a printer and a free copy of legal forms software for the Volunteer Lawyer Project office at Main. WestGroup uses the computer labs a few days a week as training facilities and has free classes in using their database. The rest of the time the lab is used by our staff to teach an Internet Legal Research classes for patrons. In addition to the computer donations, WestGroup made a $4000 donation to the Law Library at the Witkin Dinner fundraiser last month. LSTA We have also applied for and received a $55,000 grant from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). Funding from this grant is being used to expand and extend our community outreach. Our reference staff are creating, developing, and providing training classes to self-represented litigants and public librarians. We anticipate expanding: 1) the types of classes we offer; 2) the number of classes we offer at our locations; and 3) the number of classes that we offer at general public libraries throughout San Diego County. InfoPeople SDCPLL received an Internet access grant through the InfoPeople Project ( http://www.infopeople.org) , which is supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), administered in California by the State Librarian. We applied for and received one Internet-ready PC and printer for each of our four locations, and four of our Reference Librarians and one of our Information Services personnel received free training about Internet seaching techniques from InfoPeople. We also received an additional $8000 for use in developing our website and ensuring patron access to the Internet. We purchased five copies of Dreamweaver web development software for the five members of the Library's web committee. Further, the web committee members were able to attend Dreamweaver training classes to help them use the software. The funds also purchased security software for the four Internet PCs, and two new patron PCs for the East County branch and South Bay branch of the Law Library. Judicial Council of California With a lot of assistance from Kathy Abbott, Marilyn James and Pam Winters at the Superior Court, we applied for and received a $25,000 grant from the Judicial Council. We used the money to purchase three notebook PCs and two LED panel projectors, which our Main and Branch reference staff use for the legal literacy classes that we provide in-house and at general public libraries around the county. We are expanding offering these classes at all of our locations. We also used these funds to purchase the router needed to set up our firewall. A firewall is a hardware and software solution used to prevent outsiders from hacking into our local area network (LAN). A firewall must be in place before we can provide access to our catalog on our website. One of our Information Services professionals has been working on setting this up, which is very technically complex. She is nearly done, and we hope to offer our catalog on our website sometime before the end of the year. We also purchased two patron PCs for Main and one for North County. All of these offer access to the Internet, plus computer programs Word and WordPerfect. These are very useful for patrons who want to type up pleadings while in the Law Library. California Court of Appeals We are grateful to local law librarian Nana Frye, who let us know that Court might be willing to donate some of their gently used furniture to the Library. Jean Willis, Associate Director for Information Services here at the Law Library, worked with Debra Wise, Administrative Specialist at the Court of Appeals, to coordinate the donation. The Law Library received a number of good electric typewriters, task chairs, file cabinets and some couches for our staff lounge at Main. We are very grateful to Nana and Debra for their support and assistance with this money-saving gesture. We plan to continue seeking grants and donations where possible. As you can see, these grants have definitely assisted us in providing more high quality patron PCs and enabling us to expand our community outreach.

New Books- Nov 2002 CALIFORNIA POST-CONVICTION RELIEF : ELIMINATING CALIFORNIA CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS FOR IMMIGRATION PURPOSES by Norton Tooby, 2001. Tooby is a noted specialist in the field of criminal defense of non-citizens. He was recently awarded the Philip Burton Immigration & Civil Rights Award for Immigration Lawyering by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. His book includes practical advice as well as sample pleadings. Available at Main, East County and South Bay. CHILD CUSTODY AND VISITATION IN CALIFORNIA by Frank Leek, Yasmin Cogswell Spiegel, and Janet Kosid Uthe, 2001. Written by two certified family law specialists and a clinical psychologist, this book covers topics not usually discussed in practice manuals such as grandparent rights and ethical considerations of custody. Available at Main, North County, East County and South Bay. EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION: LEGAL AND PRACTICAL PROBLEMS by Judge Nathan Sobel and Dee Pridgen, 2002. Discusses problems with photo and voice and eyewitness ID. Also looks at tainted ID and standards of fairness. Available at Main. PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT by Bennett L. Gershman, 2002. Gershman is a professor at Pace Law School and a former prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney's office for six years. He has written many articles about prosecutorial and judicial conduct. Available at Main.

Reference Question of the Month- Death Penalty Q: I have been following the sniper case and want to know if any of the states the crimes were committed in have the death penalty? A: Yes, two of them. Maryland and Virginia. Washington D.C. doesn't have the death penalty. (Source: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/firstpage.html) . However, Maryland currently has a moratorium on executions. Citing the need "to be absolutely sure of the integrity" of the death penalty process, Governor Glendening announced the moratorium would continue until an ongoing University of Maryland study on racial bias and the death penalty is completed and reviewed and acted upon by the state legislature. (Source: Human Rights Watch) However, since the sniper committed crimes in several states, it is likely that he will be charged in federal court and there is a federal death penalty. There are many pro and anti death penalty sites available on the Web. Some of the best ones include http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/ http://www.ncadp.org/ http://www.deathpenalty.org/

We hope you've enjoyed our newsletter. We're hard at work on the next edition. In the meantime, please visit us online at: http://www.sdcll.org/. And come see us in person at one of our locations. For locations and hours please click here: http://www.sdcll.org/location.htm. For more information contact: Amy Hale-Janeke ahale@sdcll.org Media Coordinator / Reference Librarian (619) 531-3900