Kevin Krall: You're listening to special programming sponsored by
Stovall and Associates law firm. The content of this program does
not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jas and more.
The University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of
the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Unknown: Las Vegas, this is Laura center how butser your co
host of Vegas law talk. I'm joined by my wonderful host, Mr.
Leslie Mark Stovall, Attorney at Law.
Good morning. How you doing?
Doing great listeners, I'd like you guys to know that today we
are going to be discussing current legal affairs. And in
the last part of the show, we're going to discuss how you can
come to an estate planning seminar. If you're interested in
getting an estate plan set up, which includes either getting a
will a trust, a power of attorney,
Marisa, I was really interested in prosecutions that are
occurring in Germany, Germany is appears to me to be taking the
lead on prosecution of war criminals coming out of Syria.
As you know, 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of Syrian refugees went
into Europe and a lot of them ended up in Germany. The Germans
are using a theory called universal jurisdiction to
prosecute these individuals for war crimes. Last month, there
were news reports about a intelligence officer in the
Syrian army that was prosecuted and has been sentenced to life
in prison. He was involved in more than 5000 persons deaths in
Syrian prisons, prior to his him fleeing Syria for Germany. And
recently, there's published reports of a Syrian physician, a
doctor, if you can believe it, who was involved in the torture
of Syrians that were in custody during the Civil War. When was
the Civil War? Well, is still going on as far as I know, it
started when we pulled out of Iraq, so I think I think it's
been going on for about 10 years now. It's our Bashar is the
president of Syria, and he has tortured and use chemical
weapons on his population. Why would you do that? I don't think
he wants to give up power, and the Russians have been
supporting his regime. But what's interesting to me is that
European countries France, for example, in Germany are
prosecuting these individuals that were involved in
suppression and torture of Syrians in Europe, and they're
using a theory called universal jurisdiction. Have you ever
heard of it? I have not. What universal jurisdiction is this
idea that a national court can prosecute individuals for
serious crimes against international laws, such as
crimes against humanity or war crimes or genocide or torture?
Now, the United States hasn't universal jurisdiction. And in
fact, it appears that the United States criminal code would not
allow for use of such a theory because of the way it's
structured. In the United States. What has been used as
the Alien Tort Statute? Well, this is a it's been around a
long time. And what it does is it allows for non residents, non
US resident aliens to come in who are in the United States, if
they've been injured outside of the country, by a non US
citizen, they can bring a an action here in the United
States, where the United States has used the statute for
prosecution of foreign persons who have engaged in these kinds
of acts. That statute requires the defendant to be in the
United States that they've acted under color of law of their
country, even corporations can be prosecuted under this
statute. And it's been used to prosecute people for torture,
extrajudicial killings, and things like that here in the
United States. I just think it's really interesting that
countries are European countries are using this prosecute war
crimes and and are currently being very active in that issue.
Have you seen anything recently that's been of interest to you?
I
have the lawsuits and settlements regarding the sexual
assault of students.
You know, University of Michigan has just entered into a $490
million settlement involving a doctor, and this doctor had been
employed by the University of Michigan for over 30 years.
He died recently though, well, in 2008, right. Yeah. What was
his name?
Well, his name was Robert Anderson, and he was a physician
and he really dealt with a lot of athletes at the University of
Michigan.
So he was like a Larry Nasser,
kind of like a Larry Nasser, you know,
settled that lawsuit against the Olympics for like 300 and
something like 380 million.
Yeah, it was a ton of money. And you know, he was allowed and had
access to students for 2030 years. Apparently he was also
involved. NASA was involved in the Olympics. Isn't he the guy
that abused the gymnast?
Yes. And there was a local attorney. She was local. She
moved away to Texas. But she was a plaintiff in that lawsuit. She
was in, in the Olympics, a gymnast. And she announced the
settlement and that she was a defendant. So it was it's not
confidential.
Well, I gotta tell you, it's kind of shocking. One of the
things that seems to stand out to me, or the does stand out to
me about all these cases is people within universities were
aware this was going on in the Nasser case. The other case was
the Sandusky case at Penn State is sick. And so you have these
administrators or other people within the university that are
well aware of what's going on and they don't report it and
they allow it to continue on. You know, the
northeast part of the reason why it settled for so much money,
right? Well,
that in the number of victims, this guy Anderson, it's reported
that there was over 1000 individuals who accused Dr.
Anderson of sexual abuse at the University of Michigan, if you
can believe you would think that that's one institution that
would be very progressive and its policies and reporting. Even
the coach of the shum bachler, who was the coach of the
football team, his son was sexually assaulted by Dr.
Anderson when he was a student. When you talk about the other
settlements, 2013, Penn State paid nearly 60 million for the
couple dozen victims of Jerry Sandusky, Michigan State paid
$500 million in 202,018, the victims of Dr. Nasser
the statutes changed on reporting sexual abuse and being
able to sue or bring charges against somebody criminally
well, they
have all over the country. For example, Nevada, and this has
been some time ago in 1990, the Supreme Court said there was no
statute of limitations on child sexual assault claims, if the
assault occurred when the individual was a minor.
Criminal. No, that's a civil case. And here in Nevada, the
statutes have been the criminal statutes for sexual assault have
been changed. So there's a 20 year statute of limitations on
adults, if you are sexually assaulted, and you report the
sexual assault to the police, that the statute of limitations
is told the individual can be prosecuted at any time. And if
the sexual assault involves a minor, or, or a sex trafficking
of a minor, the statute of limitations is age 36 of the
victim.
Now sexual assault is a pretty broad term. That doesn't just
mean rate, right? Station
molestation, improper touching of a person.
So just means has to be a contact me.
That's right. A sexual contact with a with an individual.
Okay. And but if it was something that didn't involve a
contact, that would not be sexual?
Well, no, it in those kinds of cases where you have like a
hostile work environment or somebody who is spouses
themselves? Well, exposure is a little bit different than
exposure, I think may fall under, it's not a sexual
assault, it's lewdness. And depending on what the
consequences of lewd act are, I think they're more serious
consequences to that than simply exposing yourself. It's it can
be a very serious crime. Interestingly enough, the
University of North Carolina School of Arts which has been
around since the 60s, is a premier school for arts
including dance and paint and things like that. They have just
been named a defendant, as a result of it looks to me like
mostly dancers that were involved in this for sexual
abuse of students. And this goes back for many years. In this
lawsuit, it talks about another 29 defendants, eight of whom
were recruited are accused of actually sexually abusing
students. And then 19 former administrators who are named
defendants who allowed this cultural exploitation to exist,
and that case,
didn't they just settled the Boy Scouts lawsuit and they're still
looking for victims
Boy Scout lawsuit? I think they've set up a fund for
victims. It's just amazing to me that individuals who the sexual
predators are allowed to be in an environment where people
don't report
MTech sounds like people do report and then it's being
ignored.
Well, that sure seems to be the situation, these university
cases.
Yeah. And you've, you've done quite an number of cases where
you've represented victims of sexual abuse and assault, right?
I have, and what types of what types of evidence is is used to
prove those kinds of cases? It just like a he said, she said,
or you have to have like emails or
will often you either it's a combination of evidence, you can
have physical evidence where you have a violent sexual assault on
an individual. And, in fact, the hospitals are set up in Metro
setup, or local police department to take victims who
report and do a physical examination. Most hospitals have
certified nurses who do sexual assault.
But isn't there like a backlog on processing those
four genetic material? There is a delay, but the physical
examination there is not the nurses available, she has the
equipment necessary to do the examination and photograph. They
also do diagrams of the
so what if somebody sexually assaulted and they don't know,
the perpetrator? Would they still be able to sue somebody,
there's two things that a victim of sexual assault should do.
First thing is they need to report it to the police, they
need to go to the hospital and have a sexual assault done. If
they were raped, or if there was physical penetration. The second
thing is they should contact a lawyer because you have criminal
prosecutions which are handled through the police department.
And then you have civil claim related to the sexual assault
the civil claims, usually our claims against the individual
and against the facility in which the sexual assault
occurred.
So like if it was, like a school or like a place as opposed to
somebody's house, like, correct. Okay. So if they needed to talk
to a lawyer, they could talk to you about this, the listeners,
right?
Sure. And it's interesting. What we really look at is,
particularly in public events, in hotels and casinos or in
shopping,
like Yeah, like in there leaving the grocery store late at night?
That's exactly right. It's whether or not there was
adequate security, what the security situation was, what
noticed that the owner have with regards to crimes against
persons,
if it's out of venue, then there needs to be adequate security.
And if there's not, then there could be criminal liability and
civil where they could sue, right?
That's right. Exactly. Right. Okay.
And if somebody wanted to talk to you about that, they could go
to the website,
contact the office, and
it's 702-258-3034. That's where we're at less stovall.com.
Unfortunately, that happens. Oftentimes, victims of sexual
assault really don't know what to do. And, again, victims
should report immediately to the police and have an examination
done. And secondly, I really recommend that a person who has
been a victim contact a civil
lawyer to determine the personal injury lawyer, not just several
personal injury lawyer who can give them advice with regards to
how they can recover for their damages, civilly, let's recover
money to help them out. I was also interested recently in self
autonomous vehicles, self driving vehicles, right? That's
right, self driving vehicles. And there was a newspaper,
excuse me a news article about a engineer, Dan O'Dowd, I think is
his name. And he runs the Green Hill software company. And they
supply software for a lot of applications, like aeroplanes,
and space craft and things like that. Military applications. And
he was very, he came out on it with an ad criticizing Tesla in
particular. And he was saying that self driving vehicles, the
software that they're using, is really a Microsoft based
software that's just been changed to us and vehicles. So
self driving, can they not stop at a red light? Well, they're
supposed to, they're supposed to, doesn't the driver have to
press the brake?
No, I think these autonomous driving systems, you hit a
button and it's supposed to drive and
Okay, well, there was a guy who was charged with manslaughter
for running the light on self driving, but you would think if
you see the lights red, and you're on the self driving mode,
you would slam on the brakes.
You're seeing the advertisements where they have people singing
and clapping their hands and doing other things reading. Los
Angeles Times just reported a auto accident where two people
were killed. They're driving along and a Tesla went through
the intersection on autopilot. and hit these people and killed
them. The driver of that vehicle who was using the autopilot was
charged with manslaughter. And this is the according the LA
Times the first case in the United States where a person
using autopilot in a car self driving feature has been charged
with felony manslaughter. I don't know. It seems to me if
you're going to use autopilot in a car, you want to keep your eye
on stuff. But I suspect a lot of people would say, well, it's
autopilot. They told me I can do this and get out a book and
start reading or have lunch or talk to their family or
something like that. I don't know. Well, this fella Dowd says
the problem. This is that Don project, he said that, in his
study of the software that's being used in these cars like
Tesla, is that there's a malfunction eight every eight
minutes, every 36 minutes. There's some sort of unforced
error that occurs within the software sounds like a lawsuit
to Tesla, you're right, Larissa, these car manufacturers that are
using or installing and advertising automatic autopilot
or autonomous driving. They do have liability if there's not a
waiver in the in the contract that a court might court might
find to be enforceable. Excuse me. One other thing that I
thought was interesting that I saw in the news I thought you
might be interested in was this removal of Theodore Roosevelt's
statute at the Museum of American
it's a mismatch of Natural History. Yeah.
This, this statute shows Theodore Roosevelt on a horse.
And he's really buffed out, you know, Theodore Roosevelt was
kind of a chunky guy. He wasn't this big, giant guy. And walking
next to his horse is a Indian with with a headgear on, on one
side of him, and on the other side is a African American. And
it really is, yeah, that's
pretty faux pa now. Yeah.
And they're removing it, the board of the museum, voted
several years ago to remove it, because it's very offensive.
It's racist, and also a symbol of colonialism.
So since they removed it, are they going to sell it? No, it's
gonna go to the presidential library for Theodore Roosevelt.
And that's probably an appropriate place for it. It's
part of his history and it was made for to celebrate Theodore
Roosevelt's presidency, however misguided it might have been.
Now I understand what this a year are doing. The state
planning seminars, tell me about the seminars that you're going
to be putting on, I'm going
to be putting on estate planning seminars that are open to the
public. The only thing that's required is registration on my
website, which is southwest estate planning.com. The
seminars will be the third Wednesday and Thursday of every
month. So this will be starting in February. And I'm going to be
running them monthly in the seminars, the audience will
learn about trusts wills, estate planning in general, we will
discuss life insurance policies, and we will discuss a family
wealth planning sessions. And I think that this topic is finally
getting the attention that it deserves. Due to the pandemic
more and more people are aware of their mortality and taking
appropriate steps to protect their loved ones, their family
and their legacy. So in in these seminars, we will be talking
about how to keep your family out of court and conflict,
meaning creating proper state planning documents that family
members cannot contest once a person is incapacitated or they
have passed away. And this is important because a lot of
people are unaware of the probate process, which is the
process that occurs when a person dies to transfer the
assets of a living person or excuse me, of a deceased person
to living beneficiaries. And also, people are unaware of the
guardianship process. If a loved one or family member becomes
incapacitated and does not die, but they're unable to manage
their financial and medical affairs. I've been working in
these areas of law for several years. And I think that it's a
topic that deserves a lot of attention from the public
because it will touch most people's lives. So these
seminars are purely educational. And as I mentioned, the only
thing required is registration. There will be light hors
d'oeuvres and a wine tasting Going along with an estate
planning seminar, and if any of the listeners are interested in
going they just need to register at Southwest estate
planning.com. So registration at Southwest estate planning.com
under the in person events tab. I hope to see everybody there
and I look forward to helping everybody that's listening.
Marisa, you've had quite a lot of experience in handling
probate and estate matters, have you not?
I have I have represented celebrity estates, BB King
estate, and I've also represented celebrities in
estate planning. So that is my expertise. It's what I love. I
love helping with the planning and in giving people that peace
of mind and security that their affairs will be handled in the
event they can't handle them themselves. And I love assisting
people with the complicated and perplexing probate process.
Well before we sign off Larissa, did you have fun today?
I did. Well, I
did too. It's always nice to sit down and spend a little bit of
time talking about current affairs with you.
Kevin Krall: You've been listening to special programming
sponsored by Stovall and Associates law firm. The content
of this program did not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5
Jazz and more, the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of
Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.