United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Rizzo's testimony was submitted in a different case, a defamation suit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Joffrey against Maxwell.

The case, which was settled in 2017 on confidential terms, contained a trove of documents the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered unsealed.

Those documents also revealed that Joffrey, who claimed she was Epstein and Maxwell's sex slave, had accused Glenn Dubin of being part of Epstein's sex trafficking ring, which he denies.

Bro, you've been accused, credibly accused, might I ask.

Withholding knowledge of a second suspect conflicts with the Supreme Court's directive that the criminal trial, as distinct from the prosecutor's private deliberations, be preserved as the chosen forum for ascertaining the truth about criminal accusations.

Boyette v. Lefebvre, 246, 2nd Circuit, 2001.

Describing such evidence as classic Brady material, regardless of the state's ultimate conclusions about whom to prosecute, withholding knowledge of a second suspect, conflicts with the Supreme Court's directive that the criminal trials, as distinct from prosecutors' private deliberations, be preserved as the chosen forum for ascertaining truth about criminal accusations.

Countless cases have been overturned due to prosecutors' failure to timely produce evidence that could have helped the defense identify a potential alternate perpetrator.

And eventually those could start to add up if they keep coming the way it looks like they could be.

Yeah, we have Sixth Circuit, Second Circuit cases on tap as well.

So more to come on that front.

We will keep watching all of those developments, obviously, at my newsletter at endinggame.com. Here's a newsflash for you, Daniel.

But her rent was largely offset by interest he paid her, and the note came back forgiven a slice at a time and then by will.

The Second Circuit called the lease an attempt to add color and included the house.

A paper lease is window dressing.

The money has to actually move.

But the good news is that in some circuits, like the Second and Ninth Circuit, expressive works like films and TV shows have a go-to defense designed to strike the balance that Serene was just talking about between the First Amendment and trademark law.

Um, the framework for this defense actually comes from a foundational Second Circuit case called Rogers versus Grimaldi.

Rogers like Ginger Rogers, the iconic actress in Hollywood?

Yes.

She claimed that the title of the film created the false impression that the film was about her, or that she was affiliated with or endorsed the film.

So the main question before the court was whether the creator of the expressive work could be liable under the Lanham Act, um, as well as state law, for using Rogers' name in the title of the work.

And ultimately, the Second Circuit's answer to this question was what we now call the Roger test, which is a two-pronged framework that courts use to determine whether a trademark infringement claim can proceed when it's being asserted against an expressive work like a movie or a TV show.

If it is an expressive work, the use of the trademark in the film is protected unless the plaintiff proves that the defendant's use of the mark either has no artistic relevance to the underlying work or explicitly misleads consumers as to the source or content of the work.

I'll, I'll listen to the recording and the argument.

[laughs] Well, I, I used it in class the other day and the, it was a really, it was a really fun discussion [laughs] and the students were like, "Why is the, why are the lawyers for the Chinese government continuing to say that this is a case about pari passu? Like, that d- doesn't even seem to be the clause," and they don't seem to understand what the Second Circuit actually said, and they don't seem to understand that some of these cases are unpublished opinions that they're citing as binding authority.

And I was impressed, the students [laughs] were like, "Well, well, what? Are these, [laughs] these guys just trying to pull the wool over the judges' eyes, or they just don't understand?" And I mean, they must.

They're very fancy, expensive lawyers, at least on one side, so.

It means specific benefits, and the reason they claim that is because there have been several congressional efforts to try to change the 1952 statute meaning of what a public charge was, and all of those congressional efforts have failed, meaning that if you could already look at everything, you wouldn't have needed those congressional efforts to try to change the statute.

And so in the Second Circuit, which is where the case was filed in New York, there's a case called New York versus DHS that came out in 2020 which says that a public charge is someone who's unable to support themselves through work, savings, or family ties, and that mere receipts from the government of benefits is not dependency.

And so from that standpoint, that means that you can't just unilaterally disqualify people for the bases that are in these checklists.

But then they say, "But if you're saying that these checklists are not binding, then it's a question of, well, what are they there for? They're contrary." But they say if they are binding, then the issue is then that that's really a regulation.

They didn't consider alternatives or the reliance interests of what people did when they took benefits that are now gonna be held against them when they thought it was legal.

And so from that standpoint, that that would also be arbitrary and capricious.

So all three of those are interesting, but the point is, one way or another, the states are likely to prevail in the Second Circuit because they've already prevailed during an initial Trump administration rule in 2020.

What will be more interesting will be what the Supreme Court does.

This is how I read it.

This needs to be appealed to the Second Circuit.

We continue.

We've reached out to some, having found law firms and some others unwilling, unwilling to fight this fight.