University of Maine School of Law
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Prefatory Note
Get PDFIn its recent simplification and clarification of the criminal law, the Maine Criminal Law Revision Commission was also obliged to reconsider the proper breadth of the criminal sanction itself. The results of these parallel efforts are apparent throughout the Criminal Code. Those activities ordinarily considered criminal have been more precisely and comprehensively regulated, while the limits of the law controlling activities less socially damaging have been readjusted in the process of exact delineation. The Articles in this Special Issue offer an explanation and critical evaluation of the Commission\u27s efforts
Gay Students Organization v. Bonner: Expressive Conduct and First Amendment Protection
Get PDFAfter the Gay Students Organization, an officially recognized student group at the University of New Hampshire, held a dance on campus on November 9, 1973, the Governor of New Hampshire complained to the university\u27s Board of Trustees about the impropriety of allowing such a spectacle. The next day the Trustees banned all further G.S.O. social functions until the matter could be legally resolved. In Gay Students Organization v. Bonner, the G.S.O. brought an action for a declaratory judgment on the constitutionality of the university\u27s ban. The court held the ban to be an unconstitutional restriction of the group\u27s freedom of association, finding that the right to hold a dance derived from the associational right of official university recognition. Under this analysis, the G.S.O. dances were conceded not to involve expression in themselves, but were afforded first amendment protection only as a right attaching to university recognition. This Note proposes a fundamentally different first amendment analysis which focuses on the holding of the dance as communicative conduct. As a consideration preliminary to this analysis, it is argued that insofar as college administrators have power to restrict expression of students beyond that of state authorities over citizens generally, the prohibition of the dance, viewed as a form of expression, is not an exercise of such power. The communicative aspects of the dance are then discussed to demonstrate that the dance was expressive conduct which in itself invoked first amendment protection
Standards for Imposition of Discovery Sanctions
Get PDFThe adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938 marked a major change in the theory of the trial system in the federal courts. The new procedures of the Rules were designed to eliminate disposition of cases based on technical errors and encourage resolution on the merits of each controversy. The pleading rules were greatly simplified and full discovery provisions were incorporated to inform the parties regarding the basis of each adversary\u27s claim or defense and to provide greater access to evidence bearing on the dispute. The optimal use of pre-trial discovery under the Rules, however, depends upon enforcement of the discovery procedures at the trial level. Federal Rule 37 gives the trial court the power to demand compliance with the full disclosure system but leaves imposition of particular sanctions to the discretion of the trial court. The proper exercise of this discretion is critical. Failure to secure compliance by the parties defeats the purposes of the discovery rules by reducing the access of the moving party to relevant evidence and leaving the actual grounds of the controversy ill-defined prior to trial. Harsh enforcement through imposition of unwarranted sanctions, on the other hand, results in disposition of cases for failure to comply with the technicalities of the Federal Rules procedural system. The factors which must be considered in skillful use of discovery sanctions are complex. At present, the constitutional analysis of the problems involved in use of sanctions is predicated upon historical anomaly, and because of this the limits on the use of sanctions remain unclear. The case law, on the other hand, has produced an extensive guide to the proper use of sanctions. This Comment reconsiders the limits on enforcement of the discovery provisions in light of the recent cases and offers an alternative analysis of the problem. The operation of Rule 37 is outlined immediately below, followed by a discussion of the constitutional problems of discovery sanctions. The proper application of the suggested analysis to the specific facts of particular cases is treated in the concluding sections
Bangor and Aroostook Railroad v. Bangor Punta Operations, Inc.: The Public as a Real Party in Interest in Corporate Mismanagement Suits
Get PDFFor many of the nation\u27s railroads, the early 1960\u27s was a period of financial instability. To fund necessary capital improvements and to provide supportive financing in times of crisis, some railroads were affiliated with unrelated industries possessing superior growth rates. The railroads usually formed holding companies to own and manage the outside properties. The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad (BAR) followed this pattern when it formed Bangor and Aroostook Company (BAC) in 1960. Most of the stockholders of BAR exchanged their stock for BAC stock. Four years later, BAC was merged with another conglomerate to form Bangor Punta Corporation (Bangor Punta). In 1969, Bangor Punta sold the railroad (BAR) to Amoskeag Corporation (Amoskeag), another holding company. Prior to this last sale, the Interstate Commerce Commission had initiated a study of the relationship of BAR to its parent, Bangor Punta, to measure the effects of the holding company scheme upon the operation and financial condition of BAR. The I.C.C. report issued in 1971 was sharply critical. The reporters documented a history of manipulation and overreaching by the holding company. The I.C.C. concluded its report with the recommendation that legal action be taken to recover those assets drained from BAR by Bangor Punta and BAC. Responding to this advice, BAR filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Maine. In Bangor & A.R.R. v. Bangor Punta Operations, Inc., the district court dismissed the entire complaint, and held that BAR was estopped from pursuing the suit. The court reasoned that any BAR recovery would chiefly benefit Amoskeag, its principal stockholder. Since Amoskeag would have been barred from suing Bangor Punta derivatively under the provisions of Rule 23.1,1 any BAR recovery would result in an undeserved windfall to Amoskeag. Therefore, BAR could not maintain the action for lack of equity on the part of the real parties in interest behind its corporate form. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the district court\u27s dismissal. This Note explores the method used by the Bangor Punta court to establish the public as a real party in interest to the BAR suit. It discusses whether the public policy of the Bankruptcy Act and the railroad charters adequately justify an unconditional right to recovery. Finally, the Note questions whether the internal consistency of the decision was undermined by the failure to cite the source of the public interest in deterrence, and whether section 10 of the Clayton Act would have provided the needed statutory support
Contract Zoning: A Flexible Technique for Protecting Maine Municipalities
Get PDFSince the constitutionality of comprehensive zoning plans was upheld by the 1926 United States Supreme Court decision in Euclid v. Ambler Realty, municipal zoning has become an acceptable, indeed a necessary, fact of life. Maine, as well as most states, has enacted zoning enabling legislation pursuant to which many Maine municipalities have adopted zoning ordinances. The standard zoning approach which has evolved since Euclid has been based largely on the concept of uniform gridiron districts which conform to a legislatively preconceived comprehensive plan intended to assist municipalities in maintaining an orderly growth. These comprehensive plans, however, frequently have become a planning burden because they discourage land uses which were not anticipated either at the time the original plans were written or when the plans were updated. As a result, the traditional zoning approach is often incapable of meeting the demands of a growing society with its rapid technological, environmental, and cultural changes. Contract zoning, properly utilized as a complementary planning mechanism, can enable a municipality to adapt quickly and effectively to such unanticipated demands. This comment considers the use of contract zoning as a supplementary zoning technique which municipalities could employ to alleviate some of the problems created by the inflexibility of traditional planning and zoning. The primary advantage of contract zoning is its availability to a municipality for the regulation of an unanticipated development proposal and the accompanying land use problems, a situation traditional zoning is unable to accommodate satisfactorily
Ransoming the Maine Environment
Get PDFThe call for natural resource conservation is widely heard today. Purity of air and water are goals that most persons seem to endorse, at least in the abstract. The dollar costs of governmental programs for achieving relatively clean air and water doubtless are high, making questions of who bears them important. Some recent decisions of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court suggest that in Maine the major costs will be paid by taxpayers at large rather than by individual resource users
Beaulieu v. Beaulieu: An Obituary for Lex Loci and An Approach to Interest Analysis
Get PDFClifford Beaulieu, a guest in his father\u27s automobile, was injured when the vehicle struck a telephone pole in Massachusetts. Both parties were residents of Maine. The trip had originated in Maine and was to terminate there. The son filed an action against his father in the Maine Superior Court, alleging negligent operation of the vehicle. On an agreed statement of facts, the case was reported to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court where the defendant argued for dismissal of the action on the grounds that the doctrine of lex loci delictus, the law of the place of the tort, was applicable and that the Massachusetts guest statute barred recovery. Plaintiff argued that the lex loci doctrine should be abandoned and that the court should adopt an interest analysis approach to choice-of-law issues. The court accepted the plaintiff\u27s argument and held that in tort conflicts cases Maine courts must analyze the competing governmental interests of the involved states. By adopting interest analysis, the court recognized the necessity in every conflicts case of weighing and balancing the policies of the interested states, with the result that neither the law of the forum nor the law of the place of the tort will necessarily always apply. Thus, in Beaulieu v. Beaulieu, Maine law, which imposed a full due care duty on the host, had to be applied both because all relevant governmental interests were centered in Maine and because, correspondingly, Massachusetts had no interest in applying its law to the suit. The court, in finding this approach preferable to the more mechanical traditional doctrine, overruled Maine\u27s lex loci delictus precedents. In bringing Maine conflicts law into line with the interest analysis approach first adopted by the New York courts in Babcock v. Jackson, Beaulieu became an extremely important case in Maine jurisprudence. Beaulieu, however, was a relatively simple case, and the Maine courts must now confront the more difficult task of developing a workable methodology for solving complex conflicts problems in all areas of the law