2020 Legal Opinions
Court Opinion | NYCAL OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT CORP. v. United States
NYCAL OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT CORP. v. United States, Court of Federal Claims 2020
Nycal Offshore Development Corporation (“Nycal”) claims that the United States confiscated its private property without just compensation when oil and gas leasehold interests were terminated and Nycal was not notified of this termination. The meaning of the word “process” in the context of 28 U.S.C. § 1500 comes into question and the court uses the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) to analyze its use. “Process” is searched within four words of “legal” and “law”, supporting interpretations based on passage-era dictionary definitions and leading the court to the conclusion that “process” means “direct engagement” of a lawsuit between two parties.
Court Opinion | Lawrence v. FIRST FINANCIAL INV. FUND V, LLC
Lawrence v. FIRST FINANCIAL INV. FUND V, LLC, 444 F. Supp. 3d 1313 – Dist. Court, D. Utah 2020
First Financial Investment Fund, a business who buys defaulted debts and pursues collection of those same debts, is sued by Lawrence on the grounds that it is not a collection agency, collection bureau, or collection office. Using definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary for the phrase “collection office” confirmed by searches of the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”), the court concludes that “collection office” did not have any special meaning in 1953 in the context of debt collection.
Court Opinion | United States v. Delgado-Salazar
United States v. Delgado-Salazar, 487 F. Supp. 3d 1092 – Dist. Court, D. New Mexico 2020
Delgado, found transporting narcotic substances from California to Kansas by Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) agent Perry, claims that the interaction between the two was unclear and unfair because of Perry’s limited Spanish proficiency. Both sides use translators to analyze phrases which Perry spoke to determine whether Delgado correctly understood Perry’s questions; as evidence against Perry, Delgado employs the help of an expert witness to analyze the use of “por” vs “para” as a preposition following the verb “registrar”. To confirm the lack of evidence for “registrar por” in common, grammatically correct Spanish, the Diccionario de la Lengua Española and a random sample of one hundred uses of “registrar” in El Corpus del Español are used, revealing no uses of the phrase “registrar por”.
Court Opinion | Bright v. Sorensen
Bright v. Sorensen, 463 P. 3d 626 – Utah: Supreme Court 2020
Soreson, a Utah heart surgeon, faces claims of malpractice for performing allegedly unnecessary heart surgeries on thousands of patients. The News on the Web (“NOW”) Corpus is searched for the term “foreign object” in the context of medical procedures to determine whether Soreson is protected from allegations of fraudulent concealment by the relevant Utah Code exception. While corpus searches alone did not prove to be conclusive, they were helpful because they narrowed the scope of the definition of a “foreign object” to two possible definitions.
Court Opinion | State v. Burke
State v. Burke, 462 P.3d 599, 166 Idaho 621 (2020)
Burke, sentenced to time in the Idaho State mental hospital, seeks credit for his 56 days spent in the court-ordered commitment and defining the word “incarceration” is key to the decision. In this case, corpus linguistics is not used in decision making; yet, Justice Bevan urges the court to use corpus linguistics searches in future cases. He demonstrates its usefulness with a search from COHA (Corpus of Historical American English) for the word “incarceration” and contrasts it with the method of “simply turning to a dictionary to reach a desired result.”
Court Opinion | US v. Woodson
United States v. Woodson, 960 F.3d 852 (6th Cir. 2020)
Woodson, challenging a sentence enhancement for his interstate diamond robberies, argues that he did not “relocate” while committing his crimes; rather, Toledo, Ohio was his scheme’s home base. He argues this because relocation would constitute grounds for enhancing his sentence, but COCA (Corpus of American English) provides compelling evidence against him. The particular law that would justify an enhancement requires a relocation of a “fraudulent scheme” and COCA reveals that “scheme”, in ordinary speech, does not generally refer to a tangible hideout, but concepts, plans, and criminal enterprises instead.
Court Opinion | Salt Lake City Corp. v. Haik
Salt Lake City Corp. v. Haik
466 P.3d 178, 2020 U.T. 29 (Utah 2020).
This case addresses a dispute over whether Salt Lake City is required to supply water to certain land owners outside of the City’s limits, but still within their water-service area. All said, the Court declines to use the corpus linguistics analysis in their decision; nonetheless, they outline suggestions for how corpus linguistics should be used in future cases. They first suggest that “parties should limit their inquiry to the relevant time period” and second, that parties should “thoroughly examine” search results and provide “a meaningful analysis” of those results.