Hasil untuk "Commercial law"

Babar Khan, Kesang Wangchuk

The Hindu Kush Himalayas, a region with diverse ecosystems and rich biodiversity, faces widespread illegal wildlife crime. We reviewed available literature to gain insights into the scale and patterns of illegal wildlife crime in the HKH, hotspots, transit routes, consumers, and the significant causes of wildlife trafficking. Wildlife trade and seizure data for the eight HKH countries were accessed from the trade database of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the Wildlife Trade Portal of the Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) for the period 2001–2020. The review findings showed that each year, millions of wild plants and animals, valued at $ 8–23 billion, were traded to meet the demand for wildlife, its parts, and products worldwide. In the illegal wildlife trade, about 24 % of terrestrial birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles originated from biologically diverse tropical regions, including the HKH mountains. The illegal wildlife trade in HKH covered a range of commodities, including live individuals, their parts, and their derivatives. The primary drivers of the illicit trade and commercial exploitation of rare and unique species from the wild were the ever-increasing demand for traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicines, folk remedies, weak law enforcement, the high price of wildlife and their parts, and mountain poverty. Efforts to combat wildlife poaching, trafficking, and trade in the region were hampered by weak wildlife law enforcement, insufficient institutional capacity and resources, and a lack of practical regional networks and other mechanisms for regional cooperation. Porous borders and high mountain passes, with harsh climates and physical conditions, further restrained the vigilance of law enforcement agencies. A lack of understanding of wildlife supply chains' social, economic, and ecological dimensions hindered informed policy and legislation. Lack of awareness among communities and other stakeholders about biodiversity conservation made them partners in the wildlife trade rather than custodians. The region needs to strengthen institutional capacities for effective legislation and action, and greater regional cooperation for intra-regional law enforcement to control the illegal trade of wildlife across borders and online. Scientific studies on the scale, trend, and patterns of illicit wildlife trade are crucial for understanding the social, economic, and ecological dimensions of unlawful wildlife supply chains in HKH. Mass awareness about biodiversity conservation values will help create responsible stewards among mountain communities.

Marko Begović

Employment relations in sports are shaped by the interplay of national legislation, international standards, and relations between the public sector and the sports movement. The sports ecosystem represents a specific organizational and governing structure balancing public interest and the growing commercialization of sports. Given the specificity, this paper aims to explore labor relations, focusing on the legal framework and institutional environment that define the rights and obligations of professional athletes in particular. The key challenges identified include the gap between law-on-the-book versus law-in-action, especially the alignment of sports specific regulations with labor-related provisions. The results suggest the need for a concerted effort to engage in systematic governance reforms of the sports movement, to provide compliance with the legal system, and to ensure its application.

Mohsen Alijani, Mohammad Hadi Jvaherkalam

In an analytical and descriptive method, article 1 of the mandatory formal registration of immovable properties has been discussed from economical and legal point of view. The main object was explanation of Legal acts which must register at electronic registration system of documents and the sanctions of non-registered contracts. economical basics(ex ante) of that article and its rules and effects economic justification (ex past) has been discussed.conclusion is that although The legislator has not clarified the performance guarantee on non-registered contracts and just specified some sanctions such as :rejection of hear the lawsuit about proof and enforcement of the contract, eviction from the property, invalidation of the document, specific performance, criminal compliance, But it seems that an informal contract about immovable properties is invalid and the fact that the only acceptable claim is restitution of considerations means that the contract is invalid. In addition to, analysis of the effects of termination of the first contract on the next contracts show that it's economically justified and is according to the most principles of economic analysis.

Milena Galetin, Marijana Mladenov

The application of artificial intelligence has become inevitable in almost all areas of life and it is indisputable that it also affects different human rights. In the paper, the authors deal with the impact of artificial intelligence on the right to health, one of the basic human rights, and in this sense explore the attitudes of healthcare professionals regarding the application of artificial intelligence in this sector. In addition to empirical research and theoretical analysis, the most important legal documents related to the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare are presented. In the last part of the paper, the authors present concluding considerations and indicate further steps that should be taken in this sector regarding the application of artificial intelligence.

Ayache Lakhdar, Jribi Skander, Naas Toufik Tayeb et al.

This work’s objective is to investigate the laminar steady flow characteristics of non-Newtonian nano-fluids in a developed chaotic microdevice known as a two-layer crossing channels micromixer (TLCCM). The continuity equation, the 3D momentum equations, and the species transport equations have been solved numerically at low Reynolds numbers with the commercial CFD software Fluent. A procedure has been verified for non-Newtonian flow in studied geometry that is continuously heated. Secondary flows and thermal mixing performance with two distinct intake temperatures of nano-shear thinning fluids is involved. For an extensive range of Reynolds numbers (0.1 to 25), the impact of fluid characteristics and various concentrations of Al₂O₃ nanoparticles on thermal mixing capabilities and pressure drop were investigated. The simulation for performance enhancement was run using a power-law index (<i>n</i>) at intervals of different nanoparticle concentrations (0.5 to 5%). At high nano-fluid concentrations, our research findings indicate that hydrodynamic and thermal performances are considerably improved for all Reynolds numbers because of the strong chaotic flow. The mass fraction visualization shows that the suggested design has a fast thermal mixing rate that approaches 0.99%. As a consequence of the thermal and hydrodynamic processes, under the effect of chaotic advection, the creation of entropy governs the second law of thermodynamics. Thus, with the least amount of friction and thermal irreversibilities compared to other studied geometries, the TLCCM arrangement confirmed a significant enhancement in the mixing performance.

Paul A. Lombardo

Photo ID 193201183 © Orathai Mayoeh| Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT A US Public Health Service study conducted after World War II led to a research scandal involving the intentional infection of 1300 Guatemalans with syphilis and other STIs. That news initially prompted an apology by President Obama to the President of Guatemala and an investigative report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Despite promises from the US Department of Health and Human Services to invest $1.8 million to “improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases,” there is no record that such funding nor any money to compensate the families of people victimized in the research debacle has reached Guatemala. Litigation followed public disclosures. This article analyzes the litigation and explores the likelihood that this lawsuit may represent another episode in the re-victimization of people in Guatemala who still await redress for the wrongs done to their families more than 70 years ago. INTRODUCTION Nine years after its initial filing, In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, the case to recover damages for the infamous World War II-era syphilis experiments that the US Public Health Service (PHS) conducted in Guatemala has been dismissed by Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.[1] The plaintiffs sought compensation as victims and descendants of victims of studies in which approximately 1300 Guatemalans were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and more than 5000 individuals had biological samples taken without proper consent. After the court rejected claims in 2022 that Johns Hopkins University and Bristol-Meyers Squibb should be held liable for the Guatemala scandal, the Rockefeller Foundation was the only remaining defendant. The Foundation had a longstanding interest in research to find a cure for syphilis. Lawyers representing alleged victims in the Guatemala research claimed that responsibility should accrue to Rockefeller because Thomas Parran was on its board and Frederick Soper was its Associate Director and a board member. Both were intimately involved in the experiments. In this US case, plaintiffs claimed the court should assign responsibility and allow them to recover damages. Its conclusion makes it extremely unlikely that legal action will lead to compensation for those victims now or anytime in the future. The lawsuit described in this article raises the question of whether litigation is an effective avenue for addressing discoveries of historic injustices stemming from breaches of research ethics. Litigation may revictimize the very populations who endured harms during the original experiments. In this case, more than six decades after the studies themselves, and ten years after the details of those studies were publicly revealed, many of the people who became entangled in this litigation are arguably worse off as a result because they endured additional hardships during the litigation, their avenue to justice through the US courts is now foreclosed, and their credibility was called into question throughout the case. BACKGROUND The PHS/Guatemala experiments occurred between 1946-1948, and related studies continued into the 1950s. However, the entire research plan did not become publicly known until the 2010 publication of an historian’s analysis of an archival collection, and a subsequent bioethics commission report in 2011.[2] The PHS researchers who designed the Guatemala studies were attempting to hone methods of prophylaxis against STIs for members of the US military and hoped to take advantage of the then newly discovered power of penicillin as a cure for STIs. Led by John Cutler,[3] a team of PHS doctors collaborated with health professionals in Guatemala City to design a series of experiments that monitored sexual intimacy between prisoners and commercial sex workers who had been confirmed to be carrying an STI. The experiment then moved on to manually infecting prison inmates, psychiatric patients, and soldiers, with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. Between 1946 and 1953, PHS researchers also conducted serology studies on samples of blood and cerebrospinal fluid they had obtained via cervical and lumbar punctures on prisoners, orphans, school children, patients in a psychiatric hospital, and leprosy patients in Guatemala.[4]   The research was conducted without consent, without appropriate disclosures, and, in many cases, using the most vulnerable institutionalized populations. While formal standards of ethics for biomedical research later emerged in documents like the Belmont report and were adopted as part of US law, the consensus of scholars studying the Guatemala experiments is that they violated ethical standards at the time they were carried out, and the scientists and physicians who participated, well aware of their ethical toxicity, intentionally kept them hidden.[5] A few experts in the STI field knew the details of these experiments, but the US government deliberately concealed them from public view for more than sixty years. The public exposure of John Cutler’s papers clarified the scope of the studies, sometimes likened more to torture than medical experimentation, and placed the episode in Guatemala alongside the most infamous of research scandals.[6]  News of the scandal initially prompted an apology by President Obama to the President of Guatemala. Lawsuits followed. I.     Litigation Public exposé of the experiment’s details led to condemnation of the studies, which in turn prompted calls for legal action. The first lawsuit related to the PHS/Guatemala research, Garcia v. Sebelius, was a class action suit filed on behalf of victims against the US Government in 2011. A federal trial court called the Guatemala STI experiments a “deeply troubling chapter in our Nation’s history” but determined that the law shielded the government against such claims under the principle of sovereign immunity. The court declared itself “powerless to provide any redress…” and dismissed the suit in 2012.[7] In response, the US Department of Health and Human Services promised $1.8 million to “improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … in Guatemala and to further strengthen ethical training on human research protections.”[8] No commitments were made to the victims, and no compensation was delivered to them in Guatemala. Because the Garcia case ruled out a suit against the US government, in 2015, plaintiffs filed another class action lawsuit against Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb, demanding $1 billion in damages. The suit claimed that Johns Hopkins had been the faculty home for many members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) syphilis study section that recommended that a grant of financial support be approved to fund the Guatemala project.[9] Most prominent in this group of Hopkins faculty members was Joseph Earle Moore. He chaired the study section and almost every review committee for the NIH that reviewed the study. The Rockefeller Foundation’s board eventually included Thomas Parran, Surgeon General at the time of the experiments and Rockefeller employee Frederick Soper, both of whom held roles critical to the study.[10] The three companies that previously made up Bristol Meyers Squibb manufactured the penicillin used in the experiments to test levels of efficacious dose to cure syphilis.[11] The plaintiffs contended that the web of connections among these entities and the researchers who “helped design, support, develop, encourage, and finance, and participated in and benefitted from the Guatemala Experiments,” made all three entities liable for the damages to compensate Guatemalan research subjects and their descendants. From the initial filing of the suit in 2015 until eighteen months later, defense lawyers attempted to have the case dismissed, arguing that delays in filing a claim violated the statute of limitations and the speculative nature of plaintiff damages rendered them legally inadequate to provide a causal link to the original experiments. In late 2016, the plaintiffs amended their claims a third time to address these issues. At that point, the plaintiff class included more than 800 people made up of spouses, children, and other descendants of deceased individuals alleged to have been part of the intentional infection experiments. But the largest numbers of listed plaintiffs were school children whose blood had been drawn for serology experiments. While the Presidential Commission had found no evidence supporting this assertion, some of the plaintiffs also claimed to be direct victims of intentional infection experiments conducted at their schools. The court found no evidence that the Rockefeller Foundation controlled or directed either Parran’s involvement in approving the Guatemala project or Soper’s more thorough engagement with the research as a staff member at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). The Court stated, “The connection between TRF’s [Rockefeller] interest in finding a cure for syphilis and the work that Dr. Soper did while at PASB is simply far too attenuated to establish an agency relationship...there is no indication that TRF had the ability to exercise control over Soper.”[12] In 2024, with Rockefeller as the only remaining defendant, the motion to dismiss the suit wasgranted. While the litigation was still active, lawyers deposed people in Guatemala who had been responsible for identifying the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. By March 2019, it became clear that serious irregularities had occurred in recruiting those participants.  Fraudulent testimony and unethical behavior in recruiting sparked the defendants to move for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ attorneys.[13] II.     Fraudulent Testimony                a.     Serology Experiments in Port of San José One kind of experiment conducted in Guatemala included serology testing on blood samples taken from school children. Norma Alicia Lorenzo Lopez was a plaintiff in the lawsuit and former director of the school at the remote Pacific coast town of Puerto San Jose, an initial location for blood draws in school studies during the late 1940s. She signed a copy of a letter certifying that historical records and the testimony of former students verified that plaintiffs were enrolled in school at the time of the experiments. But Lopez eventually admitted under questioning that relevant records for the school were destroyed years ago in several floods and earthquakes. She had no documents to confirm that claimant’s testimony was correct, nor did she have any personal knowledge of what happened. She then testified that she had no legal authority to issue certifications on behalf of the school and had violated the rules of the Ministry of Education in so doing. Additionally, she admitted that at least one person was dead at the time he was supposed to have given his sworn statement to her.[14] Fraudulent testimony unfortunately was not limited to Lopez. Under questioning, many named plaintiffs testified that they did not know why their or their family members’ names had been included among the victims. Another witness, Dr. Orozco Aguirre, reported that he tested hundreds of people who had given blood as children in Puerto San Jose. Some of them were supposed to have also claimed to be infected with syphilis by researchers. But in a hearing before the presiding judge, lead plaintiffs’ counsel confirmed that Aguirre had given false testimony.[15] Aguirre eventually admitted that the effective date of the certificate presented to the court to show his qualifications to run a laboratory in Guatemala had been altered to conceal that it had expired. He also conceded under questioning that his expert report had been plagiarized, then altered to include data that would correspond with his planned testimony in support of the plaintiffs. As a result, plaintiffs’ counsel withdrew Dr. Orozco as an expert witness after his first day of testimony.                b.     STI Testing in Guatemala City Dr. Pablo Werner Ramirez Rivas, a physician consultant and medical expert for the plaintiffs, former Guatemalan Health Minister Roberto Paiz, and his wife Clara de Paiz had arranged “information sessions” to recruit plaintiffs. Werner’s testimony was intended to provide the factual foundation upon which several of the plaintiff’s claims were based. However, the day after Dr. Aguirre was withdrawn and only a few days before Dr. Werner was scheduled to testify, plaintiffs’ counsel also withdrew him as an expert. Additional reports emerged showing that Clara de Paiz was taken into custody in Guatemala in 2018, following charges by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala with “active bribery” in connection with a scheme to influence the selection of Guatemalan judges in an unrelated case.[16] On March 11, 2019, the plaintiffs’ counsel disclosed that they were “going forward” with a more limited list of plaintiffs and claims. The number of Guatemalan plaintiffs was reduced dramatically; fewer than one hundred remained in the lawsuit. Thirteen of the most important eighteen plaintiffs—those who claimed direct infection in the original experiments or a family relationship to someone who was involved in those experiments — were dropped from the case. III.     Sanctions Against Plaintiffs’ Lawyers After extensive discovery, the defendants’ lawyers made a motion for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ lawyers. According to the defendants, depositions and other material “revealed that plaintiffs' claims are based on manufactured evidence, false sworn statements, and unsupportable allegations.”[17] The defendants accused the plaintiffs’ lawyers of doing just what the initial alleged wrongdoers did – withholding positive test results from plaintiffs. It was a major contention of the lawsuit that those who directed the PHS/Guatemala experiments actively deceived the victims. They did not inform victims in the 1940s that they were part of an experiment, that they had been infected with syphilis, or that their condition might expose other family members to infection. Nor did they provide medical care to infected victims or counsel them to seek it. In preparing for the lawsuit, plaintiffs were sent on bus trips lasting up to five hours to reach Guatemala City for syphilis testing. Although Dr. Aguirre claimed in sworn court documents that many of the plaintiffs tested positive for syphilis, their testimony indicated they were not informed of their infection status, nor was treatment offered to those who did test positive. Defendant’s arguments for sanctions declared that by withholding infection status from plaintiffs, their lawyers “did precisely what they had accused others of doing or, more precisely, of not doing.”[18] IV.     Unsatisfactory Outcome The original complaint in this case alleged that defendants, Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol Meyers Squibb, had “designed, developed, approved, encouraged, directed, oversaw, and aided and abetted nonconsensual, nontherapeutic, human subject experiments in Guatemala.”[19] But the trial court found that there was “insufficient evidence to support” that conclusion against any of the three defendant organizations. The defendants did not downplay the horrific nature of the PHS/Guatemala syphilis studies, nor the culpability of those who conducted them. They merely rejected the idea that they, as institutions, shared blame for the activities that the government planned, conducted, and subsequently hid from the public eye. In issuing its ruling, the court endorsed that conclusion, stating that any evidence of the defendant’s complicity in these actions “has been lost to the sands of time.”[20]  The court emphasized that this result “illustrates the limits of the court system to provide justice for every injustice,” concluding that other remedies were “beyond the power of this Court to grant.”[21] The final decision in this controversy yielded similar language. In a separate opinion, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson said that people working with the Rockefeller Foundation had a relationship that “is too attenuated” to consider them agents of Rockefeller in carrying out the Guatemala experiments. “I thus concur . . . with some sadness” he said, “that the rule of law is not advanced as an instrument of justice by affixing liability where it does not belong.”[22] CONCLUSION We are left with an unsatisfactory ending to a scandal that festered over more than seventy-five years and legal drama unfolding over more than a decade. An appellate court decision now echoes what scholars and a presidential commission concluded as legal challenges began: “It was our own government . . . that was the driving force behind these monstrous wrongs.”[23] Fashioning remedies for the horrors of this and other scandals that may yet be uncovered in the archives of scientific and biomedical research remains a job that our own government should still be required to undertake.   When hidden scandals perpetrated by deceased individuals in government service are finally revealed, how should accountability be satisfied?  We know that suits against the government are exceedingly unlikely to be allowed. As this case has demonstrated, assessing damages against other institutions whose culpability cannot be proven is also likely to fail.  First steps taken by government commissions of inquiry that are free to investigate past wrongs and expose them to public scrutiny are a beginning, but never the end of the accounting. They allow some measure of recognition for victims, but those who are long dead can never be made whole.  As the 4th Circuit Court concluded, the judiciary is limited in its powers “to provide justice for every injustice.” What is needed beyond all else is a motive for a majority in Congress squarely to face scandals like those that occurred in Guatemala and craft a remedy that more fully addresses their causes and their consequences.  At this point, we have few, if any, models of what such remedies would look like, and almost no reason to believe that there is the political will to take on that task.  - [1] In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-4th-circuit/115960805.html [2] Reverby, S. “‘Normal exposure” and inoculation syphilis: a PHS ‘Tuskegee’ doctor in Guatemala, 1946–1948.” J Policy Hist 23, no. 1 (2011):6-28 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030610000291]; Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI), “Ethically Impossible”: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office; 2011). https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf  The author was a senior advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues that issued Ethically Impossible, and he contributed to the research and drafting of the Report as a staff member. He testified by deposition under subpoena and without compensation in the lawsuit described in this article. [3] Cutler [1915-2003] also conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which included Black American research subjects who were intentionally not informed about the nature of the experiment or the availability of treatment. [4] Spector-Bagdady K, Lombardo P.A. “US Public Health Service STD Experiments in Guatemala (1946-1948) and Their Aftermath,” Ethics Hum Res. 2019;41(2):29-34. [DOI: 10.1002/eahr.500010] [5] See “The Guatemala Experiments—Looking Back, Looking Ahead, and Apportioning Blame,” Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, “Ethically Impossible:” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, 2011, GPO (Washington DC)107-108. [6] Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, “Ethically Impossible:” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, 2011, GPO (Washington DC)., https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf H. Brevy Cannon, “Arras, Bioethics Commission Condemn 1940s Guatemalan Syphilis Research as Unethical,” UVA Today, August 31, 2011, https://news.virginia.edu/content/arras-bioethics-commission-condemn-1940s-guatemalan-syphilis-research-unethical. [7] Garcia v. Sebelius, 867 F. Supp. 2d 125 (D.D.C. 2012). https://casetext.com/case/garcia-v-sebelius-2 [8] “HHS Commits Nearly $1.8 million to Health Initiatives in Guatemala and to Improving Global Human Research Protections,” Business Wire, January 10, 2012, [9] Alvarez v. Hopkins, complaint, Case 1:15-cv-00950-JKB Circuit Court Baltimore City (April 1, 2015). Spector-Bagdady K, Lombardo P.A. “’Something of an adventure’: postwar NIH research ethos and the Guatemala STD experiments,” J Law Med Ethics. 2013;41(3):697-710. [DOI: 10.1111/jlme.12080] [10] Thomas Parran [1892-1968] was Surgeon General of the US Public Health Service and approved the funding proposal that resulted in the experiments. He was also a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Board of Trustees and the Board of Scientific Directors of the foundation’s International Heath Division.  At times his government service and his work at Rockefeller overlapped the work that occurred in Guatemala. Frederick Soper [1893-1977] was an Associate Director at Rockefeller and in 1947 was assigned to work on the Guatemala experiments at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). [11] Alvarez v. Hopkins, complaint, Case 1:15-cv-00950-JKB Circuit Court Baltimore City (April 1, 2015). The original complaint filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, was moved to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. [12]  In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024. p. 15. [13] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. [14]  Transcript of Norma Alicia Lorenzo Conducted on February 7, 2019, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 263-5. [15] Preliminary Transcript of Hearing, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 231-1 March 6, 2019., p. 3. [16]Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. Exhibit 8, at J.R.0778 (December 4, 2018, Exhibit 8 at J.R.0775 (record from Guatemala Central Registry of Detainees indicating when Clara de Paiz was taken into custody). She  was later acquitted of the bribery charges. [17] Estate of Arturo Giron Alvarez, et al., v. The Johns Hopkins University, et al., Defendant’s.Motion for Discovery and Sanctions, April 9, 2019; Memorandum Opinion https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/maryland/mddce/1:2015cv00950/312057/350/ [18] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC   Document 262-1. April 9, 2019, page 24 of 42. The motion for sanctions was not renewed after the case was dismissed. [19] Memorandum Opinion on Motion for Summary Judgment, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 480, page 13 of 77. [20] Id., page 75 of 77 [21] Id., Page 76 of 77 [22] In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024, Wilkinson, J., concurring at 20. [23] Id.

Andyna Susiawati Achmad, Astrid Athina Indradewi

In order to implement the idea of fair business competition, this article will analyze the function and legal obligations of online marketplaces in limiting commercial actors as 'official stores'. Normative juridical law research with statutory and conceptual techniques was used to create this study. According to the results, the distribution of commodities from producers to consumers has been altered by digital disruption. Currently, a number of online marketplace platforms offer 'official store' services to a small group of business players so they can expand their enterprises exclusively. Applying 'official stores' terms and conditions to business actors is prohibited by both Law No. 5 of 1999, which prohibits unfair business competition, and Government Regulation 29 of 2021, which relates to the implementation of the trade sector. Distributors and agents of associated producers will face unfair economic rivalry as a result of producers entering the online market as 'official stores'. Producers are prohibited from selling their products in retail settings, whether offline or online, in accordance with the relevant legislation. The findings of this study should benefit the parties involved in the online marketplace by fostering fair commercial competitiveness.

Alejandro Díaz Reyes, Gabriela Aguado Romero

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo evidenciar el actuar del Estado, mediante el análisis de la consecuencia jurídica consistente en la restricción temporal del uso de certificados de sellos digitales que se produce en el desarrollo de los procedimientos de verificación de domicilio fiscal, como una de las manifestaciones del ejercicio de la potestad de policía del Estado en el ámbito tributario. Ello implica que el ejercicio de esta potestad de gestión se aborde desde sus distintos enfoques, como son: su esencia, objeto, procedimiento y consecuencias jurídicas que, de igual manera, serán tratadas desde la esencia y finalidad de cada una de ellas. Este análisis se realiza a la luz del derecho humano a la seguridad jurídica como parámetro que acota y ajusta el discurso de la autoridad legislativa, y el de la autoridad fiscal en la aplicación de la ley en el ejercicio de este tipo de procedimientos tributarios.

David Fabio Esborraz

Este artícuo se ocupa del análisis de los aspectos más sobresalientes de la regulación del derecho de las obligaciones por parte del Proyecto de Código Civil colombiano de 2020, elaborado por un grupo de profesores de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. En particular, el análisis se centra en las fuentes del Proyecto, la metodología adoptada en materia de obligaciones, el concepto de obligación, los principios generales y las fuentes de las obligaciones.

Bohdan Karnaukh

The article addresses the issue of standards of proof from a comparative perspective. The author sketches the conventional distinction between common law and civil law countries in this regard, as well as some approaches that query the validity of the rigid division. The main purpose of the article is to characterise the Ukrainian approach to the standards of proof against the background of comparative analysis. The author concludes that recent developments in Ukrainian law have paved the way for a distinction between criminal and civil standards of proof. However, the doctrine is not yet elaborate enough to warrant a coherent application of the two different standards. There is a view that in civil law countries, not much attention is paid to the standard of proof. We would rather not take the liberty of generalising about all civil law countries, but with regard to Ukrainian doctrine, the assertion seems rather justified. However, some recent developments in procedural legislation give reasons to believe that the approach is being gradually changed. The disregard of the issue, underpinned by the sacred belief in the attainability of absolute truth, fades in comparison to the acknowledgement that standards of proof may differ in civil (commercial) and criminal cases. It is this inflexion point in Ukrainian evidence law that may entail far-reaching repercussions. Therefore, open discussion of the issue is needed to elaborate a doctrinal approach that could serve as a basis for the development of a coherent jurisprudence.

Areerat Maneerat, Sarinporn Visitsattapongse, Chuchart Pintavirooj

This research concerns a design and construction of a bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) measurement system based on dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). An indirect X-ray detector is designed by optical coupling CMOS sensor with image on the intensifying screen. A dedicated microcontroller X-ray apparatus is used as an X-ray source to capture two energy level X-ray of middle phalanges bone of middle finger. The captured image is processed based on modified Beer-Lambert law to compute bone mineral density. Bone mineral content is also computed by determining the area of the phalanges bone using active contour. The designed bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) measurement system is low-cost and hence can be distributed at district hospital for screening purposes of Osteoporosis of the elderly. Compared with BMD measured from commercial model, BMD measurement of our system acquires linear relation with R2 equals 0.969. The mean square error between the normalized BMD value and that of the commercial model is 0.0000981.

Saad Nahi Saleh, Thamer Jasim Mohammed, Huda K. Hassan et al.

Transportation of heavy crude oil via pipelines possesses many technological issues that are inherently flow related. Accurate prediction of flow characteristics is an essential step for a reliable piping design of transporting the crude oil. A rheology-based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of the Iraqi heavy crude oil flow through a horizontal pipe (1 m length of 3/4 in. inside diameter) was developed using the commercial software Ansys 15 Fluent. By using power law rheological model, the Iraqi heavy crude oil exhibits a non-Newtonian dilatant behavior over the examined shear rate range of 1–40 s−1. The proposed axi-symmetric CFD model identifies velocity profile and generates values of friction factor, which are validated with experimental measurements. Additionally, wall shear stress and entrance length were numerically predicted and compared with well-established correlations from the literature for Non-Newtonian flow. Detailed results of the CFD model exhibited a reliable prediction of the characteristics of heavy crude oil flow.

Beatrice Ficcarelli

SOMMARIO: 1. Osservazioni introduttive. – 2. Il nuovo volto della custodia. –3. La delega delle operazioni di vendita. – 3.1. (Segue) La responsabilità del delegato. – 4. Conclusioni.

Danny Nicol

To the casual reader, Agatha Christie’s fiction seems to be saturated by a deeply conservative culture and supportive of the capitalist status quo. There is indeed some evidence in Christie’s prose that she identified with conservatism. Yet despite her leanings she adopted a critical stance on the world of business. She repeatedly depicted financiers as criminals, even murderers, during the inter-war years and later, in the post-war period, blurred the line between businesses and criminal conspiracies. Christie also used the crookedness of business to provide capitalism’s victims with a motive for murder. The article explains the gap between Christie’s political views and her portrayal of business by arguing that Christie’s fundamental task was to fashion dystopias. In so doing she regarded it as more important to capture the spirit of the times than to propagandise in ways which matched her allegiances. Thus Christie’s engagement with private enterprise provides a valuable snapshot of a society more critical of capitalism and, particularly between the wars, more ready to consider alternatives to it, than is the case in contemporary society.

Тетяна Андріївна Цувіна

The article is devoted to the analysis of the independence and impartiality of the court as constituting elements of the rule of law in civil procedure. The author concludes that it is necessary to interpret the concepts of independence and impartiality of the court through the prism of par. 1 Art. 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which enshrines the right to a fair trial in civil matters, and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the interpretation and application of this article. According to par. 1 art. 6 ECHR in determination of his civil rights and obligations everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. At first glance ECHR doesn’t regulate jurisdictional issues. However, conflict of jurisdictions problem should be analyzed in terms of such elements of the right to a fair trial as access to court and «court, established by law». Criteria of independence and impartiality of the court are examined in the context of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. The main criteria for the independence of judges are: a) the method of judges’ appointment; b) the duration of their term of office; c) the availability of guarantees against external influences; d) the presence of external attributes of independence. The impartiality of the court is analyzed in terms of subjective and objective criteria. Based on the analysis of the norms of the national civil procedural legislation, it is concluded that it does not fully reflect the international standards of fair trial in terms of ensuring the institutional requirements for the independence and impartiality of the court. Particular attention in this context is also should be paid to a critical assessment of the proposed changes to the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine regarding motion for recusal of the judge in accordance with the Draft Law of Ukraine «On Amendments to the Commercial Procedure Code of Ukraine, the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine regarding improvement reviewing court decisions on appeal and cassation proceedings» № 2314 of October 25, 2019. The proposed innovations are critically evaluated because of the fact that possibility to rule on the motion for the recusal of the judge by the same judge who is considering the case does not comply with the legal axiom «nemo judex in re sua» («no one can be a judge in his own case»)

E. Macpherson

Australian water law frameworks, which authorise water use, have historically excluded indigenous people. Indigenous land now exceeds 30 per cent of the total land in Australia. Yet indigenous water use rights are estimated at less than 0.01 per cent of total Australian water allocations. In the limited situations where water law frameworks have engaged with indigenous interests, they typically conceive of such interests as falling outside of the ‘consumptive pool’ of water applicable to commercial uses associated with activities on land such as irrigation, agriculture, industry or tourism.

Sanja Maksimovic

Contracts concluded by intuitu personae are such contracts in which the personal characteristics of one or both contractors constitute a decisive element of their consent, so that the execution of obligations or the acquisition of rights is strictly related to the contractor for whose personal characteristics the contract is concluded. A contract of employment is always concluded as an intuit personae contract and this is precisely one of its main features. The duties of the employees are: performing the work in the sense of performing certain physical or intellectual work, ie achieving a certain result, performing the work within the agreed time, it is also a mater for the person to perform the job personally, a guarantee for the properties and handing over the things made to the contracting authority. In addition to these obligations, the worker is obliged to draw attention to the material defector.

Alfredo Ferrante

El artículo se propone desentrañar la naturaleza jurídica de los remedios del comprador que la ley chilena del consumidor predispone en caso de compraventa con disconformidad. El análisis resulta de utilidad, toda vez que se evidencian ciertos defectos terminológicos en la propia ley que no han sido detectados ni subsanados mediante su necesaria interpretación doctrinal.

Vibe Garf Ulfbeck, Kateřina Peterková Mitkidis, Alexandra Horváthová

[...] conflicting legal rules and norms, some pushing for the pursuance of CSR and sustainability goals and some suggesting the risk of liability for the same, were in the focus of the conference titled ‘To Pursue or Not to Pursue CSR Goals: Legal Risks and Liabilities’ held in Copenhagen on 6-7 October 2016. This conference was an initiative of the Centre for Enterprise Liability, Copenhagen University (CEVIA) and the International and Transnational Tendencies in Law centre, Aarhus University (INTRAlaw) and co-organised with the Sustainable Market Actors for Responsible Trade (SMART) project and the CSR Legal Research Network. The speakers addressed the issue of whether companies, states and other entities that are required by transnational private regulation and soft law to pursue CSR and sustainability goals in their activities may in fact face legal risks and liabilities for doing or not doing so. This special issue presents five of the contributions, discussing the topic both from the company (private) and state (public) perspectives. [...]