Beesquared

Year: 2014

  • Nashville Gives Green Light to Uber, Lyft and Other Ride-Sharing Services

    Ride-sharing services may be facing legal risks in some cities but the taxi alternatives have permission to pick up passengers at the airport in Music City.

    Nashville has become the first U.S. airport to authorize pick-ups by Uber, Lyft and other so-called transportation network companies provided the companies obtain a permit, pay a fee and identify themselves clearly.

    Drivers who satisfy the guidelines will be able to retrieve passengers in areas designated for such pickups.

    “This is a major milestone to embrace ever-evolving technology and accommodate new app-based transportation service operators,” Rob Wigington, chief executive of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, said in a press release. “We are continuously listening to the needs of our passengers, so that we can better provide and enhance the Nashville Airports Experience.”

    The authorization comes as ride-sharing services face questions from public officials in California and elsewhere about the services’ adherence to consumer-protection laws. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that district attorneys in San Francisco and LA are questioning whether the companies mislead customers in connection with how carefully the companies review the backgrounds of drivers.

    Regulators in California, which is home to Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, also are asking the companies to discontinue their practice of allowing customers to share rides. California law reportedly bars transportation services from charging more than one person for the same ride.

    Ride-sharing services tap smartphones and GPS to connect drivers and passengers. Drivers who hold licenses and satisfy certain criteria can use the services to earn money with their cars.

    According to the Tennessean, officials in Nashville held discussions with Lyft and Uber to lay out a system that would respond to demand for the services while addressing taxi operators’ concerns that their companies are being treated unfairly. As part of the plan, the companies will pay $3.50 per trip to pick up passengers. Taxis pay $1.50.

    Uber is available in about 112 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. Lyft serves about 63 cities in the U.S., while Sidecar serves 10.

    The companies now compete with taxis in many cities. In August, New York City council member Ben Kallos proposed legislation that would direct the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission to create an app that would allow passengers to hail nearby drivers without having to wave down a taxi.

    Kallos said the proliferation of ride-sharing services may mean the apps need an app.

    “I think my nightmare would be hopping into a yellow cab in the future where they’ve got a phone for Uber a phone for Lyft a phone for Hailo…and they’ve literally got a dashboard covered in phones because they want to make sure they’re signed up for every single e-hail app,” Kallos told Mashable. “My preference would people to have one phone, one interface.”

  • M.T.A. rejects transit ad, group says it will sue

    Plans by a group that is planning to sue New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority after the agency rejected a proposed advertisement that refers to Muslims killing Jews highlights how cities can differentiate between categories of speech in accepting advertising on city-owned buses.

    The M.T.A. said in a statement released Friday that it had rejected a request by American Freedom Defense Initiative, a pro-Israel group, to run advertisements that feature the quotation, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” credited to “Hamas MTV.” The ad reportedly parodies ads sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations that presented jihad as an idea of individual struggle rather than incitement to terrorism.

    The ads ran on buses in cities other than New York, according to the M.T.A.

    Under the First Amendment, a city’s allowing advertising on public buses does not make that property a public forum. Rather, a bus is a commercial forum, which means that a city can limit advertising so long as the city’s review of proposed ads is viewpoint neutral and substantially related to an important government interest.

    In its statement, the agency defended its policy as viewpoint neutral. “The M.T.A. does not decide whether to allow or not allow a proposed advertisement based on the viewpoint that it expresses or because that viewpoint might be controversial,” the agency said.

    The M.T.A. said that its security chief “concluded the proposed advertisement would lead reasonable observers to interpret it as urging direct, violent attacks on Jews, given turmoil in Gaza, Syria and Iraq and New York City’s heightened security concerns.”

  • Apple CEO Tim Cook talks with Charlie Rose – Part I

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-guVDR-XjQ

    “The hardest decisions we make are the things not to work on,” says Apple CEO Tim Cook.

     

  • Laws governing home tests for HIV can bolster prevention efforts in sub-Saharan Africa

    Laws that encourage people to test themselves for HIV can bolster efforts to eliminate AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

    That’s the conclusion of a report published Wednesday by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the South African AIDS Trust, a nongovernmental organization that coordinates efforts to counter HIV and AIDS in South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

    The report examines laws relating to home or self-testing in the seven countries where the South African AIDS Trust operates as well as in the USA, United Kingdom and France. Though about 24.7 million people live with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, only about half know whether they have contracted the virus, according to the United Nations.

    Michael Sidibe (l), executive director of UNAIDS, meets on January 18, 2013 with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. (Photo courtesy of UNAIDS)
    Michael Sidibe (l), executive director of UNAIDS, meets on January 18, 2013 with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. (Photo courtesy of UNAIDS)

    The compendium, which the law firm Arnold & Porter produced pro bono in tandem with law firms in each of the countries covered, examines whether self-testing is legal, the regulations that govern distribution of devices that make such tests possible, and protections for privacy.

    “One of the key critical success factors in fulfilling the UNAIDS and global goal of zero new infections, zero deaths and zero discrimination is people knowing their own HIVsero-status and having the ability to act on the knowledge,” writes Jonathan Gunthorp, the South African AIDS Trust’s executive director, in a preface to the report.

    Self-testing for HIV creates opportunities for people to access HIV treatment and prevention services. The opportunity is especially great in sub-Saharan Africa, where fewer people know their HIV status compared with people elsewhere in the world. More than 1.1 people in the U.S. live with HIV infection but about 84% of them know they have the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    All of the countries surveyed by the South African AIDS Trust provide citizens who have HIV with antiretroviral drugs that suppress the HIV virus and halt progression of the disease.

    Among countries surveyed, the U.S. is the only one that has a home HIV test in the market. The Food and Drug Administration approved the kit, which is manufactured by OraSure Technologies, in 2012. Though the U.K. also has endorsed self-testing for HIV a test that satisfies the European Union’s standards for medical devices has yet to appear on shelves.

    According to the report, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia all would permit device makers to market home tests, although South Africa currently prohibits pharmacies from selling them. (Presumably the test could be sold over-the-counter.) By contrast, Botswana and Tanzania require that HIV tests be supervised by a trained professional.

    Protections for privacy vary by jurisdiction as well, the report finds. Though France and Mozambique shield test results completely, most countries permit disclosure of test results pursuant to a court order or to guardians or partners, as well as in situations where a person is charged with a sexual offense or a disclosure is necessary for purposes of medical treatment.

    Constitutional privacy protections exist in South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, while Mozambique, Botswana and Tanzania all have laws that protect HIV tests results specifically. The U.K. and France adhere to privacy protections enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. In America, rules governing the confidentiality of HIV tests vary by state.

    Depending on the jurisdiction, people who test positively for HIV may have a legal duty to disclose such information to sexual partners and insurers. Though none of the countries requires an employee to disclose his or her HIV status to an employer generally, the U.S. and U.K. require disclosure instances in which an employee’s HIV status ties directly to the job.

    All of the countries surveyed offer counseling in connection with testing for HIV. For example, Tanzania requires counseling before and after testing for anyone who receives a test in a state-sponsored testing center. In France, counselors must discuss the limits in reliability of so-called rapid tests. Counseling that follows tests tends to give guidance on such topics as notifying partners, connecting with care and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, depending on the test result.

    “HIV self-testing is not a magic bullet,” adds Gunthorp. “In combination with other innovative thinking, however, it may hold the key to increasing reach of testing, opening new options for hard to reach communities, making life easier for semi-discordant couples, and supporting both prevention and treatment.”

    The report also examines laws that govern the liability of manufacturers for harm to consumers from devices themselves or from failure of a test to diagnose someone correctly.

  • Student-athlete benched after taking to Twitter?

    On Saturday I heard a report on WFAN, a sports-talk station here in New York City, that a student at a public high school somewhere in the land was suspended recently after tweeting about his lack of playing time on the boys’ basketball team.

    Or was he benched? Did I even hear the report? I haven’t been able to find the story.

    Of course, educators want to teach kids how to voice concerns in a constructive way. But suspending a student for carping about playing time would be outrageous.

    Still, the report, if true, raises the issue of student liberties in an age of social media. Suppose a student were to sue his school for suspending him after taking to Twitter to complain about playing time. Might he have a case?

    The answer, I think, would be yes.

    In 1969, the Supreme Court held that students have a First Amendment right to engage in political protest. The case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, barred a school from punishing students who showed up at school in black armbands to protest the Vietnam War.

    However, for other types of speech, the Supreme Court has tended to balance the civil liberties of students and teachers with the need for school officials to lay down rules of conduct. For example, in 1988, the Supreme Court held that the principal of a Missouri high school could prevent the publication in a newspaper written and edited by a journalism class of articles about teen pregnancy and the effects of divorce on children in a school.

    Writing for the majority, Justice White distinguished between the silencing of student speech in a public forum and regulation of student speech that ties to the curriculum:

    “The latter question concerns educators’ authority over school-sponsored publications, theatrical productions, and other expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school. These activities may fairly be characterized as part of the school curriculum, whether or not they occur in a traditional classroom setting, so long as they are supervised by faculty members and designed to impart particular knowledge or skills to student participants and audiences.

    Educators are entitled to exercise greater control over this second form of student expression to assure that participants learn whatever lessons the activity is designed to teach, that readers or listeners are not exposed to material that may be inappropriate for their level of maturity, and that the views of the individual speaker are not erroneously attributed to the school.”

    That means school officials generally can censor speech in academic programs so long as the regulation does not favor any particular point of view and that the officials show a reasonable educational justification.

    In April, a high school in Lakeland, Florida denied a request by an editor of the student magazine – who herself had endured chemotherapy – to write an article about a proposed constitutional amendment that would permit the use of medical marijuana.

    “The fact that some members of the audience might disapprove of, or take offense to, a particular story is not an educationally reasonable basis for censorship,” Frank Lomonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, told the Lakeland Ledger. “Students can, and occasionally do, take their schools to court under the First Amendment and win if they are censored, and a situation like this one could certainly be a candidate.”

    The courts have allowed a school to remove an editor who disregarded the school’s policy prohibiting all discussion of drugs in the student newspaper, and to suspend a student who make a sexually explicit speech at a school assembly after being advised by teachers that the remarks would be inappropriate.

    That brings me back to the news report about the hoopster. Athletic programs tie to a school’s academic mission, but no one who reads a tweet from a student’s account would reasonably think the message carries the imprimatur of the school.

    In that event, the action in the hoopster’s case could shift from the basketball court to a federal court.

  • On a court in Central Park, contemplating tennis anew

    Ball boys and girls shield players from sun at the U.S. Open. (Photo by Brian Browdie)
    Ball boys and girls shield players from sun at the U.S. Open. (Photo by Brian Browdie)

    An 84-degree afternoon in September may not be the best time to take up tennis.

    “Don’t turn your back to the net,” Sam, the Ghanaian tennis instructor, told me from across the court under an azure sky in Central Park on Thursday.

    What I didn’t tell Sam is that I turned after hitting my forehand because circling back to the center of the court consumed less energy than moving there laterally while bouncing on the balls of my feet.

    What I did tell Sam is that I’m out of shape. That is, I’m out of tennis shape, which is part of what brought me to Court 27.

    My path started six days earlier under an equally blue sky at the U.S. Open. I made the trip aboard the No. 7 train from Times Square. “So you don’t have a car?” a nice lady from Fort Worth who happened to be seated next to me, asked me as we chatted about life in Manhattan, the players we hoped to see (she Roger Federer; me, Eugenie Bouchard) and the mild weather until recently in our respective cities.

    “Lately we’ve had 13 days of 100 degrees, which means that the kids start football practice at 6:00 p.m. and the coaches tell them to drink water throughout the day,” the Texan told me.

    I know what she means. On Court 27, I stopped play every 10 minutes or so to drink from a paper cone that I filled with water from a yellow and red Igloo cooler attached to the fence that runs behind the baseline.

    Later I consumed a quart of lemon-lime Gatorade. Old-school flavor. While I drank I recalled the bounce in my legs that my 17-year-old self managed effortlessly in singles and doubles matches throughout four years on the tennis team during high school in Pennsylvania.

    My sister and I also played a prodigious amount of tennis in our youth. Most nights after dinner we descended into our neon-lit basement, where we battled at table tennis for a half-hour before returning to our homework.

    “I decided to take up a new sport at age 41,” Jessica, a woman who played on the adjacent court told me afterward while we sat on a steel bench painted green, our faces flush from the humidity.

    Maybe tennis is my new, old sport.

    Throughout the lesson, Sam directed me to stand at the service line, then in the back court and later at the net. At each spot, he hit a series of balls to my left or right. Maybe a dozen forehands, followed by roughly the same number of backhands. “Turn your body perpendicular to the net,” he called on the forehands that I hit wide. “Come up over the ball. Step into the shot.”

    For every forehand I returned, I hit four more wide, deep or into the net. I also hit three balls beyond the fence. The ratio remained roughly the same on backhand and volleys. Sometimes, usually after rest, I experienced a surge of spring in my legs – a groove? – only to tire and bury the ball in the net a shot later.

    At the Open, I made my way to the distant courts, where I watched Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain defeat their compatriot Arantxa Parra Santonia and Marina Erakovic of New Zealand in three sets.

    I marveled at the apparent ease with which the women seemingly made every shot, even the ones that cost points. Every other game, the players retreated to chairs at courtside, where attendants shaded them with umbrellas opened expressly for that purpose. The teammates sipped water or sports drinks. Otherwise they said little, sitting quietly in the shade. Suarez Navarro tapped her feet continuously, as if she could not wait for play to resume.

    After my lesson, I made my way back to the tennis center, which has an LED clock above the door the faces the courts. The clock has orange digits that give the place an air of precision. Near the other door a gentleman strung rackets on a stringing machine. All those rackets arrayed in a line appealed to me.

    As I left the center, I passed a man a who headed toward the courts, two rackets poking through the opening in his backpack. “Beautiful day and so few people here,” he said as we paused to survey the rows of courts. “This is fun.”

  • Central Park vendor cannot continue suit against New York City: court

    Ed Yourdon/Wikimedia Commons
    Ed Yourdon/Wikimedia Commons

    A man who painted faces and made balloons in New York’s Central Park in exchange for donations cannot continue a lawsuit claiming the city cracked down on him selectively, a federal trial court in Manhattan has ruled.

    The city did not single Alexander Alhovsky out for special treatment when it fined him for vending outside locations designated for so-called expressive matter vendors, according to a ruling released August 19 by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

    Alhovsky, who vended under the name Sasha the Clown along a walk that connects the park’s southeast entrance to the Central Park Zoo, was fined by police on two occasions in July 2010 and arrested on another for allegedly failing to abide by a rule that requires expressive matter vendors to limit their activity to spots designated by park officials.

    Park police also charged Alhovsky’s spouse, Oksana Goncharenko, with storing personal belongings in violation of park rules.

    The couple claimed that though they were among five mobile vendors in the vicinity of the walk – including a puppeteer, a juggler and a balloon-shaper – officials pestered only them in violation of federal law, which requires that the government treat all similarly situated people alike.

    The court disagreed. “As balloon-shapers and facepainters, plaintiffs constituted ‘expressive matter vendors,’ who provided their art to customers in exchange for donations,” Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote in an opinion dated August 19. “By contrast, some of the named comparators, including four of the five named in response to interrogatories, were pure ‘entertainers’ – i.e., jugglers and puppeteers who did not sell their wares.”

    At issue are rules adopted by the city that limit expressive matter vendors to vending in so-called green spots, which the city makes available daily on a first come, first serve basis. The vendors may perform their acts outside the green spots on a mobile basis, which means without the use of a cart, display stand or other device.

    The city’s focus on Alhovsky and Goncharenko to the exclusion of other vendors in the vicinity demonstrated an intent to discriminate against the couple, the duo charged.

    The number of violations that park officials handed out to vendors dissuaded the court. “Plaintiffs’ failure to establish differential treatment in their deposition testimony is only compounded by the documentary data, which indicates that, out of twenty-three notice of violations issued during a two-year time period to mobile vendors, ten of which were issued on Wien Walk, plaintiffs received only four such tickets,” Buchwald added.

    The court also declined to hear a negligence claim by Alhovsky, who charged that he had been injured while rushing to claim a green spot from which to vend. Alhovsky can pursue the claim, which arises under New York law, in a state court, Buchwald ruled.

  • Lindsay Lohan lawsuit a publicity ploy, Grand Theft Auto V maker tells court

    The maker of a popular video game has asked a court to scrap a lawsuit filed by Lindsay Lohan, charging that the actress is pursuing the claim for publicity purposes.

    Lohan’s lawsuit lacks merit and represents a misuse of the legal system, Take-Two Interactive Software, the maker of Grand Theft Auto V, asserts in court papers filed August 20 with a Manhattan trial court.

    Any resemblance between the fictional character Lacey Jonas in Grand Theft Auto V and Lohan is a form of legally protected artistic expression and not subject to a New York law that prohibits the use of a person’s image for commercial purpose without her consent.

    https://twitter.com/IBNLiveTech/statuses/484581318563336192

    Lohan sued Take-Two in July, charging that the company based the Jonas character on her image and lifted events in Jonas’s story from Lohan’s own life in violation of her publicity rights.

    Last year the actress lost a similar lawsuit against Armando Christian Perez, a rapper known as “Pitbull,” whom Lohan charged used an arrest and other events from her life in a song lyric without her consent.

    Grand Theft Auto, which was released roughly a year ago for use on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms, follows a story set in the fictional city of San Andreas. The game’s characters include Jonas, who asks another character to help her escape the paparazzi.

    In its filing, Take-Two points to a line of rulings that separate works of fiction from commercial appropriation of a person’s likeness. “Works of fiction like Grand Theft Auto V cannot constitute ‘trade’ or ‘advertising’ within the meaning of the statute,” Take-Two asserts.

    In support of its position, Take-Two points to a line of cases, including a $100 million lawsuit filed in 1999 by Michael Costanza, a New York man who claimed unsuccessfully that creators of “Seinfeld” based the character George Costanza on his life.

    “Even had Ms. Lohan not lost the Perez case last year, is case would be frivolous because the principles on which Perez relied are so well-settled,” asserts Take-Two, which asked the court to award sanctions against Lohan for filing what Take-Two contends is baseless claim.

    Some experts agree. “There’s a long line of cases in New York that say the use of a fictionalized character does not give rise to a claim,” Evan Gourvitz, an attorney with Ropes & Gray in New York who specializes in intellectual property, told Forbes. “Even the thinly disguised use of a person’s identity is not illegal so long as the actual name of the person isn’t used.”

    Though Lohan had pointed to a “side-mission” for the Jonas character that the actress charges mirrors her own life, Take-Two contends that the Lohan is reacting to statements by a blogger and not to representations by the game maker.

    Lohan’s lawsuit comes amid claims by celebrities who charge companies with wrongfully appropriating their likenesses. In April, the actress Katherine Heigl sued Duane Reade after the retailer posted on Twitter and Facebook paparazzi photos of Heigl leaving one of its stores. Heigl and the company reportedly have settled the suit for undisclosed terms.

  • Checklist for police encounters: A camera and the Constitution

    The tragic deaths of Eric Garner, an unarmed Staten Island man who died on July 17 as a result of a police chokehold, and Michael Brown, an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri who died on August 9 after being shot by a white police officer, have prompted at least one group here in New York City to teach best practices for filming police encounters.

    The group, Peoples’ Justice, is the subject of a story by Reeves Wiedeman in the latest issue of The New Yorker. At a workshop put on by Peoples’ Justice that Wiedeman attended, Aidge Patterson, a coordinator with the group, began the session with a quiz that included the following exchange with a 14-year-old filmmaker:

    “True of false,” Patterson said. “If you are stopped or arrested, it’s best to answer all the cop’s questions.”

    “When I watch ‘Law & Order,’ they say don’t talk to the cops unless you got a lawyer,” Derek, one of the teens, said.

    “Right!” Patterson said. “I’m glad they’re dropping some actual knowledge there.”

    The dialogue continues, with Derek recalling an encounter with police, who ordered the teens against a wall. Could the police legally look through the teens’ pockets, Derek wondered.

    “That’s a search,” Patterson said, drawing a distinction between the city’s stop-and-frisk practice and a search, which requires probable cause.

    “But what if they keep going?” Derek said. “Because some cops just don’t care.”

    Consequently, the cameras. Peoples’ Justice canvasses neighborhoods with a police scanner and film crews in the hope of chronicling encounters.

    Brown’s death and the events in Ferguson that followed highlight how a contemporaneous recording can aid law enforcement and the public in evaluating the lawfulness of a stop. Plus, the public has a First Amendment right to record police officers.

    As the workshop also suggests, knowing your rights matters too, especially the protections that the Constitution guarantees to individuals. With that in mind, and a disclaimer that the following does not constitute legal advice, here are some of the basics.

    Can the police order you to stop?

    Yes, the police can stop and briefly detain you for investigative purposes if they have reasonable suspicion – meaning specific and articulable facts – of wrongdoing. As Patterson notes, the police also can detain you if they have probable cause to think that you’ve committed a crime.

    Must you stop if the police ask you to?

    Generally yes, but what matters is whether you’re free to leave. That depends on whether you’ve been seized. A seizure occurs when, based on all the circumstances, a reasonable person would not feel free to terminate the encounter or to decline to answer an officer’s questions.

    In New York, pursuit by the police is itself a seizure. So is a police officer’s twice ordering you to “hold on a second.” Of course, you’ve also been seized if you are physically restrained.

    As a practical matter, if a police officer asks you to stop, and you don’t feel free to terminate the encounter, you’ve been seized.

    Can the police look through your pockets?

    No, unless you’ve been arrested. If the police detain you (without arresting you) because they think that wrongdoing is present, they can pat down, or frisk, your outer clothing if they reasonably believe that you possess a weapon. If the police encounter something that feels like a weapon, they can reach into your clothing to remove it.

    In most states, if the officer feels an object who’s contour immediately suggests contraband (e.g., a weapon or drugs), she can seize that as well. In New York, the police can seize an item only if it appears to be a weapon. Thus, absent encountering something that feels like a weapon, the police cannot reach into or rummage through your pockets.

    However, if the police arrest you, they can search your pockets, your clothing and, in most states, any containers within your immediate control. In New York, the police can only search nearby containers if they suspect that you are armed.

    What should you do if you are stopped?

    Remember that you have no obligation to say anything. In fact, anything you do say can be used against you later. Note that in most states, including here in New York, the police can ask for your name and identification, which you cannot lawfully refuse to provide. (If you’re later arrested, the police also can ask you routine booking questions that you have to answer.)

    If you feel you are detained by the police, ask, respectfully, if you are in custody. If the answer is no, then, following a frisk (assuming the police reasonably believe you may be carrying a weapon) you are free to leave.

    What are your rights if arrested?

    An arrest triggers a whole series of rights under the Fifth Amendment. Many will be familiar to anyone who’s watched televised police dramas.

    You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You also have the right to the presence of an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you if you so desire.

    This so-called Miranda warning matters in several ways. First, the police must read it to you if you’re arrested. The failure to read you your rights means that prosecutors generally cannot use anything you later say against you at trial.

    Second, a Miranda warning triggers other protections, chiefly the right to an attorney. If you ask for an attorney, all questioning must stop. Immediately. But your request must be unambiguous and specific, e.g., “I request the presence of my attorney and respectfully decline to answer any questions without my attorney present.”

    In a future post I’ll review the right to counsel.

     

  • Public Storage, self-storage company, must face class-action lawsuit over rental terms, court rules

    Wikimedia Commons
    Wikimedia Commons

    A woman who rented a self-storage unit in New Jersey can sue the owner for its alleged failure to maintain the premises notwithstanding the owner’s attempt to limit its liability, a federal court has ruled.

    The ruling, by the U.S. District Court in Camden, means that Jackeline Martinez-Santiago, who in February 2012 rented a storage space for $63 a month from Public Storage, can continue a class-action that she filed last December against the company on behalf of herself and other consumers.

    The decision highlights the principle that a business cannot renounce responsibility to maintain its premises in a safe condition for customers. It also shows that terms in a lease agreement do not become enforceable simply because a consumer initials or otherwise assents to them.

    At issue was a provision in the lease agreement signed by Martinez-Santiago that limited Public Storage’s liability for injury to people or damages to property in the absence of fraud.

    Five days after Martinez-Santiago rented the unit, her then-boyfriend, Orlando Colon, whom Martinez-Santiago had listed on the lease as an “alternate contact name,” slipped on a patch of ice in front of the unit. Colon later sued Public Storage for his injuries, asserting that the company failed to keep the premises safe.

    Martinez-Santiago also sought to cancel a provision in the agreement that required her to indemnify Public Storage for Colon’s claims.

    For its part, Public Storage, which has about 2,200 locations nationwide, sought indemnification from Martinez-Santiago for Colon’s injury and asserted that the lease provisions are lawful under New Jersey law.

    The court rejected the company’s contentions. “Businesses are in the best position to maintain their premises for the safe use of customers, and enforcing the exculpatory provisions would give Public Storage permission to be careless – negligent, reckless – in the maintenance of its property,” wrote Judge Jerome B. Simandle in an opinion dated August 14. “Public Storage has a duty to guard against any known dangerous conditions on its property or conditions that should have been discovered.”

    “That Public Storage would seek to make Martinez-Santiago responsible for money defendant owed to Colon based on defendant’s alleged failure to clear snow and ice in front of its own storage unit stands outside the norm of reasonable business practice,” Simandle added.

    According to the court, walking outside a storage unit is not an inherently risky activity comparable to activities such as exercising at fitness centers, which the courts have allowed to enforce clauses that shield them from liability for customers’ injuries.

    The ruling reaffirms the common law rule that a business or other possessor of real estate that is open to the public at large must protect people who come onto the premises from reasonably knowable hazards. Business owners have a legal responsibility to inspect their premises at reasonable intervals and to either eliminate the hazard or warn customers of its existence.

    The court also scratched a provision in Martinez-Santiago’s lease that required her to assert any legal claim against Public Storage within 12 months of the occurrence that gave rise to the demand.

    The company’s reliance on the provision “would be unreasonable because the time to bring suit challenging clauses for the tenant’s liability and indemnification for Public Service’s negligence could expire before a tangible loss is suffered,” wrote Simandle, who noted that the New Jersey laws under which Martinez-Santiago sued Public Storage have a six-year statute of limitations.

    “A consumer would have to be clairvoyant to challenge contractual fine print addressed to circumstances (like indemnification) that did not themselves arise when the contract was signed,” Simandle wrote.

    Michael Galpern, a lawyer for Martinez-Santiago, termed the lease agreement “an incredibly anti-consumer contract where Public Storage, for years, has been taking advantage of people,” according to the New Jersey Law Journal, which first reported the ruling.

    Lawyers for Public Storage did not comment.