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Michael Konowicz, aka Michael Phillips, et al. v. Jonathan P. Carr, et al.

Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, No. 20-1238 · judgment December 8, 2020


Certiorari denied · October 4, 2021
Pre-decision estimate: 3% cert probability

Before the decision, well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.

Questions presented

  1. Whether the Court should revisit the fifty-year old “actual malice” doctrine of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and its progeny to determine if the “original meaning” of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution is consistent with Constitutionalizing the common law tort of defamation, and to determine whether the same level of “breathing space” deemed necessary in 1964 continues to be necessary for Twenty-First Century speech.

  2. Whether this Court should step in and establish a test for what constitutes “commercial speech” under the Lanham Act, where the Courts of Appeal have applied different standards to define the term.

Counsel of record

For petitioner
G. Alexander Bochetto
Bochetto & Lentz, P.C.

For respondent

Case

Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference

Proceedings

  1. Oct 04 2021
    Petition DENIED.
  2. Jun 30 2021
    DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/27/2021.
  3. May 05 2021
    Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due June 16, 2021)