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High court to hear double jeopardy, registered agents cases

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//February 27, 2017//

High court to hear double jeopardy, registered agents cases

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//February 27, 2017//

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in three cases, two involving double-jeopardy claims and one involving out-of-state corporations.

The arguments will be held in the state Capitol’s Supreme Court Hearing Room.

At 9:45 a.m., lawyers in the case of State v. Steinhardt will be on the hot seat. Heather Steinhard was convicted in 2014 of failing to protect a child and first-degree sexual assault and pleaded no contest to both charges. She was sentenced to 22-½ years in jail, plus 15 years of extended supervision.

The questions in Steinhardt’s appeal to the high court include whether the charges violated the rule against double jeopardy, whether Steinhardt’s no-contest plea waived her right to be free from double jeopardy and whether Steinhardt’s trial counsel was ineffective for failing to bring up the double-jeopardy issue.

Steinhardt is appealing a state Court of Appeals decision finding that although the same criminal act cannot lead to more than one criminal charge, Steinhard had waived her right to for review of the double-jeopardy claim. That decision affirmed a post-conviction ruling by Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Sandy Williams.

Then, at 10:45 am., the justices will hear State v. Pal, which involves questions over whether a Rock County man was properly convicted in a hit-and-run case that caused the death of two motorcyclists.

Sambath Pal was sentenced to 15 years in prison, plus 10 years of extended supervision. He is arguing on appeal that it was double jeopardy to charge him with two crimes for the single act of fleeing the accident.

The justices will conclude, at 1:30 p.m., with oral arguments in the case of The Segregated Account of Ambac Assurance Corp. v. Countrywide Home Loans Inc., an insurance-and-securities case that has bounced up and down through the court system.

In 2005 Ambac Assurance Corp. issued policies to protect against losses from residential-backed mortgage securities. The policies came in response to representations that mortgage lender Countrywide had made in 2004 and 2005.

Ambac is now required to pay more than $350 million in claims. It sued various underwriters, originators and security issuers after the housing market collapsed, seeking to hold them liable for risks Ambac insured against.

One of those cases included a fraud case against the New York-based Countrywide filed in Wisconsin. Countrywide has been fighting the suit by, among other things, alleging the Wisconsin courts have no jurisdiction over it. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Peter Anderson agreed but the state Court of Appeals reversed his decision in 2016.

Among the issues the court is expected to weigh in on is whether an out-of-state company has consented to state court jurisdiction when it has provided a registered agent when registering to do business in Wisconsin and whether requiring such entities to consent to the jurisdiction of state courts violates the due-process clause.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and three civil-procedure law professors and the Coalition for Litigation Justice, a non-profit organization formed to respond to problems with mass-tort litigation, have submitted amicus briefs in the case.

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