The Arizona Supreme Court interprets an insurance clause for non-owned vehicles. Under the policy, an employee operates a non-owned auto “in connection with your business” when using the vehicle while engaged in the employer’s business. To qualify, an employee’s use of a vehicle must be directly involved with, or in furtherance of, an employer’s business purpose and does not include a routine commute to or from an employer’s office. The court states this interpretation is something less than “course and scope,” but doesn’t that depend on how one defines “course and scope”?

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In a criminal case, our supreme court determined that the surviving half-sister of a six-year-old murdered by another family member can request restitution for his loss of earnings. Quite absurd. The reality is that the young child had no loss of earnings before or after his death. While we are all sympathetic to victims, no need to defy reality. The law has always made a distinction in civil cases between estate claims under the survival statute (economic losses end with death) and the wrongful death statute (beneficiaries can claim their own personal economic losses). The rules may be different in a criminal case with restitution under victim’s rights but one can only guess why. Since we celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday last week, reading this opinion brought to mind Henry V and the Archbishop’s speech on Salic law.

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The court of appeals accepts special action jurisdiction and then denies it. There is no right to a jury trial in actions brought before the corporation commission for violations of the Arizona Securities Act. Last year the Supreme Court recognized such a right under the Seventh Amendment in actions filed by the SEC. But states can decide whether a jury trial is available under its own constitution and statutes. The Seventh Amendment does not apply to the states. Arizona’s constitution gives the corporation commission quasi-judicial powers, and it can prescribe its rules and regulations. “If our constitutional framers had intended to confer a jury-trial right for Commission enforcement actions, they would have done so.” Such negativity. The Seventh Amendment sits alone with the Grand Jury Requirement of the Fifth Amendment as not being incorporated against the states. Administrative tribunals continually deny jury trials, courts legitimize the denials, and our legislature persistently ignore them.

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