Common Rights

August 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

Back in 2007, Simon Glik was walking through Boston Common when he saw what he took to be a scene of police brutality.  He whipped out his cellphone, held it up and began recording the fracas.  The Boston police officers turned their efforts on him and charged him with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace.

In a resounding decision yesterday, the First Circuit held that police officers who prevent people from recording them in public are acting in violation of the First Amendment. It also held that the police had no probable cause under the wiretap law because the camera, held out in public, was hardly a secret recording.

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About Timothy Cornell
Timothy Cornell is of counsel at Perry, Krumsiek & Jack, where he co-chairs the litigation group and has a significant internet law, healthcare and litigation practice. Mr. Cornell graduated from the University of Chicago, where he studied philosophy. Before he became a lawyer, Mr. Cornell was a journalist at the Boston Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers. An investigative story he wrote for the Tennessean in Nashville uncovered a series of radiation experiments done on poor pregnant women during the Cold War that led to a class action lawsuit and a $10 million settlement with Vanderbilt University. He then went to Cornell Law School, where he graduated cum laude from Cornell Law School in 2002, and was editor-in-chief of the Cornell International Law Journal. He has litigated a wide range of commercial, securities and antitrust cases. Working for the famed lawyer David Boies, Mr. Cornell litigated a whistleblower case against the pharmacy benefit manager Medco that resulted in a $166 million settlement and was recognized as The Case of the Month in the June 2006 issue of American Lawyer magazine. He also defended a major telecom against claims of securities fraud, and successfully sued Genzyme and other pharmaceutical manufacturers under IP, antitrust, securities and other causes of action. He was part of a team of Boies, Schiller & Flexner that sued Visa, MasterCard and the ten largest banks in the nation on behalf of American Express. The case resulted in a $4 billion settlement, the largest in antitrust history. Mr. Cornell focuses much of his practice on helping third party payors discover overcharges and reign in their spending on healthcare, while continuing to advise startups. He currently represents a large municipal health plan in its claims of consumer fraud against a major pharmacy benefit manager. He also represents a range of internet law clients and is a network lawyer for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

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