Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The Supreme Court will begin using an electronic filing system for documents starting in November, a move other federal courts began decades ago. The court said in a statement Thursday that the new system will begin operation Nov. 13. The court says that initially attorneys will be asked to submit both electronic and paper documents. The court says that once the system is in place virtually all new filings will be publicly available for free. The system has been in the works for some time. Chief Justice John Roberts said in a 2014 report that the court was developing the system, saying it "may be operational as soon as 2016." Electronic filing is coming on the heels of the debut of a new Supreme Court website in late July.

Britain's appeals court has increased to 20 years the prison sentence of a surgeon convicted of performing unnecessary operations, leaving scores of patients maimed and some in constant pain. Ian Paterson falsely told patients they had cancer and performed operations including mastectomies. He was convicted of crimes against 10 patients in May and sentenced to 15 years. Prosecutors believe there were many more victims. The government challenged the sentence, and three appeals judges agreed Thursday that it was "unduly lenient." One of the judges, Heather Hallet, said "greed, self-aggrandizement, power" and other possible motives "do not come close to explaining how a doctor can falsely tell a patient he or she has cancer when they have not." She said the victims "must feel no sentence could properly reflect their suffering."