Foreign trade missions are a tool for key industry and government leaders to develop international business opportunities by meeting face to face. And right now, Gov. Doug Ducey is in Taiwan for one such trip that will include time in the Republic of Korea.
Ducey’s office says his five-day trade mission will “focus on strengthening Arizona’s well-established partnerships with the two Asian partners,” including meetings with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaushieh Joseph Wu, and U.S. Ambassador Philip Seth Goldberg.
Looking forward to continuing to grow our shared interests, partnership and friendship! https://t.co/sF2BTzXHpS
“Arizona has excellent relationships with Taiwan and the Republic of Korea,” Ducey said in announcing his arrival in Taipei on Tuesday. “The goal of this trade mission is to take these relationships to the next level – to strengthen them, expand them and ensure they remain mutually beneficial.”
Bilateral trade totaled $1.92 billion between Arizona and Taiwan last year along with $882 million between Arizona and the Republic of Korea, commonly known as South Korea. The governor’s itinerary includes delivering the keynote address to a group of American and Taiwanese business leaders as well as meeting with leaders of high-tech manufacturing companies.
“Arizona enjoys strong economic partnerships rooted in sectors such as technology and manufacturing – specifically within the semiconductor industry,” said Ducey, who is accompanied on the trip by Sandra Watson, who is the President and CEO of the Arizona Commerce Authority, as well as Danny Seiden, the President of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Among those involved in the trade mission are officials with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) which plans to train nearly 750 Arizona employees in Taiwan as part of the company’s $12 billion semiconductor facility being built in Arizona. Chip production is expected to begin at the Arizona plant by 2024.
Another itinerary item has the governor celebrating the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the State of Arizona and the Taiwan Ministry of Education. The MOU is signed by the Arizona Board of Regents and its counterpart in Taiwan for the purpose of promoting collaboration in higher education and workforce training, according to Ducey’s office.
The state budget this year included legislation establishing Arizona’s first foreign trade offices in Taiwan and the Republic of Korea. Those offices are expected to launch later this year.
Ducey’s trip to Asia follows a five-day economic mission to Israel in May which focused on increasing trade and investment between Arizona and Israel, as well as addressing drought issues. It was the governor’s second official visit to the country.
Two voter initiatives will be on the 2022 General Election ballot even though some circulators of petitions in support of those initiatives may not have complied with state law, leading the Arizona Supreme Court to publicly call on Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to fix her system.
The justices ruled last week that their only option was to allow the Voters’ Right To Know Act and the Predatory Debt Collection Protection Act to be on the Nov. 2 ballot despite the fact some of the signatures used to qualify for the ballot were obtained by circulators who did not comply with the requirements of Arizona Revised Statute 19-118.
“The Court declines to find that the Committee or any individual circulator failed to comply with § 19-118 when the SOS has prevented such compliance,” Chief Justice Robert Brutinel wrote. Doing otherwise, he noted, would “unreasonably hinder” the initiative power granted to voters in the Arizona Constitution.
Circulators are required under ARS 19-118 to register with the Secretary of State’s Office for each initiative effort they are involved with. Part of the registration process includes a notarized Affidavit of Eligibility.
However, the justices would not allow any signature challenges on the grounds of noncompliance with the affidavit requirement. The decision, Brutinel wrote, is that Hobbs’ online “Circulator Portal” is not designed to permit submission of more than one affidavit per circulator.
And it gets worse, according to Brutinel.
“By also refusing to accept manual submission of a hard copy affidavit…the SOS rendered it impossible for circulators to successfully submit a registration application as required by § 19-118…if they had already registered to circulate other petitions,” the ruling states.
Therefore, “any circulators’ lack of compliance with § 19-118 does not invalidate the signatures gathered by these circulators on the record and circumstances before us,” Brutinel wrote, denying a challenge by several groups including Protect Our Arizona, Americans for Prosperity, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, the Center for Arizona Policy Action, and the Goldwater Institute for Public Policy and Research.
Those groups argued in several election challenges that failure of a circulator to submit the affidavit is grounds for disqualifying all the petition signatures collected by that circulator for that initiative. The same position was argued by Gov. Doug Ducey, who filed an amicus brief in each case along with Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers.
Another voter initiative considered by the Arizona Supreme Court last week ended with a different result but still pointed to the problem with being unable to hold circulators accountable for complying with state law.
The case involved the proposed Arizona Free and Fair Elections Act which needed 237,645 validated petition signatures to make the ballot in November. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club cited more than 30 objections including the circulator affidavit issue.
The affidavits did not matter in the end, as the Free and Fair Elections effort fell shy of qualifying for the ballot by roughly 1,500 signatures. Critics of the initiative point out the importance of ensuring the initiative process “strictly complies” with the requirements set out in state law.
To do otherwise, they argue, is to call into question the legitimacy of the process.
One of the hardest tasks for an attorney is ensuring a client understands how difficult it is in Arizona to win a multi-million dollar award for damages. In fact, the State Bar of Arizona recently reported the statewide average plaintiff’s verdict in 2021 was less than $509,000, while the median plaintiff’s verdict was less than $200,000.
That is why so much attention gets focused on reports of verdict awards, to show clients the slim chances of big money—even in the most egregious of cases—and the amount of time it can take for a case to get to trial.
Tucson-based attorney Leighton Rockafellow Sr. is among those who shares the Top Ten civil verdict feature published each year in Arizona Attorney, the official magazine of the State Bar of Arizona.
“It is a way of letting our clients know that only a few cases go for the mega dollars, as the perception is that most of them do,” he told AZ Free News of the list, which does not include pre-trial settlements.
Here is a summary of the 2021 Top Ten verdicts
#1- Marquez v. Sobel, M.D. et al. – $5,000,000
In the case, the Plaintiff’s estate sued Dr. Sobel for failing to take her vital statistics during an appointment which should have revealed she was in sepsis at the time, a life-threatening medical emergency. The Plaintiff died three days later. Sobel successfully argued to the Maricopa County jury that another doctor, not named in the lawsuit, was the actual negligent party, cutting Sobel’s share of the judgment to just 5 percent ($250,000).
#2- Adams v. Arizona Senate – $2,750,000
Talonya Adams, a black female attorney, was fired in 2015 as a policy advisor for the Arizona Senate. Adams successfully argued to a federal jury in Phoenix that she was fired in retaliation for bringing to light her disparate pay based on sex and race. (It was the second time a jury ruled in Adams’ favor.)
#3- Mathis v. City of Buckeye – $1,800,000
Mathis was contracted to provide music at a demolition derby event at the Buckeye Arena when he was thrown from the bed of a pickup truck driven by a City of Buckeye employee. Mathis was in the truck after being asked by a city employee to help set up trash cans at the arena. The City accepted liability for the injuries but left the determination of damages to a Maricopa County jury.
#4- Alsadi v. Intel Corp. – $1,171,181
Alsadi was an HVAC employee of the company contracted to run an industrial wastewater facility owned by Intel Corp. In 2016 he was exposed to toxins at the facility and suffered permanent injuries. The case was decided by the federal judge during a bench trial (without a jury).
#5- Parker v. Hawley et al. – $1,029,999
Plaintiff Parker claimed fraud and negligent misrepresentation regarding the financial status of a business he invested in between 2013 and 2015. The company went bust soon after Parker’s last investment and Parker sued in 2016. A Maricopa County jury ruled in favor of Parker and awarded him the specific amount of damages he requested.
#6- Driscoll v. State of Arizona – $981,908
Driscoll was at work on Oct. 18, 2017 driving a semi tractor-trailer when it was struck by an Arizona Department of Corrections transport van at the intersection of Highway 87 and Bartlett Road in Coolidge. The DOC driver was killed; she was the van’s only occupant. The case was heard by a Pima County court which found in favor of Driscoll’s negligence claim.
#7- Stacey v. Minnick – $875,000
A two-vehicle accident in Yavapai County led to a bench trial and a post-appeal jury trial, both ending in favor of Robert Stacey. The judge who conducted the bench trial awarded Stacey $833,000 which was appealed by the defendant. A subsequent jury trial resulted in an even higher damages award in favor of Stacey.
#8- Reinsch v. Kingston et al. – $854,500
Reinsch sued the Arizona Department of Public Safety for injuries he and his daughter sustained when Kingston, a DPS trooper, crashed his state-owned vehicle into the family’s vehicle while on-duty. The award by a Maricopa County jury was for the father, as the daughter’s claim was settled without a trial.
#9- Chatman v. Ferrell et al. – $665,000
The Arizona Department of Child Safety removed Chatman’s sons from her custody after their paternal grandmother was granted emergency custody by a judge in another state. It took Chatman four months to regain custody despite the fact she previously secured a court order barring the grandmother from contact with the boys. DCS officials claimed qualified immunity against the mother’s lawsuit but a federal jury rejected the state’s argument.
#10- Zubia v. Pena et al. – $640,000
Zubia sued Pena (her former husband) and a lender after finding her signature was fraudulently affixed to a $150,000 promissory note Pena obtained in 2008 after the couple separated. Pena had used the house the couple co-owned since 1995 as collateral. When Pena defaulted on the loan, the house was put up for sale and Zubia sued for concealment fraud. Jurors in Maricopa County awarded judgment against Pena and the lender.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) is reveling in Friday’s Arizona Supreme Court ruling affirming that the attempt to get the Arizona Free and Fair Elections Act on the upcoming general election ballot as a voter initiative has failed.
“The ruling today vindicates what we knew all along: the radical Free and Fair election initiative lacked enough lawful signatures to qualify for the ballot,” AFEC President Scot Mussi said after the order was issued under Chief Justice Robert Brutinel’s name. “Arizona voters, the rule of law, and basic math were victorious today.”
What would have been known as Proposition 210 on the 2022 General Election ballot included numerous changes to state law drafted by the Arizona Democracy Resource Center (ADRC Action), such as a ban on legislative election audits and allowing election day voter registration.
AFEC took the lead in opposing the voter initiative, while some elections officials worried making that many hodge-podge changes to election and campaign finance laws at one time would have negative unintended consequences.
AFEC’s legal challenge alleged myriad problems with more than one-half of the 475,290 petition signatures submitted by ADRC Action. It ended with Brutinel’s order affirming Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Mikitish’s finding that the minimum 237,645 signature threshold was missed by 1,458 signatures.
The outcome is exactly what AFEC’s Mussi predicted. In a series of statements Friday, Mussi called out ADRC Action for the “rigged methodology” the group’s attorneys pushed the courts to use when calculating the number of valid signatures. He said the mathematic gymnastics was intended “to sneak their disqualified measure onto the ballot.”
“Their dubious formula cherry picked data that boosted their numbers, even including signatures that were disqualified by the counties in the random sample,” Mussi said. “None of their formula was rooted in statute or historical precedent and was a Hail-Mary attempt to resuscitate thousands of signatures that simply should not have counted.”
The justices ordered Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to rescind the prior determination that the initiative had qualified for the ballot.
AZ's Free and Fair Elections initiative would have made elections in AZ neither: it would have wiped away AZ’s important election safeguards and substituted them with radical, #HR1-style policies. 2/5https://t.co/MWNOrt2VFM
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AGO) has been reached an agreement to provide $400,000 to fund a new radio dispatch system for the Colorado City Police Department in an effort to improve emergency response times along the Arizona / Utah border.
Earlier this year, the Arizona State Legislature appropriated the funds to the AGO via House Bill 2862 for the express purpose of identifying ways to replace the outdated communication system relied on by police, fire, and EMS personnel in Colorado City, its sister city of Hildale, Utah, and surrounding areas of Mohave County.
“Every second counts during an emergency, so law enforcement requires efficient communication technology,” said Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. “Our office is pleased to work with Colorado City’s police department to help ensure that its officers have the equipment needed to provide the fastest response times for residents of Northern Arizona.” Rep. Regina Cobb (R-Kingman) chaired the House Appropriations Committee which earmarked the funds. It was then up to Brnovich’s staff to work with Colorado City Police Chief Robb Radley to ensure the money is spent as intended no later than June 30, 2023.
“Reliable radio communications are critical to ensure an effective and timely response in emergency situations, especially in rural communities,” said Representative Regina Cobb, Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. “I’ve been proud to work with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and his office to help secure this important public safety funding for the Colorado City Police Department.”
Among the provisions of the agreement is that the new radio system must meet at least minimum industry standards. Copies of all quotes, bid proposals, purchase orders, invoices, and receipts must be submitted to the AGO within 30 days of purchase and any excess funds not expended by the deadline must be returned to the AGO.
Radley took over the beleaguered department in August 2019 despite the fact a 2017 federal court order was in effect related to years of corruption, illegal conduct by some officers, and discriminatory services toward non-members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church. The agreement signed earlier this month by Radley signals a major step in his continuing efforts to improve emergency response services to the community.
“The Colorado City Police Department’s police, fire, and EMS communications center are extremely grateful to the State of Arizona, Representative Regina Cobb, the Attorney General’s Office, and Attorney General Mark Brnovich for the opportunity to further upgrade the center with modern radio communications,” said Radley. “The radio system will ensure first responders have the best opportunity to provide the highest quality of services possible for the residents and visitors of Northern Arizona.”
