LHC Safety and the Law

[rpenner]

Establishing a thread to cover the Hawaiian and European anti-LHC lawsuits since Walter L. Wagner feels that it is inappropriate to post these on his Astronomy thread.

Hawaiian complaint:
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-hidce/case_no-1:2008cv00136/case_id-78717/
Hawaiian update:
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4830&view=findpost&p=376492
September 17, 2008 -- Wagner and Sancho file their response to the government response to their motion to and yet another affidavit about a new fictitious danger. They cite the unpublishable and already rebutted R. Plaga paper again! They don't seriously address rule 4(f) or the Hague Convention and seem deaf to legal points being scored against them.
September 18, 2008 -- Wagner goes on a trip to Utah. Judge Chang orders that Wagner file reply by September 23 (moot!?) confirms new hearing date of October 14, and clarifies that the hearing is just on default judgment, not any sort of injunction versus CERN.
September 19, 2008 -- Sheldon Glashow, Frank Wilczek and Richard Wilson want back in as Amici Curiae -- now I have their autographs!
September 19, 2008 -- Wagner and Sancho try for the third time to properly file a motion for a permanent injunction and yet another affidavit. I am critical of their use of unattributed quotes which is contrary to the practice of both science and law and the general goofiness of the reasoning.
September 23, 2008 -- Conan O'Brian parodies Wagner's concerns.
September 25, 2008 -- Original date for hearing on default judgment versus CERN .. this would have been before the LHC startup, but Wagner won't be in town that date so the fate of the world is sold short for Wagner's travel plans. Or are we to believe that Wagner divined the LHC setbacks? If he is a prophet why can't he tell us which of the speculative bugaboos we have to worry about instead of coming up with new ones as the case moves along?
October 10, 2008 -- Wagner returns from Utah -- about this time the LHC was supposed to start physics runs, but transformers and quenches have probably set this back to 2009.
October 14, 2008 -- Hearing on default judgment versus CERN
* Wagner's own process server says that the service was illegal
* The Swiss Embassy says the service was illegal
* The US Government says the service was illegal
* Wagner points out that some form of service was physically accomplished, which was not the point at issue and while he seems to have cut-and-pasted an essay on Rule 4(f) and the Hague Convention he cites no cases giving leave for him to ignore them.

In most recent filings, Luis Sancho's signature appeared in a timely fashion. This represents a major improvement for Wagner's side.

European complaint (new URL):
http://lhc-concern.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/mr-beschwerde-cern-volltext.PDF
European (ECHR) update:
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4830&view=findpost&p=369936
This case is going nowhere -- I can't find any notice that the ECHR has taken more than an adminstrative pass at the paperwork and the filing seems deficient in that I don't see the prior court cases cited in detail -- the points raised in those cases must be in this record. They abandoned their chance to appeal in national courts.

I'm not a lawyer and none of this constitutes legal advice. But it is fun.

 

[BenTheMan]

Also, it might be nice to try to dig up some of the "The LHC/RHIC is not going to destroy the world" papers.

 

[Read-Only]

I'm not a lawyer and none of this constitutes legal advice. But it is fun.

Yep! And it also points out that Wagner is no better an amateur lawyer than he is amateur scientist!! HAR-HAR-HAR!!!

The guy is absolutely nothing but an all-around jerk.

 

[rpenner]

Since competent expert testimony may become part of the trial record, it is relevant to this thread to list potentially admissible papers.

Work in progress. Please post corrections, additions or suggestions in this format. Review articles are preferred because they address wider audiences.

Bugaboo: Black Holes of GR
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: R.L. Jaffe, W. Busza, F. Wilczek and J. Sandweiss. "Review of Speculative "Disaster Scenarios" at RHIC" Review of Modern Physics 72, 1125-1140 (2000) http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910333
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Black Holes of 4-D quantum gravity
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: J.P. Blaizot, J. Iliopoulosm J. Madsen, G.G. Ross, P. Sonderegger and H.J. Specht. "Study of potentially dangerous events during heavy-ion collisions at the LHC: report of the LHC safety study group" CERN Yellow Book (2003) http://doc.cern.ch/yellowrep/2003/2003-001/p1.pdf
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: R.L. Jaffe, W. Busza, F. Wilczek and J. Sandweiss. "Review of Speculative "Disaster Scenarios" at RHIC" Review of Modern Physics 72, 1125-1140 (2000) http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910333
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Dangerous Black Holes of N-D quantum gravity
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: J.P. Blaizot, J. Iliopoulosm J. Madsen, G.G. Ross, P. Sonderegger and H.J. Specht. "Study of potentially dangerous events during heavy-ion collisions at the LHC: report of the LHC safety study group" CERN Yellow Book (2003) http://doc.cern.ch/yellowrep/2003/2003-001/p1.pdf
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo M. Mangano. "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes" Physical Review D78 035009 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Dangerous Large Black Hole Remnants of N-D quantum gravity
Unpublished paper addressing it: R. Plaga. "On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders" http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1415
Unpublished paper rebutting it: Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo L. Mangano. "Comments on claimed risk from metastable black holes" http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.4087
Unpublished paper rebutting it: Roberto Casadio and Piero Nicolini. "The decay-time of non-commutative micro-black holes" http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.2471
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it:
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Dangerous Black Holes of N-D quantum gravity without Hawking radiation
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: J.P. Blaizot, J. Iliopoulosm J. Madsen, G.G. Ross, P. Sonderegger and H.J. Specht. "Study of potentially dangerous events during heavy-ion collisions at the LHC: report of the LHC safety study group" CERN Yellow Book (2003) http://doc.cern.ch/yellowrep/2003/2003-001/p1.pdf
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo M. Mangano. "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes" Physical Review D78 035009 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Dangerous Black Holes of N-D quantum gravity without Hawking radiation with charge evaporation
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo M. Mangano. "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes" Physical Review D78 035009 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Dangerous stranglets
Unpublished paper rebutting it:
John Ellis, Gian Giudice, Michelangelo Mangano, Igor Tkachev and Urs Wiedemann "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions: Addendum on strangelets" http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report_add.pdf (June 20, 2008)
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: R.L. Jaffe, W. Busza, F. Wilczek and J. Sandweiss. "Review of Speculative "Disaster Scenarios" at RHIC" Review of Modern Physics 72, 1125-1140 (2000) http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910333
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: J. Ellis, G. Giudice, M.L. Mangano, I. Tkachev and U. Wiedemann "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions" Journal of Physics G 35, 115004 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3414
Competent response:

Bugaboo: Dangerous Monopoles
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: J. Ellis, G. Giudice, M.L. Mangano, I. Tkachev and U. Wiedemann "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions" Journal of Physics G 35, 115004 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3414
Competent response:

Bugaboo: "Supernovae", Collapse of the vacuum, and other super-obvious things not associated with p-p collisions at $$\sqrt{s} \leq 7 \, \mathrm{TeV}$$
Competent, Published Paper addressing it:
Competent, Published Paper rebutting it: J. Ellis, G. Giudice, M.L. Mangano, I. Tkachev and U. Wiedemann "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions" Journal of Physics G 35, 115004 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3414
Competent response:

 

[rpenner]

Problem with the ECHR filing.

Swiss Federal Court decision BGE 118 Ib 562 was never filed by applicants. It concerns contractual disputes with CERN over a 1983 contract to build LEP not Human Rights or Environmental concerns. It was decided in 1992. How is misrepresenting yourself to the ECHR going to help you at the ECHR?

http://relevancy.bger.ch/php/clir/h.../118-IB-562:de&number_of_ranks=1&azaclir=clir

As for "Bezirksgericht Zürich EU080469/U" it is not available on the Zürich District Court's search service.

 

[Nasor]

Arxiv is nice and all, but surely there have been things published in actual peer-reviewed journals. Remember, anyone can slap anything up on arxiv. There's no review process. Or is this not even taken seriously enough to have gotten into real journals?

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

September 17, 2008 -- Wagner and Sancho file their response to the government response to their motion to and yet another affidavit about a new fictitious danger. They cite the unpublishable and already rebutted R. Plaga paper again! They don't seriously address rule 4(f) or the Hague Convention and seem deaf to legal points being scored against them..

No "legal points" scored; this is plaintiff's motion [for default injunction against CERN] still awaiting a response from the government attorneys on the Rule 4(f) issue. Rule 4(f) addressed extensively as requested by Judge Chang.

September 18, 2008 -- Wagner goes on a trip to Utah. Judge Chang orders that Wagner file reply by September 23 (moot!?) confirms new hearing date of October 14, and clarifies that the hearing is just on default judgment, not any sort of injunction versus CERN.

The Reply Memorandum was filed September 18, about the same time Judge Chang's deadline was filed. The Default Judgment is a request for a default permanent injunction, or alternatively a preliminary injunction if the Court allows defaulting defendant CERN the opportunity to late-file an Answer to the Complaint.

... now I have their autographs!

Woo hoo!

September 19, 2008 -- Wagner and Sancho try for the third time to properly file a motion for a permanent injunction and yet another affidavit. I am critical of their use of unattributed quotes which is contrary to the practice of both science and law and the general goofiness of the reasoning.

First time [not third] for a Motion for Preliminary Injunction [not permanent injunction]. Motion properly filed on September 19, 2008. In support of the motion is attached an Affidavit citing quotations. Attached to the Affidavit are Exhibits A-C which contain the quotations.

* Wagner's own process server says that the service was illegal.

The process server wrote me a letter stating that CERN told him they did not consider the service to be legal.

* The Swiss Embassy says the service was illegal.

The Swiss Embassy has not filed anything with the court.

I'm not a lawyer ...

So very true and obvious.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

Shouldn't this thread be in one of the social sciences? It is not physics, per se. Ben, do you want to move it?

 

[prometheus]

Shouldn't this thread be in one of the social sciences? It is not physics, per se. Ben, do you want to move it?

Wouldn't you love that. The LHC is very much a physics topic. I vote that it stays.

 

[BenTheMan]

Arxiv is nice and all, but surely there have been things published in actual peer-reviewed journals. Remember, anyone can slap anything up on arxiv. There's no review process. Or is this not even taken seriously enough to have gotten into real journals?

Nasor---the process is not that simple. You have to be endorsed, so there IS a bit of a peer review. Also, you can click on the links that rpenner gave, and go to the right hand side of the screen to "SLAC-SPIRES HEP" and get the Journal citation, where applicable.

Shouldn't this thread be in one of the social sciences? It is not physics, per se. Ben, do you want to move it?

I can think of good arguments both ways, but since it was posted in physics to start with, I will leave it here.

 

[rpenner]

September 17, 2008 -- Wagner and Sancho file their response to the government response to their motion [for default](correction) ... They don't seriously address rule 4(f) or the Hague Convention and seem deaf to legal points being scored against them.

No "legal points" scored; this is plaintiff's motion [for default injunction against CERN] still awaiting a response from the government attorneys on the Rule 4(f) issue. Rule 4(f) addressed extensively as requested by Judge Chang.

Judge Chang requested discussion of rule 4(f) and the Hague Convention because of the Government's reply memorandum. The Government raised these points in their September 5 response [Added: (Docket Numbers 73 and 74)] to your August 5 motions. (Docket Numbers 28 and 29) They cited court cases that ruled that the Hague Convention process was mandatory.

Service in compliance with the Hague Convention is "mandatory" and "pre-empts inconsistent methods of service prescribed by state law in all cases to which it applies." Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk, 486 U.S. 694, 699 (1988).
The Hague Convention does not allow a party to effectuate service from the United States on an international organization headquartered in Switzerland by dropping pleadings off at that organization's legal offices in Geneva. As the Swiss Embassy has advised this Court, "the delivery of official court documents to an intergovernmental organization through a bailiff, an attorney or the court itself violates international law and, in particular, the Agreement between Switzerland and the European Organization for Nuclear Research Concerning the Legal Status of the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, which sets down the inviolability of the buildings of the Organization and the immunity from legal process." Dkt. No. 39 or 58.

In addition, the Hague Convention has a website with flowcharts on how to make it work in this case. The judge asked you to respond. And you gave a Wikipedia-level discussion of what Rule 4(f) is.

September 19, 2008 -- Wagner and Sancho try for the third time to properly file a motion for a permanent injunction

First time [not third] for a Motion for Preliminary Injunction [not permanent injunction].

I remind you of Docket 29, filed on August 5 and your original complaint.

October 14, 2008 -- Hearing on default judgment versus CERN
* Wagner's own process server says that the service was illegal

The process server wrote me a letter stating that CERN told him they did not consider the service to be legal.

Yes, and he added in his own voice:

S'agissant des organisations internationales, tous les actes judiciaires doivent être notifiés par la Mission Suisse, laquelle est le canal diplomatique et donc la vole appropriee pour notifier des actes judiciaires. [With respect to International Organizations, all judicial documents must be notified through the Swiss Mission, which is the diplomatic channel and therefore the adequate channel by which to notify judicial documents.]

* The Swiss Embassy says the service was illegal

The Swiss Embassy has not filed anything with the court.

Docket Number 39 or 58.
I have already quoted this for you here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2005374&postcount=238

Remember, anyone can slap anything up on arxiv.

Which is why, when possible, I put the journal citation on the same line as the convenient arxiv link. R. Plaga, for example, hasn't found a journal to publish his paper in.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

The Swiss Embassy is not allowed to file pleadings, as they are not a party. The US government has not attached any Swiss Embassy documents to any of their pleadings, as of yet. Further, the Swiss Embassy has not served me with any documents. Any documents they might have lodged with the clerk would be stamped 'received' rather than 'filed'.

The position that CERN is taking through the US government attorney is that they are immune from service of process from anyone in the world. The Hague Convention, if it were the only method applicable, would allow CERN to avoid service unless they consented, which clearly they don't. Accordingly, we've argued that CERN can't have its cake and eat it too. In other words, if they wan't to have the Hague Convention applicable, then they have to consent to service. If the Hague Convention is not mandatorily applicable [as we've argued], then they have been served. We are affording CERN the opportunity to file late, which is what I believe Judge Chang might decide to allow, and defer the preliminary injunction request for decision by Judge Gillmor.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

I remind you of Docket 29, filed on August 5 and your original complaint.

Neither of those were motions for preliminary injunction. The complaint, by definition, is not a motion, even if it asks a demand for such in the demand portion of the complaint. It requires a separate, stand-alone motion, which we did not file for tactical reasons when the complaint was filed.

Likewise, the August 4-5 filing was the motion for default injunction against CERN [still pending], NOT the motion for preliminary injunction against the DOE.

The pending motion for preliminary injunction is the first such motion filed, recognized as such by all the lawyers involved, and the court. Only you, a non-lawyer, seem to think contrarily.

Now, I believe I've wasted enough time on correcting you, so why don't you let others post if they think this is a viable thread.

And Ben, I do believe it should be in Science and Society, since I'm not going to be discussing the physics of the suit in this thread, as it is inappropriate. Or we can just let it sink to oblivion, and instead follow the pleadings as they are filed in court, and not rpenner's attempts at synopsis.

 

[rpenner]

What CERN wants is not (yet) at issue. It's what the Swiss Government wants since they signed both the Hague Convention with the US and the HQ Agreement with CERN. That the process of serving papers on CERN is technically challenging is not an indication that it is impossible. Further, what basis do you rely upon to guess that CERN will somehow veto the process, when you have not allowed them to make that decision yet? Like your physics speculations of what you think might happen at the LHC, your legal speculations of what CERN's intentions or future legal strategies would be are without basis in historical or scholarly foundation.

The fact that the letter from the Swiss Embassy is in the docket allows both the Gillmor and Chang benchs to consider it on their own and have their clerks look up the precedents on their own. In fact, in factual and legal content it is largely redundant with the Breitenmoser correspondence. But it strongly indicates the position of the Swiss Government whose cooperation with the US Court cannot be depended upon as long as you break Swiss laws to pursue this case. Judges, unlike jury members, often have the discretion to investigate on their own. Rule 44.1 states in part "In determining foreign law, the court may consider any relevant material or source, including testimony, whether or not submitted by a party or admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/

Added:

The position that CERN is taking through the US government attorney....

I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't that be some sort of huge ethics violation, conflict of interest and could get the attorney both fired and disbarred if it were true? But, of course, the basis for this charge is nowhere to be found. Not everyone who disagrees with you is working for CERN.

I'm not going to be discussing the physics of the suit in this thread

That is, of course, your personal decision.

 

[Saxion]

How sad, that most of you feel the need to act like jerks towards him.

 

[Read-Only]

How sad, that most of you feel the need to act like jerks towards him.

Sorry, but you say that only because you've not yet had a chance to read everything - in MANY other threads here - where it's been proven beyond all doubt that actually he IS a jerk , liar, crook and misrepsents himself as having credentials that he clearly does not posess.

Once you've come across all that you'll understand why he's geting the treatment that he is in this thread.

 

[Saxion]

Sorry, but you say that only because you've not yet had a chance to read everything - in MANY other threads here - where it's been proven beyond all doubt that actually he IS a jerk , liar, crook and misrepsents himself as having credentials that he clearly does not posess.

Once you've come across all that you'll understand why he's geting the treatment that he is in this thread.

It's quite a flaw when someone involves themselves in a dispute with very little background knowledge on what the arguement entails.

Funnily enough, i have been watching the arguements for a good two years, and i don't percieve him as a jerk, a liar, or a crook of truth. However, i have also observed many attitudes around here, including your own, and you represent yourself as a jerk.

How do you feel about that?

 

[Read-Only]

It's quite a flaw when someone involves themselves in a dispute with very little background knowledge on what the arguement entails.

Funnily enough, i have been watching the arguements for a good two years, and i don't percieve him as a jerk, a liar, or a crook of truth.

Then you haven't been paying very close attention.

However, i have also observed many attitudes around here, including your own, and you represent yourself as a jerk.

How do you feel about that?

Feel? Nothing. Your opinion of me has no value at all as far as I'm concerned. You're nothing to me but words displayed on a screen.

 

[Saxion]

The behaviour sometimes reminds me of little children in the playpark, where one bully isn't enough, but requires the whole of them to hurl insults.

And your response shows no remorse, or adult intellect.

 

[Read-Only]

The behaviour sometimes reminds me of little children in the playpark, where one bully isn't enough, but requires the whole of them to hurl insults.

And your response shows no remorse, or adult intellect.

Absolutely NO remorse - nothing here deserves or calls any. But plenty of adult intellect and experience.

Why would you even suppose I would care about someone I don't know and will never meet? THAT'S illogical. I care about my family and dozens of friends as well as people in general that are affected by unfortunate or contrived disasters - but individuals like yourself? No interest at all one way or the other. I don't wish good or ill towards you.