• Bielaska v Orley: This Michigan Court of Appeals case was decided on February 9, 2001, and explians the issues of immunities for witnesses appointed by the court.

• Brisco v LaHue: United States Supreme Court (1983) "A witness who knows that he might be forced to defend a subsequent lawsuit, and perhaps to pay damages, might be inclined to shade his testimony in favor of the potential plaintiff, to magnify uncertainties, and thus to deprive the finder of fact of candid, objective, and undistorted evidence."

• A related web site on Immunities: You must use the "back" button on your web browser to return to this page. Inlcudes these cases:  Kalina v Fletcher; Burns v Reed; OWEN v. CITY OF INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

We do not accept the "no relief no harm" rule because it is a legal fiction with serious analytical flaws.

Rather than being a legal definition of harm, the rule is a legal fiction that divorces the law from reality. "Persons convicted of a crime will be astonished to learn that, even if their lawyers' negligence resulted in their being wrongly convicted and imprisoned, they were not harmed when they were wrongly convicted and imprisoned but, rather, that they are harmed only if and when they are exonerated."

Gebhardt v. O'Rourke, 444 Mich. 535, 554; 510 N.W.2d 900 (1994).

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