Cultivated Compendium is my personal website with the occasional link to my reporting and to important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news.
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August 24th, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that five New Orleans police officers are entitled to a new trial after being convicted of shooting six unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Frontline's Sarah Moughty and Sarah Childress report. The unarmed group of civilians was searching for food and medicine.
A new trial was granted because federal prosecutors violated the fair trial... Continue Reading
August 24th, 2015
Last week, BloombergBusiness' Natalie Kitroeff had a piece with a title sure to grab your attention: "Are Lawyers Getting Dumber?" However, the piece is really about a stupendous drop in the rate of law school graduates who are passing the bar exam. For example, bar passage rates dropped by 9 percentage points or more in Delaware, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas in 2014.
National Conference of Bar Examiners'... Continue Reading
August 22nd, 2015
The District of Columbia Circuit has unanimously upheld regulations to extend minimum wage and overtime protections to workers who take care of the elderly and the disabled in their homes, The New York Times' Noam Scheiber reports. The Obama administration enacted regulations to end an exemption from overtime and minimum wage laws for home-care workers. Continue Reading
August 22nd, 2015
Now that lawmakers in Alaska have voted to sue to try to block that state's expansion of Medicaid to 40,000 low-income adults, they will have to show irreparable harm will result if a preliminary injunction isn't granted against the expansion, APRN-Anchorage's Annie Feidt reports.
Legislators are arguing that the expansion needs to have their approval, that the population that would be covered by the expansion is not a mandatory... Continue Reading
August 19th, 2015
The number of foreclosure cases in New York State are not letting up, The New York Law Journal's Joel Stashenko reports. Stashenko was reporting on Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's report that the number of new foreclosure filings in the state is only down by 6 percent between 2013 and 2014. DiNapoli attributed the fall in the number of cases to court rules designed to end problematic foreclosure practices by lenders. Continue Reading
August 17th, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that an Ohio woman can pursue a claim that Blue Ash, Ohio, discriminated against her disabled daughter by banning her from keeping a miniature horse as a service animal, The Wall Street Journal's Jacob Gershman reports. Ingrid Anderson claims the city's ban on people keeping farm animals within municipal limits violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing... Continue Reading
August 17th, 2015
A federal judge ruled earlier this month that the Food and Drug Administration can't bar a drug company from promoting an unapproved use for its pills derived from fish oil, The Washington Post's Carolyn Johnson reports. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that the First Amendment protects Amarin Corp. "'truthful and non-misleading speech'" in promoting a use of its pills that has not been approved by federal... Continue Reading
August 15th, 2015
Civil rights lawyers from the Department of Justice have lambasted a law in Boise, Idaho, that bans people who are homeless from sleeping in public places, The Washington Post's Emily Badger says. The DOJ said in a court filing such laws are unconstitutional when there aren't enough beds for homeless people to sleep indoors: "' When adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of... Continue Reading
August 13th, 2015
The Connecticut Supreme Court, 4-3, has ruled that the state's death penalty is unconstitutional for inmates who were already sentenced to death, The Huffington Post's Kim Bellware reports. Legislators already repealed the death penalty for future crimes.
The majority ruled that execution of inmates who committed capital felonies prior to April 2012 would violate the state's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Continue Reading
August 13th, 2015
Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington all have had a 10-percentage-point reduction in their rates of citizens who don't have health insurance, Gallup's Dan Witters reporst. Seven of the 10 states that have had the greatest reductions in uninsured rates have expanded Medicaid and established a "state-based marketplace exchange or state-federal partnership." Continue Reading
August 10th, 2015
The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo writes that the right to be forgotten--or, more specifically, the right requiring search engines to erase the online search results about European citizens in favor of their privacy--could spread to the United States. For example, a French regulator has ruled that all of Google's sites, including American versions, should grant the right to be forgotten on Google sites that are not country specific... Continue Reading
August 10th, 2015
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has taken a case that will examine that state's civil forfeiture procedures, The Legal Intelligencer's Lizzy McLellan reports. The case involves the seizure of a Philadelphia woman's home and vehicle that were seized because her son sold marijuana out of her home.
The issue of asset forfeiture is heating up with federal cases also challenging the Philadelphia district attorney's procedures... Continue Reading
August 10th, 2015
Yesterday was the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, which was focused on the health of indigenous peoples, their access to health services and gaps in social services.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007, "'affirms the right to maintain indigenous health practices as well as to have access to all social and health... Continue Reading
August 7th, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled that a reporter didn't have to disclose the identity of a confidential source for a 2004 story about a federal ethics investigation into a former U.S. attorney, MLive's Khalil AlHajal reports.
David Ashenfelter, who at the time was a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, wrote a story about how then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino handled a terrorism case... Continue Reading
August 4th, 2015
Companies including Dole and Ancestry.com are souring on Delaware as the place of their incorporation, The Wall Street Journal's Liz Hoffman reports: "Dole is one of several companies that say the state has become less hospitable toward business. Among their gripes: a growing tide of shareholder litigation, which some feel the state hasn’t done enough to curb. One new measure bars companies from shifting their legal fees to... Continue Reading
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