Cultivated Compendium is my personal website with the occasional link to my reporting and to important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news.
Welcome
News and Reporting
August 4th, 2015
Idaho's "ag gag" law banning undercover surveillance inside of agricultural operations has been ruled unconstitutional, The Guardian's Rory Carroll reports. U.S. District Judge B Lynn Winmill ruled the ban violates the constitutional right to free speech and to equal protection: "'An agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter. Food and worker... Continue Reading
July 27th, 2015
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune about the mysterious death of a black attorney and the NAACP's call for further investigation into his death:
Abe Dabela was 35 years old and life seemed to be going well. He had come to the legal profession late, after a series of jobs in the health care industry, and had recently completed a stint as an associate at a major law firm. He loved riding motorcycles and was... Continue Reading
July 27th, 2015
A remote tribe living in the Amazon jungle is about to be contacted by outsiders from the Peruvian government for the first time, The Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor reports. The Mascho Piro people are not the first tribe to have existed "almost entirely outside the purview of the nation-states in which they technically live."
Critics says that contact with outsiders could cause many members of the Mascho Piro people to... Continue Reading
July 21st, 2015
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune about a lawsuit alleging a police officer in Connecticut went too far when stopping two black men:
When two black brothers were pulled over by a cop in the city of New London, the officer frisked them both, allegedly touching their genitals and their buttocks. When one of them protested and turned around during the pat down, he was arrested for interfering with the police officer... Continue Reading
July 15th, 2015
Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that an immigration law that treats mothers and fathers differently in determining whether their children may claim U.S. citizenship is unconstitutional, Reuters' Joseph Ax reports.
The law requires unwed fathers who are U.S. citizens to spend at least five years residing in the U.S. before they can confer citizenship to children born out of country, out of... Continue Reading
July 15th, 2015
The Washington Post's Kenneth R. Harney reports that mortgage problems make up 28 percent of the 600,000 complaints posted on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website. Complaints about mortgage lenders, debt collectors, credit-card companies and credit bureaus are logged on the site.
The CFPB started posting narratives for those complaints June 25, but lenders can't post their own narratives. David Stevens,... Continue Reading
July 14th, 2015
Law firms engaged in debt collection can be regulated by New York City, the New York Court of Appeals has ruled. Christy Young Berger, blogging on Accounts Receivable Management's blog, notes that two law firms, Eric M. Berman and Lacy Katzen, argued New York's law encroached on the state's exclusive authority to regulate the legal profession. The New York Court of Appeals, in answering a question posed to it by the U.S. Court of... Continue Reading
July 14th, 2015
Here is some interesting legal news from last month:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rebuked a Nevada district court judge for denying pro hac vice admission to Department of Justice lawyers based in Washington, D.C., The National Law Journal's Zoe Tillman reports.
Tillman reports that U.S. District Judge Robert Jones had concerns about the "'ethical commitments'" of out-of-state government lawyers,... Continue Reading
July 13th, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the federal government must continue to provide medical care to veterans exposed to chemical and biological-weapons experiments as well as any new information that may affect their health, Metropolitan News-Enterprise's Kenneth Ofgang reports. The experiments took place between 1942 and 1975.
The panel said the fact that care is available through the Department of Veterans... Continue Reading
July 12th, 2015
Due to a funding crisis, Connecticut's three major legal aid nonprofits have had to close their joint office that lobbied legislators, The Connecticut Law Tribune's Michelle Tuccitto Sullo reports. The closure of the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut is stemming from a funding shortfall with court filing fees being lower than expected and low interest rates on money held in attorney IOLTA accounts generating reduced... Continue Reading
July 12th, 2015
Triple-digit heat indices on Louisiana State Penitentiary's death row do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled. The Times-Picayune's Emily Lane reports that the court did agree that extreme temperatures constituted cruel and unusual punishment for the three plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. However, the court ruled that air conditioning does not have to be provided to all... Continue Reading
July 12th, 2015
A federal judge has ordered the Washington Redskins football teams' federal trademark registrations canceled, The Washington Post's Ian Shapira reports. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee upheld a ruling by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which found that the team's name is offensive to American Indians and may disparage people. The win was at the summary judgment stage.
Lee reasoned that the U.S. Supreme Court's... Continue Reading
July 11th, 2015
Utah will not be expanding Medicaid, The Washington Examiner's Paige Winfield Cunningham reports. Lawmakers ended their session this week without adopting an expansion.
Even though Republican Governor Gary Herbert wanted to expand health coverage for more low-income Utah residents, legislators could not reach agreement on an expansion plan, according to Cunningham: "Utah's stalemate puts it among a number of states with GOP... Continue Reading
July 11th, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the Labor Department acted in bad faith when investigating an oil and gas servicing company for allegedly owing backpay to independent contractors, The Houston Chronicle's L.M. Sixel reports. As a result, Gate Guard Services will get more money from the government to pay its legal expenses.
Legal observers told Sixel the case will make it easier for others to bring bad-faith... Continue Reading
July 6th, 2015
The legacy that President Barack Obama could leave on the federal judiciary could be diminished because the Republican party is blocking dozens of his court picks, Politico's Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim report: "Democrats believe the GOP is creating an unprecedented expansion of the Thurmond Rule, which holds that the Senate shuts off the confirmation valve of lifetime judicial appointments in July of an election year."... Continue Reading
Pages
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
