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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May 31st, 2015
The D.C. Circuit has refused to block the release of videos showing a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay being force-fed, The Intercept's Cora Currier reports. Media organizations are seeking footage of Abu Wa'el Dhiab's force-feedings, and the district court granted their motion to unseal and release the video.
The court concluded that the district court's decision was not an immediately appealable order and that it lacks... Continue Reading
May 31st, 2015
The Washington Supreme Court has ruled that state's law allowing defamation defendants to get cases thrown out early violates the constitutional right to a trial by jury, the Volokh Conspiracy's Eugene Volokh reports. The anti-SLAPP law says defamation plaintiffs can only move forward with their cases if they can show they would prevail by clear and convincing evidence, and the Washington Supreme Court said this... Continue Reading
May 29th, 2015
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, won't allow homeowners to get forgiveness on their mortgages even if they owe substantially more on their homes than they are worth, The Huffington Post's Ben Hallman reports. Leaders of FHFA think that giving debt forgiveness to some homeowners would encourage other people to stop paying their mortgages in order to get debt... Continue Reading
May 27th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that bankruptcy judges can decide issues that would normally be handled by federal district judges--if the parties involved consent, Supreme Court Brief's Marcia Coyle reports. The consent can be implied.
Sotomayor opined that it doesn't violate the separation of powers to allow bankruptcy courts, which are created by Congress under Article I of the Constitution, to decide... Continue Reading
May 26th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether low-income taxpayers can only receive subsidies for health insurance if they purchased their policies on state-run insurance exchanges, not federal exchanges. The four words at issue in the Affordable Care Act? "Established by a state." The New York Times' Robert Pear reports that the two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law say those four words were not... Continue Reading
May 26th, 2015
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune about an unusual sentencing request:
The normal drill for punishment in federal court is prison time, fines or probation. But a North Branford-based construction company that ran afoul of the law is asking U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton to consider sentencing the company to build two homes.
The hook is that the houses wouldn't be sold for profit. They would be... Continue Reading
May 25th, 2015
The Canadian province Ontario has empowered patients and their caregivers to control the types of services they receive at home, The Canadian Press reports. The self-directed care program will start with pilot projects first with the goal "to give patients and their caregivers more flexibility and control over the care they receive by involving them more in the planning and coordination at the start." Additional funding will... Continue Reading
May 25th, 2015
Who knew? Texas is the last state in the country to have a "pick-a-pal" system in which grand jurors are selected through a list of individuals prepared by an acquaintance chosen by a local judge. Texas legislators have approved bills to end this method of selecting grand juries, the Houston Chronicle's Brian Rosenthal reports.
The difference between the state House and state Senate versions is a provision requiring... Continue Reading
May 23rd, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that New York can exclude "Choose Life" license plates from the state's specialty license plate program, The Volokh Conspiracy's Eugene Volokh writes. The Department of Motor Vehicles found that the plates are patently offensive, which the Second Circuit, 2-1, upheld.
The license plates are nonpublic forums in which "the government may select which speech... Continue Reading
May 23rd, 2015
The Justice Department has issued its first guidelines for the use of domestic drones by law enforcement, saying that the use of drones must not violate civil rights or the right to privacy, the Associated Press reports. The department said drones can't be used just to monitor protests and other activities protected by the constitution. Continue Reading
May 22nd, 2015
While West Virginia does not have an academic-freedom exemption to its public records law, that state's high court has ruled that documents that are "internal memoranda" from a university researcher's examination of the impact of mountaintop-removal mining on public health are exempt from disclosure.
The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. reports that Alpha Natural Resources' efforts to get West Virginia... Continue Reading
May 22nd, 2015
The pace of patent litigation has fallen for the first time in five years, which can be directly traced to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last year about software patents in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, The Washington Post's Brian Fung reports. That case raised the bar for patentability and enforcement of software patents. Continue Reading
May 22nd, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a defendant in a class action case can end litigation by offering full payment to the lead plaintiff, Bloomberg's Greg Stohr reports.
Plaintiff Campbell-Ewald Co. is facing hundreds of millions of dollars for allegedly violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by sending automated text messages. The lead plaintiff was offered $1,503 for each text mesage he received,... Continue Reading
May 20th, 2015
Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky said New York's foreclosure system is "'broken and badly in need of change"' because of delays in the settlement conferences that must be held before houses can be foreclosed, New York Law Journal's Joel Stashenko reports.
The Department of Financial Services found that it takes nine months, on average, from when a foreclosure is filed in New York to when the... Continue Reading
May 19th, 2015
Andrew F. March and Mara Revkin have a fascinating analysis in Foreign Affairs of the legal underpinnings of the Islamic State (ISIS)'s efforts to build an Islamic Caliphate state. They note that ISIS is governing millions of people and sees itself as building an authentic legal order based upon a "social contract with the Muslim population it aspires to govern." For example, ISIS has issued administrative guidelines for... Continue Reading
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