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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March 21st, 2015
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White expressed concern this week about corporate bylaws that force shareholders to pick up legal bills if they lose their lawsuits against boards of directors, Reuters reports. The Delaware Supreme Court upheld that sort of bylaws in May, even though, under the "American rule," each litigant normally has to pay for its own legal costs. Continue Reading
March 21st, 2015
The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the airport-security practice known as behavioral detection in which officers send "suspicious passengers" for additional screening, the Washington Post's Josh Hicks reports. The ACLU has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit because the Transporation Secuirty Administration hasn't turned over any records about the practice, which advocates suspect leads to racial... Continue Reading
March 18th, 2015
Senate Republicans, which have been in charge of the legislative chamber since the start of the year, have not confirmed any of President Obama's 16 pending judicial nominees, Huffington Post's Jennifer Bendery reports. U.S. Attorney General nominees Loretta Lynch also has been waiting for a confirmation vote.
Eight of those nominees are for courts facing "judicial emergencies" because the number of cases per judge on... Continue Reading
March 16th, 2015
J. Jean Johnson was delivered into this world by a Mississippi midwife, and he never did have a birth certificate or photo ID.
All he had was a social security card and his identification card from his job as a city garbageman. But that was not enough for Memphis Light, Gas & Water, which denied Johnson electricity, heat and air conditioning because he did not have state-issued photo identification. In August 2011, Johnson, an... Continue Reading
March 15th, 2015
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune regarding a Connecticut financier who alleges his Manhattan art dealer defrauded him:
The art world has become a big business, with more than $6 billion in modern art and $1.26 billion in contemporary art sold in 2011. And with big business comes big litigation.
Multiple lawsuits filed by a Connecticut financial executive alleging that his Manhattan art dealer defrauded him... Continue Reading
March 15th, 2015
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune regarding a Connecticut financier who alleges his Manhattan art dealer defrauded him:
The art world has become a big business, with more than $6 billion in modern art and $1.26 billion in contemporary art sold in 2011. And with big business comes big litigation.
Multiple lawsuits filed by a Connecticut financial executive alleging that his Manhattan art dealer defrauded him... Continue Reading
March 12th, 2015
Current bankruptcy law mostly prohibits educational loans from being discharged in bankruptcy. But the White House is considering how to make it easier for student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy court, the Wall Street Journal's Josh Mitchell reports. President Barack Obama directed his administration to study whether bankruptcy should be expanded for all student loan borrowers.
Mitchell reports that only 713 lawsuits were filed to... Continue Reading
March 12th, 2015
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has conducted a study of mandatory arbitration for consumers, finding that less than 10 percent of consumers won awards in cases with American Arbitration Association neutrals, The National Law Journal's Jenna Greene reports. In contrast, consumers won 1,200 individual lawsuits in court, and consumers won $2.7 billion in cash, in-kind relief, expenses and fees through class actions... Continue Reading
March 10th, 2015
The New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled that mandated child reporters must report suspected child abuse and neglect no matter the circumstances, the Associated Press' Vik Jolly said. The court rejected an intermediate appellate court ruling finding that social workers are privileged against having to report child abuse and neglect when they learn information during counseling sessions. Continue Reading
March 10th, 2015
The Seventh Circuit has ruled that a $55 million cemetery trust fund isn't off limits from the creditors of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the Associated Press reports. Sex abuse victims and their lawyers argue that the trust fund was created to shield money from them. The archdiocese has filed for bankruptcy because hundreds of sex-abuse victims have filed claims against the archdiocese.
The archdiocese argued that the Religious Freedom... Continue Reading
March 10th, 2015
After Governor Chris Christie's administration failed to established new guidelines for affordable housing, the New Jersey Supreme Court put judges in charge instead, NJ.com's Brent Johnson reports. Under the court's order, courts will decided on a case-by-case basis how many homes in a town should be available to low-income and moderate-income residents. Over 30 years ago, the state Supreme Court ruled that New Jersey... Continue Reading
March 9th, 2015
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled that death-row inmates in Missouri don’t have a First Amendment right to learn the identities of the pharmacies that compound the drug used in executions.
The Eighth Circuit, sitting en banc, noted that there has not been a history of public access to the identities of the pharmacies that supply the drugs used in lethal injections.
Second, the court... Continue Reading
March 8th, 2015
Natural disasters are costing $250 billion to $300 billion annually, the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said in a report released last week. According to the Associated Press' Edith M. Lederer, the report estimates that, if a $6 billion investment is made every year, the cost from disasters would be reduced by $360 billion over the next 15 years. Andrew Maskrey, lead author of the 2015 Global Assessment Report... Continue Reading
March 8th, 2015
The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act was a landmark human rights law when it was enacted 25 years ago: mandating that federal agencies return American Indian remains and sacred objects collected during a long history of colonialism and mistreatment of American Indians. But the law has been "stymied by poorly curated collections, long-lost records and limited operating budgets," E&E Publishing's... Continue Reading
March 8th, 2015
In the 14 years since Oregon enacted a law to allow defendants to get DNA testing to show they might be innocent, only two have gotten judges to approve such testing. As a result, legislators in Oregon have introduced a bill to reform the state's DNA testing law for defendants, Oregon Public Broadcasting's Amelia Templeton reports.
Under current law, defendants have to show that DNA testing on specific pieces of evidence would... Continue Reading
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