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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News and Reporting
October 22nd, 2014
According to a report in Capital New York, New York settled a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union to improve the legal representation that defendants too poor to afford their own lawyers receive in Ontario, Onondaga, Schuyler, Suffolk and Washington counties. The settlement establishes caseload limits for public defenders and a monitoring compliance agreement.
October 22nd, 2014
Matt Apuzzo, writing in the New York Times, reports that one of retiring Attorney General Eric Holder's legacies is shifting terrorism cases from military tribunals to the civilian courts: "Five years ago, the debate over whether terrorists should be prosecuted in criminal courts was so contentious that it made its chief advocate, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., a political liability. Republicans argued that F.B.I. interrogation... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2014
Companies are going to face fines next year if they don't comply with a mandate to provide health insurance to employees. In order to avoid $2,000 penalties per employee, some companies are trying to enroll low-wage employees in Medicaid or to offer "skinny" plans that cover preventive care but exclude major benefits like hospital coverage, the Wall Street Journal reports. Employers, however, can face a different $3,000 fine... Continue Reading
October 21st, 2014
Jeff John Roberts, writing in GigaOM, writes about how we don't have rules yet to govern the Internet connections that have been brought to physical devices--the so-called "internet of things": "The first murder through the internet of things will likely take place in 2014, police service Europol warned this month. The crime could be carried out by a pacemaker, an insulin dosage device, a hacked brake pedal or... Continue Reading
October 21st, 2014
Al Tompkins, writing in Poynter, discusses the struggle between reporting on the Ebola epidemic and respecting HIPAA, the law protecting patients' privacy: "A health story of national proportions like the Ebola story pits the role of journalism against HIPPA rules. HIPAA (American Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) restricts patient information to doctors, direct caregivers, insurance companies and others... Continue Reading
October 21st, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari yesterday on whether a Florida man convicted of drug crimes could be forced to give up his firearms, Reuters' Lawrence Hurley reports. Tony Henderson, a former Border Patrol agent, wanted to sell the guns or transfer ownership to his wife, but the lower courts have ruled that the federal ban on felons possessing firearms terminates all their ownership rights. Continue Reading
October 20th, 2014
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery has been suspended by his own colleagues, among other reasons, because of allegations he sent pornographic emails to other governmental officials, because he allegedly tried to blackmail a fellow justice and because he may have tried to "exert influence over a judicial assignment on the Philadelphia common pleas bench outside the scope of his official duties," the... Continue Reading
October 20th, 2014
A Pennsylvania judge presiding over an investigating grand jury squelched a subpoena issued to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Brad Bumstead, that paper reports. The strangest part of the situation is that the judge says the subpoena--which had his signature on it-- was issued without his knowledge: "Judge William R. Carpenter, who is supervising the grand jury and whose signature appears on the subpoena issued Wednesday night, told... Continue Reading
October 20th, 2014
Here's a piece I did for the Connecticut Law Tribune about a new call for Connecticut to cut its prison population:
It's not every day that red-state Texas is pointed out as a paragon for reform that blue-state Connecticut should emulate.
But the author of a new book calling for a mass overhaul of Connecticut's criminal justice system says that Connecticut should adopt some of the best practices that have helped Texas reduce... Continue Reading
October 18th, 2014
After a construction project that was marred by a lawyer who got on the other side of the development deal, a new courthouse has opened in Philadelphia for domestic relations and juvenile cases, Newsworks reports. The Legal Intelligencer reports how "the courthouse's development process was not a smooth affair. Former Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel lawyer Jeffrey Rotwitt served as an attorney for the state courts in their... Continue Reading
October 18th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court, 6-3, has allowed Texas' new voter ID law to go into effect for next month's elections, The Huffington Post reports. In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the law could impose "'an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.'"
U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos found that the law was enacted with a racially... Continue Reading
October 18th, 2014
U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl has struck down Wyoming's ban on same-sex marriage, following the cue of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, NBC News reports. The 10th Circuit, which presides over appeals in federal cases in Wyoming, already ruled that same-sex marriage laws in other states are unconstitutional. Thirty-two states now allow same-sex marriage. Continue Reading
October 17th, 2014
Here's a piece I've written for the National Law Journal:
After a protracted fight, a federal judge has ruled on Thursday that all of the evidence that led him to find misrepresentations by plaintiffs in an asbestos-related bankruptcy must be unsealed.
When U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges of the Western District of North Carolina estimated the liability of Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC, in January, he found that Garlock... Continue Reading
October 16th, 2014
The United Nations' special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights has found that mass electronic surveillance does away with the right to privacy, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald reports: "In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the report was primarily focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in 1966, to which all of the... Continue Reading
October 16th, 2014
The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a state law requiring voters to show photo identification before casting their ballots, the AP reports. The Supreme Court said the requirement was unconstitutional because the "Arkansas Constitution lists specific requirements to vote: that a person be a citizen of both the U.S. and Arkansas, be at least 18 years old and be lawfully registered. Anything beyond that amounts to a new requirement and is... Continue Reading
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