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
September 5th, 2014
The Nebraska Supreme Court heard oral arguments today over a constitutional challenge to the Keystone XL pipeline, the Journal Star reports.
The issues in the case include:
* whether a 2012 statute giving the governor authority to approve the route can be upheld;
* whether three landowners have standing to challenge the law because their properties are near or would have been near the path of the pipeline route;
* whether the... Continue Reading
September 5th, 2014
A federal judge has ruled that BP acted with gross negligence and wilful misconduct regarding the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico four years ago, the Washington Post reports. That means the energy company could face fines up to $17 billion for Clean Water Act fines.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled that BP was 67 percent at fault for the spill, drilling rig owner and operator Transocean was 30 percent at fault and oil... Continue Reading
September 4th, 2014
The Seventh Circuit ruled today that Indiana's and Wisconsin's bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, the Associated Press reports. Judge Richard Posner, writing for the court, opined that “'the challenged laws discriminate against a minority defined by an immutable characteristic, and the only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction — that same-sex couples and their children don’t... Continue Reading
September 3rd, 2014
The federal government was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday to defend the National Security Agency's collection of phone call metadata for millions of Americans in order to investigate foreign terrorism, the New York Law Journal's Mark Hamblett reports: [Assistant U.S. Attorney General Stuart] Delery said the case was governed by Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), where the U.S. Supreme Court... Continue Reading
September 1st, 2014
Detroit's future is in the hands of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven W. Rhodes, the New York Times reports: If the judge "approves a blueprint drawn up by Detroit officials to eliminate more than $7 billion of its estimated $18 billion in debts and to invest about $1.5 billion into the city’s now dismal services, it will mark the beginning of the end of the nation’s largest-ever municipal bankruptcy. The outcome will set this... Continue Reading
September 1st, 2014
Capital New York's Dan Goldberg reported last week on the problems with electronic health records. For example, a Columbia University physican inadvertently exposed thousands of patient records by accessing a server at New York Presbyterian Hospital with his personal laptop. The result was the hospital paid $3.3 million and Columbia paid $1.5 million.
Moving patient information into electronic form comes with a greater risk of data... Continue Reading
September 1st, 2014
I examined a case for the Connecticut Law Tribune that could test the legal contours of the right to use drones in newsgathering:
A Connecticut television photographer's federal lawsuit could shed some legal light on how far journalists can go to record police activity and what rights they might have to use drones to gather news.
Photographer Pedro Rivera, who works on an on-call basis for WFSB-TV, took his remote-controlled drone... Continue Reading
August 31st, 2014
The ALS Association, which has raised over $100 million due to its ice bucket challenge going viral, has withdrawn its efforts to trademark the phrases "ice bucket challenge" and "ALS ice bucket challenge," the Washington Post reports. The applications with the U.S Patent and Trademark Office sought to trademark the phrases for purposes of charitable giving. One trademark attorney Erik Pelton said the effort was... Continue Reading
August 30th, 2014
In a recent piece for the Connecticut Law Tribune, I examined the aspects of the appellate process that mystify lawyers and litigants alike:
An appeal isn't just the second take on a legal dispute.
According to appellate court judges and practitioners alike, appellate practice in Connecticut requires a specialized form of advocacy that is not understood by all litigants who are representing themselves and even by lawyers who handle... Continue Reading
August 29th, 2014
In huge healthcare news, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has relented on expanding Medicaid to cover more poor Pennsylvanians under Medicaid, the Huffington Post reports: "Federal regulators accepted a modified proposal from Gov. Tom Corbett (R) that will offer an estimated 500,000 low-income individuals subsidies to purchase private insurance. The plan allows some low-income individuals to be charged premiums for coverage, and permits... Continue Reading
August 26th, 2014
MintPress News' Christine Graef reports on how a revised Violence Against Women Act is putting tribal authorities in charge of cases of abuse and violence against American Indian women: "The reauthorized act extends tribal jurisdiction to non-Native Americans who commit acts of violence or sexual assault against their Native American spouse or partner. While such incidents often go unreported, the amount that are reported reflect a... Continue Reading
August 25th, 2014
The Guardian, the Oklahoma Observer, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Oklahoma have filed a lawsuit seeking to allow journalists and other witnesses to executions to "see everything that happens from the moment an inmate enters the execution chamber," the Washington Post reports. The lawsuit cites the fact that witnesses were not allowed to see the entirety of the execution of Clayton Lockett,... Continue Reading
August 25th, 2014
Oregon has sued Oracle America for allegedly shoddy work on the Cover Oregon health exchange, The Oregonian's Nick Budnick reports. The state is prosecuting various theories all alleging that the IT firm fraudulently enriched itself at Oregon's expense.
Both sides blame each other for the failure to hire a systems integrator, or a general contractor to oversee Oracle's work, Budick further reports. When the systems... Continue Reading
August 25th, 2014
As the investigations and civil turmoil continue after Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown to death in Ferguson, Mo., a 25-year-old U.S. Supreme Court case will shape the paramaters on how the officer will be judged, the Associated Press reports: "The Supreme Court case, decided at a time when violence against police was on the rise, has shaped the legal standards that govern when police officers are justified in... Continue Reading
August 24th, 2014
ProPublica reports that the Red Cross had dropped its argument that documents about how it spent $300 million in disaster-relief funds on Superstorm Sandy contain trade secrets. The Red Cross disclosed that the largest Sandy expenditures involved financial assistance, food, other relief items, programming resources and paying for the deployment of staff and volunteers: "More than half the money spent, $129.6 million, went to... Continue Reading
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