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
August 22nd, 2014
The Associated Press reports on a trio of lawsuits filed today by "model aircraft hobbyists, research universities and commercial drone interests ... challenging a government directive that they say imposes tough new limits on the use of model aircraft and broadens the agency’s ban on commercial drone flights." Public comment was not allowed on the FAA's June directive, Brendan Schulman, a New York attorney... Continue Reading
August 22nd, 2014
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the conviction of former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin on charges of misusing the resources of her judicial chambers on her political campaigns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Paula Reed Ward reports. The most unusual part of Orie Melvin's sentence was thrown out: an order requiring her to write apologies to every judge in Pennsylvania on her picture in handcuffs.... Continue Reading
August 21st, 2014
The Wall Street Journal reports that Bank of America is going to pay a record settlement of $17 billion over its mortgage lending: "The deal will resolve a government investigation that stems largely from the bank's purchases of Merrill Lynch & Co. and Countrywide Financial Corp. as they teetered in the housing crisis." More than $9 billion is expected to be in cash, WSJ further reports. Continue Reading
August 20th, 2014
Privacy exceptions to the federal Freedom of Information Act have been invoked to reject records requests regarding Edward Snowden, Osama bin Laden and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, The Huffington Post's Matt Sledge reports: "Along with a 'deliberative process' exemption that allows an agency to withhold documents produced as part of a decision-making process, the government regularly cites privacy. The... Continue Reading
August 20th, 2014
As electronic health records reach a critical mass in the healthcare field, the litany of problems with them could be "hazardous to your mental health," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Bill Toland reports. The symptoms of issues with electronc health records (EHRs) include "pharmacy errors, hard-to-find clinical alerts, 'farcical' training, and potentially life-threatening design flaws," Toland further... Continue Reading
August 19th, 2014
A few weeks ago, an appellate attorney told me that the Connecticut Supreme Court has been taking longer to issue its decisions, but that the court's jurisprudence has become more scholarly. That conversation led me to look into the appellate-court process for the Connecticut Law Tribune, including examining the speed with which Connecticut Supreme Court handles its cases. You can look at the data behind the story here: 2013-... Continue Reading
August 16th, 2014
Earlier this month, a Tennessee state-court judge likely became the first in the country to uphold a state's ban on same-sex marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, according to Daily Kos. The ruling came in the case of a same-sex couple who got married in Iowa and seek to get divorced in Tennessee. The judge opined that the definition of marriage '“should be the prerogative of... Continue Reading
August 12th, 2014
Three justices on the Tennessee Supreme Court were retained last week during a heated judicial retention race, the Memphis Daily News reports. But while all three justices were retained, another clash is looming over the court's decision-making and "an effort by the Republican supermajorities in the Tennessee Legislature to exert political control over the court." In November, voters are being asked to amend the state... Continue Reading
August 7th, 2014
As Tennesseans go to the polls today to vote on whether to keep three Supreme Court justices on the court, The Washington Post reports that almost a million dollars have been spent on ad campaigns in the judicial retention race. For example, a political action committee set up by the Republican lieutenant governor has contributed $425,000 to seek to defeat the retention of three Democratic justices. The justices raised $1 million... Continue Reading
August 3rd, 2014
Law professor Josh Blackman, who developed a Supreme Court fantasy league, says colleagues and he have developed a computer model that can predict decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court with 70 percent accuracy, ABA Journal reports. The ninety variables included the party of the appointing president, a justice's ideological predilections and "the agreement level of the court." Blackman said the model could be used by lawyers... Continue Reading
August 3rd, 2014
According to the Associated Press, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruther Bader Ginsberg says the justices won't duck the issue of same-sex marriage after several courts around the country have found bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. She expects a case on the issue to be heard by June 2016. Continue Reading
August 2nd, 2014
I am really struck that, through public records, The Arizona Republic was able to learn that Arizona death row inmate Joseph Wood was injected 15 times with drugs midazolam and hydromorphone over a two-hour period before he was finally pronounced dead. It was supposed to just take two doses to kill him. The Associated Press reported he "gasped more than 600 times over the next hour and 40 minutes." But before Wood was... Continue Reading
August 2nd, 2014
After the efforts of Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter's administration to create an Office of Conflict of Counsel faltered, one of the main opponents of that plan has secured Department of Justice funding for a study on the quality of Philadelphia's indigent defense. I'm cross-posting the piece I wrote for Philly City Paper:
One of the main opponents of a plan to create a new Office of Conflict Counsel has secured... Continue Reading
August 1st, 2014
In a major landmark in the development of digital privacy, a federal judge has ordered Microsoft to turn over to the U.S. government a customer's emails and other account information stored in an Irish data center, Re/code reports. Microsoft unsuccessfully argued that a U.S. warrant couldn't extend to customer information held abroad.
Re/code said the case appears to be the first in which a U.S. warrant for data held overseas was... Continue Reading
July 31st, 2014
The California Court of Appeal has ruled that a healthcare provider did not violate that state's medical confidentiality law when a laptop containing four million patients' medical records was stolen, The Recorder reports. Sutter Medical Foundation could have faced $4 billion in statutory damages.
The court concluded there could not be liability without evidence that anyone actually looked at the records and the... Continue Reading
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