Cultivated Compendium is my personal website with the occasional link to my reporting and to important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news.
Welcome
News and Reporting
March 8th, 2014
The Detroit Free Press reports on the close of the trial in which plaintiffs are challenging Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage. During closing arguments, the plaintiffs' attorney said, "The right to marry is a fundamental right. It should apply regardless of sexual orientation," the Free Press further reports. The defense attorney for the state of Michigan argued that the Michigan voters had decided the issue, and the... Continue Reading
March 7th, 2014
The Detroit Free Press reports on the end nearing in a trial over Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage. Closing arguments are slated for today. The trial has focused on "child outcomes of same-sex parenting," the Free Press also reports. Continue Reading
March 7th, 2014
The Legal Intelligencer's P.J. D'Annunzio reports that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter neither signed nor veteoed legislation that will establish City Council oversight over large contracts for a private law firm to represent criminal defendants and family-court litigants too poor to hire their own lawyers. No action by the mayor means that the bill becomes law.
Quality-control and financial audts will be triggered for large... Continue Reading
March 7th, 2014
An administrative judge has ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration "lacks clear-cut authority to ban the commercial use of drones in the continental U.S.," MarketWatch reports. "Some lawyers and drone users have argued for months that the FAA has no statutory power to enforce its prohibition of commercial-drone use," MarketWatch further reports. The decison can be appealed to the National Transportation Safety Board... Continue Reading
March 6th, 2014
USA Today reports on the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments this week in a case that will shape the future of securities class actions in America: "The Supreme Court searched for a compromise Wednesday that would help businesses avoid some class-action lawsuits charging securities fraud without making them virtually extinct. Faced with the real prospect of overturning a 26-year-old precedent permitting class-action cases based on... Continue Reading
March 5th, 2014
Todd Willingham was executed a decade ago after he was convicted of setting a house fire that killed his three daughters, the Texas Tribune reports. Lawyers from the Innocence Project have already cited faulty science regarding the cause of the fire being arson. Now they say a note shows that the presiding prosecutor made a deal with a jailhouse informant even though the informant testified he received nothing in exchange for his testimony,... Continue Reading
March 5th, 2014
I'm blogging several times a day about products liability for Law.com. Occasionally I cross-post an excerpt of a blog I find interesting:
The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled against a plaintiffs' attorney for the second time in a dispute with two former clients over who owes money for discovery undertaken on the behalf of all plaintiffs in the massive federal diet-drug litigation.
Herbert Lee Jr. represented 13 plaintiffs who... Continue Reading
March 5th, 2014
The Dallas Morning News reports that prosecutors have moved to drop most of the charges against journalist and activist Barrett Brown related to posting stolen data online. They want to drop all but one of 12 charges "accusing him of trafficking in data, including credit card numbers, that was stolen from private intelligence firm Stratfor" by hackers, the Morning News says. "He had faced charges of aggravated identity theft and... Continue Reading
March 5th, 2014
An excerpted version of a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune:
One of David Rosen's personal injury cases resolved for a confidential amount last fall. When he got the case, his offices were in New Haven, about 10 miles away from where plaintiff Brenda Adelson was living in Hamden.
But Adelson hadn't been hurt in Connecticut or even the continental United States. Her leg was severely crushed by a failing water... Continue Reading
March 4th, 2014
The Fifth Circuit, 2-1, rejected BP's argument that a court-appointed claims administrator has misconstrued the terms of a settlement, The Washington Post reports. BP further unsuccessfully argued that businesses claiming economic loss are receiving settlement money even when their injuries can't be traced to the Gulf oil spill, The Post further reports. The majority reasoned that BP agreed to a settlement in which plaintiffs wouldn... Continue Reading
March 4th, 2014
I'm blogging several times a day about products liability for Law.com and The National Law Journal. Occasionally I cross-post an excerpt of a blog I find interesting.
The federal judge presiding over 40,000 vaginal-mesh cases has appointed Garretson Resolution Group to resolve liens asserted in all six consolidated multidistrict litigation.
Medicare is mandated by federal law to seek repayment for treatment it has provided... Continue Reading
March 4th, 2014
TV broadcasters have gained an ally in the federal government in a U.S. Supreme Court case that could reshape the contours of copyright law and broadcast TV. Re/code reports that the Justice Department filed an amicus brief in which they argued that Aereo's transmission of free broadcast TV programming over the Internet violates copyright law. But the governmental lawyers said a ruling against Aereo wouldn't threaten technologies... Continue Reading
March 4th, 2014
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled that Steven Donziger and his co-counsel obtaind a $9.5 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador against Chevron by "corrupt means," The Wall Street Journal reports. The judge ruled that, while Donziger started legal work in the case to improve conditions where his clients lived, his co-counsel and he "engaged in coercion, bribery, money laundering and other criminal conduct,... Continue Reading
March 4th, 2014
The National Law Journal's Mike Scarcella reports that the First Circuit, "while noting its concern about prolonged electronic surveillance, dismissed a Fourth Amendment challenge over law enforcement's secret monitoring of a suspect's vehicle." The appellate court concluded that federal law enforcement acted in good faith to use warrantless GPS tracking on a arson suspect's vehicle because they had good reason to... Continue Reading
March 4th, 2014
The Associated Press reports on U.S. Supreme Court arguments held yesterday on how states evaluate mental disability in order to decide whether murder defendants can be executed. Execution of the mentally disabled is unconstitutional.
"Five justices, enough to form a majority, pointed repeatedly to the margin of error inherent in IQ and other standardized tests. They voiced skepticism about the practice in Florida and certain... Continue Reading
Pages
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
