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
March 3rd, 2014
The National Law Journal's Tony Mauro reports that the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be "mostly sympathetic" to the Environmental Protection Agency's climate-change regulation: "Any hope among industry advocates that the U.S. Supreme Court might ban Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases altogether went up in smoke, so to speak, during more than 90 minutes of spirited argument last week. For one... Continue Reading
March 3rd, 2014
Yale Law Professor Judith Resnik opined in the New York Times against Delaware's effort to fight against the growing market in private dispute resolution by allowing litigants to use Delaware's chancery judges for secret arbitrations if the businesses had at least $1 million at stake, paid $12,000 in filing fees and paid $6,000 per day: "The Delaware legislation is a dramatic example of rich litigants using their... Continue Reading
March 2nd, 2014
The Washington Post reports on "the legal gusher" facing BP in the federal courts in New Orleans.
One issue involves the April 2012 settlement over economic harm to people and businesses, and how much causation plaintiffs have to show to be entitled to be paid by the special master administering payouts from the BP fund, The Post reports. "BP alleges that many of the 256,478 claims filed--by a parade of fishermen,... Continue Reading
March 2nd, 2014
For two months, the Philadelphia Police Department has had a new policy to stop false confessions, including putting strict limits on how long suspects can be held for questioning and preventing witnesses from being taken from a crime scene to a detective division for questioning, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. There have been a couple hiccups. The PPD issued a three-page clarification about the new interview and interrogation... Continue Reading
February 28th, 2014
It's been reported before how Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. told the Supreme Court no one had standing to challenge warrantless electronic surveillance because no criminal defendants had yet been caught by the program. Despite Verrilli's assurances to the court that defendants would receive notice if the evidence against them derived from warrantless surveillance, the Department of Justice was not giving any such notices.... Continue Reading
February 28th, 2014
Courthouse News reported on a Media Law Resource Center study led by Staff Attorney Michael Norwick and on which I assisted: "Libel and privacy cases against the media continue to drop, and cases against print outlets that lead to verdict-ending trials are also declining steadily, a nonprofit dedicated to press rights reported.
The Media Law Resource Center's 2014 Report on Trials and Damages says that 12 new cases... Continue Reading
February 27th, 2014
After Politico reported that Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman says he's been told his telephone records were obtained by a national security letter, Julian Sanchez posted on Just Security that there at least two ways in which a national security letter would appear to strain the limits of the authority from the only NSL statute allowing for access to telecommunications records.
"First, §2709 may only be used in... Continue Reading
February 27th, 2014
As the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the fraud-on-the-market theory underpinning most securities fraud class actions, the Wall Street Journal asks if this sort of class action will become an endangered species and if the "balance of power between companies and the lawyers who sue them" will be rebalanced.
Under the fraud-on-the-market theory, shareholders don't have to show a direct connection between the alleged fraud and their... Continue Reading
February 27th, 2014
The National Security Agency needs to keep phone-call metadata longer than the five-year limit in order to preserve evidence for the civil lawsuits challenging the legality of surveillance, the Justice Department said in a court filing Wednesday, The Hill reports. "'The United States must ensure that all potentially relevant evidence is retained,'" government lawyers said, according to The Hill. The government does say the... Continue Reading
February 27th, 2014
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, vetoed legislation that would have allowed conservative religious business owners to refuse to provide services to same-sex couples regarding their marriages, such as wedding photography, wedding cakes and flowers, The Washington Post reports. In deciding to veto the legislation, Brewer said, "'I have not heard of one example in Arizona where business owners' religious liberty... Continue Reading
February 27th, 2014
The National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Media Law Resource Center jointly conducted a survey, which showed troubling trends for transparency. Here is an excerpt of the report I wrote for NFOIC and MLRC about the 2013 survey results:
Just as similar informal surveys in 2009 and 2011 had, the 2013 Open Government Survey found a substantial decline over the last two to five years in the amount of resources devoted by media... Continue Reading
February 26th, 2014
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction of Texas' state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports.
It appears that Judge Orlando Garcia may have applied the lowest level of constitutional scrutiny, rational basis, in reaching the decison. According to the AP, Garcia opined: "'Without a rational relation to a legitimate governmental purpose, state-imposed inequality can find no refuge in... Continue Reading
February 26th, 2014
I'm blogging several times a day about products liability for Law.com. Each day I cross-post an excerpt of a blog I find interesting.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission is seeking public comment on its proposal to change the disclosure of information about manufacturers of products.
The commission voted 2-1 in favor of putting the proposed rules out for public comment. The dissenting commissioner said her colleagues were... Continue Reading
February 25th, 2014
The Supreme Court did not grant certiorari in appeals over allegedly defective washing machines that accumulated mold, The Wall Street Journal reports. "The court's decision to stay out of the dispute marks a breather for justices who in recent years have issued a string of rulings disallowing class-action cases," WSJ notes. The Seventh Circuit and Sixth Circuit held that the lawsuits could be certified as class actions... Continue Reading
February 25th, 2014
Two Supreme Court watchers got into a bit of a tit-for-tat this week on the eighth anniversary since Justice Clarence Thomas last asked a question from the bench.
Jeffrey Toobin opined that Thomas' famous habit of not asking questions during oral arguments is "disgraceful" because "they are, in fact, the public's only windows onto the Justices' thought processes, and they offer the litigants and their lawyers... Continue Reading
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