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
November 12th, 2013
When the attorney for an apartment-building developer sent 52 Right-to-Know requests to a Pennsylvania township, that has not been without costs, the Reading Eagle reports. "Each request has led to minutes, hours or even weeks of digging out records, sending emails or conversing with attorneys - all of it tapping limited resources and money available to the small government entities," the Reading Eagle further reports. (The... Continue Reading
November 11th, 2013
I wrote a story for ALM's Connecticut Law Tribune about a lawsuit challenging Connecticut's alimony laws as unconstitutional:
"Four plaintiffs have filed a complaint challenging the constitutionality of Connecticut's alimony laws on the grounds that they affect a "fundamental liberty interest in ending a marriage and in remarrying."
The plaintiffs, who filed their complaint anonymously and who were ordered to... Continue Reading
November 10th, 2013
The New York Times commentator Floyd Norris reports on a study that found that a federal law called the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act--which requires more transparency on the fees credit card companies collect from their customers--actually worked. The researchers expected to find that, if credit card companies couldn't charge those fees anymore, they would start charging customers more interest or... Continue Reading
November 10th, 2013
An appellate court has upheld a $8,600 award in civil penalties and attorney fees against the New Orleans Police Department for violating a public records request made by the New Orleans-based Innocence Project, The Times Picayune reported. The newspaper further reported: "the local office of the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal group that seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted defendants, sued the NOPD earlier this year after it... Continue Reading
November 10th, 2013
The Associated Press reported: "The head of Hawaii's Senate judiciary committee said Saturday he expects an amended bill legalizing gay marriage to pass easily in the Senate next week, with no changes to the measure passed by the House Friday night after two grueling floor sessions and a lengthy public hearing." The legislation would allow same-sex weddings to begin on Dec. 2 in Hawaii, the AP also reported.... Continue Reading
November 8th, 2013
The Associated Press reports that "a Connecticut judge said Friday that he wants to hear the 911 recordings from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting before ruling whether they can be released to the media."The judge set a Nov. 25 hearing on whether the recordings can be sealed so he access them, the AP also reports. Continue Reading
November 8th, 2013
When the United Nations Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted in 2007, it was seen as a milestone in better protecting the rights of indigenous peoples to protect their lands and cultures. But it is unlikely that President Barack Obama is going to issue an executive order to enforce the declaration, the Indian Country Today Media Network reports. Yet American Indian legal experts who gathered recently say that law to... Continue Reading
November 8th, 2013
As Twitter's initial public offering opened this week, The New York Times' DealBook reports that Twitter's "biggest potential tax shelter is its history of losing money. Like most growth companies, Twitter has accumulated a lot of operating losses. These losses, in theory, can be carried forward as net operating losses to offset future taxable income. But investors should not count on it." The net operating losses can... Continue Reading
November 8th, 2013
A federal judge has ruled that people with disabilities were discriminated against by New York City during Superstorm Sandy. The New York Law Journal reports that "Southern District Judge Jesse Furman ruled Thursday that the city violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the New York City Human Rights Law in how it plans to respond to severe storms and power outages." While the judge said the... Continue Reading
November 8th, 2013
We all like tax deductions (mortgage interest deduction, anyone?). Even though JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $13 billion to the Justice Department, corporate leaders also probably like the fact that they can claim a tax deduction on part of that settlement as an ordinary business expense. The Washington Post reports on the introduction of a Senate bill and a House of Representatives bill that would change "part of the law that lets... Continue Reading
November 7th, 2013
A columnist for The State, a newspaper in South Carolina, writes about a unique wrinkle arising out of that state's system for selecting the chief justice of its supreme court: legislators might break with tradition of selecting the longest-serving justice as a matter of course.
The current chief justice and another current justice on the court both have gone through a vetting process with a merit selection commission. Usually, the most... Continue Reading
November 7th, 2013
New York's rental market is absurdly expensive and it seems to be having an impact on sober homes for people to get treatment, including those coming back into society after being jailed.
According to The Crime Report, Suffolk County sought to pay $500 per resident for sober homes (which is $300 more than the state pays per resident), but one operator told the county that "'[f]ive hundred dollars is not going to cut it,... Continue Reading
November 7th, 2013
The Arkansas attorney general certified a ballot measure today that would allow voters to amend the state constitution to recognize same-sex matrimony, according to ArkansasMatters.com. The ballot measure must now have get signatures in support to get on the ballot.
November 6th, 2013
The Pennsylvania Superior Court has stayed part of the sentence of a former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice convicted of political corruption, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Joan Orie Melvin, who is appealing her conviction, won't have to write letters of apology until her appeal is disposed of. The court reasoned that, if Orie Melvin's succeeds in getting a new trial, "'it is possible that her apology letters could... Continue Reading
November 6th, 2013
Andrew Cohen, in a blog for The Atlantic, argues that the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision to reject "a claim by a convicted murderer who argued that she was denied her Sixth Amendment right to the 'effective assistance of counsel' because her lawyer counseled her to reject a manslaughter plea deal without first adequately investigating the facts of her case" turns the constitutional right to counsel into a right... Continue Reading
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