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
October 12th, 2013
As JPMorgan's legal costs mount from several governmental investigations, the investment firm has set aside a $23 billion reserve fund for litigation costs, The New York Times reports. But all the bank's legal woes will be good for law firms: "Even as defense lawyers publicly complain that government regulators are being too aggressive, they privately celebrate the windfall. Law firms in New York and Washington are collectively... Continue Reading
October 12th, 2013
TV broadcasters are challenging in the U.S. Supreme Court Aereo's business model as an infringement on their copyrights in their programming. FierceCable reports: "Broadcasters argue in the petition that Aereo designed its system to exploit what they described as a loophole in copyright law which has allowed Cablevision to launch its network DVR." Aereo specifically set up its service of streaming free broadcast programming... Continue Reading
October 11th, 2013
SCOTUSBlog has an interesting analysis on an oral argument this week in the U.S. Supreme Court on forum selection clauses. The blog predicts that the Fifth Circuit will be reversed in the first forum selection clause case to get to the justices in a quarter-century. The justices also seemed to favor an argument from an amici brief that a "forum-selection clause gives [defendant] Atlantic Marine a complete defense to litigation in any... Continue Reading
October 11th, 2013
Next month, the Texas Supreme Court will consider two separate cases of estranged same-sex spouses who married in Massachusetts and want to get divorced in Texas. This blog post notes: "Currently, it is unclear what the decisions of the Texas Supreme Court are likely to be. More than anything else, these upcoming decisions reflect the changing landscape of family law in the U.S. As of now, just over a quarter of the U.S. population lives... Continue Reading
October 11th, 2013
President Barack Obama’s “war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive” since President Richard Nixon’s administration, according to the author of a report commissioned by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The report, “The Obama Administration and the Press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America,” was released Thursday.
The report was written by... Continue Reading
October 11th, 2013
A Philadelphia judge was wrong to enter a compulsory nonsuit in the first of over 30 cases involving allegations that brain cancers were caused by a carcinogen leaking from a chemical plant, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled this week.
A two-judge panel of the Superior Court reversed Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Allan L. Tereshko in a non-precedential decision. Judge Kate Ford Elliott authored the opinion in which Judge... Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
A Virginia carpet cleaner allowed a rug cleaner to subpoena Yelp about the identities of negative reviewers of its business, The Raw Story reports. The carpet cleaner argues its business rival made the reviews. Yelp was found in contempt of court for not complying, and the Virginia Court of Appeals heard oral argument in the case this week. Advocacy group Public Citizen explains, according to The Raw Story, '“courts elsewhere have... Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
Lawyers for the libertarian Institute for Justice wrote in a New York Times op/ed that the Ninth Circuit was wrong to rule against First Amendment challenges to a "California law that prohibits licensed medical providers from using talk therapy to try to change a minor’s sexual orientation." The Ninth Circuit found that such therapy is “conduct,” not “speech,” according to the piece. The risk of allowing... Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
Just this morning, Hearst, which has a TV station in the Boston area, lost its argument for a temporary injunction in the District of Massachusetts against Aereo, GigaOm reports. Hearst argues that the use of individual antennas by Aereo to rebroadcast its copyrighted television content violates its public performance rights. But the judge said a temporary injunction is unnecessary because '“it seems more likely that the harm will... Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
Despite ongoing negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Rights Organization, no international legal protection has yet been worked out to protect cultural heritage like traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expression, Indonesia's Antara News reports. Cultural heritage is left unprotected by intellectual property law. Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
A Connecticut panel, appointed to review the state's public records laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, heard testimony related to its charge to "recommend to lawmakers how to alter the delicate balance of victims' right to privacy and the public's right to know about crimes and the operations of agencies like police departments," The Connecticut Post reports. One father whose son was murdered... Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
The Washington Post has a great explainer on why the exchanges for American consumers to buy health insurance policies are buggy and having problems since they opened. One issue: "the site needs to interact with a large number of databases operated by various federal and state agencies. If these back-end systems are poorly designed, it could take months or even years to straighten out the mess," The Post reports. Continue Reading
October 10th, 2013
Broadcasters who lost their copyright challenge in the Second Circuit to Aereo's Internet streaming service of free broadcast TV programming are going to seek certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, Variety reported in an exclusive. Contrary rulings against Aereo rival FilmOn X could set up a circuit split if the Ninth Cicrcuit followed the lead of trial-court rulings. Continue Reading
October 9th, 2013
There was a lot of buzz about the study finding that half of the links in U.S. Supreme Court cases don't work anymore. Moreover, 70 percent of the links in law reviews and other law journals also have rotten away. But what I love about this study is that the scholars behind it are part of an effort to come up with a solution.
Jonathan Zittrain wrotes that "the Harvard Library Innovation Lab has pioneered a project to unite... Continue Reading
October 9th, 2013
The Atlantic blogs on a report from the Brennan Center for Justice on "what the surveillance state does with our private data" as a strong synthesis of everything that's been revealed in recent months. Further, The Atlantic writes, "even though the people being spied on are often totally innocent, the government stores their information for a very long time."
The full report is here: http://www.brennancenter.org/... Continue Reading
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