My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
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
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 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
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
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
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