My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
January 7th, 2014
Four couples are challenging Arizona's ban on same-sex marriage in a putatative class action, Courthouse News Service reports. For example, "plaintiffs Holly Mitchell and Suzanne Cummins say that though they were able to become certified foster care parents, only Cummins was allowed to adopt their two children because 'Arizona law strongly prefers heterosexual couples in permanent adoption proceedings and permits only a husband... Continue Reading
January 6th, 2014
The U.S. Senate has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including a vote in December 2012 that failed by five votes, The Interdependent reports. The convention was modeled after the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The Senate likely will consider the convention again this year, The Interdependent further reports.
"Both U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary [of State John]... Continue Reading
January 6th, 2014
Just Security's Steve Vladeck's writes that last week's decision finding a Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel memo is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act "may have the effect, unintended or otherwise, of insulating virtually all nonpublic OLC memos and opinions from FOIA requests–regardless of their subject-matter or sensitivity." (The opinion regards the FBI's use of exigent National... Continue Reading
January 6th, 2014
ProPublica reports on a little-covered problem: some people harmed by medical malpractice can't find any attorneys to take their cases.
This is a phenomenon that many plaintiffs lawyers told me about when I was regularly reporting on medical-malpractice litigation for The Legal Intelligencer. Med mal cases are very expensive to work up because they require expert witnesses and scientific-oriented discovery, and many firms will not take... Continue Reading
January 6th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court halted same-sex marriages in Utah this morning while an appeal of a ruling that the state's ban on same-sex nuptials violates constitutional rights proceeds in the Tenth Circuit, NPR reports. A stay during an appeal was denied by lower courts. The justices' order was without comment or dissent. Continue Reading
January 6th, 2014
Craig Zucker founded Buckyballs, a desk toy of small magnets that can be stacked into infinite shapes. But "perhaps more than 1,000" kids have swallowed the magnets and needed to undergo surgery, The Washington Post reports. Now the Consumer Product Safety Commission is seeking to hold Zucker personally liable for the $57 million recall because he dissolved his business, The Post further reports: "The commission supported that... Continue Reading
January 6th, 2014
The New York Times' Adam Liptak writes on the difficulties in protecting the constitutional right to have counsel paid for in criminal cases when you can't afford your own lawyer. For example, in Washington, a federal judge has found two cities violated the constitutional right to counsel by having lawyers handle 500 cases at a time. The judge has imposed a federal monitor to improve the situation. In Texas, a pilot program is starting... Continue Reading
January 5th, 2014
The D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that President Obama's Justice Department can keep secret a memo that established "the legal basis for telephone companies to hand over customers’ calling records to the government without a subpoena or court order, even when there is no emergency," The New York Times reports. The memo was deemed to be subject to the executive branch's internal deliberations privilege. Continue Reading
January 5th, 2014
The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has issued final safe-harbor regulations for payments and business practices related to electronic health records. Some of these payments and practices would otherwise implicate the federal anti-kickback statute. EHR Intelligence reports that federal regulators have extended the safe harbor until Dec. 31, 2021, with three goals: to incentivize the adoption of EHRs,... Continue Reading
January 5th, 2014
As health-care expands in an effort to cover all Americans, the Medicaid expansion could mean that more people over the age of 55 will face liens being placed on their assets for their care, according to a report in BenefitsPro. "Washington and many other states, including California, Florida and New York, interpret the [federal] regulations to mean that they should use liens to try to recover any money spent by Medicaid on any care for... Continue Reading
January 3rd, 2014
While women have made some progress in the partner ranks at large law firms, women are lagging at the associate level, The Washington Post reported earlier this week: "Women make up 20.2 percent of partners at major law firms — up from 19.9 percent in 2012 — but the percentage of women associates dipped slightly from 45.1 to 44.8 percent over the same period, according to a report released this month by the National... Continue Reading
January 3rd, 2014
Despite the many lawsuits pending to strike at state-level bans on same-sex marriage--and success in some of those lawsuits, the Associated Press reports that the 30-plus mini-Defense of Marriage Act laws aren't going anywhere just quite yet. "'The thing that I would not do is confidently predict that now all of these ‘mini’ DOMAs are going to be declared unconstitutional. That would be a mistake,' ... ... Continue Reading
January 3rd, 2014
The Atlantic has this piece arguing that continuing to rely upon the U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Smith v. Maryland to justify the NSA's mass surveillance of phone calls in the USA no longer makes sense. The case involved the use of a pen register to investigate a burglar-stalker who allegedly made obscene phone calls to a crime victim, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "a search only occurs when a citizen has a... Continue Reading
January 1st, 2014
The Washington Post reports that 2.1 million people have signed up for health-insurance policies, about half through the federal exchange and about half through the state exchanges. Federal officials are also confident the 2.1 million figure means more Americans, rather than fewer, now have health-care coverage starting Wednesday since it 'certainly outpaces anyone who may have lost a plan' this year," The Post... Continue Reading
January 1st, 2014
The Legal Intelligencer's Max Mitchell reports that the murky role of Penn State's general counsel during grand jury proceedings could affect the efforts of prosecutors to hold three university administrators accountable for their actions regarding convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. "If three ex-Penn State administrators facing charges stemming from failing to properly deal with reports of child sexual abuse by Jerry... Continue Reading
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