My occasional take on important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news:
Legal News
Legal News
October 14th, 2013
The Lexington Herald-Leader has this good yarn about a Kentucky Supreme Court justice who denies seeking campaign donations from a lawyer facing investigations, as well as a fraud lawsuit, over allegations he steered clients to an administrative law judge at the Social Security Administration:
"In early 2012, Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott repeatedly drove to the Floyd County office of disability benefits lawyer Eric C.... Continue Reading
October 13th, 2013
The New York Times' Adam Liptak has this Sunday Review piece exploring how activist U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.'s court has been. There's a surprise in the findings. " If judicial activism is defined as the tendency to strike down laws, the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is less activist than any court in the last 60 years," Liptak writes. Continue Reading
October 13th, 2013
Foreign Affairs has this piece on several problems India is facing, including a lapdog press: "Restrictions have also been placed on civil rights; libel and defamation laws have become unsettlingly wide. Indeed, national newspapers and magazines, far from serving as a powerful fourth estate, are now commonly viewed as subservient to members of the government." Further, a governmental official floated the idea of governmental... Continue Reading
October 13th, 2013
The New York Times reports on why the health-insurance exchanges have been so buggy: one factor was that the biggest contractor wasn't given specifications right away and only started writing software code this spring. Another factor was not rolling out a piece of the portal instead of the whole shebang at once. A third factor was that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "assumed the role of project quarterback,... Continue Reading
October 13th, 2013
The RAND Corporation, which was commissioned by the American Medical Association to identify the factors that influence physicians' professional satisfaction, found that those physicians surveyed do not want to go back to paper charting. But they are reporting several issues with the deployment of electronic health records: "Among the key findings of the study was how electronic health records have affected physician professional... Continue Reading
October 13th, 2013
The Seattle Times reports on the practice of locking people in the middle of mental-illness crises at emergency rooms because there are not enough beds available in the psychiatric system. The crux of this ground-breaking report: "'Psychiatric boarding,' as it is officially called, or 'warehousing,' as it is known to mental-health advocates, has long taken place on occasion in Washington, which ranks at... Continue Reading
October 12th, 2013
Lawyers for the Onondaga Nation are not very hopeful that their land claim will get accepted for review, much less get a positive ruling, from the U.S. Supreme Court after the justices ruled that the equitable doctrine of laches barred the land claim of the Oneida Nation, another Haudenosaunee/Iroquois tribe based in New York. However: the "Onondaga’s land rights lawsuit is framed differently from the Oneida and... Continue Reading
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 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
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