Cultivated Compendium

The Washington Post's Kenneth R. Harney reports that mortgage problems make up 28 percent of the 600,000 complaints posted on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website. Complaints about mortgage lenders, debt collectors, credit-card companies and credit bureaus are logged on the site.

The CFPB started posting narratives for those complaints June 25, but lenders can't post their own narratives. David Stevens, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, told Harney the process is one-sided and uses '“unsubstantiated and unverified'” information that can be submitted by anyone, and the bureau does not “'validate the authenticity of the complaint or the individuals making the complaint.”'

Law firms engaged in debt collection can be regulated by New York City, the New York Court of Appeals has ruled. Christy Young Berger, blogging on Accounts Receivable Management's blog, notes that two law firms, Eric M. Berman and Lacy Katzen, argued New York's law encroached on the state's exclusive authority to regulate the legal profession. The New York Court of Appeals, in answering a question posed to it by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, found that New York's law doesn't encroach on the state's authority to regulate lawyers.

Here is some interesting legal news from last month:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rebuked a Nevada district court judge for denying pro hac vice admission to Department of Justice lawyers based in Washington, D.C., The National Law Journal's Zoe Tillman reports.

Tillman reports that U.S. District Judge Robert Jones had concerns about the "'ethical commitments'" of out-of-state government lawyers, but the Ninth Circuit opined that "'generalized doubts about all government attorneys’ ethical commitments are not valid grounds for denying an individual attorney’s application for pro hac vice admission."'

Even though Jones reversed his previous order denying the the U.S. attorney permission to appear in USA V. USDC-NVR, the panel held that this did not render the controversy moot because it was reasonable to expect that Jones might issue such an order again.

The case was one of first impression.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the federal government must continue to provide medical care to veterans exposed to chemical and biological-weapons experiments as well as any new information that may affect their health, Metropolitan News-Enterprise's Kenneth Ofgang reports. The experiments took place between 1942 and 1975.

The panel said the fact that care is available through the Department of Veterans Affairs is insufficient basis to not compel the government to provide care to the entire class of test subjects.

The panel also found a basis for compelling medical care in a 1988 military regulation finding that test subjects have a duty to be warned even if their participation in the research is now over. The military had argued that the regulation only apply prospectively.

Due to a funding crisis, Connecticut's three major legal aid nonprofits have had to close their joint office that lobbied legislators, The Connecticut Law Tribune's Michelle Tuccitto Sullo reports. The closure of the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut is stemming from a funding shortfall with court filing fees being lower than expected and low interest rates on money held in attorney IOLTA accounts generating reduced interest income.
 

Triple-digit heat indices on Louisiana State Penitentiary's death row do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled. The Times-Picayune's Emily Lane reports that the court did agree that extreme temperatures constituted cruel and unusual punishment for the three plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. However, the court ruled that air conditioning does not have to be provided to all of death row.

A federal judge has ordered the Washington Redskins football teams' federal trademark registrations canceled, The Washington Post's Ian Shapira reports. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee upheld a ruling by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which found that the team's name is offensive to American Indians and may disparage people. The win was at the summary judgment stage.

Lee reasoned that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that Texas didn't violate the First Amendment when it banned specialty license plates bearing the Confederate flag means that the government is exempt from First Amendment scrutiny. As a result, the judge ruled that the Lanham Act's ban on disparaging trademarks doesn't violate the First Amendment.

Utah will not be expanding Medicaid, The Washington Examiner's Paige Winfield Cunningham reports. Lawmakers ended their session this week without adopting an expansion.

Even though Republican Governor Gary Herbert wanted to expand health coverage for more low-income Utah residents, legislators could not reach agreement on an expansion plan, according to Cunningham: "Utah's stalemate puts it among a number of states with GOP governors who have recently tried — but failed — to get their legislatures to approve alternative Medicaid expansion plans. Those states include Tennessee, Idaho and Wyoming."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the Labor Department acted in bad faith when investigating an oil and gas servicing company for allegedly owing backpay to independent contractors, The Houston Chronicle's L.M. Sixel reports. As a result, Gate Guard Services will get more money from the government to pay its legal expenses.

Legal observers told Sixel the case will make it easier for others to bring bad-faith claims against the government.

The lead Department of Labor investigator destroyed evidence and demanded a multimillion-dollar penalty. A district judge ultimately ruled that the workers are independent contractors, not employees.

The legacy that President Barack Obama could leave on the federal judiciary could be diminished because the Republican party is blocking dozens of his court picks, Politico's Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim report: "Democrats believe the GOP is creating an unprecedented expansion of the Thurmond Rule, which holds that the Senate shuts off the confirmation valve of lifetime judicial appointments in July of an election year."

The GOP-controlled Senate is on track this year to confirm the fewest federal judges since 1969, and more than two dozen federal courts have declared emergencies because of excessive caseloads caused by vacancies. Nominations for judges for the home states of Republican senators, however, are moving on the Senate floor.