Cultivated Compendium

Class actions will face a new test in the U.S. Supreme Court next year after the justices granted certiorari on two issues:

1) Can workers at an Iowa meatpacking plant rely on statistical sampling to establish liability and damages regarding wages?

2) Can a class be certified when it contains membesr who weren't injured and have no legal right to damages?

Reuters' Alison Frankel says in her analysis that class action lawyers "could be looking back with nostalgia and regret at the good old days when they only had to worry about Wal-Mart v. Dukes and Comcast v. Behrend."

Frankel notes that the Supreme Court also has taken up Spokeo v. Robins, presenting "the question of whether Congress can confer constitutional standing on otherwise uninjured class members by providing a private right to recover statutory damages for violations of consumer laws."

The Supreme Court also has taken up Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez, presenting the issue of whether defendants can stop class actions by offering lead plaintiffs a settlement that addresses their full damages.

The Legal Intelligencer's Ben Seal reports about how the Philadelphia public interest legal community is going through a sea change in leadership. This also is happening nationally as a generational shift occurs at legal services agencies for low-income clients. Cathy Carr, the retiring leader of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, attributes the "increase in national turnover to the aging of the baby-boom generation. Many public interest organizations were founded 40 or 50 years ago, she said, and their leaders are reaching the ends of their careers."

New York court officials are looking to expand the rules governing the use of cameras in the courtroom so they can be used to "'to the fullest extent permissible by the law,'" New York Law Journal's Andrew Keshner reports. The rules for the use of cameras in the courtroom haven't been updated since the 1990s.

The proposed new roles would insert new language saying "'in order to maintain the broadest scope of public access to the courts,' and promote confidence and understanding of the judicial system, 'it is the policy of the Unified Court System to facilitate the audio-visual coverage of court proceedings to the fullest extent permitted by the New York Civil Rights Law and other statutes."'

Public comment must be received by August 10.
 

Arkansas has decided against imposing cost-sharing on people who are receiving Medicaid coverage under the Obamacare expansion if they are below the federal poverty level, Modern Healthcare's Virgil Dickson reports.

President Obama's administration has allowed Arkansas to mandate that beneficiaries make monthly contributions to "health independence accounts" if they enrolled in private plans on the new insurance exchange. Cost-sharing will be imposed for people above the poverty line.

The New York Board of Parole has been held in contempt for failing to give an explanation as to why it denied parole for a convicted murderer, The New York Law Journal's Ben Bedell reports. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Sciortino had already vacated the 2013 denial of parole to convicted murderer Michael Cassidy. When the parole board denied Cassidy release a second time, Sciortino said their explanation of why restated "'the usual and predictable language with no specificity or other explanation to justify parole denial."'

Attempts by legislative leaders to use Alaska's budget to stop the governor from accepting federal funds to expand Medicaid are likely unconstitutional, the Alaska Dispatch's Pat Forgey reports.

The governor wants to expand healthcare coverage to 20,000 or more low-income Alaskans. Legislators included provisions in the operating budget aiming to stop Governor Bill Walker from unilaterally accepting $130 million in federal money for the program.

Counsel for both the governor and for the legislature have concluded the legislative language is likely unconstitutional because the state constitution confines budget bills to appropriations.

Kansas has enacted a law that would strip the state courts of their funding if that state's Supreme Court rules against a separate law that removed some of its powers, The New York Times' John Eligon reports.

Gov. Sam Brownback signed a courts budget tying funding to a law that took the authority to appoint district court judges from the Supreme Court to the district courts themselves. The measure was promoted by the Kansas Legislature's conservatives.

Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, told Eligon the measures in the judiciary budget bill would be like Congress "passing a law outlawing abortion and then telling the judicial branch that it will lose its funding if it finds the law unconstitutional."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that homeowners who declare bankruptcy can't void second mortgages even if their homes aren't worth what they owe on their primary mortgages, the Associated Press reports. The court was unanimous in the decision.

The Floridian homeowners said their second loans were worthless.

Even though a medical marijuana dispensary violates federal law, it still has the right to recover money stolen from it by an attorney, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko reports that the now-defunct Northbay Wellness Group of Santa Rose can seek to reclaim its $25,000 stolen by now-disbarred attorney Michael Beyries. Beyries has declared bankruptcy, and the former lawyer argued that Northbay had "unclean hands" and couldn't assert its rights to recovery against Beyries' bankruptcy estate.

The unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit disagreed. According to Egelko, the court opined that, “'Allowing Beyries to avoid through bankruptcy his responsibility for misappropriating his client’s money would undermine the public interest in holding attorneys to high ethical standards.'”

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the President Obama's nominees to serve on the circuit courts of appeal won't be confirmed anymore, The Huffington Post's Jen Bendery reports. McConnell said on a conservative radio show that "'so far, the only judges we’ve confirmed have been federal district judges that have been signed off on by Republican senators,” and he expects that to be the case through 2016.

However, Luis Felipe Restrepo, a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, has had a hearing scheduled before the Judiciary Committee, and he has the support of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. Kara Stoll, a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, also has been voted out of the Judiciary Committee.