A Republican Tennessee state senator has introduced legislation to bar drones from flying at sporting events, concerts and other large events, ABC local affiliate WKRN's Jamey Tucker reports. The bill also would address copyright issues when event sponsors hire vendors to record their events.
The updates about the U.S. Supreme Court's arguments today in King v. Burwell are coming fast and furious. The petitioners are seeking to invalidate the insurance subsidies in states with federal exchanges. SCOTUSBlog reports that Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing justice on the court, "expressed deep concern with a system where the statute would potentially destroy the insurance system in states that chose not to establish their own exchanges – likening this to an unconstitutional form of federal coercion. That made him seem skeptical of the petitioners’ reading of the statute, a hopeful point for defenders of the existing subsidies in all states."
Tenative insurance settlements have been reached in 160 cases stemming from Superstorm Sandy in which engineers' damages estimates were changed, the New York Law Journal's Andrew Keshner reports. The settlements are between the Federal Emergency Management Authority and lawyers for plaintiffs and involve FEMA's "write your own" program that lets insurance companies write and service federal flood insurance.
A New York Assemblyman has proposed legislation that would make it a felony to film patients receiving medical treatment without prior consent and give patients and their families a private cause of action to sue for damages, ProPublica's Charles Ornstein reports. The bill was filed after a TV show aired the final moments of a patient's life while he was being treated at NewYork-Presybterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and his wife recognized his voice when she saw the episode. New York does not recognize a common law right to privacy.
The California Supreme Court has rejected San Diego's blanket ban on where convicted sex offenders can live, the Los Angeles Times' Maura Dolan reports. The Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks was unconstitutional because the blanket ban"'has severely restricted their ability to find housing.'"
The Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes are seeking the power to try domestic violence cases involving non-tribal members, the Portland Press Herald's Colin Woodard reports. The plan is setting up a dispute over the scope of tribal authority in Maine.
A 2013 federal law expanded the authority for tribes to try domestic violence crimes involving non-tribal members so long as tribal courts meet federal constitutional standards and provide legal counsel. A bill has been introduced in Maine to align that state's law with the 2013 amendment to the Violence Against Women Act as well as to give the Penobscots expanded criminal jurisdiction for offenses that involve sentences up to three years.
The Maine Attorney General's Office argues that federal law does not apply to Maine tribes because "the Maine Settlement Act of 1980, which says that no federal Indian law is applicable within Maine if it 'affects or pre-empts the civil, criminal or regulatory jurisdiction of the State of Maine' unless Congress explicitly specifies it is to apply to the Maine tribes," Woodard reports.
Tribal leaders counter that the bill would enable to them to better protect women abused by their non-American Indian intimate partners.
Slovenia has become the 11th country in the European Union to approve same-sex marriage, Euronews' Seamus Kearney reports. The Slovenian Parliament also voted in favor of legalizing adoption by gay and lesbian couples.
A new wrinkle has developed in the tussle between the federal judiciary and the Alabama judiciary over the fate of same-sex marriage in that state, the Los Angeles Times' James Queally and Ryan Parker report. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled yesterday that judges should not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples even though a federal judge has ruled the state's ban on same-sex matrimony is unconstitutional: "Six of the court’s nine justices concurred and a seventh did so in part in the 148-page ruling, published Tuesday night."
Chief Justice Roy Moore, who ordered the state's probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, recused himself from the decision. But the federal judge who declared the ban unconstitutional ordered all of the state's probate judges to comply with her order.
The Alabama Supreme Court cited confusion among the state's probate judges as the reason that licenses should not be issued right now, Queally and Parker report.
The city of Chicago has beaten the argument that it impermissibly ceded its police power to the law firm it retained to prosecute a lawsuit on the city's behalf alleging that five drugmakers engaged in highly deceptive marketing of opioid painkillers, The Litigation Daily's Scott Flaherty reports. The drug companies argued that the firm's interest in earning a contingency fee from any recovery created a conflict that stripped the defendants of their due process rights. A federal judge ruled that because the city retains control over the litigation of the case the retention of a private law firm didn't violate the rights of the defendants.
Defense attorneys plan to appeal a decision by a Manhattan Supreme Court justice to allow the consideration of punitive damages in asbestos lawsuits for the first time in almost 20 years, The New York Law Journal's Jeff Storey reports. Supreme Court Justice Sheri Klein Heitler, coordinator of the New York City Asbestos Litigation (NYCAL) court, opined that plaintiffs are able to seek punitive damages in every court except her court and "'I, for one, cannot justify a situation in which an asbestos plaintiff is permitted to apply for punitive damages in Buffalo but not in this court.'"
The NYCAL has been criticized by the defense bar and tort reform groups as an outlier where "damages are significantly higher than in other jurisdictions and rulings and procedures do not give proper regard to due process rights of defendants," NYLJ further reports.
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