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Everyone makes mistakes. Some folks have one too many drinks before getting behind the wheel. Others fail, allegedly, to follow proper procedure when testing DUI blood draws, leading to retesting 1,700 samples. When Colorado’s state toxicology lab had to do just that, they laid the blame publicly on one young lab tech, Mitchell Fox-Rivera. After he was fired, Fox-Rivera claimed that the government lab improperly impugned his reputation, denying him due process....

On Monday, SCOTUS helped solidify one of President Obama’s major policy goals by ruling in favor of the “demand response” provisions of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The decision appears to be the end-of-the-line for major opponents of the regulation now that FERC has received the Supreme Court’s blessing. At issue was the provision included in the FERC law intended to manage peak energy use consumption. Under “demand response,” local and regional electricity grid operators agree to pay large sums of money to large peak energy consumers like schools, businesses, and hospitals in order to ease them off of use during those times....

Do you have what it takes to be a Dragon Master? That’s the challenge, or the come-on, posed by Dragon’s Ascent, one of the new electronic “games of skill” that are popping up in convenience stores and bars around the country. If you come upon this game and wonder whether you have the right stuff to master dragons, you might ponder popping in some money to find out. Maybe, when you then further read the instructions, you will be won over by the news that if you are really good at mastering dragons, you can win actual money....

He-said-she-said cases can be tedious. Here, we have a Sixth Circuit first impression case where he (the defendant) said no to a search, while she (the co-occupant), said yes. So was it an unreasonable search? Do residential co-tenants have equal possessory interests? Four officers in Smyrna, Tennasse, conducted a “knock and talk” to investigate an anonymous tip indicating that the occupants at the house where Lanerrick Johnson was staying had marijuana and a firearm....

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this week that Travelers Casualty and Surety Company did not have to cover Tactical Stop-Loss’s losses stemming from a major shareholder’s criminal scheme. Tactical Stop-Loss and an affiliate (the Tactical Group) administer trust accounts for insurance companies that provide stop-loss coverage to employee benefit-plan sponsors. Tactical Group purchased a Crime Policy (Policy) from Travelers Casualty and Surety Company insuring against loss from theft or forgery by an employee “acting alone or in collusion with other persons....

If you hadn’t heard of Alan Dershowitz before the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal re-entered the news cycle, you might have to hand over your bar card. He was Harvard’s youngest law professor at 28 in 1967, was part of O.J. Simpson’s legal “Dream Team,” and has been a font of legal analysis on cable news networks for years. If David Boies slipped past your radar, we wouldn’t be shocked, but still surprised....

A pair of cases seeking certiorari to resolve a circuit split, despite involving states choosing to defund Planned Parenthood via Medicaid spending, did not garner enough interest among the Justices to be accepted. Technically, the case is about whether Medicaid provides a private right of action, but Justice Clarence Thomas clearly believes there’s so much more, or maybe not, to it. Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, published a dissent (scroll to the end), lambasting their colleagues for not doing their jobs to fix the circuit split over a procedural matter....

The verdict is in on the California video game law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 vote on the video game issue, reports Reuters, ruling the video game ban as unconstitutional. The California law restricted the sale of violent video games to minors. California video vendors brought suit against the state of California alleging that the law violated freedom of speech under the First Amendment. In the last blog post, we discussed the California video game case as it came before the U....

Conviction and sentence for tax evasion and other crimes is affirmed where: 1) there was sufficient evidence of defendant’s willfulness to support his conviction for tax evasion; 2) the court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to recuse itself after defendant plotted to have the judge arrested by the provost marshal of his “common law court” in an attempt to intimidate all of the judges of the district; 3) defendant was not denied due process as he was provided with adequate resources to conduct his pro se defense; and 4) defendant’s sentence was not substantively unreasonable....

District court’s imposition of a sentence of 86 months’ imprisonment on a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm is affirmed where: 1) although defendant’s reckless-endangerment conviction was not a crime of violence, defendant’s evading-arrest offense was a crime of violence; and 2) the district court did not err in applying a four-level enhancement under the Guidelines in finding that, by preponderance of the evidence, the defendant used or possessed a firearm in connection with a felony chop-shop offense....

The lines between clinical diagnoses and legal classifications are sometimes blurry. However, there are a few crucial differences when it comes to needing legal assistance. A health care professional makes a clinical diagnosis for the purpose of medical care. That clinical diagnoses, however, can also be used to aid in legal classifications. For example, a clinical diagnosis of blindness can aid in being considered “legally blind," which can help you get disability benefits....

Three insurance companies were sued by two patients and their pharmacies after the companies had refused to pay for blood-clotting-factor products under ERISA health plans. Eventually, the insurance companies paid them in full, including interest. Each time, the patients recovered through settlement, not court order. The patients filed for attorneys’ fees under ERISA, which allows for recovery of attorneys’ fees when there has been “some success” on the merits. The settlements were success enough, the First Circuit reasoned, deciding for the first time that the catalyst theory allows recovery of fees in ERISA cases....

While sitting behind a computer screen is widely regarded as much safer than wandering the streets at night asking people for their opinions in 140 characters or less, computer crimes are becoming increasingly common. Additionally, in recent years, social media sites have even become hotbeds for crime, and police are getting wise to it. Below you’ll find five common crimes being committed on, or as a result of, social media....

After Henry Lyons gave a student athlete an “F” in his course at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, a university committee determined that the student should get a second chance. The paper, graded by the committee, got a D+. Lyons complained to the school’s chancellor about the preferential treatment afforded student athletes and asked for an investigation. The university didn’t offer him a job for the next semester, which Lyons said was retaliation for speaking out about the treatment of student athletes, a violation of his First Amendment rights....

With the Supreme Court set to consider same-sex marriage petitions from five states at its first conference on September 29, one argument lurks in the background. Implicit in this concern for popular sovereignty must be a suggestion that, when the people themselves make law, that law is somehow more important than when the legislature does it (and, as a corollary, it’s more important because it’s achieved via the mechanism of voting)....

That was easy. A years-long dispute over which agency was responsible for picking up the tab for the federally-mandated special education that must be provided to students, even those in jail, ended yesterday with a per curiam whimper and a citation to a lengthy California Supreme Court opinion. The short answer? The offender’s parents’ local district. He was a special education student, beginning in second grade. By age fifteen, he was a juvenile delinquent, in the hands of the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), a school district that provides education to juvenile hall inmates, as well as troubled students in community day schools....

District court’s denial of defendant’s request for habeas relief from a conviction for sexual assault of a child is affirmed where defendant’s Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claim fails as he falls short of establishing that he was prejudiced by anything his trial counsel did or didn’t do. Read Cianciola v. Dittmann, No. 09-1867 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin...

In US v. Brown, No. 07-2287, the court of appeals vacated defendant’s crack cocaine distribution sentence, holding that a prior conviction for delivery of a “simulated controlled substance” under Iowa law did not qualify as a “felony drug offense” under a recidivism provision of the federal Controlled Substances Act. EEOC v. Kelly Servs., Inc., No. 08-3880, concerned an action by the EEOC alleging that defendant employment agency discriminated against a Muslim by failing to refer her to an employer because of her refusal to remove her khimar for work....

In re the City of New York, No. 10-0237, involved a civil right action brought by protesters and others who were arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC). The court of appeals granted the City of New York’s petition for a writ of mandamus vacating the district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to compel the production of roughly 1800 pages of confidential “Field Reports” prepared by undercover officers of the New York City Police Department who were investigating security threats in the months before the RNC, holding that 1) a writ of mandamus was the only “adequate means” for the City to seek review of the district court’s order and thereby prevent the irreparable harm that the City - and thus the public - would suffer from the disclosure of the Field Reports; 2) because the Second Circuit had never before addressed the circumstances in which the law enforcement privilege must yield to a party’s need for discovery, the petition presented novel and significant questions of law whose resolution would aid in the administration of justice; 3) after determining that the law enforcement privilege applied, the district court indisputably erred in failing to apply a strong presumption against lifting the privilege; 4) the district court indisputably erred in failing to require that plaintiffs show a “compelling need” for the Field Reports; and 5) the district court made a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence when it found that plaintiffs’ need for the Field Reports outweighed the public’s interest in their secrecy....

In plaintiff’s case against several defendants arising from a custody case in which the Illinois state court found that she suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, district court’s dismissal of her suit is affirmed where: 1) guardians ad litem and court-appointed experts, including psychiatrists, are absolutely immune from liability for damages when they act at the court’s direction; 2) no factual allegations tie the defendants, who are private individuals, to a conspiracy with a state actor; and 3) district court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiff’s Rule 59(e) motion....