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We had a feeling they’d be back. Last October, we noted that Argentina’s first appeal to the Supreme Court was kicked, which wasn’t particularly surprising since the appeal was filed before the Second Circuit handed down its decision (ordering Argentina to pay more than $1 billion in debt). While that petition was pending, the Second Circuit handed down its decision, and an appeal of that decision was expected. Here it is: will the Supreme Court save Argentina from venture “vulture” capitalists, and possibly save that nation from economic collapse?...

When Mario Garcia was arrested for a DUI in Riverside County, California, the police booking system matched him to an outstanding felony warrant in Los Angeles. Garcia was quickly transferred to L.A. Except the police had the wrong Mario Garcia. And despite Garcia’s numerous objections, officers refused to perform even the most basic checks, checks which would have revealed their mistake. In so failing, the Ninth Circuit ruled on Wednesday, the Los Angeles County, the L....

Schwab v. Reilly, No. 08-538, involved a Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee’s appeal from the Third Circuit’s affirmance of the bankruptcy court’s order denying the trustee permission to auction certain equipment so that the debtor could receive the money she claimed exempt and the estate could distribute the remaining value to creditors. The Court reversed, holding that because debtor gave “the value of [her] claimed exemption[s]” on Schedule C dollar amounts within the range the Code allows for what it defines as the “property claimed as exempt,” the trustee was not required to object to the exemptions in order to preserve the estate’s right to retain any value in the equipment beyond the value of the exempt interest....

Will the Birther Movement accept defeat after losing a challenge in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? The Birther Movement, most famously represented by one-time presidential candidate Donald Trump, is fueled by people who doubt that President Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen, one of the constitutional criterions for presidency. Birthers claim that President Obama falsified his Hawaiian birth certificate, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A group of Birther-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in a California federal court on January 20, 2009, the day Barack Obama was sworn in and took office as President of the United States....

An enhanced sentence of defendant to 188 months’ imprisonment as an armed career criminal following four firearm convictions is vacated and remanded where, because the state of Illinois sent defendant a document stating that his principal civil rights have been restored, while neglecting to mention the continuing firearms disability, the final sentence of 18 U.S.C. section 921(a)(20) means that his burglary convictions do not count for federal purposes. Read Buchmeier v....

Donald Trump was the first major party presidential candidate who declined to make his tax returns public since 1976. The president still hasn’t released his tax returns, and failure to do so may keep him off the 2020 ballot in California. The California State Senate voted 27-10 to require presidential candidates to release five years of income tax returns in order to appear on the primary ballot. The proposed bill isn’t law yet, but would it even be constitutional if it does?...

For workers privy to sensitive information about their employers, it can often be tempting to leak information to the media when your company makes bad decisions. However, if you have any plans of keeping that job, you might want to think twice before leaking sensitive information, because, yes, you can be fired. And that’s not all. As the whole world has seen recently, thanks to the literal electric-car-fire that is Tesla, when employees leak information, companies can and will sue those employees....

Arbitration agreements are not what they used to be, at least not as far as Sunoco is concerned. The gasoline company sought to compel arbitration in an alleged fraud involving Citibank, claiming the plaintiff Donald White signed an arbitration agreement with the credit card company. White alleged Sunoco induced him to sign up for a rewards card but did not give him promised discounts. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals said Sunoco wasn’t part of the arbitration agreement in White v....

A federal appeals court reversed the conviction of a man who smuggled a Pakistani man into the United States, then drove him to board a train to Canada with a fake British passport. It was part of a scheme for the Pakistani to re-enter the United States (via the United Kingdom) and seek U.S. citizenship with the fake documents, but authorities arrested the men before they reached the Canadian border. Choudry Muhammad Khalil, the smuggler, was sentenced on multiple counts for his crimes....

Newdow v. Rio Linda Union Sch. Dist., No. 05-17257, concerned an Establishment Clause action by the atheist parent of a student challenging the recitation of the pledge of allegiance by other students in the school at issue. The court of appeals reversed an injunction in favor of plaintiffs, holding that the Pledge of Allegiance did not violate the Establishment Clause because Congress’s ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism and that the context of the Pledge–its wording as a whole, the preamble to the statute, and this nation’s history–demonstrated that it was a predominantly patriotic exercise, despite its use of the words “under God....

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals is now the second federal appellate court to strike down Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) Section 3, reports The Associated Press. Applying “heightened scrutiny,” the Second Circuit concluded that DOMA’s classification of same-sex spouses was not substantially related to an important government interest and held that DOMA Section 3 violates equal protection. Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, a George H.W. Bush nominee, wrote the opinion for the divided panel....

District court’s denial of a 28 U.S.C. section 2255 motion to vacate a sentence for possession of machine guns and unregistered firearms by defendant, a volunteer with the Tennessee State Guard who had built nine machine guns in response to the events of September 11, is affirmed as the Second Amendment does not confer an unrestricted individual right to keep and bear machine guns. Read Hamblen v. US, No. 09-5025...

In plaintiffs’ class action lawsuit against defendant-automobile insurance providers, defendant’s petition for permission to appeal is granted and the judgment of the district court granting plaintiff’s motion to remand the action to the state court is affirmed where the new claims added by the class certification order relate back to the relevant transaction or occurrence. Read In Re: Safeco Ins. Co. of America, No. 09-8027 On Petition for Leave to Appeal...

Twenty-four people got the ride of their life at the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, California yesterday, as they were stuck several stories up in the air by a stalled roller coaster. Called the “Invertigo,” the coaster apparently stalled while being lifted to its high point, where it would have released riders on a twisting, 50-MPH, multiple-inversion ride through its metal loops. As reported in the San Jose Mercury News, though, instead of that thrill ride, the riders were treated to waiting in ninety-plus-degree heat for hours while firefighters from two cities raised buckets to lower them one by one from their seats....

Connecting the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds through the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) has been a boon to industry and commerce, and it supports transportation and recreation. But opening a pathway between bodies of fresh water has a price. Within CAWS, the price is an invasive species of Asian carp. Five states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and Pennsylvania — sued the Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (the District) in federal court, seeking a preliminary injunction that would require the defendants to put in place additional physical barriers throughout the CAWS, implement new procedures to stop invasive carp, and expedite a study of how best to separate the Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds permanently....

Last week, Take-Two Interactive Software finally overcame copyright infringement claims over its use of professional basketball players’ tattoos in its NBA 2K video games. The plaintiff, Solid Oak Sketches, alleged the game violated their copyrights in five tattoos inked on NBA players Eric Bledsoe, Lebron James, and Kenyon Martin. The game aims to give players a realistic view of a professional basketball game, including the appearance of real NBA players. Solid Oak holds an exclusive license to each of the tattoos at issue in the case, but those rights are watered down when the tattoos are inked onto someone’s skin....

A gaggle of angry social networking professionals claim that LinkedIn “hacked” their email accounts, leading to a deluge of emails to their contact lists with invitations to connect with them on the social network, complete with their photo, name, and implied endorsement. They want the email spamming to stop. LinkedIn, meanwhile, wants this litigation to stop, and argued in a motion to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh (the judge who seems to be the de facto tech trial judge in Silicon Valley, who presided over the Apple v....

Four high school students from Morgan Hill, Calif. lost a federal lawsuit this week over American flag T-shirts. The students claimed that school administrators violated their free speech rights by asking them to change clothes or take excused leave from class after they wore American flag T-shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo. The plaintiffs argued that their First Amendment rights were suppressed and that they were denied equal protection because they were treated differently than students wearing Mexican flags and colors the same day....

Property owners must pay for environmental cleanup costs that occurred before they acquired it, a federal appeals court said. In Pennsylvania Department of Equal Protection v. Trainer Custom Chemical, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals dropped an $818,000 cleanup bombshell on a chemical company after it purchased a property for $20,000. Pennsylvania’s environmental protection department sued to recover the cleanup costs. A trial judge said Trainer Custom Chemical was responsible for costs incurred after the purchase, but not before....

Percy Green II is a well known civil rights figure in St. Louis. Last week, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed a case involving Green’s arrest several years back, for his alleged disruption of a school board meeting. Subsequently, the charges against Green were dropped. Green nevertheless sued the police officers who had arrested him, alleging that the arrest violated his civil rights. The district court granted the police officers qualified immunity....