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Pacific Inv. Mgmt. Co. v. Mayer Brown LLP, No. 09-1619, concerned a securities fraud action against outside counsel for a corporation that allegedly made false statements in connection with a securities offering. The court of appeals affirmed the dismissal of the complaint, on the grounds that 1) a secondary actor can be held liable for false statements in a private damages action for securities fraud only if the statements were attributed to the defendant at the time the statements were disseminated; and 2) plaintiffs’ claims that defendants participated in a scheme to defraud investors were not meaningfully distinguishable from the claim at issue in Stoneridge Inv....

One of the main arguments by opponents of some police and criminal justice reforms is that protestors focus too much on the actions of a few bad apples. The vast majority of police go to work and do the right thing every day. Many protestors counter that those “good cops” need to be partners in reform and that they have a mutual interest in getting rid of police officers with questionable ethics....

Sumbundu v. Holder, No. 07-3736, involved a petition for review of the BIA’s decision affirming an Immigration Judge’s (IJ) denial of cancellation of removal on the grounds that petitioners lacked moral character under the “catchall” provision of 8 U.S.C. section 1101(f). The Second Circuit denied the petition, holding that 1) the court had jurisdiction because petitioners raised constitutional claims or questions of law; but 2) intent to commit misconduct was relevant to an IJ’s decision that a petitioner lacks good moral character; and 3) misrepresenting a “substantial sum” on a tax return may certainly be a factor in the IJ’s moral character determination....

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit addressed the issue of attorney fees in a long standing desegregation case, awarding legal fees to the prevailing parties. On March 26, 2012, a panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled again in a case that has been before the courts since 1982. This time, the court didn’t rule on the merits of the case, but on the awarding of attorneys’ fees and costs to the “Joshua Intervenors”, a group of African-American parents who appealed the desegregation practices of the Little Rock School District, reports the Associated Press....

For decades, an aircraft carrier would dump about 410,000 gallons of human waste into the ocean every day. Multiply that by 10 aircraft carriers, and you have a whole lot of ship waste. But that’s not the real problem in Giovanni v. United States Department of Navy. The plaintiffs just want the government to pay for medical monitoring of drinking water that the Navy contaminated over the years. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals is chewing on it....

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied a second-degree murder appellant’s ineffective counsel appeal on Monday, finding that the lawyer’s failure to preserve a claim of insufficiency at the trial level did not prejudice the appellant because there was sufficient evidence to support his conviction. Appellant Clay Parker was tried in the Albany County Court on a “twin indictment” alleging two counts of second-degree murder, one count for intentional murder and one count for depraved-indifference murder....

In Dodd v. Jones, No. 09-2016, an action under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 against Missouri police officers, alleging that they failed to protect plaintiff from an intoxicated driver in responding to his accident, the court affirmed summary judgment for defendants where 1) the evidence did not support a finding that defendants took plaintiff into custody and held him against his will so as to trigger the corresponding duty described in DeShaney; and 2) because the percentage of alcohol in the blood diminishes with time, an effort to secure evidence of blood-alcohol content by drawing blood from a suspect after his arrest was a reasonable search incident to arrest....

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to build additional sections of a border wall between the United States and Mexico. But his words may have come back to haunt him. A federal judge used Trump’s repeated public statements on immigration to undermine his claim for emergency funding for the border structure. “Defendants’ argument that the need for the requested border barrier construction funding was ‘unforeseen’,” according to U....

A federal judge ruled that Iowa’s “ag-gag law,” prohibiting surreptitious investigation of animal abuse, is unconstitutional. Judge James Gritzner struck the law, which was enacted in 2012 to keep reporters and activists from going into animal facilities and reporting abuse. He said people have a First Amendment right to report what is going on inside such places as pig farms, chicken ranches, and slaughterhouses. The decision in Animal Legal Defense Fund v....

Adam Chandler is something of a certiorari numbers buff. When Chandler isn’t hard at work as an attorney in the Appellate Section of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, he’s crunching numbers about cert-stage amicus briefs. Five years ago, Chandler used his mathematical wizardry to annoint a group of Supreme Court cert-stage all-stars. All-star status was awarded based on the number of amicus briefs that a friend of the Court submitted during a three-year period, and the corresponding number of petitions granted....

US v. Martin, 07-2272, concerned a challenge to convictions of defendants for violating various provisions of 21 U.S.C. sections 841, 843 and 846, for their respective roles in a narcotics conspiracy. US v. Hudson, 09-3518, involved a prosecution of defendant for possession of a firearm as a felon and possession of a stolen firearm, district court’s conclusion that defendant’s prior look-alike drug conviction amounted to a “controlled-substance offense,” in sentencing defendant to 72 months’ imprisonment....

President Trump’s promised raids in select cities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel has understandably sent a jolt of anxiety through immigrant communities nationwide. While Trump praised the raids as “very successful,” immigrants’ rights advocates say what has happened so far has not matched the hype. But administration officials said because these are targeted raids there will not be an overwhelming show of force, and that the raids will likely keep going in the coming days....

In a dispute involving the denial of overtime pay, district court grant of summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where defendant is not obligated to pay overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act as the Act’s definition of “enterprise” refers to the activities performed by a public agency and does not extend to a private, non-profit, independent contractor associated by regulation and contract with a public agency. Read Jacobs v. New York Foundling Hospital, No....

Remember when you were a kid, waking up before sunrise to see if Santa Claus had done his job yet? You probably checked several times throughout the night before the moment finally came. And it did, of course, because Santa Claus was real – at least until you got older. So it is with the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Every kid in the press corps has been checking like clockwork to see if he’s there yet, and the rumors keep coming....

In 2010, Los Angeles officials gathered for a “Town Hall on Homelessness,” a forum where Venice residents complained about the prevalence of homeless individuals sleeping in their cars. City officials and high-ranking LAPD officers attended, assured residents that they would reemphasize enforcement of an existing ordinance prohibiting living in one’s car. How? They formed a task force of twenty-one officers that were to use Section 85.02 to cite and arrest homeless people who were in violation of the statute....

Maritime law applies to a different world, one where ships and sailors live. But if the “special solicitude for the safety and protection of sailors” goes further ashore, machine makers may have a problem. In re. Asbestos Products Liability Litigation, a federal appeals court said manufacturers may be liable for injuries from parts added to their products later. That means the “bare metal defense” won’t work. Manufacturers can be held liable even for asbestos they don’t put in their machines....

A supervisor who allegedly ignored complaints that her parole officer was sexually harassing his parolees does not have qualified immunity, the Seventh Circuit ruled on Friday. According to a lawsuit filed by Adam Locke, a Minnesota parolee, Mya Haessig repeatedly ignored complaints that Locke was being sexually harassed by his parole officer and threatened him with retaliation for pursuing those complaints. Failure to act on the sexual harassment complaints was a violation of Locke’s equal protection rights, according to the court, and a reasonable jury could find that Haessig’s failure to act was a form of discrimination against men who report sexual harassment....

Letter-writing is largely a lost art, (a reality not lost on fallen institutions like Mrs. John L. Strong and the U.S. Post Office). The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals clearly lacks concern for the future of the hand-written word. This week, the Cincinnati-based appellate court ruled that a criminal defendant’s letters to asking his attorney to withdraw a guilty plea were insufficient to overcome the fact that his attorney never filed a motion to withdraw the plea....

The first rule of legal research is: always cite check. If you don’t, Judge Richard Posner will compare you to a really ugly bird. Tiberius Mays is a former inmate of the Illinois state prison at Statesville. While a resident at the facility, he enjoyed many first-class amenities, including protracted group strip searches. When he complained, and filed suit, the inmates were allegedly subjected to an even more protracted strip search, with dirty gloves, in front of other prisoners, while the guards mocked the inmates’ bodies and genitalia....

The Second Circuit reversed a conviction for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine on Wednesday. James Dickerson was convicted of conspiring with a New Haven, Connecticut, drug ring from which he bought and resold drugs. The jury viewed him as part of the drug ring’s conspiracy based almost solely on the volume and frequency of drug purchases and resales. That is too tenuous of a connection to support a conspiracy conviction, the Second Circuit reasoned....