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Wyoming-born, Wyoming-raised, and Wyoming-educated, you might just call Attorney General Gregory Phillips “Mr. Wyoming.” Generations of his family have come from Uinta County. Phillips completed high school, college, and law school - all without leaving the great State of Wyoming. According to his state-provided bio, he then clerked for the Honorable Alan B. Johnson, a U.S. District Court Judge in, you guessed it, Wyoming. For those counting, that’s fifty-three-ish years in Wyoming and a very distinguished and varied career in private practice and public service....

In a Title VII action based on defendants’ alleged retaliation against plaintiffs for their complaints regarding workplace discrimination, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where plaintiffs’ allegations in support of many of their claims were overly conclusory. However, the order is vacated in part where a reasonable jury could find for plaintiffs on their claims regarding defendant’s allegedly punitive changes to plaintiff’s work schedule. Read Hicks v. Baines, No....

We share a lot of our personal information online. Much of it is voluntary – like filling out a Facebook profile and offering up our location, job and school history, age, and even date of birth. (How else would people remember to wish you Happy Birthday, after all?) And despite all the voluntary sharing we do, we often expect that the sites we share with won’t involuntarily share our info with third parties....

Who wants to leave their money to someone who can’t handle it? If any beneficiaries in your estate plan are minors or have physical or intellectual disabilities, you may want to set up a testamentary trust. One of the more complicated areas of estate planning involves trusts. However, they are an effective estate planning tool if used properly. Consider including a testamentary trust in your will if you have any concerns about your beneficiaries being unable to manage an inheritance....

Praetorian Ins. Co. v. Site Inspection, LLC, No. 09-2008, concerned an action by an insurer against a property inspector claiming that the insurer issued a policy to a third party based on an inadequate inspection by defendant. The court of appeals affirmed summary judgment and an award of attorney’s fees for defendant, on the grounds that 1) the only affidavit submitted by plaintiff in opposition to summary judgment was purely self-serving; 2) the parties’ agreement contained an enforceable indemnification clause; and 3) this situation was clearly one of these unique circumstances under Missouri law where attorney’s fees were not specified in the contract, but where defendant was defending a suit brought against it in reference to the matters against which it was indemnified....

When Kevin Dixon entered into Cook County Jail in Illinois, he probably didn’t know that the persistent pain in his back and abdomen was cancer. Neither did his jailers. The decedent in this case was an inmate who was sent to Cook County Jail as a pretrial detainee. About a month later, he started to develop severe pains in his back and abdomen. The jail responded to his complaints and sent him to an outside medical facility where it was determined that a “paratracheal tumor” was growing in his chest....

In an action related to a trademark dispute involving the singing group “The Drifters,” district court judgment is affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part where: 1) the court did not err in issuing contempt findings against the plaintiffs as they reassembled plaintiff’s business under different names in order to evade the injunction issued by the district court judge; 2) the court erred in holding co-plaintiff Revels in contempt, as defendant never actually moved for him to be held in contempt, and he thus never obtained notice and a separate hearing; and 3) the court properly awarded defendant attorney’s fees, but abused its discretion in refusing to impose any remedy other than attorney’s fees, as plaintiff continued to evade the injunction and infringe the trademark....

In a personal injury action based on an accident during a bicycle race, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where none of the race supervisors was assigned to the area right near the accident, but that choice was not grossly negligent in light of the fact that the stretch of road where the accident occurred was relatively straight and wide. Read Milne v. USA Cycling Inc., No. 07-4247 Appellate Information...

As a general rule, one shouldn’t send porn through a work email account during work hours. As a more specific rule, one shouldn’t do that if one is a state official, and as an even more specific rule, the head of the state police really shouldn’t be doing that at all. And yet, here we are. The Pennsylvania state attorney general’s office last week named eight current and former high-ranking state officials who were part of an investigation into state officials’ sending and receiving pornographic emails on state email accounts on state computers....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging an unlawful search of a student, the denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity is affirmed where the search of Plaintiff’s underwear violated the Fourth Amendment because the facts did not give school officials reasonable suspicion to search her underwear. Read Safford Unified Sch. Dist. No. 1. v. Redding Appellate Information Argued April 21, 2009 Decided June 25, 2009 Judges Souter, J....

In plaintiff’s copyright infringement action against defendant who had hired him to take photos of the “Thomas & Friends” toy train characters for use in promotions, district court’s dismissal of his complaint is reversed where: 1) the photos qualify for the limited derivative-work copyright provided by section 103(b) as plaintiff’s artistic and technical choices combine to create a two-dimensional image that is subtly but nonetheless sufficiently his own; and 2) district court erred in concluding that plaintiff needed defendant’s permission to copyright the photos, as there is nothing in the Copyright Act requiring the author of a derivative work to obtain permission to copyright his work from the owner of the copyright in the underlying work....

Arizona has been a political hotbed in the illegal immigration debates. With 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be in the United States, Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, has been Ground Zero for immigration reform. On Thursday, May 26, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the illegal immigration issue and upheld a controversial Arizona illegal immigration law. Let’s be clear for a minute here– the law that was upheld was not SB 1070, the same law that requires the police to ask “suspected illegal immigrants” for identification....

Earlier this year in Floyd v. City of New York, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin handed down a 237-page liability opinion finding that the City of New York, through the New York City Police Department (“City”), violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of plaintiffs by engaging in racial profiling in the execution of its stop and frisk policy. Judge Scheindlin wrote a separate opinion detailing the remedies in Floyd....

Two cases closely watched by the tech industry are making progress through the Second Circuit. In the first case, Apple’s e-book litigation may be coming to an end with a proposed settlement awaiting court approval, while the criminal case against Ross William Ulbricht, the alleged founder of Silk Road, is moving forward. And if that’s not enough and you want to try your hand at the judiciary – well there’s a job opening for that....

In an action challenging defendant-city’s denial of plaintiff’s application to erect a wireless antenna under the Telecommunications Act, summary judgment for plaintiff is affirmed where the city failed to rebut plaintiff’s showing that the denial of the application amounted to an effective prohibition of wireless services. Read T-Mobile USA Inc. v. Anacortes, No. 08-35493 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted June 1, 2009 Filed July 20, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Callahan...

On the one hand, workers’ compensation insurance seems pretty basic: If you get hurt on the job, you can get money for medical bills and missed income. On the other hand, it’s not so easy: What qualifies as “hurt”? What constitutes “on the job” – what if you’re on the road for work or you work from home? And how much missed income can you get and for how long?...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has announced that a formal impeachment inquiry has been opened into President Donald Trump. The announcement comes on the heels of revelations that Trump pressed Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, soon after asking his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to withhold millions in military aid to the country. “This week, the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” Pelosi said....

President Trump has made multiple aggressive critiques of the judiciary in the less than three weeks he’s been in office – and not often in diplomatic terms. Angered by a nationwide temporary restraining order against his executive order on immigration, for example, the president decried a federal judge in Seattle as a “so-called judge” and warned that “If something happens blame him and the court system.” If such attacks have left the legal community exasperated, they’ve also started taking a toll on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch, who reportedly called the attacks “demoralizing” and “disheartening,” the New York Times reported yesterday....

Edwards v. A.H. Cornell & Son, Inc., No. 09-3198, concerned a plaintiff’s suit against her employers and supervisors, claiming that she was terminated in violation of section 510 of ERISA and state common law after complaining to management about alleged ERISA violations. In discussing the term “inquiry” as stated in section 510 of ERISA, the court wrote: “Here, Edwards does not allege that anyone approached her requesting information regarding a potential ERISA violation....

Is it meat or is it “meat”? That question is arising with increasing regularity in legal squabbles as the plant-based food industry continues to expand its market share and the traditional food industry fights back. In the latest instance, on Sept. 16, a Chicago-based food brand and plant-based food trade group filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma, claiming that a new labeling law in that state discriminates against them....