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Investment banker’s petition for review of the SEC’s affirmance of the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) finding that petitioner violated NYSE Rule 476(a)(6) by disclosing a client’s confidential information to a third party, the petition is denied where: 1) a violation of the rule did not require bad faith; 2) mere unethical conduct was sufficient for violation of the rule outside the breach of contract context; and 3) summary judgment was appropriate on the issue of petitioner’s guilt....

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals went meta this week, finding that a former Hofstra grad student could proceed with her retaliation claim against the school. This is pretty much the Inception of retaliation suits. The student, Lauren Summa, claims that she lost her student job at the University because she filed a retaliation claim against the University after she lost a previous student job. Take a moment to wrap your head around that....

Denial of Iowa’s petition for review of the Secretary of Health and Human Services’s decision rejecting a plan proposing changes to the state’s Medicaid program relating to multiple source drugs is denied where the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s rejection of Iowa’s proposed plan was not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, or contrary to law. Read Iowa Dep’t of Human Servs. v. Ctrs. for Medicare, No....

Blocking traffic is an illegal, albeit effective method of protesting in the United States. When protesters block traffic, they are engaging in civil disobedience, a term coined by one of America’s earliest freethinkers and intellectuals, Henry David Thoreau. While nearly everyone caught in a traffic jam caused by protesters becomes upset due to the delay, it is important to recognize that the inconvenience gets people’s attention, which is what protesters aim to do....

Denial of petitioner’s application for disability benefits affirmed Jones v. Astrue, 09-3282, concerned a challenge to the district court’s affirmance of an ALJ’s denial of petitioner’s application for disability benefits. In affirming, the court held that, given the consistent objective medical opinion from both petitioner’s treating physicians and the agency physicians that her condition was benign, it cannot be said that the ALJ’s determination that petitioner exaggerated her allegations of disabling pain was patently wrong....

Last week, a California jury determined Monsanto’s popular Roundup weed killer was a “substantial factor” in causing a longtime customer’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. What was left to figure out was how culpable the company was in creating a dangerous product and failing to warn consumers. We now have our answer. In phase two of Edwin Hardeman’s trial, the same jury ordered Monsanto to pay him more than $80 million for failing to include Roundup’s cancer-causing risk on the label....

Petition for review of an order denying withholding of removal is denied where substantial evidence supports the IJ’s finding that petitioner failed to satisfy his burden of establishing a clear probability of future persecution in his home country, and the IJ properly relied on petitioner’s failure to provide corroborating evidence in so finding. Read Liu v. Holder, No 07-0204 Appellate InformationPetition for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action claiming that defendant-officer wrongfully removed a sick infant from the custody of her parents, summary judgment for plaintiff is reversed where there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendant was confronted with imminent danger to the infant at the time in question. Read Mueller v. Rogers, No. 07-35554 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted September 15, 2008 Filed August 10, 2009...

Judge Posner hates ostriches. The large, flightless birds, erroneously thought to bury their heads in the sand at the sight of danger, are one of the Judge’s favorite insults. Did you ignore adverse precedent? Ostrich! Somehow fail to check citing references? Ostrich conduct! That doesn’t mean he thinks ostrich behavior is criminal, however. Sometimes, closing your eyes to a problem is acceptable, the judge ruled yesterday. Overturning a conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine, Posner rejected the use of “ostrich” instructions which urged a jury to convict if the defendant had deliberately avoided discovering his role in a trafficking scheme....

Nicholas Glisson made the mistake of selling a prescription pill to his confidant, who turned out to be an informant. The Wayne County judge made the mistake of sending Glisson to prison, disregarding doctors’ recommendations for house arrest because of his poor health. The Indiana Department of Corrections made the mistake of not treating his condition, and Glisson died of starvation and acute renal failure 37 days later. “‘I’m sorry to tell you your son passed,” Alma Glisson recalled of a phone call from the prison....

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday that it is sending the University of Notre Dame’s lawsuit over contraception coverage back to the Seventh Circuit for reconsideration. The Catholic university had objected to the Affordable Care Act’s “compromise” provisions for religious institutions, which allowed them to opt out of covering their employees’ contraception directly. According to Notre Dame, even the act of opting out was too much and substantially burdened their religious freedom....

If you know only one thing about the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), it’s that kickbacks and unearned fees are prohibited. Thursday, however, the Supreme Court clarified the terms of the unearned fee prohibition. Justice Scalia, writing for the unanimous court, affirmed the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to hold that a plaintiff must demonstrate that a loan charge was divided between two or more persons to sue for a RESPA violation....

Contemplating face-mask laws in the U.S. can be a dizzying exercise. Many states require masks and some don’t. And if states do require them, what does it mean? Who must wear the masks and where must they wear them? Who is exempt? If there was one nationwide federal order that applied to every citizen, it would be much easier. But of course there isn’t, and there are Constitutional reasons for that....

In what may come as a surprise to many, the third travel ban issued via executive order has been temporarily cleared by SCOTUS in a pair of unexpected Monday morning orders. And, if your head is spinning at this point, wondering how in the world that happened, don’t worry, you weren’t meant to see this one coming. In an emergency appeal filed by the DOJ days before Thanksgiving, it asked the High Court to stay the preliminary injunctions issued by the district courts in Hawaii and Maryland....

District court’s judgment of acquittal for defendant convicted of drug related crimes is reversed and remanded as, the district court was required to review the record in the light most favorable to the government and should not have overturned the verdict where the evidence presented at trial could lead a rational trier of fact to find defendant knew a controlled substance was involved in the transaction, particularly his co-conspirator’s statement regarding his role....

Sentence for drug crimes is affirmed where: 1) this court’s prior remand did not require the district court to grant defendant a 40 percent downward departure for substantial assistance as the remand was a general remand for resentencing and did not place any limitations on the discretion of the district court judge in resentencing; 2) the court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to grant more than a 20 percent reduction based on defendant’s substantial assistance; 3) the court did not abuse its discretion by denying defendant’s request for a downward variance based on his post-sentencing rehabilitation and the cost of his incarceration; and 4) defendant’s sentence was not unreasonable....

Enhancement of defendant’s sentence as a career offender reversed US v. Sonnenberg, 09-2801, concerned a challenge to the district court’s imposition of an enhanced sentence in treating defendant as a career offender under the sentencing guidelines, in a prosecution of defendant for crack cocaine distribution conspiracy. In vacating the sentence, the court remanded for resentencing as, under the Supreme Court’s decision in Begay v. US, 533 U.S. 137 (2008), defendant’s Minnesota conviction for “intra familial sexual abuse” does not qualify as a crime of violence within the meaning of U....

Massive scam to defraud consumers of a male sexual performance enhancing herbal supplement US v. Warshak, 08-3997, concerned defendants challenges to their convictions for a massive scheme to defraud their customers, in connection with the sales of their flagship product Enzyte, an herbal supplement purported to enhance male sexual performance. However, the court vacated defendant’s 25-year sentence and remanded for resentencing, as well as the defendant’s mother’s money laundering convictions as the evidence was insufficient to support the defendant’s mother’s money-laundering convictions....

The Fourth Circuit recently upheld an Ocean City, Maryland, ordinance prohibiting women from exposing their breasts in public, including on the city’s popular public beaches. The lawsuit arose in 2017, when four local women in the small tourist town asked the City if there was any law prohibiting them from going topless at the beach. There was no such law on the books at the time, but in response, the city passed an ordinance banning public nudity....

Having a will and other estate plans are essential to ensuring your assets pass on to their intended recipients when you pass on. However, there are certain provisions that don’t belong in your will, as they simply can’t be enforced under the law. Here are five of the most common things you shouldn’t include in your will: 1. Funeral Plans. Although it may seem fun to memorialize your wish to be cremated and turned into a well-cut diamond, your will isn’t the best place for burial preferences....