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Well that didn’t take long. Just over two weeks after hearing oral arguments over a controversial Reno highway expansion, the Ninth Circuit has refused to halt the project. Community groups had opposed the controversial SouthEast Connector, seeking an emergency injunction to halt the project and arguing that it had been approved without sufficient environmental review. The Ninth, it seems, didn’t even have to think twice about it. The court quickly rejected the group’s appeal, in a three paragraph opinion which found no indication that the lower court had abused its discretion when it allowed construction to go forward....

In a medical malpractice action against the U.S. based on plaintiff’s contraction of hepatitis at an Air Force hospital, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff’s administrative charge did not make out a lack of informed consent claim, and as a result she failed to exhaust her administrative remedies as to that claim; and 2) the district court did not abuse its discretion by not sua sponte granting plaintiff a continuance to retain new counsel or an expert witness when she never made such a request....

Black Star Farms LLC v. Oliver, No. 08-15738, concerned an action by a Michigan winery claiming that certain provisions of Arizona’s statutory scheme regulating the direct shipment of wine from wineries – whether located in-state or out-of-state – to Arizona consumers violated the dormant Commerce Clause. The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for defendant, on the ground that Arizona’s statutory exceptions to its three-tier distribution system, which treated similarly situated in-state and out-of-state wineries the same and imposed no new impermissible burdens on out-of-state wineries, did not have the practical effect of favoring in-state economic interests over out-of-state interests....

Risen Rejected Gerrymandering Accepted Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments: Patent Definiteness The Federal Circuit evaluated whether Biosig’s patent met the statute’s definiteness requirement (“claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as [the] invention,”) by using it’s own weak test, which asks whether the claim is “amenable to construction,” and, as construed, is not “insolubly ambiguous.” Limelight Networks v. Akamai Technologies: Whose Infringement Is It Anyway?...

Kenny Rogers explained in “The Gambler” that “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” It’s good advice. Knowing when to walk away or run can be difficult. For example, is it ever okay to run from a cop? While fleeing from a cop may not be a good life choice, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that it doesn’t automatically establish reasonable suspicion for arrest....

The U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a leukemia victim who said a refinery gave her cancer. In Hall v. Conoco, Samantha Hall sued Conoco for strict liability and negligence, alleging the company’s refinery emitted cancer-causing benzene into the air where she grew up. A trial judge excluded her expert witness, however, saying the doctor’s opinion was unreliable. The expert said benzene particles potentially caused her disease, but did not rule out an unknown cause of the cancer....

In a First Amendment challenge to a prohibition on contributions by certain law-firm employees to candidates for Connecticut Attorney General, district court judgment is affirmed where: 1) the challenged contractual bar on campaign contributions has not been enforced in over six years and cannot reasonably be expected to be reimplemented, and thus plaintiff’s requested relief of a declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, and a cease-and-desist order are moot; and 2) defendant is entitled to qualified immunity from plaintiff’s claim for damages as there was no clearly established right under the First Amendment to receive campaign contributions during the relevant period....

Most people agree that mandatory background checks prior to firearm purchases are a good thing. But that’s assuming they work. Two months before he massacred nine people in a Charleston church, Dylann Roof purchased the .45-caliber Glock pistol he used in the shooting from a gun store. The gun store ran the required federal background check, and sold him the gun after receiving no response for three days. As it turned out, Roof had been arrested six weeks earlier on a felony drug charge that should’ve disqualified him from legally possessing a firearm....

When we review the daily decisions from the federal appellate courts, we tend to click on cases that include famous names. Our quasi-celebrity fixation is how we found the Joe the Plumber decision the day it came out in April. It has also resulted in posts on luminaries like David Bowie and Jon Ham, (just not that David Bowie or Mad Men’s Jon Hamm.) The point is, we became similarly distracted when we saw a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision about Michael Collins....

Florida’s capital punishment sentencing scheme is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled this morning. In an 8-1 opinion authored by Justice Sotomayor, the Court found that Florida violated the Sixth Amendment by allowing a judge and not a jury to make the final determination over whether a defendant should be put to death. Florida employs a “hybrid” capital sentencing structure, where a jury recommends the death penalty but a judge decides whether a defendant shall ultimately face execution....

If everybody is so hot for new technology, why do in-house lawyers have such a hard time getting money for it? That’s a question bothering general counsel, according to a new study. A global report shows that 55 percent of in-house attorneys say “difficulty in getting budget” is their main tech challenge. It’s a puzzle because the companies apparently have the money for legal tech. They just aren’t sure how to spend it....

Challenge to Arizona Proposition 200 In Gonzalez v. Arizona, No. 08-17094, an action raising the questions whether Arizona Proposition 200 violated the Voting Rights Act, was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth or Twenty-fourth Amendments of the Constitution, or was void as inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the court affirmed judgment for defendants in part where Arizona’s polling place photo identification requirement did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause....

GSI Commerce Solutions, Inc. v. BabyCenter, L.L.C., No. 09-2790, involved petitioner’s appeal from the district court’s order granting a motion to disqualify petitioner’s counsel. The court affirmed on the ground that counsel represented respondent’s parent company, respondent and the parent company were so closely related that they were essentially one client for disqualification purposes, and counsel had thus engaged in concurrent representation, which it could not do without the parent company’s consent....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action claiming that defendant city violated the First Amendment by disciplining plaintiff police officers based on their speech, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed where the speech at issue was made pursuant to plaintiffs’ job duties. Read Huppert v. Pittsburg, No. 06-17362 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted July 18, 2008 Filed July 21, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Tallman Dissent by Judge W. Fletcher...

An Au Pair is a nanny and a foreign exchange student in one. Under the Au Pair program, foreign nationals can come to the U.S. on a nonimmigrant J-1 visa to provide daycare services for host families. The Au Pair lives with their host family and can obtain a secondary or post-secondary education. Federal law and regulations from the Department of State require that Au Pairs be given room and board and paid $195 per week....

Justice Anthony Kennedy did not like to be called “the swing vote.” “The cases swing,” he said at a Harvard Law School event. “I don’t.” As much as he tried to laugh it off, however, Kennedy’s reputation stuck with him through his last Supreme Court case. Some observers say his position changed over the years, but that’s how he got there. Here are some of the cases that Kennedy swung most dramatically....

The Supreme Court justices blazed a trail through the wilderness of Indian Law on Monday, guided by Lewis and Clarke. But, no, there weren’t any river fordings. Sacajawea was nowhere to be found. In a strange coincidence, the Supreme Court’s first case to deal with tribal sovereignty this term is captioned Lewis v. Clarke. Rather than an expedition into the West, the case, for which the Court just heard oral arguments, deals with the reach of native tribes’ sovereign immunity....

When Lockheed Martin Corp. sought to set aside a decision that essentially determined that they violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the Act), the Tenth Circuit ruled against them, affirming the decision of an administrative law judge (the ALJ). Lockheed, in return, shut down the pen pal program and Owen’s position in the company was not affected. The Tenth Circuit agreed with the ALJ that Brown was subsequently constructively discharged for actions that are protected under the Act....

A Federal copyright claim won’t always preempt a state-law claim for implied contract, particularly when submitting a pilot or series pitch to a studio. In simpler terms: A party can sue a television network if a network rejects his idea, only to use it on its own years later. A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Larry Montz, a parapsychologist, and Daena Smoller, a publicist, who claimed that NBC stole their idea....

In an action claiming that the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act infringed the right to travel because it penalized federal employees who worked in areas where the prevailing pay rates were lower, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where: 1) as to employees in lower-paying areas, the act, if anything, imposed a penalty for staying put, not for traveling; and 2) not everything that deterred travel burdened the fundamental right to travel....