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It’s not easy to prove a TV discrimination claim, but that doesn’t stop television personalities and hopefuls from filing employment discrimination lawsuits. In April, two prospective contestants for The Bachelor filed a class action lawsuit against ABC for racial discrimination. In a far less publicized case out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, two television reporters lost their age discrimination claims on Tuesday after failing to provide proof that a TV station discriminated against them due to their ages, reports The Associated Press....

US v. APW N. Am., No. 08-55996, involved an appeal from the denial of a motion to intervene in an action filed by the EPA under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The court of appeals reversed, holding that, under CERCLA, a non-settling potentially responsible party (PRP) may intervene in litigation to oppose a consent decree incorporating a settlement that, if approved, would bar contribution from the settling PRP....

Less than 10 percent of New York City firefighters are black or Hispanic, but more than half of the city’s 8 million residents identify with a racial minority group, reports CNBC. Those numbers may have weighed on U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, when he dubbed FDNY “a stubborn bastion of white male privilege” and wrote that the rampant discrimination in the department was a “shameful blight on the records of the six mayors of this city who failed to take responsibility for doing what was necessary to end it....

Online credit card scammers must pay $26 million following an FTC action over the scheme. The U.S. District Court of Nevada ruled that Cardflex, Blaze Processing, Mach I Merchanting and their officers, operating together through a series of iWorks websites, had fraudulently and illegally bilked consumers out of millions of dollars. The iWorks scam promised consumers that they could get rich quick through online advertising and obtain government grants to pay off personal debts....

Prisoners’ medical rights is always a hot-button issue. Arkansas inmate Billy Culbertson appealed the district court’s dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 damage action alleging that he was overmedicated while incarcerated as a pretrial detainee. The Eighth Circuit sided with the lower court that dismissed the complaint, which sheds light on the evidentiary requirements needed for inmates to prove deliberate indifference to serious medical needs in prison. Culbertson claimed that, while under the supervision of the County Sheriff, he was overmedicated by Lonoke County Jail staff from September 2006 to January 2008....

Auto Accident Insurance Matter In Progressive Gulf Ins. Co. v. Faehnrich, No. 09-16487, an action by an insurer seeking a declaration that the family member exclusion in an auto insurance policy barred recovery for defendants arising out of a car accident, the Ninth Circuit certified the following question to the Supreme Court of Nevada: Does Nevada’s public policy preclude giving effect to a choice-of-law provision in an insurance contract that was negotiated, executed, and delivered while the parties resided outside of Nevada, when that effect would deny any recovery under Nevada Revised Statutes section 485....

The Second Circuit greatly expanded the right to bring retaliation suits against government employees last Thursday. In a unanimous three-judge ruling, the court found that claims of illegal retaliation based on a complaint of discrimination are allowed under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983, which makes government employees liable for violating constitutional rights under the color of law. The ruling represents a break from 19 years of precedent which largely found retaliation to be outside sec....

According to Comcast’s recently released 2020 network data, streaming video remains – by far – the largest use of the internet in the home. This is true despite more people than ever using video conferencing technology while working from home. On the other hand, there’s not that much to do anymore after work but see what’s on Netflix, right? Netflix, unsurprisingly, is aware of how much people rely on video streaming services....

Unlike his start as U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein is going out without a bang. Precisely two years after he was confirmed, Rosenstein announced his resignation from a job that will forever tie him to Robert Mueller’s investigation. Rosenstein selected Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Now that the investigation is over, so is Rosenstein’s career as Deputy Attorney General. And like the Mueller report, his resignation was somewhat anti-climatic – just the way he wanted it....

In a decision that could open the door to broader administrative restrictions in other areas, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The 6-3 ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency split firmly across ideological lines. The agency went further than the power Congress granted it in the 1970 Clean Air Act by creating its own regulatory scheme to cap carbon emissions, the court ruled....

You can patent a snow plow or a new combustion engine. You cannot, however, patent an abstract idea, such as using an intermediary for escrow purposes in a financial transaction. But wait, what if you write a computer program that makes that abstract idea a reality? Does translating an idea into code turn it from an unpatentable abstraction to a patentable practical invention? That’s the issue in Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank....

On Dec. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in one of the most highly anticipated cases of the current term. It’s a decision that has the potential to greatly expand Second Amendment rights. You may already be familiar with the basics of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York. The plaintiffs are challenging a New York City ordinance preventing the transport of guns outside of city limits....

Job interviews are a two-way street, and both parties have to watch for signals. The job applicant should look for clues about where the employer is going, and the interviewer should look for someone who can fit right in. It’s a bit of a dance at the intersection of human resources. There are signs, however, that tell an employer the applicant has no clue. Here are some mistakes that no interviewer should miss:...

Estate planning is important for all families. For parents in blended families, however, it is an absolute necessity. The complexities of the modern blended family require thoughtful estate planning to ensure that every member of the family is protected, provided for, and recognized properly. Creating a will with a lawyer or through an online estate planning service like FindLaw Legal Forms & Services ensures that all of the children you and your spouse have will have their unique needs met when you are no longer alive....

Every once in awhile, the Supreme Court will decide a case that has widespread social and political impact, striking down discriminatory laws, upholding cherished institutions, protecting individual liberties. But not all Supreme Court opinions are great. Most are boring, technical, and of little import to the general public. And some are downright terrible. For every Brown v. Board of Ed., there’s a Buck v. Bell. Indeed, there are enough horrendous Supreme Court opinions to fill a book, or at least a blog post, and many of the Court’s worst decisions still stand as good law....

In a nonprecedential yet significant order, a panel of the Second Circuit vacated the district court’s grant of summary judgment in Sharkey v. J.P. Morgan Chase and remanded for further proceedings. Jennifer Sharkey was a manager in the Private Wealth Management division of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Part of her job involved assessing client risk. One client in particular seemed fishy to her: She was unsure where his money was coming from, the client had a history of having millions of dollars go missing, and he didn’t always provide the information she asked for....

The coronavirus pandemic will dramatically change many things about American life by the time it runs its course. But one thing is for sure: It won’t change our reliance on the courts to resolve disputes. In fact, we may be looking to the courts like never before to answer questions about who has done wrong, and about who owes what to whom. The lawsuits have already begun, and by many accounts they are just the initial waves of what may be a tsunami....

We can’t beat Judge Silverman’s summary of the case, so we’ll stick with the direct quote: Yes, this is a class-action lawsuit over the coating on sunflower seeds, and whether the sodium in the coating must be disclosed on the product’s nutrition label. “Some days we are called upon to consider such profound issues as eleventh-hour death penalty appeals, catastrophic threats to the environment, intense and existential questions of civil and human rights, and the most complicated, controversial problems in civil, criminal and administrative law....

A judge in the Northern District of California has issued an order denying a search warrant due to the warrant seeking to go too far when it comes to smartphones and biometrics. The warrant not only sought the inspection of smartphones belonging to the individuals identified in the warrant, but also sought to search all smartphones of all individuals discovered on the premises covered by the warrant, and in doing so, would have required those individuals to provide the necessary biometric data, such as a fingerprint, or face, to unlock the device....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action claiming that Defendant-Judge violated due process by paying Plaintiff less than the amount of compensation he requested as a public defender, the dismissal of the complaint is affirmed, where: 1) the determination of Plaintiff’s compensation was a judicial act and thus entitled to immunity; and 2) Plaintiff’s claims against the city failed because the judges were not municipal policymakers. Read Bliven v. Hunt, No....