Defendant’s child pornography conviction and sentence are affirmed, where 1) the affidavit in support of the search of Defendant’s home provided probable cause to believe that the images at issue included real children; and 2) the government may decline to move for a reduction in a defendant’s sentence under U.S.S.G. section 3E1.1(b), so long as the decision does not rest on a constitutionally impermissible factor and is not arbitrary. Read US v....
Lost in all the ongoing hoopla of Election Day 2020 is some big news for fans of keeping their online data private in the face of corporate and government snooping. Voters in California, Massachusetts, and Michigan approved some pretty significant changes. While only residents of these states will benefit in the short-term, they indicate where the national mood is regarding data privacy and getting access to information corporations collect on you....
As work wellness programs have grown in popularity in recent years, there have been significant pushes by businesses large and small to encourage participation among employees. Wellness programs can involve weight loss and physical activity, behavioral treatment, smoking cessation, and medical examinations. In theory, this improves the health and productivity of workers and can help to lower costs for a business. That is why in 2019 over 80% of large businesses offered a wellness program of some kind....
Valerie Jackson arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport on November 4, 2016, ready to vacation with friends. According to Jackson, she had recently started carrying a gun in her purse because she was being stalked by a man who had assaulted or harassed at least two other women. She was arrested at the airport for attempting to bring the gun through security - which Jackson says only happened because she forgot the gun was in her bag....
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals took on an eyebrow-raising tone recently when it endorsed a pro-gun advocate notion that a “right to buy arms” is implied within the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. The decision is a major blow to Alameda County’s attempts to limit gun sales and the location of gun stores. It’s a page flipper, for sure. “500-Foot-Rule” When John Teixeira sought to set up his gun shop “Valley Guns and Ammo” in the San Francisco Bay Area’s East Bay, he ran into a number of roadblocks that stymied his efforts....
Google is a big company. And in any company large enough, internal documents find their way to external audiences. Sometimes it’s good news, like 10 percent raises for everyone. (Not good news for the leaker, though, who was fired.) And sometimes it’s a bad look, like an engineer arguing that women are biologically ill-suited for tech and leadership jobs. (Not a great look or a company already being investigated for a gender pay gap, or that engineer, who was also fired....
In an action arising out of an allegedly fraudulent business venture, dismissal of the complaint on forum non conveniens grounds is reversed where: 1) the parties could seek relevant documents in Slovakia through procedures for international third-party discovery; 2) the fact that defendant might be unable to implead alleged joint tortfeasors in California was by no means determinative of the forum non conveniens inquiry; and 3) defendant, in asking for the extraordinary measure of dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds, needed to provide not simply the numbers of witnesses in each locale, but information sufficient to assist the court in assessing the “materiality and importance” of each witness....
In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action against a canine control officer regarding defendant’s issuance of a summons due to complaints about plaintiff’s dog, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where the issuance of a pre-arraignment, non-felony summons requiring a later court appearance, without further restraint, did not constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure. Read Burg v. Gosselin, No. 09-0708 Appellate Information Argued: November 10, 2009 Decided: January 7, 2010 Judges...
A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for raiding a private company’s laboratory, even though an agency official later admitted there were insufficient grounds to justify the raid. The U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals said the EPA was entitled to sovereign immunity in Garling v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A trial judge had dismissed the case against Roger and Sheryl Garling as time barred, but the appeals court said the court lacked jurisdiction....
Democratic and Republican senators have reached an agreement with the White House on proposed legislation that would reform current immigration law to – among other changes – allow immigrants who are currently in the U.S. illegally to begin the process of establishing permanent residency in the U.S., after paying a fine and processing fees. The proposed law also contains provisions for a temporary guest worker program and fortification of U.S. border security....
District court judgment is reversed where the court erred in finding plaintiffs’ indemnification claim was barred by the Missouri statute of limitations for actions on contracts, as the cause of action had not yet accrued under Missouri law when they filed their third-party complaint against defendant. Read Discovery Group LLC v. Chapel Development, LLC, No. 08-2334 Appellate InformationAppeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. Submitted: January 16, 2009Filed: July 27, 2009...
Recently, the topic of increasing the number of justices on the High Court has come up again – as it tends to every few years. And, naturally, there’s no shortage of bad ideas. The concept of court-packing involves Congress changing the rules to allow the president to appoint more justices. Currently, the president is capped at nine, but Congress could change that, and ideas abound. But perhaps the most troubling problem with a court-packing scheme like this would be the potential, and likelihood, of a snowball effect (on top of a slippery slope)....
When a nonprofit demanded arbitration under FINRA against J.P. Morgan, and filed a declaratory action in federal court to compel it, J.P. Morgan sought to litigate the matter out in a different court. According to the bank, despite the fact that FINRA Rule 12200 is clear that customers have a right to arbitrate FINRA claims, the forum selection clause in its contract trumps the federal regulation. Unfortunately for the bank, both the federal district, and now Third Circuit Court of Appeals, didn’t see it that way, and have ordered the bank to arbitrate the claims....
Andrew Auernheimer is best known to people as “weev”, his online handle. The notorious hacker was sentenced to 41-months in prison for conspiring, with Daniel Spitler, to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). He was convicted of federal identity theft and conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to a protected computer in November 2012. Spitler, “weev’s” co-defendant, has not been sentenced, as he entered a plea agreement. Did “weev” really commit identity theft?...
In an action under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) claiming that Defendant terminated Plaintiff based on his military service, judgment for Plaintiff is affirmed where evidence of anti-military animus from a decisionmaker, combined with the close temporal relationship between Plaintiff’s leave for military service and his discharge, were sufficient to support the District Court’s finding that Plaintiff was discharged in violation of USERRA. Read Hance v. Norfolk S....
In Dunn v. Castro, No. 08-15957, a challenge to a restriction that was temporarily imposed on plaintiff’s right to receive visits from his three minor children while he was in prison, the court reversed the denial of defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint where a reasonable prison official could have believed that terminating plaintiff’s right to receive visits from his children was lawful, in light of clearly established law and the information he possessed....
Aiding and abetting go together. Terrorism and kickbacks, not so much. Together, they added up to no liability in Brill v. Chevron Corporation. A federal judge said the lawsuit did not link kickbacks from Chervon to Saddam Hussein to the plaintiffs’ injuries. The judge said there was “compelling evidence” the oil company paid illegal kickbacks to Iraq for cheap oil, but it was not the same as supporting terrorism. Anti-Terrorism Act Baruch Yehuda Ziv Brill and 328 other plaintiffs sued Chevron, alleging the company funded Hussein’s attacks on Israel....
The Senate confirmed Judge Jacqueline Nguyen for a seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last night by a vote of 91-3. She will be the first Vietnamese American and first Asian-Pacific woman to serve on a federal appeals court, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. President Obama nominated Judge Nguyen to serve on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last September. Nguyen has served as a U.S. District Judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles since 2009....
When you win more than $3 million in a case, it should be cause for celebration. For the plaintiff in his case against a drug company, however, it was a big let down. Jesse Mitchell had won $150 million against the company three months earlier, but the judge threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial. The latest decision wasn’t exactly good news for the defendant either. AbbVie, which is facing more than 4,000 similar lawsuits, plans to appeal....
Dismissal of Habeas Petition Affirmed In Lakey v. Hickman, No. 09-15940, a murder prosecution, the court affirmed the dismissal of petitioner’s habeas petition where: 1) statutory tolling is unavailable for the 267 days at issue here because petitioner’s final state habeas petition was deemed untimely under California law; and 2) even giving petitioner the benefit of equitable tolling for the time period prior to the court’s decision in Pace, petitioner’s subsequent 141-day delay rendered his federal petition untimely by at least 128 days....
