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“Dueling Dinosaurs” is not a remake of “Deliverance,” starring Burt Reynolds and Jon Voigt. In the movie with the famous “dueling banjos,” four friends battle wild mountain men while canoeing. It doesn’t end well for at least two of them. In Murray v. Bej Minerals, it doesn’t end well for a couple of ranchers who were fighting over dinosaur fossils found under their property. The “dueling dinosaurs,” and several property owners, were locked in combat....

U.S. law is established when it comes to liability for social media platforms that host inappropriate, infringing, or violent content. Under §230 of the Communications Decency Act, online platforms have general immunity from content posted by a third party. While there is no indication presently that Congress will address §230 immunity, social media and tech companies may still need to change their policies on what content they can host. At least that is the position of Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft....

In an ERISA action seeking a declaration that plaintiffs-employees were entitled to lifetime health benefits under a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), summary judgment for plaintiffs is affirmed in part where the CBA unambiguously granted plaintiffs benefits. However the ruling is reversed in part where the CBA and related documents said nothing about subsequent modifications to these benefits, and the application of the relevant provisions suggested that the parties contemplated reasonable modifications....

As expected, the Supreme Court has lifted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent eviction moratorium, holding that the CDC does not have the authority to prevent evictions under federal law. The decision is another example of the increasing use of the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the heavily scrutinized practice by the Justices of issuing unsigned decisions on emergency motions without a full briefing or argument. Access this opinion and thousands more with a free trial of Westlaw Edge....

Maine ranks as one of the country’s most rural states, with 61% of residents in rural areas. One upshot of this configuration is that many of Maine’s school districts do not have even a single high school. But since students in those districts nonetheless have an equal right to a free public education, they are left with some unusual choices: either reach an agreement with surrounding districts to enroll the affected students, or Maine pays the affected students’ tuition at private schools in lieu of an accessible public school....

Obviously, Stormy Daniels and Monica Lewinsky have something in common. But there’s also a big difference. Daniels made a lot more money after an alleged affair with her president than Lewinsky made with hers. Donald Trump denied the affair, of course, and Bill Clinton did “not have sex with that woman.” If you are not sick of the stories, here’s another twist in the Stormy tale. Her lawyer screwed her out of allegedly stole $300,000 from her....

In a drug prosecution, a denial of defendant’s motion for a reduction of sentence is affirmed where the district court lacked authority to reduce defendant’s sentence under 18 U.S.C. section 3582(c), because the sentence was dictated by his plea agreement pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(1)(C), and not the Sentencing Guidelines related to crack cocaine. Read US v. Main, No. 08-4088 Appellate Information Argued: May 11, 2009 Decided: August 27, 2009...

In a class action for failure to pay overtime brought by current and former Countrywide External Home Loan Consultants, the denial of class certification is affirmed where no rule or decisional authority prohibited Defendant from filing its motion to deny certification before Plaintiffs filed their motion to certify, and Plaintiffs had ample time to prepare and present their certification argument. Read Vinole v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., No. 08-55223 Appellate Information...

Arguing in front of the Supreme Court is a big deal that only a select few lawyers are ever lucky enough to get the chance to do. But notably, a recent study of the lawyers who have the most appearances in recent years has produced some rather curious findings. Aside from the curious findings that actually relate to political leanings of the lawyers appearing before the High Court, the report essentially names which law firms have the best records in front of the Supreme Court....

States (Arizona and Kansas) have passed laws requiring voters to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. Meantime, a long-standing federal law (the National Voter Registration Act, or “Motor Voter” law) says that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has to make a universal nationwide voter registration form, and that states have to take it and like it. Long story short: Arizona’s law already made it to the Supreme Court last year, when the Court required Arizona to recognize the federal form....

The Armed Career Criminal Act provides sentence enhancements for convicted felons who commit firearms crimes. Commit two or more violent crimes or drug trafficking crimes and your third gets you 15 years, minimum. Edward Young was helping his neighbor sell her late husband’s possessions when he found seven shotgun shells in a box. He put them in a drawer for safekeeping. Unbeknownst to him, he wasn’t allowed to possess ammunition because he had been convicted of burglary-type crimes 20 years earlier....

Some would argue that the Supreme Court is utterly predictable: We all know that Scalia is going to go scour the statutes, Thomas is going to complain about Commerce Clauses (dormant or otherwise), and Sotomayor is going to tick off her colleagues. According to Prof. Josh Blackman, the creator of FantasySCOTUS, the “power predictors” hit 75 percent. Next season, FantasySCOTUS players will go up against more than a few SCOTUS nerds with lucky guesses: They’ll battle a predictive algorithm designed by Blackman and his colleagues, one that predicts individual justices’ votes 70....

Imagine e-book utopia. Billions of books, nearly every significant work ever written, available electronically through an electronic library. Want to flip through some Faulkner? Click. Peruse Peruvian history? Click. Find the answer to the meaning of life and everything? It’s 42, and you can find that with a click or two too. The HathiTrust is not that utopia, nor is Google Books. They could be, but the restrictions placed upon them in the name of copyright protection limits their use to that of a glorified catalog....

She came, she saw, she got remanded. And now, she’ll petition the Supreme Court for another grant of certiorari after the Fifth Circuit once again ruled against her. Abigail Fisher didn’t get into the University of Texas at Austin. Others, who were arguably less qualified, did under the university’s “holistic” approach to admissions, which considers race as a positive, but not dispositive factor. She’s now lost twice at the Fifth Circuit, so why might the Supreme Court be her best hope?...

The U.S. Supreme Court gave California the final round in a decades-long tax fight, but it was a muted victory. In Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt, California had tried to collect $13.3 million in taxes from a wealthy inventor who had moved to Nevada. Instead, Gilbert Hyatt won a $100,000 lawsuit against the state for pursuing him. The Supreme Court reversed that judgment, but California will get no taxes from the decision....

On remand from reversal of district court’s grant of habeas relief on defendant’s Sixth Amendment claim, district court’s conditional grant of defendant’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus is affirmed where: 1) defendant’s challenge to the state trial court’s sentencing process has obvious merit, as the trial court did not consider non-statutory aggravators in the balancing process used to determine defendant’s death sentence, obviously in error; and 2) defendant’s habeas claims actually before the court are meritless and the claims defendant declined to pursue are waived....

Sears Roebuck and Company has some angry washing machine customers. The retailer, best known for its wide range of appliances, is facing class action lawsuits from customers across six states. Tuesday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that the customers had enough in common to pursue their claims through two separate class action claims, The Chicago Tribune reports. The suits against Sears both arise from alleged defects in Kenmore-brand Sears washing machines sold in overlapping periods beginning in 2001 and 2004....

Sometimes, you just have to count your lucky Skeloses. Dean Skelos, former New York state Senate majority leader, and his son Adam Skelos have won a reprieve from their corruption convictions. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said jury instructions in United States v. Skelos were faulty. But for an intervening decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in an unrelated case, the Skeloses might be wishing upon a different star....

Raising children is difficult these days. Was it ever easy? However, it is even more challenging if you are a single parent. Not only are your kids dependent on you during your life, but you must also plan for someone to care for them if you die or are incapacitated due to a significant illness or injury. It is a common situation. In the United States, 23% of children under 18 live in single-parent households....

Compromise is often the only solution. Extremes rarely lead to agreement. You can try to get your way and likely fail, or you can concede a bit in order to advance your interests. It is generally accepted that by compromising, we make incremental progress, and that’s a good thing. But when do we make so many exceptions to a rule that it becomes irrelevant? Is that what’s happening to new and proposed LGBT legal protections around the country, as Think Progress reports?...