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Smith v. County of Lenawee, No. 09-1703, concerned an action brought by a deceased plaintiff’s estate against a county and various agents of the county sheriff’s department and department of corrections for the death of the plaintiff while in custody of the sheriff’s department. As stated in the decision: “[T]he facts show that Smith had been experiencing DT symptoms for close to forty-eight hours prrior to Moore’s arrival at the jail, that a physician had been notified of Smith’s condition, that jail officials were told to monitor Smith, and that Moore was present at the jail for a matter of minutes only....

In what seems to be one of those times where the High Court majority would have been better off not saying anything at all, Justice Roberts writing for the majority in Trump v. Hawaii, stated: “Korematsu has nothing to do with this case.” Naturally, given the controversial subject matter of the travel ban case, that statement was not likely to go un-responded to in the media and by legal scholars. And though the mention of Korematsu was borne out of the dissent’s criticism of the majority’s opinion, as many pundits (and the dissent) point out, Justice Roberts’ statements on Korematsu belied conventional logic....

Recently, Annie England Noblin, a woman from Missouri, was denied her prescribed methotrexate (her arthritis medication) because the pharmacist had to check with her doctor to make sure she was not pregnant and going to use it to induce an abortion. She eventually received her medication but says she will most likely switch to a more expensive option to avoid this hassle in the future. As with Annie, the struggle for women to gain abortion-adjacent medication may only become harder as states increase restrictions in a post-Roe v....

It’s not every day that a district court certifies questions of law for a state’s highest court, but the District Court for the District of Delaware certified not one, but four questions of law seeking guidance from the Supreme Court of Delaware. All the questions had to do with fee shifting in a non-stock corporations bylaws: whether and under what circumstances a fee shifting provision is valid, whether such a provision is valid if adopted to deter litigation, and whether the provision is enforceable against someone who became a member before its adoption....

The past week has been unusually busy for the Supreme Court – and for Court watchers like us! For more than 20 hours spread over four days, Neil Gorsuch powered through his Senate confirmation hearings, covering everything from educational access for disabled students to the SCOTUS bladder. But while Gorsuch was testifying, the Court kept working, issuing opinions, hearing oral arguments, and even overruling the nominee himself. Here are the highlights....

Are your Democrat friends and colleagues threatening to move to Canada should Donald Trump win the presidential elections? Well, they may not be getting far enough away, at least not for one of the Supreme Court’s most liberal justices. In a uniquely revealing and political interview, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that, should Trump be elected, she just may have to move to New Zealand. Justice Ginsburg has never been shy about her politics....

Missouri doesn’t use the two-drug protocol that left a man in Ohio gasping and convulsing during his execution, and stretched an Arizona man’s execution to nearly two hours. And it doesn’t use propofol, the drug that killed Michael Jackson, though it tried. (The drug manufacturer threatened to stop selling it stateside before Missouri backed down.) Since October, the Show-Me State uses only one drug, pentobarbital, which it obtains from a compound pharmacy at $11,000 a hit....

Need to know about traffic laws in the Garden State? Are you wondering whether the European house sparrow can be hunted in Bergen County? And just what sorts of fireworks are allowed down on the Jersey Shore? Find the answers here at FindLaw. Whether you’re researching New Jersey family law, criminal procedure, or the state Shellfisheries Council, our updated New Jersey Statutes and Constitution section has all the New Jersey laws you could ever need, all free and mobile-friendly....

Peconic Baykeeper, Inc. v. Suffolk Cty., No. 09-0097, involved an action claiming that a county violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) in its application of certain anti-mosquito pesticides, and, separately, its dredging of mosquito ditches. The court of appeals affirmed judgment for defendant is part, holding that 1) because the CWA established a permit exemption for the maintenance of drainage ditches, and the ditches had as their purpose the draining of surface waters, the county’s maintenance activities were exempt from the CWA’s permit requirements; and 2) the record supported the conclusion that the county’s activities did not bring an area of the navigable waters into a use to which it was not previously subject, and thus did not fall within the CWA’s recapture provision....

The plaintiff in a lawsuit is generally the master of his complaint, but the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the defendant can have a say regarding the amount in controversy when it becomes clear that a plaintiff is simply trying to evade federal jurisdiction. Larry D. Frederick brought a putative class action suit against Hartford Underwriters Insurance Company (Hartford) in Colorado state court; Hartford removed the case to federal court....

Qu v. Holder, 09-3118, concerned a challenge to a BIA’s reversal of IJ’s grant of a Chinese citizen’s application for asylum and order that the petitioner be removed from the U.S. to China. In vacating the decision, the court remanded the matter as, although petitioner seems to have made the requisite showing that she was a member of a particular social group of women in China who have been subjected to forced marriage and involuntary servitude for asylum purposes, the BIA did not make an explicit finding on the issue, but rather appeared to base its denial of asylum on the fact that petitioner was not targeted in part on account of her gender....

The Second Circuit decided two cases today, one involving a securities fraud action alleging inadequate disclosure of transfer agent fees, and the other concerning an attorney’s fee award in a civil rights class action. In Operating Local 649 Annuity Trust Fund v. Smith Barney Fund Mgmt. LLC, No. 07-5125, the complaint alleged that defendant investment bank negotiated a contract for transfer agent services that saddled plaintiffs with excessive, misleadingly disclosed fees....

In an action by a putative class of persons whose financial assets escheated to the California Controller’s Office pursuant to California’s Unclaimed Property Law (UPL), alleging insufficient notice and mishandling of plaintiffs’ property, order granting partial summary judgment to plaintiffs and defendants is affirmed in part where the Eleventh Amendment barred plaintiffs’ claims for restitution. However, the order is reversed in part where the state was not constitutionally required to pay any interest under the UPL....

For the past 50 years, the U.S. government has declined to ask respondents to the census about their citizenship status, fearing that noncitizens and Hispanic citizens would be less likely to participate at all if they thought census information would be used to deport them or their loved ones. The Trump administration, however, wanted to re-introduce a citizenship question to the 2020 census, claiming it would provide more accurate population data....

The topic of the week, thanks to The New York Times and the Supreme Court’s lack of output this week, is the partisan polarization of the U.S. Supreme Court. Case in point: five Republican appointees voted in favor of the Republican National Committee in last month’s campaign finance decision. #conspiracy Adam Liptak’s article for the Times argues that the perception of partisanship “may do lasting damage to its prestige and authority and to Americans’ faith in the rule of law....

In plaintiffs’ case against a hospital and doctors under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) 42 U.S.C. section 1395dd, district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants is affirmed where: 1) the type of plaintiff’s routine hospital visits for pregnancy and her status as a outpatient does not trigger EMTALA; and 2) plaintiffs’ evidence was not sufficient to raise a disputed issue with respect to a stabilization claim....

Conviction for intentionally trafficking in goods and knowingly using a counterfeit mark is affirmed where: 1) the district court did not abuse its discretion in its definition of use under 18 U.S.C. sec. 2320(a) and the jury charge accurately submitted the issues to the jury; and 2) there was sufficient evidence of defendant’s use of the counterfeit marks on or in connection with the goods to sustain his conviction. Read US v....

In a prosecution arising from defendants’ conduct relating to their business of sending unsolicited email, or spam, advertising adult websites, defendants’ electronic mail fraud convictions and sentences are affirmed where: 1) no authority supported defendants’ notion that a district court must provide a clear geographic definition of the relevant community in an obscenity prosecution; 2) a national community standard must be applied in regulating obscene speech on the Internet, but the district court’s failure to instruct on this standard was not plain error; 3) defendants’ as-applied vagueness challenge to the CAN-SPAM Act failed even applying a heightened requirement of clarity; and 4) the district court properly concluded that one defendant’s related lawsuit was meritless and amounted to obstruction of justice....

Sentence for credit card fraud, aggravated identity theft and other crimes is affirmed where: 1) the sentence imposed upon revocation of defendant’s supervised release was not unreasonable; 2) the sentence imposed for subsequently-committed criminal offenses was not unreasonable; 3) the court did not err in making the revocation sentence and the new criminal conviction sentence consecutive in light of defendant’s recidivist tendencies; and 4) there was no error in making completion of drug treatment a special condition of defendant’s supervised release....

So here’s where we are in the saga of Wisconsin’s voter ID law. Last month, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments on the legality of the state law requiring, like many states’ laws these days, state-issued photo IDs in order to vote. Hours after the oral arguments, the panel issued an order staying enforcement of the district court’s order – meaning the state can enforce the law pending outcome of the appeal....