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The Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed an earlier injunction preventing Google and YouTube from hosting the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” film. That short, offensive and highly controversial film lead to violence and rioting in Egypt and elsewhere. It was briefly blamed for the attack on a U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Cindy Garcia, one of the actresses whose performance was manipulated in the film, had originally convinced the Ninth Circuit that she had a copyright interest in her scene, resulting in the take down order....

Frank Brown sued his former employer, ScriptPro, LLC, alleging Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) violations and trying to collect payment for overtime hours he allegedly worked from home. Brown, however, was a non-exempt employee and he didn’t log that time. That brings us – and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals – to what we will call the Ke$ha rule of non-exempt compensation: If an employee wants to be paid for his work, it has to be “tik tok, on the clock....

Just how long can the police hold you without charging you? The law says arrestees cannot be held without charges for an “unreasonable amount of time.” But, that time differs between states. What Happens In Between Arrest And Charges? On TV shows about the law, the camera shows the arrest. Then it skips ahead to the accused being told what they’re charged with, but it doesn’t often show the process in between....

You know why public libraries are better than the Environmental Protection Agency? When a book is overdue, you know what the fine will be. You know you will be charged. There’s a comforting certainty to a library infraction. Not so with the EPA, as Mike and Chantelle Sackett learned when they started to build their dream home on a plot of land near Priest Lake in Idaho. The Sacketts tried to challenge the EPA, and hired their own scientists to refute the claim and show that their landlocked plot in an already-developed neighborhood was not a wetland, reports Reason....

A note to government employees: Don’t falsify your timesheets — you could be facing jail time. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a conviction in exactly such a case. Courthouse News Service reports that the appeals court has upheld a conviction in the case of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where the employee, Herman Ransom, falsified his time sheets in order to play tennis and gamble during work hours....

No Supreme Court justice is more conservative than Clarence Thomas, right? With his hardline originalism, his narrow reading of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, his rejection of the Dormant Commerce Clause and stare decisis, Justice Thomas sits proudly on the farthest right wing of the Court. Except, when it comes to conservatism, Justice Thomas could soon find himself out ranked. Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch, is significantly more conservative than both Justices Scalia and Thomas, according to a review of his Tenth Circuit decisions....

Traveling to another country can be a pleasant hassle. Speaking a new language, finding your way around, or even making sure you are not eating something you would rather not. However, COVID-19 restrictions are continuing to add another layer of complexity to overseas travel. If you are planning an international vacation this summer, know the rules before you run into an unexpected roadblock. Good News For International Travelers Returning Home The U....

A small group of plaintiffs are all breathing a collective sigh of relief thanks to a recent Second Circuit decision vacating the dismissal of their case. The case was dismissed sua sponte by the federal district court after the plaintiffs’ attorney failed to show up on time for a pretrial conference. After waiting just under half an hour for the late lawyer to show, the lower court dismissed the matter with prejudice, despite the fact that the case was through discovery and motions and basically ready for trial....

We’re pretty wimpy when faced with anything that might be slightly uncomfortable, so we tend to be fierce advocates of anesthesia and pain killers. The Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC), by contrast, takes a more relaxed approach to pain. Last week, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Arkansas prisoners ex post facto clause appeal and upheld an Arkansas law granting the DOC Director discretion in state’s lethal injection procedures....

An ankle bracelet is more than a fashion statement: it’s a search. At least according to the Supreme Court’s holding in Grady v. North Carolina, which found that a state conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it affixes a device to an individual’s body, sans consent, for the purposes of monitoring them. The case involves Torrey Grady, a “recidivist sex offender” who was ordered to wear a tracking device at all times, much to his dislike....

With only a few more weeks to go in this current hurricane season, a federal district judge ruled against New York City for failure to adequately provide emergency plans to protect the disabled during emergencies. Background Two non-profits representing people with disabilities, and two disabled people, filed a suit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City following hurricane-turned-tropical storm Irene, alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act and New York City Human Rights Laws....

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed this week that an employer doesn’t have to reallocate or eliminate the essential functions of a job to accommodate a disabled employee. Terri Kallail began working at Alliant Energy Corporate Services in 1996 as a Customer Service Consultant. She eventually became a Resource Coordinator at the Distribution Dispatch Center (DDC) in Cedar Rapids. To provide 24/7 coverage, Alliant requires Resource Coordinators at the DDC to work 9-week schedules that rotate between 12-hour and 8-hour shifts, and day and night shifts....

In an original jurisdiction action by South Carolina seeking an equitable apportionment with North Carolina of the Catawba River’s waters, the special master’s grant of three nonparties’ motions to intervene is affirmed in part as to two of them where: 1) the Catawba River Water Supply Project was properly permitted to intervene because it showed a compelling interest in protecting the viability of its operations, which were premised on a fine balance between the joint venture’s two participating counties; and 2) Duke Energy was also properly allowed to intervene because it was likely that any equitable apportionment of the river would need to take into account the amount of water that Duke Energy needed to sustain its operations....

Much like women who are online dating receive far more suitors than they can handle, the Supreme Court gets asked for a date far more often than it can (or will) accept. As a result, the grant rate for certiorari is a bit less than 1 percent. With that in mind, the Monday orders list is usually a sad, yet uneventful waiting room full of spurned parties. Today? It was far from a riot, but there were a few notable cases, including the court’s denial of a writ of mandamus in an NSA surveillance case and this, a half-hearted benchslap by Justice Alito....

Last week the Third Circuit clarified an area of bankruptcy law that was unclear – whether a disallowed trade claim in bankruptcy proceedings is also disallowable “in the hands of a subsequent transferee.” The Third Circuit held that it was. KB Toys filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004, and pursuant to the bankruptcy code, filed its Statement of Financial Affairs (“SOFA”), showing payments made in the prior 90 days that may be subject to attack as avoidable preferences....

In re: Dittmar, No. 09-3230, involved bankruptcy trustees’ appeal from the judgment of the bankruptcy appellate panel holding that debtors’ stock appreciation rights (SARs) were not part of debtors’ bankruptcy estates under 11 U.S.C. section 541. The court reversed where 1) while the value of the SARs before any payment event occurred may have been de minimis, that did not mean that debtors did not have a property interest in the SARs; and 2) the SARs created by the collective bargaining agreement at issue were more akin to contingent pre-petition property rights than mere expectancies based on discretionary bonuses....

In an action for tortious interference with plaintiff’s expectation of employment, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where plaintiff failed to create a triable issue on whether there was purposeful interference by the defendant that prevented the plaintiff’s legitimate expectancy of employment from ripening into a valid business relationship, as he had no evidence that defendants prevented him from obtaining clinical privileges at the hospitals in question. Read Botvinick v. Rush Univ....

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the dismissal of a potential class action lawsuit related to Capital One’s practice of charging “overdraft fees.” Fortunately for the credit giant, only the breach of contract claim and one other statutory claim under New York law were revived. The plaintiff in the case alleges that the contractual agreement and the bank’s actual practices do not line up, which results in customers being unfairly charged overdraft fees....

We could have disposed of this lawsuit much more quickly by asking whether anyone, with half a brain, could believe the claims of a law school that once released its own rankings, based on chairs, which placed the esteemed Cooley Law as the second-best school in the country. Besides, we all sold our souls for legal careers, only to find that there were no careers upon graduating. Just because Cooley is shameless doesn’t mean you were ripped off (legally)....

Four young men walked into a pizza parlor to rob it; one pulled a gun on the manager. Frank Pobjecky, a customer waiting there for his order, was an armed, off-duty officer. What happened next was like a scene from a Dirty Harry movie. Unfortunately for one of the robbers, it was not a movie. That was the day he died, and now his family’s lawsuit for excessive force is over, too....