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The newly unveiled e-commerce system Facebook Pay seems so simple and convenient. Connect your credit card or PayPal to your Facebook account, then agree to link it to Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp and then you are free to send and receive money using those platforms from anywhere in the world. So, should you sign up for Facebook Pay? Is it safe? Facebook, of course, says it is. In its announcement, the company says it has been processing donations since 2007 and operating its own fundraising platform since 2015....

In a case from the wild prair-ee, the Tenth Circuit was called upon to figure out who owns rights to what, stemming from an almost 100-year-old mineral rights law. The Ballad of Jed Clampett this is not. Stull is a ranching company. It runs a grouse-hunting business above ground in rural Colorado. Entek is a mineral company. It mines for minerals, oil, and other valuable underground stuff – largely under Stull’s land....

In a petition for review of the BIA’s denial of Petitioner’s application for cancellation of removal, the petition is granted, where the District Court was required to determine the effect that Dada v. Mukasey, 128 S.Ct. 2307 (2008), may have on Petitioners’ eligibility for cancellation of removal. Read Nevarez v. Holder, No. 07-74271 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted April 15, 2009 Filed July 8, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Reinhardt...

In US v. Castagana, No. 08-50057, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s conviction for committing threats and hoaxes in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1038(a)(1), holding that section 1038(a)(1) contained no specific intent element, and thus the government was not required to prove that defendant specifically intended the recipients of his letters reasonably to believe that they contained anthrax. FTC v. Neovi, Inc., No. 09-55093, involved an action by the FTC arising from a website managed by defendants that created and delivered unverified checks at the direction of registered users....

In a petition for review of the BIA’s determination that Petitioner did not qualify for lawful permanent residency due to her lack of a qualifying sponsor, the petition is denied, where substantial evidence supported the BIA’s determination that the proposed sponsor did not qualify because he was not domiciled in the U.S. as required by 8 U.S.C. section 1183a(f). Read Park v. Holder, No. 07-17322 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted November 20, 2008...

US v. Heras, No. 09-3150, concerned the government’s appeal from the district court’s grant of defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal on the charges of conspiracy to possess and aiding and abetting an attempt to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine. The court reversed on the ground that the evidence was sufficient to permit a jury to infer from defendant’s knowledge that a co-conspirator was a drug dealer seeking to take possession of a quantity of drugs and defendant’s knowing effort to further and facilitate that possession that defendant necessarily adopted the specific intent underlying the attempted possession, namely, distribution of any acquired drugs....

In a petition for review of the BIA’s order removing petitioner from the U.S., the petition is denied where convictions for solicitation to commit rape by force, in violation of Cal. Pen. Code section 653f(c), and solicitation to commit assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, in violation of Cal. Pen. Code section 653f(a), constitute crimes of violence under 8 U.S.C. section 1101(a)(43)(F) for immigration law purposes....

Tens of thousands of Wisconsin voters have an important question to ask themselves today: Go to one of the few remaining open polling places in the state, putting their health at risk, or be unable to vote in an election in which the U.S. President, a state supreme court justice, and thousands of other elected positions at the federal, state, and local levels are at stake. What they cannot do, after a Supreme Court decision yesterday, is mail in their absentee ballots received after today....

Miller v. Thane Int’l., Inc., No. 09-55474, involved a securities fraud class action alleging that a corporation’s pre-merger prospectus contained materially misleading representations because it implied that the company’s shares would list on the NMS. The court affirmed judgment for defendant on the grounds that 1) in a prior order, the court did not comment on the reliability of the company’s stock prices, other than to state what is undisputed, namely, that the stock traded in an inefficient market; and 2) stock price evidence may be used in a loss causation assessment when the market for a stock is not Cammer-level efficient....

Can governors order visitors from another state to be quarantined? Three months ago, when New York was the hottest COVID-19 hot zone in the U.S., New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said no. Governors in Florida, Rhode Island, and Texas signed executive orders requiring any travelers from New York to self-quarantine for 14 days, and those actions did not sit well with him. In the U.S., Cuomo said correctly, citizens have freedom to travel, and if they happen to live in a state with a high rate of coronavirus infections, it doesn’t matter....

The battle over workers’ rights and employers’ desire to conduct business lawsuit-free turned another page recently. In Faush v. Tuesday Morning. Inc,The Third Circuit overturned a grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant temp-employer, remanding the case back to the lower court for further findings. The language applied in the court’s opinion spells more trouble ahead for employers seeking to blur the distinction between ’temp’ and ’employee.' Matthew Faush was a worker with Labor Ready, a staffing firm that provides temporary employees to various companies including Tuesday Morning, defendants....

The district court’s restitution order imposed upon defendants for conspiracy to violate civil rights relating to a prostitution scheme is vacated where restitution for “lost income” under 18 U.S.C. section 3663 was not the same as disgorgement of all of defendants’ ill-gotten gains from the victims’ forced prostitution. Read US v. Kuo, No. 08-10314 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted October 15, 2009 Filed December 3, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Graber...

A former state judge’s conviction and 28-year sentence was affirmed by the Third Circuit this week. The former “Kids for Cash” judge was convicted by a jury for 12 of 27 counts including racketeering and money laundering conspiracy in February 2011. The former juvenile court judge’s appeal was rejected except for 1 count for Honest Services Mail Fraud. The court supported the argument that the former judge did not waive his statute-of-limitations defense to this count, but he was not so successful in his other arguments....

It’s not easy being a machine. Put another way, robots do not have free speech rights. Or in other words, you can’t use robocalls to convey political messages. Or perhaps even better said, as a federal appeals court said after listening to arguments that a ban on robocalls discriminated against political speech: “We don’t get it,” the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said. “Nothing in the statute … disfavors political speech....

Just the news that attorneys needed right now: According to insurance broker Ames & Gough, attorney malpractice claims increased in both number and cost in 2019. That trend is expected to continue in 2020, as law firms struggle to provide remote services to clients in difficult circumstances. The number of malpractice claims filed rose 10% in 2019, according to the report, which analyzed 2019 malpractice data for approximately 80% of the largest law firms in the U....

The holidays are a time for family, but family is a challenging concept if you are divorced and share custody of your child or children. How do you work out a way for each parent to have some time with the kids during the holidays without it devolving into a pine-scented fight? Here are a few ideas to help make your holidays more Happy Days, and less Law and Order....

President Biden recently signed an order raising the refugee cap to 62,500 from 15,000, a record low during the Trump administration. Global resettlements were mostly halted because of the previous administration’s immigration policies and the ongoing pandemic. The president, when signing the order said, “The United States Refugee Admissions Program embodies America’s commitment to protecting the most vulnerable, and to stand as a beacon of liberty and refuge to the world....

Maintaining a human connection with people is a natural need that doesn’t end when you’re in prison. However, the need to “reach out and touch someone” isn’t a constitutionally-protected right that you get for free. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held on Thursday that the First Amendment does not prohibit the Department of Corrections from charging prisoners for telephone communications with the outside world. The lawsuit was filed by Arkansas prison inmate Winston Holloway, who complained that his right of free speech was being violated because high prison phone charges prevented him from calling his family more often....

We’ve always known the Supreme Court is a political institution. Justices are appointed by presidents representing political parties, and those appointments are coveted to the extreme. And we even refer to Justices as “conservative” or “liberal” based on their voting history. But the Court itself has taken great pains to keep the bitterness that can accompany political discourse behind closed doors. Perhaps it’s no surprise that a topic as controversial as the death penalty would see the Supreme Court’s split spill so acrimoniously into the public view, but it’s still a shock....

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. Operation Neptune, as it was called then, was the largest seaborne invasion in history. Casualties were numerous, and many of the invasion’s objectives weren’t met on the first few days. But eventually, D-Day would be seen as a turning point of World War II. Very few of those who participated in the D-Day invasion are still with us, and those who remain are hopefully enjoying a comfortable retirement....