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When Connie Mathews allegedly failed to pay her Portable on Demand Storage (PODS) bill, the company auctioned off the contents of her container and used the proceeds to pay the bill. Her belongings were reportedly worth over $300,000. PODS received approximately one percent of that amount. Mathews was peeved, so she did what any disgruntled storage customer would do: She slapped PODS with a $2 million RICO claim. Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit explained that a RICO suit isn’t the best revenge....

US v. Lanham, 08-6504, concerned a challenge to convictions and sentences of defendants-correctional officers’ for conspiracy to violate an inmate’s civil rights in violation of 18 U.S.C. sections 241 and 242 and making false entry in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1519, arising from an inmate being beaten and raped by other inmates as a result of defendants’ decision to scare the inmate by placing him in a general population jail cell....

After he appeared suspicious at a border checkpoint in California, border patrol agents searched Chad Camou’s car, in which they found Alejandro Martinez-Ramirez, an undocumented immigrant. But this case isn’t even about Martinez-Ramirez. Nope. It’s about child pornography. The border patrol agents took Camou’s cell phone, then started rifling through it an hour and 20 minutes after his arrest. The agent was looking for evidence of smuggling, but found child pornography instead....

In plaintiff’s race, national-origin, employment discrimination and retaliation action against defendant-former employer, district court’s dismissal of plaintiff’s federal claims in his second complaint is affirmed as plaintiff’s federal claims are barred by res judicata because his section 1981 claims arise from the same set of facts as his Title VII claims which were dismissed in his first complaint. Also, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff’s state claim and dismissed without prejudice instead of dismissing that claim with prejudice....

In a case involving school districts’ consolidations under Arkansas’ Act 60, district court’s grant of defendants’ motion to dismiss is affirmed where Act 60 is a facially neutral law that does not infringe on a fundamental right and survives rational basis review because the State of Arkansas has a legitimate governmental interest in consolidating school districts to achieve economies of scale and other efficiencies and the classification drawn between school districts based on their average daily membership is rationally related to advancing that interest....

District court’s denial of petitioner’s application for disability insurance benefits and social security income is affirmed where: 1) substantial evidence on the record as a whole supports the ALJ’s conclusion in not giving controlling weight to the treating physicians’ opinions when there was conflicting evidence about claimant’s ability to perform work; 2) ALJ did not err in rejecting claimant’s subjective complaints based on the evidence; 3) ALJ sufficiently reviewed the record and his decision referenced claimant’s obesity; 4) a hypothetical posed by the ALJ did not improperly exclude claimant’s subjective pain allegations as it was unsupported by the record....

A homeless man in Memphis, trying to get back on his feet, got a bittersweet taste of the milk of human kindness after he fell for a scam ad on Craigslist and was saved by a sympathetic landlord. Anthony Owens found an apartment listed online and met with an impostor apartment owner, turning over a $100 deposit fee to the stranger. Owens had been living in a friend’s van, but when he tried to move in to his newly rented apartment, lease in hand, he discovered he had no apartment or contract after all....

It is difficult to even know where to start with this story. A woman is suing the Hyatt Hotel corporation for invasion of privacy, negligence in hiring, training and supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The cause of the suit? Dayanara Fernandez returned to her room in a Hyatt in Deerfield, Illinois, to find an employee attired in his Hyatt uniform - from the waist up. From the waist down, he was dressed in her skirt and a pair of her heels....

In an environmental case involving the clean-up of a contaminated site, a modified injunction stating that defendant-CBS has “substantially complied” with a Minnesota Decision Document and imposing no additional requirements on it is affirmed in part and vacated in part where: 1) the district court’s decision was consistent with the prior mandate from the circuit court; 2) there was substantial evidence in the record that CBS completed the remediation required by the Decision Document, and thus there was no error in finding that no further relief was necessary under Paragraph 1 of the injunction; 3) denial of plaintiff’s requests to increase the amount of a performance bond posted by CBS was proper; but 4) a denial of post-judgment response costs is vacated and remanded for further proceedings....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging excessive force by officers during an arrest, denial of summary judgment to defendants on qualified immunity grounds is affirmed in part where: 1) the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction to review officers’ contention that there was insufficient evidence of causation to hold them liable for the decedent’s death; and 2) the evidence supported a finding that certain officers violated decedent’s clearly established rights under the Fourth Amendment by failing to intervene in the assault....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action based on injuries plaintiff sustained when defendant-officers shot at him as he was fleeing after an armed robbery, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where there was no abuse of discretion in the district court’s dismissal of one defendant for insufficient service of process. However, the order is reversed in part where there were genuine issues of material fact concerning whether one defendant-officer’s actions were objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him....

The National Rifle Association isn’t finished fighting the Wilmington Housing Authority gun ban. Two residents (represented by NRA attorneys) sued WHA, claiming that the ban on guns in common areas of public housing complexes violated residents’ Second Amendment rights. The plaintiffs argued that the gun ban applied to low-income residents of public housing, and criticized that “wealthier persons who live in another type of government housing, such as the Governor of the State of Delaware, are not deprived of the right to keep and bear arms,” reports WHYY....

In a Bivens action arising out of an allegedly unlawful strip search of a prisoner, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies with respect to his First Amendment claim; and 2) the evidence plaintiff presented that a guard was motivated to search him for non-penological reasons was irrelevant to the reasonableness of the search. Read Nunez v. Duncan, No. 04-36146 Appellate Information...

Victims in Pennsylvania who have been awarded punitive damages cannot collect damages against their tortfeasor’s insurer, the Third Circuit ruled last Friday. Their ruling stems from the Keystone State’s public policy against allowing individuals to insure against punitive damages. Allowing the victims to collect punitive damages from the insurers (through an assigned breach of contract and bad faith claim) would circumvent the punitive purpose of the damages, the circuit found....

How much discretion does an attorney have when pleading on behalf of a client? The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Pedro Jesus Calla-Collado was bound by his attorney’s admission to allegations in a Notice to Appear (NTA). Calla-Collado, a native and citizen of Peru, entered the United States in 2005. In September 2007, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated. He was detained as an undocumented alien, and placed in removal proceedings....

Politics. We can’t seem to respect each other’s differences when it comes to politics. Some of us are also having a hard time drawing a line between politics and religion. As these issues come up constantly in the news, two cases in the Eighth Circuit bring up these issues. And in less divisive news, the Eighth Circuit recently upheld a trade dress verdict for Hallmark Cards. Should we send the company a congratulatory card?...

The year is not quite over, but if we were doing a “hot issues of 2013” this one would definitely be on the list: warrantless GPS searches. In early 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States decided United States v. Jones, where it held that the Government’s attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle, and the subsequent tracking of the “device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets, constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment....

Right before it left for summer break, the Supreme Court granted cert to a case that will leave many teachers worried about their future. On the last day of its 2015 term, the Court agreed to review a constitutional challenge to state rules requiring some government workers to pay fees to unions they have not joined. The suit came from a group of non-union California school teachers who claimed the fees infringed upon their First Amendment rights....

What happens when a seniority-based job assignment system comes into conflict with the needs of disabled workers? Seniority wins, at least in a recent ADA lawsuit against United Airlines. In that suit, a disabled United ramp serviceman failed to show “special circumstances” that would require United to make an exception to its seniority system, the Seventh Circuit ruled. Michael Dunderdale began working as a ramp serviceman for United in 1997. Those are the people you see loading and unloading luggage on the tarmac, for example....

In a disability discrimination action under the Rehabilitation Act (the Act), summary judgment for defendants is affirmed where Oregon’s Office of Public Defense Services was not a “program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” within the meaning of section 504 of the Act during the period of alleged discrimination and thus the state did not waive its sovereign immunity with respect to that agency. Read Sharer v. Oregon, No. 08-35396...