There are three good reasons for a lawyer to hire a tax attorney, but you only need one. Tax law is a specialty, just like probate, family, and immigration law. If you want to try it, do it after you are certified and can bill for your time. Otherwise, you’ll want to keep all the money you can for taxes. Here are the second and third reasons: Time Learning about tax law and your obligations is time-consuming....
The Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado houses some of the most hated mass murderers in the world. They include Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and terrorists in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Twin Towers. Then there’s the “Underwear Bomber.” He’s in the news again, claiming prison officials have mistreated him. Force-Feeding Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is serving four life sentences, plus 50 years without parole, after being convicted of attempting to blow up a flight on Christmas Day in 2009....
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals interprets the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure strictly. For example, Rule 35 allows a court to “correct a sentence that resulted from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error” within 14 days after sentencing. What happens after 14 days? According to the Tenth Circuit, the court loses subject matter jurisdiction for resentencing when the period lapses. Appellant Michael McGaughy pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute marijuana, and the district court sentenced him to 46 months’ imprisonment....
The Second Circuit has adopted the National Labor Relations Board’s organizational standards for proposed unions. In applying a two-part test, the court joined other federal jurisdictions to evaluate whether proposed collective bargaining units consist of employees who share a “community of interests” and do not “arbitrarily exclude other employees.” The panel reached its decision in Constellation Brands v. National Labor Relations Board, a contest over the organization of a winery’s operations department....
Alas, “One Gun” isn’t just a clever nickname. New Jersey’s One Gun law effectively limits the number of firearms a person can purchase in the Garden State to one per month. The National Rifle Association – along with the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Inc. and Bob’s Little Sport Shop – challenged that law, arguing that it was pre-empted by federal law and deprived gun buyers of due process....
This post was updated on December 13, 2022 Should all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? An apt question. New Year’s Eve is the night that we ask ourselves what to carry forward and embrace in the new year and what to leave to history. We resolve to do better. Despite that resolve, many goals will fall to the wayside. The last thing we need before the new year is to end the current one on a bad foot....
As of Friday, abortion is back before the Supreme Court for the first time in years, after the Court granted cert to review Texas’s restrictive abortion law. (You remember, the one that led Wendy Davis to hold a 13-hour filibuster two years ago, then passed shortly after.) Then on Monday, it rejected a request to publicly release Planned Parenthood documents under the Freedom of Information Act – leading to a rare dissent to the denial of cert....
It should come as no surprise to thousands of American Family insurance agents that they are independent contractors. And it’s not because the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said so in Jammal v. American Family Insurance Company. It’s because the agents said so when they joined the insurance company. Of course, the case is more complicated than that. Unfortunately for 7,000 agents and their families, it means they don’t get health and retirement benefits....
A motion for relief filed halfway through an execution. Why have you never heard of such things? It’s probably because most executions don’t last two hours – lethal injections typically take about 10 minutes. More interesting than the motion itself was the awkward conference call where the judge heard both sides and seemed close to intervening before convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood was pronounced dead in Arizona. As the call ended, the judge noted that this only delays the issue, and that this would have consequences for other plaintiffs....
The Ninth Circuit decided one capital habeas case, one involving longshoremen’s benefits, and another concerning an immigration law issue. In Smith v. Mahoney, No. 94-99003, a capital habeas matter, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of the petition, on the grounds that 1) although defense counsel inadequately investigated the facts of the case before allowing petitioner to plead guilty, petitioner did not establish that he was prejudiced by his lawyer’s representation; 2) non-character, non-circumstance evidence need not factor into the constitutionality of a death sentence; and 3) petitioner failed to develop his claim of judicial bias sufficiently to warrant an evidentiary hearing....
In US v. Grooms, No. 07-1384, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s drug and firearm possession convictions, holding that the search of defendant’s vehicle was supported by independent probable cause because the police had reason to believe the car would contain evidence relevant to a threat made by defendant. In Storey v. Roper, No. 08-2936, a capital habeas matter, the court of appeals affirmed the denial of petitioner’s habeas petition, on the grounds that 1) petitioner had an opportunity to interview the victim impact witnesses presented during sentencing before their testimony, and he had the opportunity (though he did not take it) to cross-examine the witnesses; 2) in light of all of the other relevant and admissible evidence presented at the third penalty-phase trial, a photo of the victim’s tombstone did not render the penalty-phase trial fundamentally unfair; 3) based upon the Supreme Court’s definition of “acquittal” in the context of a death sentence as explicated in Poland, petitioner had never been acquitted of the death penalty; and 4) petitioner failed to present new reliable evidence that he was innocent of the crime of which he was convicted....
While you were chilling the champagne and prepping your party hat Saturday night, Chief Justice John Roberts was steeling himself for the publication of his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. In light of the many calls for recusals during 2011, particularly in the individual mandate litigation, the theme of this year’s report was Supreme Court ethics. Justice Roberts’ take on the issue: Pipe down. We’ve got this. (Sidebar: Has Chief Justice Roberts been reading this blog?...
Notre Dame has again been denied injunctive relief in its challenge to Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. The Catholic university had claimed that being connected in even the most minor way to the provision of birth control to its faculty and students violated its religious beliefs. Last March, the Seventh Circuit refused to grant Notre Dame an injunction protecting it from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate, prompting the Supreme Court to send the case back for reconsideration in light of Burwell v....
If your company doesn’t utilize some form of contract management software, you may want to consider pitching that idea at the next opportunity you get. Considering how connected the entire world has become, using sophisticated contract management software that enables you to control and manage contracts throughout the lifecycle of a contract, can do wonders for almost any business. From helping sales people put together approved contracts, to helping customer management teams explain contract terms or explain common issues and resolutions, the right contract management system can be game changing – not to mention time-saving for legal....
Johnston v. Maha, No. 08-6048, involved a civil rights action regarding the conditions of plaintiff-inmate’s confinement. The court of appeals granted plaintiff’s motion for appointment of counsel in his appeal of the grant of defendants’ motion for summary judgment, on the ground that plaintiff’s claims met the threshold standard of likely merit and presented issues of substantial complexity such that appointment of counsel would be of significant benefit to the court....
Supreme Court cases often seem removed from our daily lives. We may not like the outcome of a prison strip search case, or agree that grand jury witnesses should receive absolute immunity (even when they lie), but most of us can’t imagine ourselves being personally affected by such decisions. So most people — lawyers excluded — tend to ignore what happens in the Court. (The healthcare case was a rare exception....
You’d think having multiple criminal cases dismissed due to a tainted warrant would be enough, but after Jared Armstrong escaped the clutches of the Alaska criminal justice system, the alleged child predator then sued the cops. His luck just ran out. More than two years after the case reached the Ninth Circuit, the court finally granted the underlying appeal, and immunity to the officers. Back in 2005, Armstrong, who was in his late thirties, befriended two young teenage boys....
Between the late ’80s and the late ’90s, Peter Glazman recruited a variety of people to be “franchisees” for his courier business, in which his company delivered packages around New York City. Glazman’s franchisees basically paid for everything themselves: a white van, “training” fees, “beeper” fees, insurance, taxes, gas, uniforms, and on and on. The plaintiffs in this case are several franchisees – many of whom recently emigrated from Eastern Europe and spoke limited English – who claimed that they would be promised a 60 percent commission from each package delivery....
There has been a lot of talk about how law firms are re-evaluating their need for office space. While it is anticipated that law firms will begin to downsize, many lawyers are not eager to begin working from home full-time, according to a new survey by Gensler. According to the survey, only 10% of attorneys want to work from home full-time. A significant majority (74%) said they wanted to work from the office most days of the week....
Rio Grande Silvery Minnow v. Bureau of Reclamation, No. 05-2293, involved a quiet title action regarding certain dam areas. The Tenth Circuit remanded the action, on the ground that plaintiff’s action was time-barred, because the district court did not clearly err in finding that plaintiff knew as far back as the early 1950s that the U.S. claimed title to the properties, and thus the district court did not have jurisdiction to decide the merits of the action....
