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If you need something to do on a slow night, consider heading down the Ninth Circuit – for a movie. That’s right, the halls of justice aren’t just for deciding cases, they also host regular movie screenings put together by judge Alex Kozinski. The Los Angeles Times provided a glimpse behind the scenes of one screening, in a piece published on Thursday. Kozinski provides the film and booze for free, but the pizza will cost you $10....

US v. Bacon, 09-1793, concerned a challenge to the district court’s denial of an acceptance-of-responsibility reduction in imposing a within-Guidelines sentence of 34 months’ imprisonment involved a prosecution of defendant for bank fraud. In affirmin, the court held that the district court thoroughly addressed the section 3553(a) factors and the error in the guidelines calculation was harmless. The court rejected defendant’s remaining arguments in support of his claim that his sentence was procedurally unreasonable as they were wholly without merit....

“Otto Cuban Jew muther f***er bastard get our message your family is not safe we will get you good Jew is a dead Jew say hi to your hore wife death to the jews heil hitler [swastika].” Obviously, something had to be done. What did his Chrysler, his employer, do? To make matters worse, Chrysler’s trial strategy was absolutely puzzling. While they presented testimony that May was well-liked and that other employees (especially the HR department) were deeply concerned about the harassment, they also hinted that May himself was behind it!...

Is a debt-collection law firm retained to collect fines for a city obligated to comply with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)? Apparently not. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that city-levied fines are not debts under the FDCPA. Victor Gulley sued Markoff & Krasny, a law firm enlisted to collect unpaid fines for the City of Chicago, claiming that the firm violated the FDCPA by misrepresenting the total amount he owed, failing to validate the alleged debts as requested, communicating with him after being told to stop, and generally harassing him....

BigLaw attorneys may look forward to splurging on fancy new cars, but those attorneys who are commuting to Manhattan shouldn’t look to the federal courts for extra spending money coming from savings on New York parking taxes. This week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court decision denying jurisdiction over a New York parking tax challenge. New York State authorizes New York City to impose taxes of 18....

Dexia Credit Local v. Rogan, No.08-3500, concerned a challenge to the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction barring defendant’s wife from continuing to transfer certain assets, in supplementary proceeding to enforce a $124 million judgment against defendant and related partnerships, arising from a longstanding Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme. Because the district court had subject matter jurisdiction over the case and because the there was no abuse of discretion in entering the preliminary injunction, the decision of the district court is affirmed....

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived a securities fraud lawsuit on Thursday accusing Grant Thornton LLP (GT) of defrauding Winstar Communications shareholders and bondholders, reports Reuters. Winstar, a GT auditing client, went bankrupt in 2001. Winstar was a broadband communications company that provided wireless Internet connectivity to various businesses. GT served as Winstar’s independent auditor from 1994 until Winstar filed for bankruptcy in April 2001. GT had regarded Winstar as “one of its largest and most important clients,” according to court filings....

In Budde v. Kane County Forest Pres., No. 09-2040, the Seventh Circuit faced a challenge to the district court’s grant of summary judgment against a police chief claiming employment discrimination based on his alcoholism disability, after he was fired for causing an accident while driving drunk. Under 29 C.F.R. section 1630.2(m), in order for the plaintiff to prevail on his discrimination claim, he must first establish that he is a “qualified individual with a disability” by showing that he is someone who, “satisfies the requisite skill, experience, education, and other job-related requirements of the employment position,” and “can perform the essential functions of the position held, with or without reasonable accommodation....

Dodds v. Richardson, No. 09-6157, concerned an action claiming that defendant-sheriff violated plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by depriving him of his protected liberty interest in posting bail. The court affirmed the denial of summary judgment to defendant based on qualified immunity, holding that 1) defendant has yet to proffer any reason, let alone a “legitimate goal,” for refusing to allow plaintiff to post bail and detaining plaintiff for three days, other than the assertion that the longstanding policies or customs at the jail, allegedly set by either the court clerk or the district judges, prohibited individuals charged with a felony from posting bond until they had been arraigned by a judge and from posting bond after hours; and 2) plaintiff’s right to be free from unjustified detention after his bail was set was clearly established such that a reasonable official in defendant’s position in April 2007 would have understood that his deliberately indifferent maintenance of the policies that prevented arrestees from posting preset bail for no legitimate reason violated the Constitution....

It’s the Friday before Memorial Day and the last thing you want to do right now is focus on tasks that require thinking. That’s okay. You’ve worked hard this week, right? Even if you have a bundle of briefs to complete before the close of business, it’s a well-known fact that short breaks actually increase productivity. That’s right. Come over to the dark side of procrastination. Take these quizzes, and then return to your work, with your batteries recharged....

In an ERISA action challenging a stock purchase under an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), the dismissal of the complaint is reversed where, when an ESOP incurs debt to finance a purchase of shares of stock and then later sells the shares in exchange for cancellation of some of that debt, the debt cancellation in the second transaction should not be construed as having reduced the purchase price paid in the first transaction....

Former Minneapolis Police officer Mohamed Noor was convicted of murder in the shooting of an unarmed Australian woman, Justine Ruszczyk, in 2017. Ruszczyk had called 911 about a possible sexual assault near her home, and Noor admitted to shooting Ruszczyk as she approached his car when he and his partner responded to the scene. “I fired one shot,” Noor testified during his trial. “The threat was gone. She could have had a weapon....

This is almost genius. Almost. To date, arguments in favor of state bans on gay marriage have fallen flat in every court that has considered the matter. And with dozens of pending cases nationwide, we though we’d heard every conceivable argument. And then Schuette happened (both the Affirmative Action case and the Michigan Attorney General). Michigan: Respect Democracy! For those who missed the last Schuette case, Schuette v. BAMN, the Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s ban on racial preferences in admissions in the name of democracy....

The Apple-Samsung case may be the most talked-about patent infringement case of the year, but it’s certainly not the only case that people are talking about. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction preventing Motorola from enforcing an injunction it won in a German court against sales of Microsoft’s Xbox and Windows sales in Germany, the Seattle Times reports. The preliminary injunction came from a pair of Microsoft-Motorola cases: A Microsoft suit filed in Seattle, and a Motorola suit filed Germany....

Kamalyan v. Holder, No. 05-76408, involved a petition for review brought by an Armenian Jehova’s Witness challenging the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) order adopting and affirming a decision of an immigration judge removing petitioner from the U.S. The court granted the petition on the ground that any reasonable adjudicator would agree that the government did not establish a fundamental change in country conditions by a preponderance of the evidence....

Summer is a rough time for Supreme Court watchers: Unlike sports fans, there are no free agency rumors to keep us occupied. Instead, we spend all summer wondering if that one case out of a flyover state which has immense implications for an obscure point of law will make it to the big game – Supreme Court review. The time is at hand, folks. Rumor has it that we’ll be seeing an orders list from the Supreme Court tomorrow, with grants and denials in all of those obscure cert....

Many people in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ tri-state reach are still coping with the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy. While Vermont escaped the storm with relatively little damage – only 7,000 people were without power as of Thursday – President Obama has declared Connecticut and New York federal disaster areas, the Hartford Courant reports. While the flood waters are receding, and some people are trying to return to work, many federal offices – including the Second Circuit – are still closed....

Times are tough for executioners. Society has long moved passed the more flamboyant forms of capital punishment – hanging, firing squad, guillotine – and even the remaining methods might amount to torture. That is, if you can even find someone to use them on. The Seventh Circuit isn’t making any executioners’ lives easier either. The court threw out the death sentence of a man convicted of killing an Indiana sheriff’s deputy....

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reluctantly sided with a registered sex offender this week in a facial challenge to an Albuquerque law that prohibited registered sex offenders from entering the City’s public libraries. Because the City failed to present any evidence as to the reasons or justification for its ban, the court had no choice but to affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of John Doe, the sex-offender appellee....

Chloe v. Queen Bee of Beverly Hills, LLC, No. 09-3361, involved an action alleging violations of sections 32(1) and 43(a) of the Trademark Act of 1946, 15 U.S.C. section 1051, et seq., and New York General Business Law section 349, as well as common law trademark infringement and unfair competition. The court vacated summary judgment for defendant on the ground that defendant’s single act of shipping an item into New York, combined with the affiliated business’s substantial activity involving New York, give rise to personal jurisdiction over defendant....