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We have long believed that the Target clearance aisle was a dangerous place, but that belief was based on monetary concerns, not safety hazards. Regardless, we love Target. An unpublished Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion issued last week, however, reminds us that danger lurks even in happy places. With that in mind, the Sixth Circuit reinstated a Target clearance shopper’s negligence claim against the retail giant, finding that the district court had erred in granting Target’s motion for summary judgment....

In this tight job market, you probably do not want to spend time going through the interviewing and hiring process with a candidate who cannot legally work in the U.S. Those who do not know much about immigration law may think there is a clear divide between those who can work in the U.S. and those who cannot. In reality, there is a significant gray area comprised of candidates who could work here if they had employment sponsorship, candidates with temporary but otherwise unrestricted employment authorization, and candidates who may only work for a specific type of employer....

The Patent Act authorizes courts to impose triple damages in cases of infringement. But the Federal Circuit’s Seagate test makes those damages hard to come by, imposing a relatively complicated two-part test to determine when damages are warranted, subject to trifurcated (yes, trifurcated) appellate review. The Supreme Court tossed out that test yesterday, ruling unanimously that the Seagate requirements were not consistent with the Patent Act. The ruling is a boon to patent holders, who could see much more money coming from litigating patent infringement now....

We’ve been writing a bit about the “Benchslappy” Seventh Circuit – we can’t help ourselves. The Seventh Circuit’s benchslaps are funny, and often illuminating – so much so we had to do a review of some that have occurred only within the past three months. After reviewing some of the more notable Seventh Circuit benchslaps through the years, we’ve decided to put a list together for you on how to avoid getting whapped the next time you submit a brief, or argue, before the Seventh Circuit....

Retired patrolman Jim Simone didn’t get any help from the Sixth Circuit, as the court ruled Wednesday to affirm the lower court’s denial of summary judgment in a civil rights suit against the Cleveland cop. The case involves Simone using a stun gun on a suspect, Rafael Correa, who he suspected of having a gun, despite the Correa’s compliance with the officer during the arrest, reports The Plain Dealer. The Sixth Circuit also took some time to elucidate some fun facts about Tasers and police procedure before booting Simone back down to the district court....

The Seventh Circuit has been in the news a lot lately with the recent Supreme Court’s dismissal of Madigan v. Levin, where it had a chance to determine whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) preempted an equal protection claim. Recently, the Seventh Circuit reversed and remanded a straight forward ADEA claim, finding that the district court erred by granting the defendant’s motion for summary judgment. John Mullin was a fire truck and rescue equipment salesperson since 1990, and in 2008 and 2009 won Temco’s Salesman of the Year Award for selling the most fire trucks in the preceding fiscal year....

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recently preserved a high-profile employment discrimination case against the Arkansas State Capitol Police Chief Darrell Hedden over an African American officer’s firing. The case sheds light on qualified immunity from Section 1983 racial discrimination and retaliation claims. Officer Richard Burton alleges that he was a victim of race discrimination and retaliation when he was fired in 2010. The decision recounts Burton’s complaint of repeat use of racial epithets by Officer Norman Gomillion, an officer with whom Burton worked....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging that defendants interfered with plaintiffs’ constitutional right of familial association by removing their child without a protective custody warrant, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where it was reasonable for officer-defendant to believe the child’s statement that she had been abused at the time she spoke with him. However, the order is vacated in part where local government units such as defendant-county are not entitled to the qualified-immunity defense....

Last year, a jury in Portland, Oregon, convicted romance novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy of second-degree murder for the 2018 death of her husband, Daniel Brophy. The state’s case against her was pretty straightforward: Surveillance footage showed a van matching Crampton Brophy’s outside her husband’s workplace around the time he was killed, and she stood to gain $1.4 million in life insurance money upon his death. But the case caught national attention when it was discovered that Crampton Brophy had written a blog post several years earlier titled “How to Murder Your Husband....

Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, involved an action challenging the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) decision to approve the unconditional deregulation of Roundup Ready Alfalfa (RRA), a variety of alfalfa genetically engineered to tolerate the herbicide Roundup. The court of appeals reversed the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance of judgment for plaintiffs, holding that 1) plaintiffs had standing to seek injunctive relief, and defendants had standing to seek the Court’s review of the Ninth Circuit’s judgment affirming the entry of such relief; and 2) the district court abused its discretion in enjoining APHIS from effecting a partial deregulation and in prohibiting the planting of RRA pending the agency’s completion of its detailed environmental review....

Are you an intellectual property practitioner or law student with an interest in IP? Can you be in Chicago on September 15? Then you may want to take a break from gazing at architecture from the riverboat cruise or Crown Fountain in Millennium Park - both of which are worth seeing, if you haven’t already - to attend the Chicago-Kent Supreme Court IP Review (SCIPR) at Chicago-Kent College of Law....

CSI dropped the ball. The insurance brokerage company knows it made a mistake, it admits it, and in all likelihood, it’ll be held accountable for it. But the question is: will that accountability come via the tort of negligence or for breach of contract? When National Pastime, a company that runs promotions for Major League Baseball teams, contacted CSI about a series of Kids Nights at the Cleveland Indians baseball park, they explicitly stated that an inflatable slide would be used....

In Pichardo v. Virgin Islands Comm’r of Labor, 08-4259, the Third circuit granted a petition for a writ of certiorari, and affirmed the decision of the newly-created Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands, in plaintiff’s suit against her former employer for wrongful termination. The court first held that the degree of deference afforded to a territorial supreme court allows for reversal on matters of local law only when “clear or manifest error is shown....

In the closely watched case of the anonymous blogger John Doe who runs the blog “Amthrax,” the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a decision in this case of first impression which Doe and other anonymous bloggers may want to blog about. The Signature Management v. Doe decision sets out the considerations for a federal court to consider when it comes to unmasking an anonymous blogger whose blogging has been found to violate the law and therefore would not be entitled to First Amendment protection....

While many people can’t wait for drones to deliver their pizzas, others are counting on them to deliver their organs. That’s what just happened in Baltimore. A drone flew a donor kidney to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center. They then transplanted the kidney to a patient suffering kidney failure. The doctors were successful, and so was the drone. The delivery took about 10 minutes; the operation a little longer....

Controversy has been rumbling at Fresno State since 2010 when conservative student Neil O’Brien started a chapter of Young Americans for Liberty at the school and allegedly began “harassing” professors in the Latin American Studies department there. Last week, the Ninth Circuit effectively upheld Fresno State’s view that O’Brien had expressed harassing speech. But the court also let stand his count against the school on the grounds that it retaliated against him for his conduct....

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a closely watched petition for cert. in the excessive force case against Newport Beach’s police department. The cert denial is bad news for the department as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previously held that the case against the department, but not against individual officers, could proceed. The Newport Beach incident made national headlines as the victim was a mentally handicapped individual who was shot dead by police, and based on what’s been reported, it would seem that non-lethal force could have been used....

If we had told you that today’s Obamacare birth control mandate would be a matter of statutory interpretation, and that five conservative justices would vote against the mandate in the name of corporations’ religious rights, would that at all surprise you? Today’s decision was exactly that: closely held corporations have religious rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and therefore, can’t be forced to provide birth control to their employees through Obamacare-mandated health coverage....

Denial of a motion to dismiss or stay the litigation, for misappropriation of trade secrets of a technology for manufacturing a chemical used in manufacturing nylon, in favor of arbitration Invista S.A.R.L. v. Rhodia, SA, 09-2514, concerned a challenge to the district court’s denial of defendant’s motion to either dismiss or stay the litigation in favor of arbitration, in plaintiff’s suit for interference with contract, unfair competition, and misappropriation of trade secrets, in connection with a technology for manufacturing a critical intermediate chemical used in manufacturing nylon....

The Supreme Court denied cert this week in combined cases Utah Highway Patrol Association v. American Atheists, Inc., and Davenport, et al., v. American Atheists, two religious display disputes involving cross memorials honoring fallen Utah state troopers. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals narrowly decided last year that the cross displays were an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a 19-page dissent to the denial of cert, claimed that sharply divided courts will continue to debate proper application of the Establishment Clause until the Supreme Court issues an opinion to clarify its stance on religious displays on government property....