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Ultimate Appliance CC v. Kirby Co., No. 09-3297, dealt with a district court’s denial of plaintiff’s motion for a filing extension holding that it had no authority to grant filing extension once the Rule 4 deadline had expired. Under Fed. Rule of Appellate Proc. 4, a notice of appeal must be filed within 30 days after the judgment or order appealed from is entered, but a party may move for a filing extension within thirty days of the expiration of the initial time period....

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals did not find any products liability in a suit asserted by a worker who suffered a severe workplace accident. Derek Braswell was operating a heavy press brake, manufactured by Cincinnati, Inc, when his right arm was crushed and later amputated. Despite signs warning the operator not to reach into the area, Braswell still did so, and accidentally stepped on a pedal that then triggered a hydraulic-powered ram’s descent....

In US v. Laurienti, No. 07-50240, the court of appeals affirmed defendants’ convictions for securities fraud conspiracy, holding that 1) defendants did not challenge, and overwhelming evidence supported the finding, that the conspiracy existed and that at least one member of it performed an overt act; 2) the district court erred by failing to give a “trust relationship” jury instruction, but defendants intentionally relinquished their right to challenge the jury instruction; and 3) the characterization of the sales practices as unlawful was relevant, because the government sought to prove that, as conducted by defendants (with an intent to defraud and in violation of trust relationship duties), the practices were indeed unlawful....

It seems former-college-basketball-star-turned-NBA-disappointment Rumeal Robinson’s hard-partying ways have finally caught up with him. And there’s no one left to bail him out. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions on eleven counts of fraud and bribery charges and upheld his 78-month prison sentence. An Iowa jury found Robinson guilty of using such underhanded tactics as bribing a Community State Bank loan officer, submitting a fake tax return, recruiting straw borrowers, and using his mother’s home in order to fund his extremely extravagant lifestyle....

“Winner-take-all” voting will remain in place in Texas, following a ruling by a Fifth Circuit panel that the state’s electoral system does not unduly burden voters. The electoral voting challenge, filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens and nine Texas voters, argued that the state’s two-step voting system dilutes minority votes. The unanimous decision upheld a lower court’s dismissal. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia employ a winner-take-all system for presidential elections, and such methods have been upheld by the Supreme Court....

This post was updated on March 28, 2022 Divorce causes a lot of upheaval for everyone involved. Amidst the emotional turmoil, you also have to make legal choices to safeguard the futures of you and your children. These include protecting inheritances that you planned to pass on to your children. If you and your spouse have children, then for the most part protecting their inheritance rights will be pretty straightforward. You will need to update your will after your divorce to make sure you pass on your estate to your children....

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the San Juan Coal Company in Farmington, N.M. is bound by the terms of an arbitration ruling with the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE), the union that represents mine workers at the company’s Farmington, N.M. coal mine. San Juan and the IUOE have a collective bargaining agreement detailing the terms of the mine workers’ employment. The collective bargaining agreement stipulated that an employee who works beyond his scheduled hours for a particular day will be paid 1....

For law students at Harvard, and across the country thanks to YouTube, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan recently gave some open advice. However, the discussion is just informative for lawyers as it is for law students, as Justice Kagan also shares quite a bit about herself, her fellow justices, and how she views the legal profession. The open-ended questions led her onto entertaining tangents too, like how Justice Breyer (who was her antitrust professor when she was a student) is the funniest justice, and his hypotheticals are easily funnier than Scalia’s famous retorts, at least in her opinion....

To get into the spirit of giving this holiday season, why not give back to the Tenth Circuit by making a charitable contribution to the Historical Society of the Tenth Judicial Circuit? As we all know, the lawyers and judges of the Tenth Circuit have a rich history. Becoming a member or making a small contribution to the society can help to preserve and promote the legal community and public’s understanding of the role of the circuit....

The state of Massachusetts has become the 16th state to officially ban ‘gay conversion therapy’ for minors. And the trend is continuing, with a bill now being sponsored in Congress that would prohibit Medicare funding for it. ‘Gay conversion therapy,’ in case you didn’t know, seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and regards LGBTQ identities as an illness to be corrected. The basis of and practice of ‘gay conversion therapy’ has been discredited and is widely considered harmful....

Lawyers are bound by the courts. We may disagree with judges, but we respect their decisions. If we fail to do so, we can be fined, or even jailed. But is the President of the United States bound by the same limitations as mere mortal lawyers? Not according to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In fact, Gingrich claims that the POTUS can simply “ignore” a Supreme Court decision that he deems “fundamentally wrong....

You think it would go without saying: corrections officers cannot sexually abuse inmates without violating those inmates’ rights. Apparently not. The Second Circuit felt the need to restate the obvious after a district court tossed two inmates’ suit, which alleged that they were fondled by correctional officers in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Such abuse is clearly unconstitutional, the Second Circuit wrote. Further, it emphasized that the Circuit’s Eighth Amendment precedents must be applied broadly to comport with evolving “societal standards of decency” regarding inmate sexual abuse....

It’s not an uncommon opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court is a bit lacking when it comes to transparency. There are no cameras in the courtroom, opinions are changed without notice after being released, link rot plagues citations to online sources, and court watchers have to rely on third parties to access the briefs that, most of the time, are what makes up the justices’ minds. In other words, there is a lot of room for improvement....

A unanimous decision was reached in the controversial Byrd v. United States case, reversing the decisions of the appellate and district courts, which held that an officer did not need probable cause or consent to search a rental vehicle when the driver and sole occupant was not listed on the rental agreement. As the High Court explained, the fact that a driver isn’t listed on a rental agreement does not, in and of itself, impact a person’s reasonable expectation in privacy....

In a petition for review of the denial of petitioner’s motion to reconsider or reopen his deportation proceedings, the petition is denied where 8 C.F.R. section 1003.23(b)(1) was a valid exercise of the Attorney General’s Congressionally-delegated rule-making authority, and did not contravene 8 U.S.C. sections 1229a(c)(6)(A) or (7)(A), and thus the Immigration Judge lacked jurisdiction over petitioner’s motion because petitioner had previously been removed from the U.S. Read Rosillo-Puga v. Holder, No....

Everybody probably has a story or two about a horrible teacher, a mean teacher, a strict teacher. We know bad teachers are only a small minority among the thousands of wonderfully dedicated teachers doing a hard, underpaid job every day. But, bad teachers are still pretty fun to talk about – and we can even learn something from them and their bad behavior. So, here’s a round-up of just a few of our best bad teacher stories:...

Small-business owners who reopen their doors following coronavirus-related shutdowns face many uncertainties. Will their customers come back? Will their employees come back? Can they even stay in business? But the most pressing uncertainty is probably safety. How can owners and operators of small businesses keep everyone safe? We’ve learned that one of the best ways to keep people safe from the coronavirus is to keep them separated by at least six feet, for instance....

District court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant in plaintiff’s action under the Age Discrimination Employment Act is affirmed where: 1) district court did not err in holding that plaintiff failed to establish her prima facie case; and 2) plaintiff has not created a triable issue as to pretext since none of plaintiff’s evidence gives rise to an inference that defendant’s decision to terminate plaintiff was so unreasonable as to create an inference of pretext....

Joseph Mabery was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court sentenced Mabery to 327 months’ imprisonment. That’s a pretty harsh sentence, but the court noted that Mabery had an extensive criminal history of theft, assault, and drug charges, and had never been lawfully employed. Mabery obviously had to challenge the search – who wouldn’t, when facing over 27 years for gun possession – so he argued to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that the cops who discovered his contraband illegally seized his vehicle by shining a spotlight on it....

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals adopted a standard of review for DNA testing appeals this week. The court established in Tuesday’s U.S. v. Pitera decision that the question of whether a prisoner is entitled to DNA testing under the Innocence Protection Act is subject to de novo review. De novo re view, however, was not enough to help Thomas Pitera win his DNA testing request. To justify post-conviction DNA testing under the Innocence Protection Act, the court that entered the judgment of conviction must make nine findings:...