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Petitioner’s petition for review of the BIA’s order denying his application for cancellation of removal is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, where Petitioner’s disputes with the factual findings of the Immigration Judge did not rise to the level of due process violations. Read Arambula-Medina v. Holder, No. 08-9589 Appellate Information Filed July 10, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Briscoe Counsel For Petitioner: Robert Brown, Oklahoma City, OK For Respondent: Stephen J....

The death penalty is alive but not doing so well at the California Supreme Court. While voting to affirm a death penalty decision in The People v. Potts, two justices of the state supreme court distanced themselves from the majority of the court in a recent case. They called the capital punishment process an “expensive and dysfunctional system.” That’s not the same as saying the death penalty is wrong, but it was a clear message that the death penalty is in trouble in California....

In an action claiming that defendant city and county failed to provide plaintiffs, Latino residents of neighborhoods in the city, with adequate municipal services for discriminatory reasons, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where: 1) given defendants’ evidence of a lack of disparity in actual access to sewer services, plaintiffs’ statistical evidence was insufficient to give rise to an inference of discriminatory intent; and 2) defendant-county presented valid reasons why it chose to undertake certain infrastructure projects first....

In Eley v. Bagley, No. 06-4503, the Sixth Circuit faced a challenge to the district court’s denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus by a defendant convicted of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery and sentenced to death. In affirming the district court’s denial and dismissing the petition, the court held that the Ohio Supreme Court’s finding that “the record fails to reveal sufficient indicia of incompetency” did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent....

Life just got a little sunnier for legal practitioners in Alaska. FindLaw just launched its new Alaska Statutes and Constitution section, bringing the best, easiest-to-use Alaska codes to legal professionals in the land of the midnight sun. So, if you need to know about agricultural loans in Anchorage or solicitation laws in Seward, FindLaw has you covered. And it’s all free. FindLaw’s new Alaska Statutes and Constitution section is brought to you through our partnership with Thomson Reuters Westlaw, FindLaw’s sister company and the leader in online legal research....

In US v. Rainey, No. 07-3775, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s sentence for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base, distribution of cocaine base, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, on the ground that, because there was no showing that the U.S. Attorney’s Office knew of an address change for defendant, the U.S. Attorney properly served defendant by mailing notice to the jail where defendant was incarcerated. Torgerson v. City of Rochester, No....

In a recently filed age discrimination lawsuit against IBM, new facts are coming to light about the employee culling that occurred within the company starting in 2014. The complaint alleges that over the last six years, IBM has terminated over 20,000 employees over the age of 40, and focused its efforts to hire younger workers, or as the company called them, “early professionals.” Last year, IBM came under fire for similar claims and was the subject of an exposé that seems to have succeeding in making the computing giant rethink its employment policies....

Most armed robberies are state crimes, with some exceptions—for example, it is a federal crime to rob any bank. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a), anyone who “by force and violence, or by intimidation, takes, or attempts to take, from the person or presence of another . . . money . . . belonging to, or in the care, custody, control, management, or possession of, any bank” is committing a federal crime....

Wondering about actuarial authority in Indiana? Need to know what spyware is prohibited in the Hoosier state? FindLaw has you covered. If you’re looking for the best, easiest-to-use Indiana codes, you can now find them on FindLaw. FindLaw’s new Indiana Code and Constitution section has everything you could need, and it’s all for free. FindLaw’s new Indiana Code and Constitution section comes to you through our partnership with Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw, our sister company....

This blog was originally created in 2016, in celebration of Justice Ginsberg’s 83rd birthday. It has been updated after Justice Ginsberg’s death on September 18, 2020. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg spent 40 years as a federal appellate judge and Supreme Court justice. Her time on the bench made her one of the most influential justices in the history of the U.S. She became one of the rare Supreme Court Justices who are widely known and celebrated by the U....

Civil Rights Action by Day Laborers In La Asociacion de Trabajadores de Lake Forest v. Lake Forest, No. 08-56564, an action alleging that the City of Lake Forest police ran all the day laborers looking for work off the public sidewalks, the court affirmed in part the dismissal of the action and the denial of attorney’s fees to a settling plaintiff where one plaintiff failed to assert any factual allegations in its complaint that it was forced to divert resources to help another association because of the defendants’ actions....

Litigation finance has become a billion-dollar industry. Yet funders took some lumps in 2020 like many others. Despite initial forecasts that litigation funding would help firms and businesses during an economic slowdown, litigation funding only increased by about 6% in 2020, according to Westfleet Advisors, a litigation brokerage firm. Westfleet began surveying litigation financing in 2019, which has historically been a very opaque industry. According to its second-annual report, litigation funders invested $2....

Petition for review of a decision denying asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture is denied where: 1) plaintiff failed to show the harm she suffered in 1997 was on account of her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion ground; 2) while a 1984 attack against plaintiff constituted past persecution, plaintiff failed to show she had a well-founded fear of future persecution as a result of changed circumstances; 3) plaintiff failed to show she was entitled to humanitarian relief based on the severity of the past persecution that she suffered; and 4) plaintiff did not show she was denied due process or that her administrative appeal was fundamentally unfair....

The Supreme Court recently upheld a life sentence without parole for a man convicted of murder when he was 15 years old. In Jones v. Mississippi, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment does not require judges to separately find a juvenile defendant “permanently incorrigible,” or incapable of rehabilitation, before sentencing them to life without parole. The 6-3 decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, addresses the Court’s 2012 decision in Miller v....

In a case involving a pro se defendant convicted and sentenced for assaulting a corrections officer while serving a thirty-five year sentence, a denial of habeas relief is affirmed where state courts’ conclusion that defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court. Read Thomas v. Carroll, No. 06-2282 Appellate Information...

Lawsuits, for better or worse, are a fact of business life. And just because a business is small doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t get sued. When small businesses get sued, other small business owners take notice and try and learn from the lawsuit, because there are lessons everywhere you look. Here are five of the biggest small business lawsuits in the news recently, and the lessons other small business owners can take away:...

District court’s restitution order and sentence of a defendant convicted of making a false statement in relation to a bankruptcy proceeding is affirmed where: 1) the district court did not err in applying a 16-level enhancement for intending to cause a loss of more than $1 million; 2) district court did not err in applying the two-level enhancement for using sophisticated means and the record clearly supports the enhancement for obstruction of justice under U....

In an attempted murder prosecution, dismissal of petitioner’s habeas petition as untimely is affirmed where the verification requirement for a California habeas petition was so important under California law that, where a petitioner is denied the opportunity to provide a verification upon filing, he must provide one prior to any judicial proceeding. Read Zepeda v. Walker, No. 08-56085 Appellate Information Submitted September 1, 2009 Filed September 10, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Tallman...

Overall, the decision is a cautionary tale to those who seek to use the statutory language of the law to try and pull corporate shenanigans. Continental’s Facts Distilled The dealings between IGF and Continental Casualty are complex, but we’ll try to keep them simple. In 1998, IGF insurance bought a crop insurance company from Continental Casualty Company for $25 million. IGF then sold the business for $40 million later on. During the bidding process, IGF heard many offers, but only accepted one from a company that agreed to pay the $40 million in a “circuitous” manner....

Attorney Michael Avenatti had 15 minutes of fame, but his infamy is going to last a lot longer. After riding a wave of publicity around actress Stormy Daniels, Avenatti flirted with a run for the presidency. All of that disappeared, however, as he sunk into a morass of his own legal problems. In the latest episode of Lawyers Gone Wild, Avenatti has been indicted for stealing nearly $300,000 from the former porn star....