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Encore Capital Group, a major debt-collection company, will head back to the settlement table after the Sixth Circuit scuttled the prior arrangement. Calling the relief given to the unnamed plaintiffs ($17.38 per claimant) and the one year injunction prohibiting illegal practices “perfunctory at best,” the Sixth Circuit found that the lower court abused its discretion in approving the $5.2 million settlement. Under the terms of the class action settlement, the four named plaintiffs were to receive $8,000 collectively, plus their debts would be forgiven....

Wragg v. Village of Thornton, No. 08-3766, concerned a sixteen-year-old’s 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit against a village and individual defendants, alleging his substantive due process rights were violated by the defendants’ deliberate retention of a fire chief, who molested him, despite knowledge of his prior improprieties with other minors. The court stated that it looks to various factors in determining whether a certain individual or group has policymaking authority on any particular policy decision, and they are: 1) lack of “constraints by policies” made by others; 2) lack of “meaningful review”; and 3) a “grant of authority” to make the policy decision....

We are approaching the first anniversary of the First Step Act, a landmark piece of criminal justice reform legislation. Embraced by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the law has already led to thousands of people being released from federal prisons. But one year later, according to advocates, it is clear that the law represents just that: a first step. The Progress so Far Appearing before Congress last week, Department of Justice officials said there has been significant achievements made under the law....

Back in April, we covered EEOC v. Ford, in which an employee with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) alleged that Ford failed to make reasonable accommodations for her disability. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit found that telecommuting was a reasonable accommodation, so Ford had to make that accommodation. Last week, the Sixth Circuit granted a petition for rehearing en banc. The panel decision will be vacated and the case will be reheard in front of all 13 of the Sixth Circuit’s active judges....

When somebody starts by saying, “It’s not about this…,” that’s a big hint that it really is about that. So it seemed for judicial nominee Amy Coney Barrett when she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Chuck Grassley, who voted for the nominee, said he was “surprised and disheartened” by Democrats’ questions involving her faith. “Their questions strongly implied that she’s too Catholic for their taste, whatever it means to be ’too Catholic,’” Grassley said....

In a section 1983 suit brought against a county Board of Education (Board) by the parents of children who were dismissed from a high school football team for challenging their coach’s leadership, a jury verdict in favor of defendants is affirmed where: 1) the Board’s policy amounts to a content-neutral time, place and manner regulation; 2) the board’s policy is not unconstitutionally vague on its face and as applied; 3) plaintiffs’ challenges to several of trial court’s jury instructions are rejected; but 4) district court’s decision to grant $87,216....

Habeas corpus is all but dead, gun rights mean nothing (especially for 18 to 21-year-olds), the Feds will break up your neighborhood poker game, and the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Washing Machine Cases were ignored completely. Yes, these are all exaggerations of the effects of the most notable of today’s many denials, found amongst a 46-page orders list. But in fact, the Court did not grant any new cases. Here are the ones that we were keeping an eye on:...

New York’s attorney general says President Trump used his charitable foundation like it was his personal checkbook, including $10,000 he paid from the foundation for a painting of himself. In People of the State of New York v. Trump, the state alleges Trump wrote a check for $100,000 to settle a zoning dispute for his Mar-a-Lago club. The attorney general is suing to recover $2.8 million in restitution and fines for years of illegal transactions....

When is an opinion that turns out to be wrong an untrue statement of fact? Only when it is not sincerely held, the Supreme Court ruled last week in a securities fraud case. The Court’s decision in Omnicare v. Laborers District Council Construct Industry Pension Fund, overturned a recent Sixth Circuit holding and reconciled a split between the Sixth and other circuits. Omnicare had been sued for securities fraud stemming from a statement that it believed it was complying with the law....

Just off the heels of Easter, if you walk into a grocery store, drug store, or convenient store this week you will see them. Donning familiar pastel pinks, yellows, and blues, they will likely be relegated to clearance bins, marked with “50% Off” stickers, or headlined under “Buy 1 Get 1 Free”. They are Peeps. Otherwise known as those marshmallowy confections shaped like curious versions of animals. Hundreds of millions of Peeps are whisked off of store shelves each year....

In the American legal system, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be incarcerated before being proven guilty. Whether it’s because courts have deemed them a flight or safety risk, or because they can’t afford bail, almost half a million people are jailed before their criminal trials ever take place. This kind of imprisonment, and its attendant costs (loss of income, a job, and even a place to live), runs counter to our guiding principles of criminal justice, and reformers have been proposing fixes, like eliminating money bail and only detaining people based on their risk of harm to others or fleeing their trial....

If you spent Monday perusing the latest Supreme Court orders, then you may have noticed that the government is contesting Beer. (Ugh, Mondays.) For those of you following along with the federal judges’ cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) battle, U.S. v. Beer should ring a bell. That’s the case challenging a government decision to withhold COLAs guaranteed under the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. The Act amended compensation and ethics rules for all three branches of the government....

We’ll admit it: We were pretty excited for yesterday’s marathon oral arguments at the Sixth Circuit. How often does a fundamental civil rights issue get hashed out in court? How often are five cases and four states’ laws addressed all at once, marathon-style? But as unique as these cases are procedurally, the truth is this: Whatever the Sixth Circuit holds in a few weeks or months, it’ll likely be irrelevant....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Are the robots going to take over the world?! There is no question that artificial intelligence is finding its way into our everyday lives. Some people love interacting with Alexa as part of their daily activities. Others worry about the loss of autonomy and privacy that accompanies the burgeoning AI world, and some dread that someday humans may become secondary to the artificial intelligence we have created....

The Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision on employment discrimination has many of us talking about statutory interpretation. But although Justice Neil Gorsuch’s agreeance with the more liberal justices on the court came as a surprise to many of us, his textualist views did not. Justice Gorsuch has long been a proponent of the textualist approach, which has existed in one form or another for decades. And although it’s never quite been mainstream, those who subscribe to it are often very devoted....

Conviction for drug crimes is affirmed where: 1) the district court did not err in denying defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal, as sufficient testimony confirmed she knew of the conspiracy and intentionally joined it, and was an actual participant despite her minor role; and 2) the court did not abuse its discretion in denying her motion for new trial. Read US v. Garcia, No. 07-3720 Appellate InformationAppeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota....

While running a solo practice might be best thing to happen to you since passing the bar, busy solos can often suffer from a critical lack of vacation. After all, who would run the practice if you weren’t there? If you have needy clients or cases in active litigation, getting away for more than a weekend might be impossible, unless you have another lawyer you can rely on to keep an eye on things while you’re away....

Race Tires Am., Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire Corp., 09-3989, concerned a plaintiff’s antitrust suit against a tire supplier competitor and a motorsports sanctioning body, arising from the adoption of the so-called “single tire rule” by various sanctioning bodies in the sport of dirt oval track racing as well as the exclusive supply contracts between the sanctioning bodies and the defendant tire supplier. In affirming the district court’s grant of defendants’ motions for summary judgment, the court adopted a general rule that the Sherman Act does not forbid sanctioning bodies and other sport-related organizations from freely adopting exclusive equipment requirements, so long as such organizations otherwise possess, in good faith, sufficient pro-competitive or business justifications for their actions....

There’s no more American holiday than Thanksgiving. (Well, except maybe Independence Day. And doesn’t Canada have a Thanksgiving, too?) A day filled with overeating, over-drinking, and then football? Sign me up! Thanksgiving has popped up over the years at the U.S. Supreme Court as well, though it didn’t involve Chief Justice Rehnquist falling asleep on the couch watching the Stanford game. It’s mostly involved the “War on Christmas.” Utah Pie Co....

In a petition for review of the denial of petitioner’s asylum application, the petition is denied where: 1) the BIA properly required corroboration of petitioner’s testimony; and 2) though the three letters submitted by petitioner supported the conclusion that petitioner’s claimed clan and subclan existed, the law was that in order to reverse the BIA finding, the court of appeals must find that the evidence not only supported such conclusion, but compelled it....