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The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a court-appointed attorney and a conservator involved in an elderly man’s improper conservatorship were not entitled to absolute federal quasi-judicial immunity. The plaintiff in the case, Daniel Gross, sued after spending 10 months in the locked ward of a Connecticut nursing home while under involuntary conservatorship. Gross, an octogenarian New York resident, sought treatment in a Waterbury, Connecticut hospital in 2005....

California’s DNA and Forensic Identification Data Base and Data Bank Act (DNA Act) may not be long for this world. Not in its current form, at least. Wednesday, a majority of the Ninth Circuit en banc panel that heard the DNA Act appeal expressed concern that the DNA is taken from people regardless of whether they are later charged or convicted of a crime, reports the San Jose Mercury News....

Las Vegas is set to become the focal point for a Fourth Amendment issue that’s as brazen as it is kooky. Suspecting several high rollers staying at Caesars Palace were engaged in an illegal bookmaking operation, the feds allegedly cut off Internet access to their $25,000-per-night private villa, then posed as repairmen to enter the villa, snoop around, and use that snooping as the basis for a subsequent search warrant....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging the unlawful taking of a DNA sample, the dismissal of the action on qualified immunity grounds is reversed, where the forcible taking of the DNA sample under these circumstances violated Plaintiff’s clearly established Fourth Amendment rights. Read Friedman v. Boucher, No. 05-15675 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted October 19, 2007 Filed June 23, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Thomas Dissent by Judge Callahan...

Chicagoland radio fans got a bit of a Supreme Court treat this morning. Chicagoans who turned their dial to 98.7 FM WFMT found themselves listening to a rare guest DJ: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Notorious RBG took over the airwaves as a guest host for the afternoon. This wasn’t your regular Top 40 tunes, though. Justice Ginsburg didn’t drop any gangsta rap (though she’s admitted she’s becoming more familiar with the genre)....

“One in six women will face some form of sexual violence in their lives – behavior that’s unacceptable for our society and on our platform. As a platform committed to providing safe transportation, we hold ourselves to a higher standard by designing products and policies to keep out bad actors, make riders and drivers feel safe, and react quickly if and when an incident does occur.” That sounds like a reassuring enough statement, coming from Lyft’s Head of Trust & Safety Mary Winfield, until you wonder why the statement was necessary in the first place....

In a trademark infringement action involving the enzyme-based dietary supplement Wobenzym, the District Court’s preliminary injunction requiring Defendant to cease selling a dietary supplement is affirmed in part, where Defendant did not meet its burden to prove that Plaintiff ceased production of the supplement; but vacated in part, where a District Court must find a substantial risk of danger to the public or other special circumstances in order to enter an interlocutory order recalling a product in a trademark infringement case....

In a petition for review of the BIA’s denial of petitioner’s second motion to reopen his removal proceedings, the petition is denied where the BIA correctly determined that 8 C.F.R. section 1003.2(d)’s post-departure bar divested it of jurisdiction to review a motion to reopen filed by a removed alien, like petitioner, even though relevant regulations allowed an alien to file one motion to reopen within 90 days. Read Mendiola v. Holder, No....

At the age of 18, young people can vote. They can go to war. They can play the lottery. They can even purchase a handgun, as long as that purchase occurs between private parties, where no background check is done. But if a young person, such as co-plaintiff Rebekah Jennings, a former member of the U.S. Olympic Development Team and decorated pistol marksman, wishes to purchase a handgun through legitimate retail channels, she is denied....

Criminal law is not a shell game, but it sure must look like it to Michael Daniel Cuero. He pleaded guilty to two felonies and was sentenced to 14 years and four months in state prison. However, the prosecutor missed a prior offense in the deal and amended the complaint. As a result, Cuero got 25 years to life in Kernan v. Cuero. A federal appeals court said he was entitled to the 14-year deal, but the U....

Justice Scalia’s former seat on the Supreme Court has sat vacant for 125 days, as of today. That makes it the third longest Supreme Court vacancy in the 20th century, lasting almost three times as long as the average vacancy of 55 days. And in the three months since President Obama nominated D.C. Circuit Chief Justice Merrick Garland to fill that seat, the Senate has held no official meetings, hearings, or votes on the nomination....

In Gueits v. Kirkpatrick, No. 09-2335, an assault prosecution, the court of appeals reversed the grant of petitioner’s habeas petition, holding that petitioner failed to demonstrate that the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, was unreasonable in its application of the ineffective assistance of counsel standard set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). As the court wrote: “Respondent Robert Kirkpatrick, Superintendent of New York State’s Wende Correctional Facility, appeals from the judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brian M....

You can file this under “Guidance Counselors’ I’m Glad I Never Had,” or whatever it is you call your miscellaneous crazy file (you know, the file were you keep print outs of the most ridiculous stuff you’ve read). Said guidance counselor published an adult “sex advice” book, and then was surprised when he lost his job as a tenured guidance counselor at a public school, in a Chicago suburb. Bryan Craig was a guidance counselor and women’s basketball coach at a public high school....

The goal of the Clean Water Act is fairly straight forward: to protect and restore the waters of the United States. But what counts as “waters of the United States” is often a tricky and highly contentious question. And if federal agencies determine that your isolated marsh, seasonal ponds, or agricultural slough are subject to regulation under the act, then a whole host of legal restrictions can suddenly apply. Yet, you may not be able to challenge that determination until years in the future....

The Supreme Court will finally return in less than a month, and when it does, it will start the next term with McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case that many are already calling Citizens United II for its possible impact on campaign finance reform. The facts of the case are simple. According to the FEC, Alabama resident Shaun McCutcheon would like to give large amounts of money to the Republican National Committee (RNC)....

In plaintiffs’ action against the school district for punishing their daughter for creating a internet profile of her high school principal on MySpace.com, district court’s judgment in favor of the school district is affirmed where: 1) Tinker applies to student speech, whether on- or off-campus that causes or threatens to cause a substantial disruption of or material interference with school or invades the rights of other members of the school community, and here, because the student’s internet profile featuring her principal alluded to his interest or engagement in sexually inappropriate behavior and illegal conduct, it threatened to substantially disrupt the Middle School regardless of whether the student’s role in creating the profile was criminal or tortious; 2) school district did not violate the parents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to direct and control the upbringing of their child; 3) Pennsylvania permits school authorities to discipline students for conduct akin to this student’s creation of the profile; and 4) the Middle School’s policies under which the student was punished were not unconstitutionally vague or overbroad....

The government may not be able to fix the stagnant domestic economy or the abysmal unemployment rate, but at least it can hold liars accountable for falsely claiming that they have received military medals for valor. Or can it? Earlier this month, a Maryland judge dismissed a case against Aaron Lawless, an Army and Marine vet who was named Glock’s 2008 Hero of the Year Award after falsely claiming to have earned four Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and one Silver Star while serving in Iraq....

A few years back, a firestorm hit the Internet – and by a firestorm, I mean a fire sale. A tablet, with specifications on par with the high-end Apple and Android devices of the time, priced at $499.99 to $599.99, would go on sale for as low as $99, as HP had decided to scrap its Touchpad line a mere month after it launched. Unsurprisingly, every retailer in the world sold out of Touchpads within hours....

The Ninth Circuit decided one environmental law matter and one concerning an arbitral award regarding telecommunications local exchange carriers. MacClarence v. EPA, No. 07-72756, involved a petition for review of the EPA’s order denying petitioner’s request that the EPA object to the issuance of a Clean Air Act Title V permit for pollutant-emitting activities at an oil and gas processing facility. The court of appeals denied the petition, holding that 1) the EPA Administrator’s conclusion that petitioner failed to provide adequate information to support his claim that the entire facility should be aggregated was not arbitrary or capricious; and 2) the Administrator’s order denying the petition properly set forth petitioner’s burden under 42 U....

When you have an opportunity to talk to your parents about their estate planning (or lack of it), make sure you are prepared. Often, these conversations happen when there is a family emergency, and it is too late to benefit from proper planning. If you can have a conversation about estate planning before something tragic happens, know what to say and not to say to your parents to help them with decision-making....