Posts

If you had hoped to take administration of the Clean Water Act into your own hands, you may be out of luck. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that the Clean Water Act does not allow citizen suits to enforce the conditions of a §1344 permit. The Corps issued the Program a permit, allowing it to dredge Bayou Postillion in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. Dredging activities such as those allowed under the Program’s permit result in “spoil banks,” which are large piles of dredged material that must be deposited along the sides of the Bayou....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. In this electronic age, we leave our digital footprints practically everywhere we go on computers and online. What are the limits to data retention and when should our footprints be wiped clean? This question perhaps raises even more questions instead of a firm answer. Once upon a time, what we said and how we acted was not recorded in any real way....

Before the internet age, discovery was a matter of digging through endless paper files. But the problem is that paper can be shredded, torn, burnt. In today’s digital world, electronic forensic evidence abounds in every nook and cranny – sometimes with great overlap. Small firms must use some creativity to know where to look when dealing in the digital discovery game. These days, it helps to know exactly what digital footprints you should be tracking....

In US v. Williams, No. 07-20689, the Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant’s murder convictions, on the grounds that 1) the Government’s articulated reasons for striking a veniremember were supported by the voir dire transcripts; and 2) it was not clear error for the district court to include defendant’s first trip, during which he transported approximately 60 unlawful aliens, as part of the relevant conduct. However, the court vacated in part, holding that the district court erred in its definition of “act of violence” under the Federal Death Penalty Act and, under the correct definition, the evidence at trial cannot support a finding that the requisite threshold intent was met....

First came the Fair Sentencing Act reform. Then came disputes over whether crack sentencing reform was retroactive. Now, a third wave of relief for nonviolent drug offenders is on the way, after Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama administration, and the Department of Justice announced that a new clemency program that will prioritize applications from nonviolent low-level offenders who meet a specific list of criteria. As part of the program, there will be a change in leadership in the DOJ’s pardons department, as well as a call for pro bono assistance for as many as 23,000 potentially qualifying inmates....

What good is a deadbolt lock on your front door when the back door is missing and the house keys are sitting inside, in plain sight? It’s not a perfect analogy, but its pretty close to the situation many Apple users are in, without even knowing about it. Earlier this year, Apple released two-factor authentication. It was heralded, as all two-factor implementations are, because as more and more of our data (and our clients’ data) move to the cloud, there is more and more to lose from someone cracking a simple password....

Eric Sinrod is a partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris LLP (http://www.duanemorris.com) where he focuses on litigation matters of various types, including information technology and intellectual property disputes. His Web site is http://www.sinrodlaw.com and he can be reached at ejsinrod@duanemorris.com. To receive a weekly email link to Mr. Sinrod’s columns, please send an email to him with Subscribe in the Subject line. This column is prepared and published for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice....

In house counsel counting of the benefit of attorney-client privilege were dealt a decisive blow this week by the European Court of Justice, the European Union’s highest court. The ECJ soundly rejected arguments from a Dutch chemical company that had asserted attorney-client privilege, or legal professional privilege, over communications between employees and in house attorneys. The ECJ’s advocate general issued an advisory opinion in April which meant that the court was likely to rule in favor of limiting attorney-client privilege when asserted by in house counsel....

Here’s what’s not interesting about this case brought by the EEOC: An employee was forced to retire because of his religious beliefs. A West Virginia jury found in favor of the employee, Beverly R. Butcher Jr., and awarded him $150,000. Here’s what is interesting about this case: Butcher’s employer, Consol Energy, wanted to implement biometric hand scanning for time and attendance tracking. Butcher, an evangelical Christian, said such hand scanning would assign “the Mark of the Beast” referenced in the Bible....

Sur, yu can start a law prac part-tim. If you understood that last sentence, then you know what I’m saying: “Sure, you can start a law practice part-time.” But it is going to be missing a few things – like hours during the day – so you’ll have to fill-in some blanks to make sense of it. Here are a few pieces of advice: Part Time, Full Commitment “The single-most-important thing about starting a part-time law practice is the single-most-important thing about starting a full-time law practice: don’t half-ass it,” says Sam Glover for the Lawyerist....

The Illinois State Bar Association has released two reports recently that reflect negatively on solo or small firm attorneys. One report (loosely) ties student loan debt and small firm economics to unethical conduct. The other shows that the vast majority of disciplined attorneys are solo or small firm practitioners. As for that other odd argument about unethical conduct, we’d have a hard time outdoing Carolyn Elefant’s disemboweling of such a logically flawed argument, but the key points are this: anecdotal evidence means little, especially when actual evidence from the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission doesn’t back the theory....

“Alien reporting requirements” – a terrifying phrase for immigrants in the U.S. The phrase becomes particularly ominous given the fact that it was completely misinterpreted by an immigration court in Alan Soares Renaut v. Loretta E. Lynch. How is that possible, you ask? Aren’t the reporting requirements simple enough? Here’s the requirement at issue: as an alien in the U.S., you’re required to give the government a valid mailing address. If your address changes, you must inform the government of that change....

It is an old feud with a new twist. Bock & Hatch used to share work with Anderson& Wanca against companies that sent out unsolicited faxes. The alliance broke up with bad blood years ago. In Technology Training Associates v. Buccaneers Limited Partnership, that feud is back in the news. Now the case is more about the lawyers than the litigants. Bad Blood The story dates back years ago, when the law firms paired up to pursue class actions against companies that violated federal telemarketing laws....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. Let’s face it, the Internet can be a scary place from a risk standpoint. Indeed, it seems that on practically a daily basis we hear about a massive security breach and the theft of sensitive and personal data. Still, such technologies and policies never are perfect in terms of creating a silver bullet against all cyber risks....

How do you secure your smartphone from government spies? The only sure answer might be to remove the battery, then crush the phone with a sledgehammer. Leaked documents from the Snowden files, provided to German magazine Spiegel show that the NSA has, and continues to, hack into every major smartphone platform, including security stalwart BlackBerry. The hacks range from decrypting secure messages to gathering stored location data. The agency has working groups that target each platform, adapting their hacks and malware for each security update....

In a capital habeas matter, denial of petitioner’s habeas petition is affirmed where: 1) given the overwhelming aggravating evidence, the state courts’ conclusion that no reasonable probability had been shown that, but for petitioner’s lawyer’s alleged lack of investigation, the trial court would have failed to sentence petitioner to death, was a reasonable application of clearly established federal law; 2) the trial court did not clearly err in determining that a juror was credible in testifying that she would apply the law fairly; and 3) a question that potentially injected a non-statutory aggravating factor into petitioner’s case was harmless....

In an age where it seems like surveillance just keeps getting more surveill-ey, the Florida Supreme Court has hit the brakes on the common police practice of using live cell phone location data to track a person’s movements in real time. Police had obtained a both a pen register and a trap-and-trace order to track the numbers Shawn Tracey was calling on his cell phone. A month later, the order had expired, but nevertheless, police accessed the real-time cell site location information of Tracey’s cell phone without a valid order....

Boies’ bluster is still blustery. And it may be having the opposite of the desired effect. Last week, we told you about the letters noted litigator David Boies has sent on behalf of Sony to numerous media outlets. The letters basically threaten to rain down fire and brimstone upon anyone who reports on or posts information that was stolen in the big hack that has been the story in the news for the past few weeks....

And now looking to the friendly skies, Southwest Airlines last week confirmed its plan to submit a bid for the bankrupt Frontier Airlines. By getting the nonbinding proposal off the ground, in line with the bankruptcy court’s requirement, Southwest can now officially check-in with Frontier to request information and documents as part of its due diligence efforts to research the company. Southwest may be number one in daily domestic flight operations, but it came in second in making a move for Frontier....

Do you miss the days of the floppy disk? Neither do I. I remember when it was normal to have a box of those things on your desk, with different labels for different groups of documents. Today, even USB memory sticks are becoming obsolete. Now, you can keep everything in the cloud. I’ve long advocated, Dropbox, a Web-based service that uses cloud computing to sync, store and share files and folders across the internet....