Former Judge Richard Posner may have retired, but he definitely is not going away. He ruled for almost 37 years at the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, then abruptly turned his attention to reforming the court system by helping pro se litigants. However, the U.S. Fourth Circuit said his “advisory counsel” services were “not needed.” But not even a federal circuit, where Posner loomed large for decades, can keep him out of the courtroom....
Cher famously lamented her inability to change the past. If she could have turned back time, she would have taken back the words that hurt her lover, and he would have stayed. Don’t we all have those regrets? We all make mistakes, particularly with email. We send messages without attachments. We click the wrong name as the recipient field auto-populates. (Who doesn’t get tripped up by auto-populate in an office where everyone is named Andrew or Stephanie?...
You’ve brought some fresh blood into your firm. But if your new associate is new to the law, they come to you not-fully-formed. What are you supposed to do with this unshapen lump of lawerly potential? Mold it, of course! And that takes training. If you’re looking to set up an associate development program (and if you have fresh associates, you really need a training system) here are some ways to get it done....
In early October, negotiators finally put the finishing touches on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP is the largest regional trade agreement ever, binding 12 Pacific nations and 800 million people, and effecting 40 percent of global GDP. But the text of the agreement remains a secret – except, that is, the parts that have been released by WikiLeaks. The “public secrets” website has published the text of the TPP governing intellectual property rights, raising concerns that the partnership’s treatment of intellectual property could harm the public interest....
In a wire fraud prosecution, the District Court’s denial of Defendants’ motion to dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy grounds is affirmed, where the Court of Appeals’ earlier reversal of the verdict was premised narrowly and solely on the failure of the honest services charge against Defendants, and did not preclude other theories. Read the full decision in US v. Brown, No. 08-20038. Appellate Information: Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of TexasFiled on June 17, 2009...
Here’s some simple advice: when you’re considering referring a client to other attorneys, keep your worst ones to yourself. If your client has a week case, is difficult to work with, or has a tendency to struggle with timely payment, few attorneys would want you to send them their way. This friendly reminder to not pass your bad clients off to other attorneys comes from Randall Ryder, a consumer lawyer in the Twin Cities....
Power in a law firm isn’t found just in the wood-paneled, reporter-lined corner office, but right behind the front desk. A law firm’s receptionists isn’t just the first face visitors see when they arrive, he or she is also the cornerstone of a successful office. Your receptionist matters, so be sure you pick the right person for the job. If you’re currently hunting for a new receptionist, put candidates with these characteristics at the top of your list:...
The Fourth Circuit reversed a criminal conviction last week because the defendant’s lawyer snoozed through a significant portion of the trial. Nicholas Ragin had been convicted by a federal jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, and sentenced to 30 years for his involvement in prostitution and drug rings. But his lawyer, Nikita Mackey, napped through several parts of his trial. The attorney’s somnolence was so bad, the Fourth Circuit ruled, that Ragin did not need to show that he was actually prejudiced....
In an action alleging sex discrimination against the director of certain medical clinics, judgment for plaintiffs is affirmed in part where: 1) the evidence of defendant’s harassment of other parties was highly probative to demonstrating a systemic pattern of discrimination at the clinics and relevant to all plaintiffs; and 2) the court of appeals could not conclude that the hearsay testimony admitted by the district court had more than a slight effect on the jury’s verdict....
Apple was hit with a $23.6 million loss in federal court on Tuesday, with a ruling that the tech company infringed on five patents owned by Mobile Telecommunications Technologies (MTel). According to Inside Counsel, the Texas federal court found that Apple infringed on five of MTel’s two-way pager network patents from the ’90s by using MTel’s tech in its iPhones and “other devices.” So iPads and iPods? In any case, Apple has to pay up for six years of patent infringement....
Note to self: applying electric current to one’s heart via a Taser can disrupt the heart’s normal operation. Such a notion makes sense – after all, when a person’s heart stops, the remedy is often to use a defibrillator to shoot bursts of electricity into the patient’s heart to “jump start” it. However, for a time, it was thought that the X26 Taser was incapable of disturbing a person’s heart rhythm....
You may or may not allow your firm employees to surf Facebook and Match.com. You want to give them some online freedom. But where (or how) can you best draw the line? Software written for large firms is too expensive and inefficient for a smaller law firms, which usually has five or fewer networked computers. And large systems might not combine protection from external attack with protection from inefficient and dangerous employee web usage....
This just in from the hilarity department: Police departments nationwide have, for years, been spending taxpayer money to distribute what is essentially malware to unsuspecting parents who want to monitor their kids’ online activity: a little program called ComputerCOP. The extensive report comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Deeplinks Blog, which investigated ComputerCOP, a piece of “software” that has been around for 15 years. For the last few years, it has included a keylogger that transmits everything your child (or anyone using that computer) types, unencrypted, to a remote server, making it easy for any snooper on a wireless network to snatch up your sensitive data....
In an action seeking the proceeds of a maritime insurance policy, partial summary judgment for defendant, holding that the measure of indemnity was limited under the policy to the amount by which the payments to the holders of the priming liens for necessaries reduced plaintiff’s recovery on its mortgages, is affirmed in part where the policy did not allow recovery of consequential damages. However, the order is reversed in part where the difference in values was not to be determined solely by the proceeds recovered from the foreclosure sale at issue....
A friend of ours once worked for a Philadelphia criminal defense attorney who joked that he was going to write a book on how to properly conceal a weapon in a car. Every time the attorney challenged an automobile search, police officers offered the same explanation: I saw something that looked like a gun underneath the seat. In this book-writing alternate universe, the attorney wasn’t trying to enable criminal activity; he was mocking the local cops’ abuse of the automobile exception and plain view doctrine....
Let’s call this new hack Christine. In 1983, Steven King released a novel of the same name, describing a vintage Plymouth Fury possessed by supernatural, murderous powers. The movie followed soon after. Three decades later and a vulnerability in General Motors’ OnStar system allowed very non-supernatural hackers to take over cars from afar, locating the vehicle, unlocking it, and starting its ignition. Thankfully, OnStar was not connected to a vehicle’s steering, brakes, or transmission, meaning hackers couldn’t use the security gap to rundown teenagers a la Christine....
While you may have not even known this industry even existed, the FTC is concerned that a pigment maker’s merger with another pigment maker worth an estimated $1.67 billion violates antitrust law. The pigment in question is used to color paints and plastics and other products white, and provide opacity. And unfortunately for Tronox and National Titanium Dioxide Company (a.k.a. Cristal), the two pigment makers, a recent ruling from the D....
Union Pacific Railroad lost an unconstitutional taking claim against the State of Louisiana last week in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Louisiana prevailed in this railroad crossing case with the reliable state standby, Eleventh Amendment immunity. In 2008, the Louisiana Legislature passed a law requiring that all railroad companies obtain permission from the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) before closing or removing private railroad crossings. The law mandated that railroad companies file a written request to the LPSC, and the owners of record of the private crossing, detailing the manner in which the crossing unreasonably burdens or substantially interferes with rail transportation....
Knock, knock, Neo. Behind the screen you are looking at right now, another world is knocking. It’s not the Matrix; it’s the internet. And it is blowing up in a debate about the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. On one side, Comcast, AT&T, and ISP lobbyists are heaping praise on Ajit Pai, who was appointed FCC chairman by President Donald Trump. On the other side, consumer groups, public interest advocates, and the media are hating on the new appointee....
District court’s order vacating an arbitrator’s award in favor of a union on the ground that the arbitrator exceeded his authority by adding a term to the underlying contract is reversed and remanded as, even if the arbitrator erred, he acted within the scope of his authority under the contract. Read PPG Indus., Incorp. v. Int’l Chem. Workers Union Council of the United Food and Commercial Workers, No. 08-2180 Appellate Information...
