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It’s not about the size of the company – it’s about the culpability and level of misconduct during the subprime mortgage bubble that preceded the 2008 financial crisis. That’s the message the Department of Justice is sending after today’s settlement with Citigroup. While the company opened negotiations with a $363 million offer, and the DOJ demanded $12 billion, the approximately $7 billion deal struck is this: a $4 billion civil penalty paid to the Justice Department, $500 million paid to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp....

We weren’t ready to declare BlackBerry dead. We had hopes for the once-leader, now-follower. They were the only company to take smartphones with keyboards seriously. They were also the only smartphone company not entangled in that PRISM nonsense. Plus, their BlackBerry 10 OS looks nifty, and can even run Android apps if you install them manually. That’s a lot of promise that will almost certainly not be realized. It’s been less than a month since BlackBerry (formerly known as Research in Motion) announced that it was looking to sell the company, or go private, or do anything to survive....

If you use a password protected Wi-Fi network, chances are you’re using a WPA2 password. Most consumer Wi-Fi routers and connected devices have been using the WPA2 standard for years. And until this past week, WPA2 was pretty much considered safe, but now, experts are warning Wi-Fi users about a new hack that threatens to unravel the core of WPA2 security. The KRACK hack exploits a process in the WPA2 protocols called the “four-way handshake....

In national news this week, London-based GW Pharmaceuticals has just secured the nation’s first ever FDA approval of a marijuana-based prescription medication. While a synthetic form of THC (the active psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) has been available for decades for chemo patients, and others with debilitating conditions, the new drug actually is derived from CBD, a chemical found in both marijuana and hemp and has no psychoactive effects. The new drug, Epidiolex, is meant to treat children ages two and up who suffer from two different rare medical conditions that cause severe seizures (that are often resistant to other drug treatments)....

Law isn’t the civil profession it once was. Comments are more personal, physical confrontation is not uncommon. But in one Alabama courtroom, civility rules, or at least it does until the trial starts. Or until Auburn plays in the BCS Championship game. An Alabama attorney as asked for, and received, “grace and mercy” from the court and found civility from opposing counsel as well. Recall please our recent post on a New York attorney who asked for a delay in the middle of a federal trial so he could attend the bris of his grandson, should such child be born a boy....

It sounds dirty, but everyone does it. Googling yourself, or “performing a vanity search” as they say in polite company, is incredibly common. It’s a rudimentary way to see what your internet footprint looks like, and to discover what kind of information Google has on you. Now, Google has finally given Googling yourself the attention it deserves. The search engine is adding a host of new features that make vanity searches much more helpful, to busy legal professionals and everyone else....

In the final scene of the last Star Wars movie, a promising Rey holds out a light saber to Luke Skywalker like a protege reaching for her master. Moviegoers won’t know how that relationship turns out until “The Last Jedi” is released in December, but it will definitely balance the forces of good and evil. Will the relationship go toward the Force or will it turn to the Dark Side?...

The FTC and VTech Electronics have reached a settlement related to the 2015 data breach that exposed millions of children’s and their parents’ personal information. The data breach resulted from internet-connected devices for kids, including handhelds, smartwatches, and a variety of apps and media. VTech reported is paying $650,000 to settle the FTC’s case. One significant problem involved VTech collecting information from kids without the consent of their parents in the first....

So if Mother England no longer bars nonlawyers from owning equity stakes in law firms, who are we Yanks to continue our ethical objections? After all, both the Constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789 incorporate “the common law,” i.e., the common law of England. The British, Australians, the District of Columbia, and maybe soon North Carolina, have discarded the ethical rule against nonlawyers owning equity stakes in law firms, reports the ABA Journal....

Award of attorney’s fees and sanctions against former police officers in their civil rights suit Lamboy-Ortiz v. Ortiz-Velez, 09-1640, concerned a challenge to the district court’s grant of $130,000 in attorney’s fees and over $60,000 in sanctions against plaintiffs and their counse, in former police officers’ suit against a mayor and various members of a police department, each of whom belong to the opposition Popular Democratic Party (PDP), in Puerto Rico, claiming that defendants conspired to deprive them of their civil rights and effectively remove them from the local police force....

While you’re reading this in the office, do you also have a Facebook window open? Are you Facebooking at work? You could be putting your law firm’s security and data at risk. It’s true. Malware has found weaknesses in social media security to infiltrate business organizations. There’s a proliferation social media apps and programs out there – so much so that it often is just easier to remember the biggies: Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Skype, etc....

Google and Microsoft should be mortal enemies, right? After all, in the world of office productivity, Microsoft’s Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the rest) has been the dominant program for a generation, despite challenges from Google. The competition is much more robust when it comes to consumer cloud storage, where Google Drive holds its own against Microsoft and Dropbox. There’s good news for fans of both Drive and Word, however....

In an action brought by plaintiff-longshoreman against defendant-employer, decision of the Department of Labor’s Benefits Review Board (BRB) is affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded where: 1) the evidence relied upon by the ALJ is, for the purpose of rebutting an allegation of an aggravation of a prior injury, no evidence at all; 2) an award of plaintiff’s attorney fees is remanded as it was an abuse of discretion for the BRB to look to an hourly rate appropriate ten years ago, arbitrarily adjusted with no regard to the fact of the case or the lodestar factors; and 3) BRB did not abuse its discretion to deduct 1....

Action Claiming Sexual Assault at Mental Health Facility In Rodriguez v. Christus Spohn Health Sys. Corp., No. 10-40371, an action alleging that, while receiving voluntary inpatient mental health treatment at defendant hospital, plaintiff was sexually assaulted by a staff member, the court vacated the denial of defendants’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss plaintiff’s state law claims based on government immunity where 1) plaintiff’s claim under Chapter 74 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code was a tort based on a statute that contained no independent waiver of immunity; 2) defendant was immune to any claim under Chapter 81 except as allowed by section 81....

Have you ever had that awkward scenario when, after billing clients, they call you, enraged at how the cost of your professional services? When you’re billing by incremental times, it’s easy to rack up a huge bill that can not only pad your pockets but shock your clients. Well, one attorney thought up a way to avoid these scenarios. He’s asking his clients how much they would like to pay him....

Proponents of a Confederate flag license plate for Texas drivers brought their case before the Fifth Circuit last week, hoping to renew their fight against the DMV which denied the controversial plate. According to The Associated Press, the Sons of Confederate Veterans renewed the fight in a case they had brought against the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in 2011 for rejecting their proposal to place a Confederate flag symbol on a “specialty plate....

Texas’ gay marriage ban has been challenged in federal court by two same-sex couples who filed suit in San Antonio on Monday. According to MySanAntonio.com, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes along with Cleopatra De Leon and Nicole Dimetman are suing to bar the state from enforcing Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage, arguing “[t]here is no rational basis” to deny the couples the right to marry. By far not the first suit of its kind, so what do the couples allege?...

Absent a last-second stay by the United States Supreme Court, Warren Lee Hill, a mentally retarded inmate who killed his girlfriend, and later, beat a fellow prisoner to death, will be executed. The Eleventh Circuit declined to review a motion to delay the execution once more, after they previously granted a stay, then denied his habeas corpus petition under the auspices of AEDPA procedural requirements. Hill’s situation might be the first of its kind....

It’s not a matter of mandates versus taxes. Nor is it a religious challenge. This time, it’s about Obamacare/Affordable Care Act subsidies, the ones that make healthcare affordable to low-income individuals. We’ve noted the general premise of these lawsuits repeatedly: the text of the statute appears to support the notion that unless a state forms its own healthcare exchange, no subsidies were supposed to be available. The IRS took a different view and reinterpreted the statute, making subsidies available to everyone, regardless of whether the person used a federal or state exchange....

For in-house and general counsel for major pharmaceutical companies, the recent deluge of lawsuits against opioid makers, like Purdue Pharmaceuticals, has likely resulted in panics around legal departments from coast to coast. If you don’t know the first thing about Purdue’s legal headaches, the local Burlington Free Press article provides a solid summary. But for those outside the pharmaceutical industry who might not be closely following the epidemic of opioid litigation related to the opioid epidemic, below you can read about a few key takeaways that can transfer across industries....