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A consumer watchdog group is trying to block Google’s controversial new privacy policy – by suing the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has until Friday to respond to the suit. The Electronic Privacy Information Center’s lawsuit seeks to compel FTC regulators to enforce the Commission’s 2011 settlement with Google, The Los Angeles Times reports. Google’s proposed privacy policy, set to kick in March 1, violates the settlement, EPIC’s lawsuit asserts....

The luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz is facing a similar diesel-gate to what Volkswagen went through, and it’s been ongoing for some time, but just not really on anyone’s radar. It is being alleged that certain models had software “defeat devices” that detected when the vehicle was being emissions tested and when it did, the vehicle would operate within the legally allowed emissions ranges for the test, but otherwise, the car would not....

E-discovery has come a long way since it first debuted. Papering your opponent has never been easier and no longer requires spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on copying and a crosstown courier. Now, it is routine for document dumps to be fully contained on a single flash drive, or DVD-ROM, or even in an email. However, while digitization makes e-discovery easier, the age of the internet has brought with it an entirely new language that lawyers and discovery professionals from coast to coast must learn to understand: Emoji....

The Supreme Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland this week, finding that lawsuits against states under the self-care provision of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) are barred by sovereign immunity. In addition to adding another affirmed notch to the Fourth Circuit’s belt, the decision has set off rumblings about increased odds of the Court striking down the Affordable Care Act....

Let’s talk hypotheticals. A client walks into your office, and says, “I want to hire you. And I will pay you 1 million Monopoly dollars for your services.” You would politely decline the offer, right? Now, let’s tweak that scenario. A prospective client saunters in and offers to pay you 1 million in Bitcoin to represent him. This might actually work. In the government’s eyes, Bitcoin is no more “real” than Monopoly money, but the financial markets think that it has value....

Social media has been known to cause problems. It can destroy a client’s divorce or lead to a mistrial. But sometimes, attracting media attention is the best way to serve your client. Social media campaigns have ended legislation; they’ve influenced death penalty cases; and they’ve led to renewed criminal investigations. They’ve even been known to shame businesses into doing the right thing. So how do you use social media to stir up a public outcry?...

Clifford Darden’s European Basketball career apparently didn’t go so well. In 2007, he committed two robberies. In the June robbery, he held up a convenience store and walked out with $300. In the July robbery, he walked out with $2,000 and a few bullets in his body, courtesy of an armed store clerk. When the police arrived, Darden admitted to committing the robbery. He reiterated his confession at the hospital....

In house and general counsel may be able to glean a lesson about how not to turn an ally into an enemy from the most recent shot fired in the mattress wars. Last year, when Mattress Firm decided to end its relationship with Tempur-Sealy, the makers of the Tempur-Pedic mattress couldn’t just lie still. As the bed-in-a-box ecommerce industry is still soaring, traditional mattress stores are taking a big hit to sales, and that pain is being felt across the industry’s major players....

Trial presentations using computers are fairly common now but wouldn’t it be easier if you could use an iPad instead of dragging around your laptop and get the same functionality? Enter the TrialDirector app for iPad released at the beginning of October. Maybe you already have the TrialDirector app for your iPhone or the desktop version of the software? If that’s true and you don’t already have the app for iPad, whatare you waiting for?...

President Trump’s most recent travel ban was halted yesterday evening by a federal judge in Hawaii, just hours before it was scheduled to go into effect. The executive order would have temporarily halted travel and immigration from six majority-Muslim nations, while stopping refugee resettlement generally. In a harshly worded ruling, Judge Derrick K. Watson halted enforcement of the ban nationwide, saying that any “reasonable, objective observer” would recognize the order as disfavoring Islam, “in spite of its stated, religiously-neutral purpose”....

Just before 2015 became yesterday’s news, the United States Copyright Office issued a statement of intended plans to open a public study meant to “evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the safe harbor provisions contained in section 512 of title 17, U.S.C.” For those who aren’t copyright law geeks, that’s part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These are the carve outs that allow online copyright use without first contacting the copyright holders....

District court’s imposition of a sentence of 78-months imprisonment upon a defendant convicted of money laundering and related crimes is affirmed where the district court’s sentencing was free from error, plain or otherwise. Read US v. Davila-Gonzalez, No. 08-2575 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico Decided February 10, 2010 Judges Before: Seyla, Boudin and Howard, Circuit Judges Opinion by Circuit Judge Seyla...

Defendants’ sentence and conviction for conspiring to defraud the US of employment and income taxes and to commit insurance fraud by use of the mails and for procuring false tax returns is affirmed where: 1) a denial of motion to suppress evidence found at a certain address was correct as the evidence was sufficient to support a finding of probable cause; 2) prosecutor’s remarks regarding a trial exhibit did not constitute reversible error; 3) district court did not commit reversible error by admitting into evidence summary testimony and charts; 4) district court did not commit reversible error by allowing the prosecutors to elicit out-of-court testimony identifying one of the defendants; and 5) district court did not err in including unpaid state taxes in the total tax loss amount used to calculate the base offense level for sentencing the defendants....

With the recent killing of the Obama-era net neutrality regulations, many law firms are probably wondering what is going to happen to their online marketing campaigns. More enterprising attorneys might even be wondering whether they can ride the dark side of the non-neutral net to get preferential ad placement. If net neutrality is left to die, the internet as we know it today could become a vastly different place where internet providers can manipulate speeds and access to certain content online....

The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a case earlier this week involving a copyright lawsuit between two Puerto-Rican television producers. The case is a typical “he-said/he-said” case centered around two very similar television shows about the antics and adventures of characters living within a condominium complex. But who was the real author of the show? And to whom did the copyright belong? When two shows are that similar but still have a few minor differences, is there copyright infringement?...

The verdict is in on a free new e-reader, custom-designed for lawyers. The Thomson Reuters ProView app for iPad promises to make legal research easier, with unique features that attorneys will appreciate. ProView boasts all the features of a regular iPad e-reader, like text searches, clipboards, and the ability to change fonts. But because ProView is specifically built for lawyers, it also touts features that other products can’t touch. Here are three ways Thomson Reuters ProView packs a punch for legal professionals:...

Drones have been around for some time now. What was perhaps the first aerial bombardment of a city involved a sort of proto-drone. In 1849, Austria employed “unmanned aerial vehicles” (balloons filled with remote-controlled bombs) against revolting Venetians. By the late 1950’s, the U.S. Air Force was routinely using unmanned aircraft during missions in hostile territory. But drones are just recently being embraced for business and recreational use, with non-military drones quickly outnumbering their combative counterparts – used more often for photographing scenic vistas than bombing neighbors....

The Senate confirmed Andrew Oldham to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by one vote, 50-49. But sometimes one vote is all it takes to change everything. For the Trump administration, the latest appointment is one more step in an overhaul of the federal judiciary. With Oldham, Trump has put three judges on the Fifth Circuit and a total of 44 nominees on the federal bench around the country. With another coming to the U....

Yes, it’s true. The Fifth Circuit finally decided that age old question: is a forklift a motor vehicle? The court in Boyett v. Redland Ins. Co. needed to answer this ludicrous metaphysical question because an insurance company wanted to use Louisiana law to try to foreclose any chance of a truck driver receiving compensation from a forklift accident. No dice insurers, a forklift is a motor vehicle. Clyde Boyett was a truck driver employed by Boeuf River hauling lumber in North Carolina....

What do you call an industry that has experienced a 5000% increase over the span of 9 years? Some may say saturated. But the e-discovery sector is not backing down, the players are looking to adapt, merge, and continue developing technology and practices in this popular junction of law and technology. The American Bar Association (ABA) reports that the electronic data discovery industry has expanded from featuring about a dozen providers in 2000 to the 600 that now reside in its domain....