Add JPMorgan & Chase Co. to the list of banks being sued by the City of Los Angeles, and add one more headache for the banking giant, which has been plagued with legal troubles, most of which emerged from the London Whale trading scandal. This lawsuit, like a handful of others filed by Los Angeles, accuses big banks of discriminatory lending practices during the mortgage crisis and continuing through the present day....
Critical information is missing from an FBI report. According to analysts, the information is considered “the gold standard of crime data.” The Uniform Crime Reporting Program contains crime, arrest, and police data from around the country. But almost 70 percent of the data tables are gone from the latest report. Why did the FBI eliminate the tables? Missing Tables In its annual report, the FBI has eliminated data tables it usually provides....
Maine wants to eliminate Medicaid coverage for thousands of residents, but it has a small problem: It needs the federal government’s approval for the plan. So Maine took to the federal courts to demand “swift action” from the feds on its Medicaid waiver request, The Associated Press reports. Last week, Maine Attorney General William Schneider asked the First Circuit Court of Appeals to review the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ failure to act by Sept....
In plaintiff-wireless carrier’s case against a city, the city’s zoning board, and some of its members for denying a variance and special use permit to build a wireless communications tower in the city, district court’s judgment in favor of the plaintiff is affirmed as the zoning board’s decision was a final action for purposes of section 332(c)(7)(B) of the Telecommunications Act, and as such, the court did not err in finding that the zoning board’s decision had the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services....
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution of Domineque Ray, who was set to be executed in Alabama on February 7. And on February 7, SCOTUS overruled the circuit court’s stay. The circuit court had explained that the district court should have stayed the execution due to the violation of Ray’s religious freedom. Notably, the stay did not involve the merits of his case, which involve the rape and murder of a 15-year-old child....
On Tuesday, we looked at two recent “F U letters.” These letters, sent in response to legal claims that the recipient felt were lacking in merit, are not of the “let’s settle this peacefully” variety – they are of the die now, and die slowly variety. A well-crafted “F U letter” let’s opposing counsel know that, not only are any claims frivolous, but that if they proceed, you will destroy them....
District court judgment denying defendant’s motions for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence following his conviction for transporting a minor in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in sexual activity is affirmed where: 1) the victim’s postverdict corroboration of defendant’s defense theory did not constitute newly discovered evidence; and 2) defendant’s claim that his trial attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel because he did not contact the victim prior to trial to ascertain whether she would corroborate defendant’s testimony does not constitute newly discovered evidence, as defendant knew about it the time of trial....
The key to determining whether an employee’s pre- or post-employment activity is compensable is whether the activity is an “integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.” Nice sentence, but not terribly helpful. Thomas clarified that an integral and indispensable activity is “one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities.” For this reason, the Court has found in previous cases that putting on protective clothing at a battery factory and sharpening knives at a slaughterhouse are things that an employee has to do in order to do his job....
The nation’s largest retailer, of both discount goods and guns, doesn’t have to include a proposal from shareholders in its proxy materials, the Third Circuit ruled on Tuesday. A lower court had ruled that Walmart violated securities law when it refused to include a proposal by a shareholder and one of the nation’s oldest churches, Trinity Wall Street. The case is a reminder of the fine line between shareholder proposals which seek to change a business’s social policy, which are permissible, and those which seek to change its day-to-day operations, which a company may ignore....
Q: What is a JabberJury? A: The future jury of America. Well, maybe. JabberJury is a website that invites users to post their disputes online. Both parties upload videos explaining their side of the dispute, and then the site opens the floor up to an online jury that then comments, and eventually votes for a winner. Users also earn “Jabbies”–credits that can be redeemed for prizes, swag, or donated to charities, which means they show up willingly and ready to work....
Guest post by Jennifer K. Halford, Esq. Attorneys may use social media websites to research jurors as long as they do not have any communication with the juror, the New York City Bar Association recently announced in its ethics opinion 2012-2. Social media can be a great tool for attorneys. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites can reveal information about potential jurors. It can also help you monitor for signs of misconduct during trials....
Over the weekend, the Internet was abuzz with rumors that Snapchat, the insanely popular ephemeral picture- and video-messaging app, was hacked and that users’ pictures and videos would soon be released. While it may seem far-fetched that an app with self-destructing media would be hackable, you only need to look at the “fappening” (the iCloud celebrity photo hack) to see that “The Snappening” wasn’t too unfathomable, especially since the company has been hacked (for usernames and passwords, not photos and videos) before....
Alabama students won’t be subject to immigration status verification as they head back to school this year. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that the school immigration status verification provision of Alabama’s HB 56 violates the Equal Protection Clause, reports Education Week. The section at the center of this appeal, Section 28, requires Alabama’s public elementary and secondary schools to request certain documentation from enrolling children in order to classify them as either lawfully or unlawfully present within the United States....
If you thought you could ignore business analytics in your law practice, well, analyze this: Big Data, with more than 25 billion smart devices on the Internet of Everything, is getting bigger by the nano-second. Not even Big Brother can ignore the need for analytics to handle the information overload. Take, for example, the case of Gary Pusey. He pleaded guilty to insider trading last year after the Securities and Exchange Commission identified him by using analytics to pour though billions of rows of data going back 15 years....
Back in 2013, CNET learned that Apple had the ability to break the encryption on locked iPhones if it so desired. This led to a long waiting list of decryption requests by police eager to get at the juicy probative evidence inside (or failing that, a bunch of photos of the suspect’s brunch). Apparently fed up with this, Apple announced yesterday that a new encryption method employed iOS 8 means that it can’t decrypt a locked iPhone running iOS 8 even it wanted to – or was ordered to....
Given the dramatic legal corporate landscape surrounding the economic downturn, it should come as no surprise that compliance officers are in demand. Not only that, but the salaries of attorneys who work in compliance are growing at some of the fastest rates in the legal industry, according to the Robert Half 2014 Salary Guide. Another growing trend of compliance officers: A growing majority of people who hold that title are women....
Companies are allowed a certain amount of bluster (“puffery”) when making advertising claims. If those claims are demonstratively false, though, that’s when you get into trouble with regulators. AT&T claims that that its U-Verse DSL Internet service is the “fastest Internet for the price,” which is true – only if you’re talking about its 3 Mbps plan, the slowest one it offers. According to Ars Technica, Comcast – AT&T’s chief rival in the broadband Internet world – along with the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus told AT&T in a statement that its claim was misleading, even though technically correct (the best kind of correct)....
The United States is basically a two-party system. Republicans versus Democrats. Before that, there were Whigs, Federalists, and a few others, but for the most part, there has never been a true third party. Is it tradition? Popular preference and/or apathy? Or is it a matter of ballot access? Since the last election, we’ve seen lawsuit, after lawsuit, after lawsuit, most brought by the Libertarian Party, regarding access to the ballot....
FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. The Internet yields all sorts of disputes. Take the nine-year-old Scottish girl who was banned from posting photographs of school meals on her blog, which caused a firestorm of criticism. Martha Payne, who by now has had in excess of three million hits on her blog at NeverSeconds.blogspot.com, started posting photos of her Scottish primary school lunches at the end of April....
There are only a few things worse than sitting down to type out a motion, letter, or any other piece of writing and being struck with a case of writer’s block. However, for attorneys, the writer’s block problem is amplified because of the ethical issues surrounding billing. Can you bill the client for banging your fists against the keyboard while staring blankly at an empty word document? Like bathroom breaks, or other short breaks, whether continuing to bill your client while working through your writer’s block will depend on what you’re doing to do so, and what’s on your mind while doing it....
