Posts

Be careful what you bill for. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas medical billing professional’s convictions for healthcare fraud this week, finding that there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict. Sylvia Delgado, a self-professed medical billing expert with 30 years of experience in medical coding and billing, owned a billing company called Med Comp Electronic Billing. Delgado formed Synergy, a business to provide group psychotherapy counseling to the elderly, with Licensed Master Social Worker Robert Rael and Dr....

You know about patent trolls – owners of questionable patents who file frequent frivolous lawsuits, often looking for a quick settlement from their corporate targets. We’ve seen patent trolls go after hapless wankers, giant companies like Apple and AT&T, and everyone who’s ever used a firewall. Now, Patexia, an intellectual property company that relies on crowdsourced subject matter expertise, is looking to help companies fight back. Patexia recently launched a “Coalition Funding Initiative” to help companies threatened by frivolous patent litigation share costs and knock out potential threats through inter partes review....

A federal appeals court refused to set aside the convictions of a Chinese man who blamed the government for deporting his main witness in a green card sting. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal said the jury had enough evidence to convict him even though his witness hadn’t testified. Moreover, the court said Kaixiang Zhu was responsible for his own predicament in United States of America v. Zhu. “Indeed, Zhu is in this particular fix because of his own decision to flee arrest and live as a fugitive in another part of the country for more than two years,” the court said in the per curiam opinion....

Be careful what you “like” on Facebook. This week, the social network filed a brief in a First Amendment retaliation challenge before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that Facebook “likes” are free speech, reports GigaOM. A district court previously dismissed the case, finding that clicking that tiny thumbs-up button was “insignificant speech” that did not involve “actual statements.” In 2009, Daniel Ray Carter, a deputy in Hampton, Virginia, clicked a Facebook icon to “Like” the “Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff” page....

More than 30 federal courts have ruled against state bans on gay marriage since Windsor. Until today, federal courts unanimously agreed that such bans were unconstitutional, regardless of the level of scrutiny applied – rational basis, intermediate, or strict scrutiny. U.S. District Court Judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman (a Reagan appointee) made note of the unanimity before straying from the course of his colleagues, noting, “It would no doubt be celebrated to be in the company of the near-unanimity of the many other federal courts that have spoken to this pressing issue, if this Court were confident in the belief that those cases provide a correct guide....

It’s a war out there in cyberspace. Everyone is vying for a piece of the pie – customer eyeballs and dollars. But what are some steps that the honest solo attorney can utilize to fight against that most annoying of opportunists, the cybersquatter? But you don’t have to give up when a cybersquatter takes over one of your desired domains. Fight back, with these quick tips that will help you shore up your good name against the attacks of online domain-name trolls....

A Supreme Court ruling outweighs an unpublished opinion from an administrative law judge (ALJ). Yes, that seems obvious, but we raise the point only because the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion this week in which it reversed a U.S. Department of Labor Benefits Review Board (BRB) decision that relied on an ALJ decision instead of binding Supreme Court precedent. Robert Green appeared before an ALJ in 2008 to request disability benefits for hearing loss incurred through loud noise exposure at Ceres Marine Terminals (Ceres)....

General Electric is suing Uptake Technologies, alleging the up-and-coming tech company is trying to steal its trade secrets. Uptake has lured away top talent from the industrial giant, GE claims, in a “ruthless scheme” to poach its executives. GE wants a judge to restrain the former employees from disclosing proprietary information. Courts will award damages when defendants take trade secrets. In this case, however, the plaintiff wants to stop it before it happens....

Oracle’s Java lawsuit against Google has come with a possibly hefty $6 billion price tag. Sun Microsystems, the original developer of Java, was bought out by Oracle. Oracle is now suing Google, claiming that the tech giant illegally infringed on Oracle’s Java patents by using Java in Google’s Android operating system, used in smartphones and tablet computers, reports Computerworld. In coming up with the damages estimate, Oracle employed Iain Cockburn, a professor at Boston University according to Computerworld....

For online publishers, the law giveth and the law taketh away. Just after the U.S. Supreme Court turned back a case challenging federal shield laws for online publisher Backpage, the embattled company shut down its adult services section under pressure from the U.S. Senate. On Monday, the high court let stand a decision against women who sued Backpage for facilitating child sex trafficking and left in place the Communications Decency Act that has protected website operators from liability for content posted by others....

A complaint is a complaint is a complaint. Most have captions, parties listed, and many have that line numbering along the side of the page that Word just loves to tinker with if you shift away from double-spacing. Some courts mandate certain fonts, font-sizing, spacing, and margin size. Let’s hope the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania doesn’t, because this complaint is a freaking work of art: font choices, formatting, bright red signature at the end – it’s all just so dang perfect....

She said she was pregnant. Her boss responded: “I guess these things happen. I suppose we have your honeymoon to blame for this?” Between good friends it might have been uncomfortably funny, but between an associate attorney and her superior at a big law firm, not so much. It led to a gender bias lawsuit that has settled. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, a Massachusetts firm with more than 300 lawyers, announced it settled the case....

Things just got a bit snitchier in the Empire State. In a recent ethics opinion, the New York State Bar Association has said that lawyers must report co-counsel’s mistakes to their client, should the other attorney’s error or omission rise to the level of potential malpractice. Here’s how the reasoning goes. The NYSBA’s ethics opinion shouldn’t be too surprising, given attorney’s own personal duty to communicate to clients “a significant error or omission by the lawyer in his or her rendition of legal services....

This is not your traditional summer camp. There are no ghost stories around the fire, no hiking through the woods, no macrame. Instead, the middle and high school students attending the NSA’s summer camp learn how to decrypt passwords, exploit network security flaws, and build robots. That’s right, as of Summer 2015, the NSA has a summer camp – and it’s turning America’s youth into an army of hackers. What could go wrong?...

A new FindLaw.com housing survey suggests more Americans are now poised to re-enter the housing market. As a result, real estate attorneys may soon be in hot demand. Just two years ago, 63 percent of survey respondents said they were less likely to buy a house because of the weak economy. Today, however, only 30 percent of Americans say the economy is keeping them out of the housing hunt, the survey found....

The First Circuit Court of Appeals has been asked to overturn a ruling that would transfer a Rhode Island man into the custody of federal officials in a death penalty case. Boston.com reports that the appeal was filed with the First Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week in the case of Jason Pleau. Pleau’s lawyers are appealing an order by federal Judge William E. Smith for the state of Rhode Island to hand over Pleau to federal officials so that he can stand trial in federal court....

There may not be another court to turn to for relief, but two-time Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen still won’t back down in a fight to force him to turn over his confidential sources for his 2006 book, “State of War,” which contained confidential CIA secrets regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The Fourth Circuit ruled against Risen last year, holding that Branzburg v. Hayes controlled and that there was no reporter’s privilege that would keep a reporter off the stand during grand jury proceedings....

Getting an emergency extension, especially for a trial date, is generally reserved for serious emergencies, like injuries, illnesses, disasters and catastrophes. Luckily for one Georgia lawyer, his judge considered the Georgia Bulldog’s Rose Bowl appearance to be good cause. In short, attorney J. Patrick Connell received, as the court lamented, a “generous” gift of a last minute trip to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl from his older brother. And despite the court noting some signs that the emergency extension could also be the result of poor preparation, the judge seemed all too excited to live vicariously through counsel....

If you have your own criminal defense firm, there is an article out in USA Today that you will definitely want to take a look at. According to an extensive investigation, federal prosecutors repeatedly withheld exculpatory evidence from the jury and the defendant. The article detailed several ways in which prosecutors covered up evidence. The misconduct included lying about or failing to disclose deals that they had made with convicts, whom they promised reduced sentences in exchange for their cooperation....

Conviction for drug and firearms crimes is vacated where: 1) the evidence was sufficient for a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that one defendant was guilty of knowing possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number; 2) the evidence was sufficient to support another defendant’s convictions for drug crimes and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, but was insufficient to prove the scienter requirement of his conviction for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime; and 3) the prosecutor’s challenged statements constituted misconduct, and the improper comments so poisoned the well that the trial’s outcome was likely affected and a new trial is warranted on the convicted offenses....