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Though the disorderly conduct charges were later dropped, and Aaron Tobey made his flight, he still filed a lawsuit alleging violations of his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, as well as a Bivens claim, due to the hour or so that he spent in custody being interrogated by law enforcement and airport security. The district court held little sympathy for Mr. Tobey. It dismissed the Bivens, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims via a 12(b)(6) motion brought by the TSA, (citing qualified immunity), but allowed the First Amendment claim to proceed....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. More and more, people are migrating away from the traditional call-a-taxi model, and are instead searching on their smartphones for the closest Uber or Lyft vehicle. You might remember the Beatles’ lyric “Baby, you can drive my car,” and now Uber and Lyft drivers likely are singing to themselves, “Baby, you can ride in my car....

Earlier this year, we picked Lane v. Franks as our “SCOTUS sleeper” – a case nobody was talking about, but one that was extremely important for whistleblowers and workers’ speech rights. Edward Lane, the director of a state program for at-risk youth, noticed that a politician held a no-show gig at the local community college and fired her. He was subpoenaed to give testimony in her criminal trial. Lane was then laid off....

A deposition can win a case; everybody knows that, but few lawyers practice that way. Too often depositions are boring affairs from beginning to end with recitations that sound like mindless prayers: the “rules of the road,” the admonitions, the agony of repetition. That’s why depositions in high-profile cases are so important. Attorneys almost always up their game for a celebrity deposition. Lil Wayne Lil Wayne is not so little anymore, but his 2012 deposition is a classic....

In what could be an historic event in the history of American medicine, it appears that the Food and Drug Administration stands poised to approve the controversial procedures of mitochondrial replacement therapy, otherwise known as MRT, reports the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Babies who are born of this procedure inherit the genes of three parents – a fact that troubles some. The technique has already been legalized in the UK....

The internet has always been a place to experiment with identity, and maybe to fudge the truth a bit. Think of the Facebook teens claiming to be experts on international politics, for example, or the divorcee looking for love on a dating website, with pictures that are a decade or so old. That desire to embellish can sneak in to lawyer websites, too, and suddenly you’re no longer a solo practitioner, you’re “Lawyer and Associates;” you don’t just have a family law practice, you’re a leading expert in divorce....

You know not to threaten your clients, not to lie or break the law and not to fool around with trust accounts. But did you know there are hidden ways an honest lawyer can still get in ethical trouble? “Specialist” is a term of art in many jurisdictions. Up until 2002, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct prohibited lawyers from calling themselves specialists unless they were certified as such by their states....

In 2005, Halliburton hired Anthony Menendez to be the Director of Technical Accounting Research and Training in the Finance and Accounting department. Menendez trained field accountants and monitored accounting issues. A few months after he was hired, he reported to his boss, the Chief Accounting Officer (CAO), that some of Halliburton’s accounting practices deviated from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Over the next few months, he brought these concerns to the CAO’s attention but was told he wasn’t being a “team player....

Anyone familiar with Abercrombie & Fitch knows its branding; the ubiquitous black-and-white photos of the semi-naked, “attractive all-American kid” are in all of its stores and advertising. Well, no matter how much a company spends to build and maintain a “look,” it does not matter (for the most part) when religious accommodation is concerned. Abercrombie has learned this the hard way. Abercrombie has seen its share of controversy – whether it’s cultural or sexual insensitivity, according to the San Francisco Chronicle....

When it comes to giving AI control over recruiting and hiring, there’s a potential drawback that employers need to be aware of: racism, sexism and bigotry are all learned attributes, and machines can learn them too. In tech, this phenomenon of a machine providing bad results due to bad data is known as “garbage in, garbage out.” Teaching AI to Not Discriminate The big problem with AI and machine learning, at the moment, is the fact that systemic discrimination, both along race and gender lines, has been going on for so long and is so ingrained in society, that there’s almost no way for an AI to not pick up on it....

As if there the lawyers at Apple weren’t busy enough defending lawsuits and serving others with complaints, the maker of the iPhone has sued rival Samsung Electronics claiming that Samsung’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablet “slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad. The lawsuit, filed on Friday, alleges Samsung copied the look, product design and product user interface of Apple’s products, Reuters reports. The suit takes aim specifically at the Galaxy series of smartphones and tablet, as well as other Samsung smartphones for “copying” Apple’s user interface and design features, Reuters reports....

The federal district court in Maryland has ruled that the case against President Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., alleging unfair competition and violation of the emoluments clause, can proceed. Fortunately for the president, the court did limit the case only to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. That means Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties cannot be included in the lawsuit. Although a similar case out of New York had been dismissed for a lack of standing, the Maryland federal district court found that both D....

Accused NYC Madam Anna Gristina is still being held on a $2 million bond despite the fact attorney Peter Gleason claims she “doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.” The mother of four is accused of running a multi-million dollar high-end prostitution ring for almost 15 years. But on Monday, Gleason presented a solution to her problem. He offered to put up his $2.5 million TriBeCa loft as collateral for her release....

With the sale of Flickr to SmugMug, many users certainly expected some big changes, particularly as the service’s 1TB of free storage was just too good to be true to begin with. Unfortunately, for many Flickr users and the rest of the internet, Flickr’s newly announced policy culling the storage limit on free accounts from 1 TB to just 1,000 files has the potential to devastate the files backed by the Creative Commons....

In an action by the government against defendant-taxpayers to reduce to judgment federal income tax liabilities, dismissal of defendants’ claims of improper notice based on their attorney’s supposed failure to receive notice of tax liens and the IRS’s improper failure to consider an innocent spouse defense, is affirmed as the claims are foreclosed by res judicata and are without merit. Read Haag v. US, No. 08-1355 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts...

They say nothing in life is free, but this week FindLaw has a one-hour webcast on how to attract clients to your law firm’s website. The cost: zero dollars (i.e., it really is free). The free seminar, entitled “Websites That Work: Attracting the Clients Your Law Firm Desires,” will be held twice on Thursday, March 10. As you surely know, the Internet is often the first stop for an increasing number of legal consumers....

An en banc Eleventh Circuit yesterday struck down a Florida law that prevented doctors generally from asking their patients about gun ownership. The law was an unconstitutional restriction on the doctors’ free speech, the court ruled. The legal battle over that law, Florida’s Firearms Owners’ Privacy Act, earned the moniker Docs v. Glocks, after doctors complained that the law prevented them from properly screening patients and discussing possible health risks....

The impact of technology on legal practice isn’t just felt in eDiscovery, incriminating selfies, or AI junior associates – it’s also playing out in courtrooms. Tech’s impact in the courtroom ranges from cutting edge, still hypothetical applications like virtual reality crime scenes, to everyday uses like electronic filing and electronically displayed evidence. But how are judges, often considered tech-averse, responding to these changes? They love them, according to a recent survey by the New York City Bar Association, but they also don’t always use tech to its fullest potential....

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last term in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum has already put the kibosh on one Alien Tort Statute (ATS) claim in the Eleventh Circuit: In that case, the court said that Kiobel foreclosed using the ATS where all the conduct took place outside the United States. In front of a different three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit, plaintiffs in Baloco v. Drummond Company argued that Drummond, an American coal mining company, “aided and abetted or conspired” with Colombian paramilitary forces by paying the paramilitary to murder several Colombian union leaders at Drummond’s Colombian mines....

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a cheerleader who refused to cheer at school events for her alleged rapist does not have to pay the originally-awarded attorney’s fees to the parties she sued following the alleged rape. In October 2008, H.S., a student and member of the cheerleading squad at Silsbee High School, was allegedly sexually assaulted by two classmates, Bolton and Rountree, at a private party....