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This is a wee bit ridiculous. New Orleans Attorney Stuart Smith, a notable environmental lawyer, apparently hates noise, fun, and cabaret shows. Robert Watters owns Rick’s Cabaret and opposes strict noise ordinances in the French Quarter. On its own, this dispute is unremarkable. Except Smith allegedly sent a text message to Watters and is now being charged with cyberstalking. What Was the Message? “I have had your troubled history investigated,” Smith wrote Watters on Feb....

In the frenzied environment of the Silicon Valley startup, employees join the company even though they’re not sure when their paychecks will arrive, if ever. Many startups aren’t even financially viable for a while (if ever). But how do you explain not paying wages at the company’s inception? If you’re Pandora, you just don’t pay them, and later claim you didn’t know that was illegal. According to Business Insider, Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren admitted at a San Francisco startup conference that, between 2002 and 2004, it didn’t pay its 50 employees at all....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. With potential reforms in the wind with respect to government surveillance practices, the National Security Agency (NSA) has issued a seven-page report that seeks to explain and justify its conduct. The report, titled “The National Security Agency: Missions, Authorities, Oversight and Partnerships,” begins with a quote from President Obama that calls for “reviewing the authorities of law enforcement, so we can intercept new types of communication, but also build in privacy protection to prevent abuse....

If you want to bring a loaded gun with you to a federal dam or reservoir, expect to be turned away. Except for hunting and target range purposes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls most federal water resource development projects, doesn’t allow for loaded firearms on Corps lands. Explosives are banned too. Save those for the National Parks. For Second Amendment advocates in the Eleventh Circuit, that restriction “completely destroys” their right to bear arms....

A federal judge allegedly gets into a physical fight with his wife. A lawyer gets “seized” at a security checkpoint when she refuses to take off her coat. A child pornographer gets a rehearing because his lawyer was late coming back from lunch. These were among the most-viewed posts in FindLaw’s U.S. Eleventh Circuit Blog this year (though, honestly, a lot of really good ones were missing; c’mon folks, what’s wrong with bagel envy?...

Organized labor affects us all, from in house attorneys to the poor, stranded BART riders in San Francisco. (A local radio station coined a new phrase today: “calling in BART.”) And if your company deals with organized labor, you may have experience dealing with “top down” unionization or compulsory union dues. Both of those things could become a thing of the past after the Supreme Court hears two landmark labor cases this term: Unite Here Local 355 v....

When it comes to technology and the law there are plenty of unanswered questions. Some of these we’ll have a long time to ponder. We can debate, for example, the legal implications of robot intelligence for a few years still. Others are more urgent, like who owns the patent on one of the most promising gene editing techniques, or how should the law respond to self-sailing ships. All of them, we think, are interesting....

Defendants’ criminal contempt convictions are affirmed where: 1) the record did not indicate that the trial judge failed to consider the recusal standard under 28 U.S.C. section 455(a) in denying defendants’ motion to recuse; 2) the district court’s instruction to the government to prosecute defendants for criminal contempt did not indicate prejudgment of the case; and 3) a district court’s statements on the evidence at sentencing may not be considered as an accurate reflection of the district court’s view of the evidence during trial....

In a case arising from the huge accounting fraud conspiracy at HealthSouth Corporation, defendant’s securities fraud sentence is vacated on appeal by the government where the purely probationary sentence imposed by the district court was patently unreasonable in light of defendant’s role in the massive corporate fraud at issue. The court of appeals further rules that any sentence of probation would be unreasonable given the magnitude and seriousness of defendant’s criminal conduct, and only the imposition of a meaningful period of incarceration will achieve Congressional sentencing goals....

Conviction for False Statements to Bank Reversed In US v. Rabhan, No. 09-60683, the court reversed defendant’s conviction for conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. section 1014 by making material false statements for the purpose of influencing a federally insured bank and a U.S. agency in connection with a loan to procure a catfish farm in Mississippi where the government failed to rebut defendant’s prima facie showing that the conspiracies charged in Georgia and Mississippi were a single conspiracy....

Call it poetic justice. Allan Monga, a Maine high school student, won the state’s Poetry Outloud Competition. But the sponsoring organization said he could not compete at the national level because he was not a permanent resident. Monga complained in federal court that it wasn’t fair, and the judge agreed in Monga v. National Endowment for the Arts. The student provided poetry; the judge added justice. Pending Asylum When Monga left Zambia in 2017, he came to America seeking asylum....

The Onion recently joked that Congress forgot how to pass a law, but to the contrary, “Do Not Track Me” legislation was introduced today by Rep. Jackie Speier. The bill is designed to allow consumers to block unwanted tracking of personal information online. Under the bill, the Federal Trade Commission would be charged with enacting and enforcing new regulations that would provide consumers with ways to block companies from tracking their internet activities and privacy information....

If you missed your flight to NYC for this year’s Legaltech New York conference, there’s no need to miss out on some of the legal innovations that were presented there. In one of the more interesting Legaltech events, nine startups gathered for “Legal Disruption Lightning Rounds.” (Think “Shark Tank” but without the proprietary content.) These start ups seek to change how we we settle disputes, draft contracts, and record fulfillments. Here are three that stand out to us....

Insurance policies are written to favor the insurer by including coverage exclusions, and the courts won’t help beneficiaries litigate around them. Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision to deny a widow’s claim on an accidental death insurance policy, finding that the insurer did not have to pay under the policy’s alcohol exclusion After a night of heavy drinking, Wesley Vincent was found face-down in front of his house by his wife, Cheryl Likens....

You can have plenty of clients, unparalleled courtroom success, a stellar reputation – and your firm can still go belly up. That’s because running a law firm requires business skills on top of your legal ones. And many lawyers simply don’t know how to tell if their business is doing well or not. Enter KPIs, or “key performance indicators,” signposts that can help you know whether your firm is thriving or diving....

Last week, the president of Chick-Fil-A publicly came out with an ant-gay stance saying that his company stood behind the “biblical definition” of the family unit. And just to show that this was not a random sound bite taken out of context, the company’s president, Dan Cathy, then reiterated his stance during an appearance on a popular radio show. In an effort to mitigate the damage from Cathy’s large foot in his mouth, Chick-Fil-A issued a statement via Facebook saying that it would leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government, reports the Huffington Post....

When Joca-Roca Real Estate and Robert Brennan entered into a contract back in 2005, the contract contained an arbitration clause. No biggie: Arbitration clauses are everywhere, especially now that we know they trump state contract law in some important ways. But what else do they trump? Do they trump the common law doctrine of waiver? No, they don’t, said the First Circuit Court of Appeal in a case decided Monday....

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a rehearing in a retaliation and constructive discharge lawsuit this week. While that may not seem like big news, rehearing would have been an opportunity to reexamine the court’s 2010 Smith v. Xerox Corporation ruling. In Smith, the court held that a plaintiff could use a mixed motives theory in a Title VII retaliation case. Dr. Naiel Nassar was a member of the faculty at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW), which is affiliated with Parkland Hospital....

On the heels of the Google walkout protesters getting one of their important demands met, Facebook announced that it too will follow Google’s lead and end mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment claims. Now, at both Facebook and Google, an employee bringing a sexual harassment claim has the option to proceed via arbitration or the courts. Additionally, at Facebook, a new policy was announced requiring management level employees (at director level or above) to report if they date someone within the company....

The parents of a young boy injured during birth lost their appeal to the First Circuit last Friday, largely due to lack of evidence to support their claims. The family appealed, arguing that the court had error in not presenting their preferred jury instructions and not allowing them to use leading questions against a nurse present at delivery. In both cases, the parents failed to present evidence to show that the lack of leading questions was prejudicial or to support the legal theory underlying their jury instructions, the First Circuit ruled....