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There is a change in the weather, and it goes beyond climate change. In a setback to an older generation, young people won a round in their lawsuit against the United States over global warming. They allege the government has knowingly let carbon dioxide destabilize the climate, and denied them the right to live in a habitable environment. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the government’s motion to dismiss was premature, and remanded the case to the trial court....

Over the course of a few years, a high school student named J.S. began having a sexual relationship with his teacher, Thomas Keelan. Suspecting an inappropriate relationship, J.S.’s parents enrolled him in a treatment program. After completing the program, J.S. decided to cooperate with law enforcement. J.S. made a wiretapped phone call to Keelan, who then drove down to Florida to have sex. Guess what? Busted! On appeal, Keelan challenged the trial court’s restitution order requiring him to pay for J....

Ever since City of Renton v. Playtime Theaters, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed cities to zone out of existence businesses it didn’t like, as long as the city was nominally zoning based on “secondary effects” and not targeting a particular kind of expression. In Renton, it was – and this gives you an idea how old the case is – an “adult” theater. From the First Circuit, Showtime Entertainment v....

With the proliferation of social media, more and more employers are turning to Facebook to investigate and fire their employees. As you may know, there’s a huge difference between suspecting that an employee is doing something against the rules and actually proving it. But thanks to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, GCs and HR managers can now use an employee’s own words or images against him. Here are three ways that Facebook has been used to investigate the suspected wrongdoings by employees:...

Our “SCOTUS Week” coverage continues with the Fourth Circuit, where the Court has granted certiorari in four cases, with a massive amount of petitions still pending, according to CertPool’s tracker. And while some of those pending petitions are likely grants and will be among the most heavily watched of the Court’s cases (we’re thinking King v. Burwell, the Obamacare subsidies case specifically), today we’re looking at the birds in hand, not the ones in the bush....

Staying on top of continuing legal education classes is a problem no corporate counsel wants to deal with. Well good news, GC Advisor for your iPad can take the hassle out of this chore. The new free app from Thomson Reuters was designed exclusively for in house counsels. It gives users direct access to CLE-accredited webcasts from West LegalEdcenter via RSS feed. Over 25,000 lawyers used LegalEdcenter every year to stay on top of their requirements....

California may soon join other states that have made blockchain records legally enforceable, including smart contracts and electronic signatures. Under California’s Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, proposed legislation expands the definition of electronic records to include blockchain and electronic signatures. Blockchain, which is like electronic DNA, creates an electronic ledger of the origins and history of records. It is the same technology that makes bitcoin a trustworthy virtual currency. For many lawyers, blockchain is becoming the best way to create verified documents....

In California, court budget cuts have become a grim reality. San Francisco Superior Court Presiding Judge Katherine Feinstein has announced some very bad news - around 40% of the court’s staff will be laid off, accounting for more than 200 employees. And, around 25 courtrooms will be closed, reports the Courthouse News Service. The cuts came after announcement by the California Legislature approving of a new $150 million budget cut for the court system....

The concept of ultra vires has generally protected corporate directors from shareholder lawsuits on the ground that the corporation acted outside the scope of its authority. But what if a corporation wants to spend extra money ensuring that, for example, its supply chain is conflict-free? It’s probably cheaper to employ slave labor in other countries than it is to contract with manufacturers that are engaging in humane business practices. Arguably, failing to cut costs to the bone impedes shareholder profits and might be grounds for a lawsuit....

Perhaps you’ve heard of Patreon, the crowd-funding site that helps online artists and content creators establish a monthly income from masses of low-level subscribers. The website allows content creators to make profile pages and request support for their creative endeavors in the form of pledges. In return for their pledges, supporters are often treated to exclusive content or other rewards. But most of the supporters don’t do it for the swag; they support their favorite content creators in order to see them continue to thrive and create....

Maybe sometime in e-history, a government worker thought the cost to access a court document electronically should be roughly the same as the cost to print a page. At least for Public Access to Court Electronic Records: PACER charged 7 cents a page in 1998. The fee increased incrementally thereafter, and today it is 10 cents a page. It’s about the same you pay to copy a page at the courthouse copy machine, which is stocked with paper by the court....

Vila v. US Atty. Gen., No. 08-16013, concerned a petition for review of the BIA’s denial of petitioner’s application for a waiver of inadmissibility. The Eleventh Circuit denied the petition on the ground that, because petitioner’s approved I-140 visa petition did not make him a lawful resident under section 212(h) when the Immigration and Naturalization Service formally approved his application for adjustment, petitioner did not lawfully reside continuously in the U....

EMC is getting a Dell, dude. Lots and lots of them, probably. Dell Inc. announced today that it has completed its $60 billion merger with EMC, the data storage company. The news marks the culmination of the largest technology sector merger ever and leaves Dell, with $74 billion in revenue, as the largest privately controlled tech company in the world. Evolving With Computer Technology Dell became one of the world’s biggest tech companies on the strength of its computers....

In US v. William, No. 08-2303, the First Circuit faced a challenge to a conviction for possessing marijuana and crack cocaine, arising from a brief traffic stop at a sobriety checkpoint. The court affirmed the conviction and rejected defendant’s claim that the stop was unlawful because the checkpoint’s primary purpose was something other than detecting impaired drivers. However, defendant’s sentence is vacated and remanded for resentencing as the sentencing provision applied in this case - a five-year minimum and a twenty-year maximum - required not only more than three grams of crack cocaine, but also a prior conviction under 21 U....

If you’re counsel for a Fortune 500 company (or a company that hopes to make it big one day), you may want to consider how your client stacks up when it comes to LGBT workplace equality. The Human Rights Campaign’s 2013 Corporate Equality Index ranks some of the biggest companies in the country, including multinational corporations, on how their policies address equality for LGBT employees. (For example, Thomson Reuters, FindLaw.com’s parent company, scored 100 percent on the 2013 Corporate Equality Index....

St. Patrick’s Day is coming up! Men in funny green suits and plenty of green beer could have many DUI lawyers seeing plenty of green money in the days following this party-hard holiday. According to NHTSA, DUIs rise dramatically during holidays. As people gather for holiday parties, many people inevitably drink too much alcohol. State highway patrols are now able to provide very accurate DUI fatality and arrest statistics whenever a holiday comes up....

Last year, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a law requiring adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screening. At the time, he said it was “unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction,” CNN reports. Florida was the first state to pass such a requirement. A year later, data released by the state showed that the law resulted in no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no effect on the number of applications, according to The New York Times....

Google will pay $7.8 million and open up its Android software to competitors as part of a settlement with Russian antitrust authorities, Reuters reported on Monday. The deal could be a precedent-setting settlement for the tech company. Google, like Microsoft before it, was accused of exploiting the market dominance of its Android smartphone operating system, in order to shut out competition and protect its online search traffic. The Android OS is by far the most common operating system for smartphones globally, operating on nearly nine out of every ten smartphones phones worldwide....

Just in time for the Oscars, Hollywood is trying to snuff out competition from streaming video. If it were a movie, it would be a pirate story. The major studios claim one company is stealing their bounty online. Omniverse One World Television provides streaming content to several online television services. Hollywood’s plot: sue one to kill them all. Movies and Television In Paramount Pictures Corporation v. Omniverse One World Television, six studios claim that Omniverse is infringing on their copyrights....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. By now, you likely have learned about that Equifax suffered tremendous hacking. Specifically, as Equifax recently announced, hackers took advantage of website application vulnerability to access records during a several month period from May through July of this year. Not only did these hacking activities take place over an extended period of time, but as many as a whopping 143 million consumers in the United States may have been impacted....