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Nearly one in five American adults suffer from a mental illness at some point, with almost ten million adults experiencing serious mental illnesses that interfere with daily life. This means that, sooner or later, most lawyers will encounter a client with some sort of mental illness or impairment. Working with a client with mental illness can raise serious ethical questions about your representation, your client’s competency, and the form of your relationship....

The Fifth Circuit denied a stay of execution for a Texas man sentenced to be executed on Wednesday, ignoring arguments about uncertainty with regard to the lethal injection drugs. According to The Associated Press, Michael Yowell was set for execution on Wednesday for the murder of his mother and father in 1998, an execution that would be carried out with pentobarbital that was acquired from state compounding pharmacy. Despite the plaintiffs’ arguments that this pentobarbital could cause hypothetical issues, the Fifth Circuit stated that mere speculation is not enough to stop Yowell’s execution....

It was a drug smuggling conspiracy straight out of a pulp novel – or telenovella. For two years, Manuel “El Boss” Santana-Cabrera sent drug couriers on flights from San Juan to Philadelphia and New York. The couriers would check in with regular luggage, which airport workers would swap out with cocaine-packed suitcases to be handed off to a taxi driver upon arrival. Eventually, the DEA caught wind, one smuggler turned on another, and bit-players Jorge Correa-Osorio and Denise Shephard-Fraser were arrested....

Don’t let the headlines about brain-scan hacks scare you. It’s not like hackers can get inside your head. But they can get into hospital systems through a program used in brain scans. They can get patient data and shutdown hospital computers, like other hacks that compromised systems medicating patients intravenously. On second thought, you should be afraid – be very afraid. NeuroWorks NeuroWorks is Windows-based software used in electroencephalograms sold by Nautus....

A federal court judge has sharply reduced a $5-million punitive damage award given to two law school professors by a jury that concluded they were defamed by West Publishing Corp., a legal-publishing firm. U.S. District Court Judge John P. Fullam stated that $2.5 million each exceeded the actual damage to the lawyers’ reputations in a decision this week. Fullam sliced the punitive award for each man to $110,000, which with $90,000 in compensatory damages means each would get $200,000, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports....

Talk about a niche practice: A Chicago lawyer has filed almost a thousand qui tam cases in Cook County, Illinois courts over the past 15 years, bringing in millions of dollars in settlements. Stephen Diamond and his firm, Bloomberg’s Michael Bologna reports, obtained almost $30 million across 911 qui tam actions, $11.6 million of which he’s kept for himself. Diamond became the “king of qui tam” by suing internet retailers for failing to pay proper taxes....

Petition for review of an order denying adjustment of status is denied where: 1) the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision did not violate petitioner’s due process rights as adjustment of status is not a cognizable liberty or property interest for purposes of due process because it is a discretionary form of relief; 2) petitioner was not entitled to have the Board remand to the IJ to reach a conclusion about whether the In re Magana exception for limited situations where not recognizing a marriage would cause gross miscarriage of justice applied; and 3) the Board’s ruling as to plaintiff’s second adjustment of status petition was supported by substantial evidence and thus could not serve as the basis for adjustment of status....

Former official’s suit against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Governor’s senior staff for due process violations Monahan v. Romney, 09-2458, concerned a plaintiff’s suit against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and several members of the Governor’s senior staff claiming that the defendants had unconstitutionally removed him from his office as Chairman of the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission in 2003, depriving him of his protected property and liberty interests without due process of law....

A Massachusetts town sued Monsanto after the town renovated one of its schools to be free from PCB, a common additive to building materials, like paint and caulking, that has been linked to negative health effects (in paint and other products). The town claimed that the company failed to do anything about the caulking that contained PCB, though it clearly took steps to discourage certain uses of PCB containing paint and other products decades ago....

In US v. Fowler, No. 08-15463, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s conviction for murder with the intent to prevent a person from communicating information about a federal offense to a federal law enforcement officer or judge of the U.S., holding that 1) nothing in 18 U.S.C. section 1512(a)(1)(C) required proof that a federal investigation was ongoing, imminent, or likely; and 2) several defendants involved in the conspiracy had committed federal crimes that could have led to a federal investigation and prosecution....

The law department holiday party has come and gone, and executives are starting to leave for the holidays. Don’t make your remaining days in the office until the holiday break a waste of time – use this time wisely to get yourself organized for the new year. Organization and planning are often over-looked as time suckers but in reality, they are just as important, if not more important than the handling of your day-to-day tasks....

OSHA recently released a set of draft guidelines to help organizations currently setting up compliance regimes. The guidelines concurrently protect whistleblowers’ rights. By implementing some of the key suggestions in the guidelines, employees should be compelled to discuss issues with employers before anything blows up into a full blown lawsuit. Employers who have anything to say about the guidelines should consider submitting comments, which will be made public. The guidelines are lengthy and the main points are written in predictably broad language....

2015 is winding down, but it ain’t over yet. You still have a few good weeks to make some (tax deductible) investments in your business. Nothing beats ending the year with a marketing push which is, with few exceptions, 100 percent tax deductible. The vast majority of business-related marketing expenses are tax deductible. So long as expenses are ordinary, necessary, and reasonable, they can be deducted in the year the money is spent....

The nation mourned in unison this week as Twitter announced the end of TweetDeck’s long-neglected Android, iOS, and Adobe AIR Desktop versions of the platform. Going forward, users will have to make due with the browser or Google Chrome app versions. For many, there won’t be a difference. The mobile apps were generally useless to begin with and the Adobe AIR app, while having some features lacking in the newer versions, was a buggy, unstable, resource hog....

The federal government experienced 77,183 cyber incidents last year, according to a recent report by the Office of Management and Budget. Those incidents, more than 200 a day, covered everything from denial-of-service attacks against government websites to the theft of over 20 million personnel files. The massive amount of cyber incidents represents a 10 percent increase from previous years, though federal agencies are getting better at preventing cyber attacks, according to the report....

Perhaps the cycle of life is the same as the cycle of law when it comes to wills. In Queensland, Australia, a court has accepted an unsent text message as a valid will. The text was found in the deceased man’s phone after he committed suicide. As in any probate case, it marked the sad end of a life. But it happened at a time when informal wills are making a comeback....

Bank Robbery Conviction Affirmed In US v. Thomas, No. 09-40989, the court affirmed defendant’s convictions for conspiracy, bank robbery, and weapons possession, where 1) the jury could reasonably infer that one defendant had the same partner in the first, second, third, and fifth bank robberies, and that he did not acquire a new partner for the fourth robbery who behaved identically to the other defendant; and 2) the identification confusion argued by defendants did not amount to substantial prejudice or result in an unfair trial....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Has our ability to stay present in the real world largely been destroyed by the internet? If so, how has that happened? If we erected internet “stop signs” would we be better off? While we were saturated with different sources of information, news, and entertainment as recently as the Twentieth Century, those sources had naturally occurring stop cues that allowed us to pause and consider disengaging from the sources....

What is a lawyer to do when it is too cold outside? This is not a lawyer joke. The polar vortex has closed courthouses across the Midwest, where temperatures have plunged below freezing. It was so cold outside that people saw one lawyer putting his hands in his own pockets. OK, so that is a joke. Polar Vortex But seriously, the arctic blast is not funny. People have died as nearly half the United States reported below-zero temperatures....

It’s embarrassing to get fired, and even more so when it’s executed in public. Then there’s the ultimate dismal dismissal, when a judge kicks you off a case. There’s no place to hide when it becomes part of the record. So what do you do when you get booted from a case? The lawyers at Frey Buck in Seattle did it like a boss. Glass Art Anne Bremner, a well-known local lawyer, was representing a man in a civil case against a famous artist....