In October, we blogged about a lawsuit against the editors of tz info, the time zone database for Unix. The editors were sued by a company called Astrolabe, Inc., who claimed a copyright interest in data used to populate the database. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff this week. It turns out the EFF got involved. According to…
The 10th Circuit decided an interesting FOIA case this week. In World Pub. Co. v. United States Dept. of Justice, the Court held that Tulsa World magazine was not entitled to six mugshots under the Freedom of Information Act. For more on this case, see posts on Politico and ABA Journal. The Maryland Supreme Court denied a negligence claim against…
Yesterday, the UC Davis protestors who were pepper sprayed by campus police in response to a non-violent protest filed suit in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California. The plaintiffs, who were students or recent graduates of the university, had occupied the campus quad to protest university privatization, tuition increases, and earlier police beatings of protestors at Occupy Cal.
I’m from Chicago, where everyone knows someone who knows someone in the mob. That’s why I loved this case, U.S. v Ambrose, sent to me by Laurel. It’s chock full of good mafia stories and lingo involving a crooked Deputy U.S. Marshal and a made guy in the “Chicago outfit” who turned state’s evidence. In other criminal law cases, a…
Whitey Bulger, the indicted and apprehended alleged ringleader of Boston’s notorious ‘Winter Hill Gang’ organized crime family, needs “a reasonable amount of time to review a tsunami’s worth of discovery,” according to Bulger’s defense lawyers J.W. Carney, Jr. and and Henry B. Brennan. The statement was made in a filing with the Massachusetts federal court this morning (read the legal…
This was kind of a slow week for our Daily Summary writers, but we did have a blockbuster from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Perry v. Brown. This case involved Proposition 8, which amended the California state constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. The 9th Cir. chose to address the constitutionality of Prop. 8 and…
Proposition 8 (‘Prop 8′), the California voter amendment that sought to ban same-sex marriages in the state is unconstitutional, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a 128-page opinion issued this morning. You can read the complete decision below:
Here are some of last week’s highlights from our Daily Opinion Summaries writers. US v. Strandhof, US Ct. App. 10th Cir., 1/27/12 The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Stolen Valor Act (18 U.S.C. 704(b)) which makes it illegal to falsely claim to have received a military award or honor. The district court found that appellant’s false claims to…
Today, Facebook, Inc. filed a Form S-1 Registration Statement [PDF] with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for its initial public offering. Here are some observations from reading this interesting filing. Billion with a B. Companies that manufacture and sell tangible products are easy to understand. For a company like Facebook, you may be scratching your head wondering…
Here is a rundown of January’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Justia Dockets legal filings and Facebook posts readers viewed the most. Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for January 2012 Jeffrey Moore, 3050 points, 61 answers Brian D. Lerner, 1,395 points, 33 answers Andrew Bresalier, 1,100 points, 36 answers David…