InfiLaw

  • Morning Docket: 07.27.18
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 07.27.18

    * Papa John has filed suit against his former company in a bid to protect his legacy as America’s foremost “racist guy who makes bad pizza.” [Wall Street Journal]

    * While everyone prattles on about Trump’s tapes, the government just blew another deadline to reunite the children they kidnapped with their parents. [Courthouse News Service]

    * Troubled law school Arizona Summit trying to get ASU to take its students if or when it loses accreditation. By the way, if you want to hear an in-depth discussion about the problems with Arizona Summit and its sibling schools, check out this. [AZ Central]

    * Speaking of independent law schools, the landscape for these programs — for-profit or not — is getting harder. [Law.com]

    * Lawsuit seeking to desegregate Minneapolis schools is moving forward. [MinnPost]

    * Government argues that Evan Greebel deserves 5 years for his role in aiding Shkreli. [Law360]

    * Former Biglaw associate accused of ripping off Harlem church. [New York Law Journal]

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  • Morning Docket: 04.26.18
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 04.26.18

    * Rudy Giuliani is reportedly in talks with Robert Mueller over a Trump interview again. Because whenever you have a loose cannon for a client it’s important to get them talking to federal investigators as soon as possible. [CBS News]

    * A quick primer on today’s Michael Cohen hearing. [Courthouse News Service]

    * Looks like Geoffrey Berman gets to stay on the job at the SDNY. A little-known quirk of the system is that an interim U.S. Attorney, like Berman, can only stay in that role for 120 days and if the White House fails to confirm someone to the role by then, the district court gets to choose who will act as the U.S. Attorney. Judge McMahon says they’ll choose Berman. It’s an anticlimactic conclusion for those of us hoping the judges would put Preet back on the job. [Law360]

    * Charlotte Law may be gone, but it has managed to live on as a whistleblower suit, though that may be coming to an end soon and Staci Zaretsky and Kathryn Rubino are partially to blame according to the judge’s opinion. [Daily Business Review]

    * The Cosby jury asked the judge to explain the legal definition of consent. How was that not a jury instruction? [Vulture]

    * Sally Yates, who lost her job over Trump’s original Muslim ban, offers her take on the latest version. [PBS Newshour]

    * That story making the rounds about the golf course that called the cops on black golfers for golfing too slow? Well, one of those golfers is a lawyer. [Legal Intelligencer]

  • Morning Docket: 11.27.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.27.17

    * According to recently released tax records, a mystery donor gave more than $28 million to the Wellspring Committee to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands and help get Neil Gorsuch confirmed. How awesome would it be if that mystery donor were the president himself? [Law Newz]

    * The DOJ says Trump can appoint the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Federal Vacancies Act, but the Dodd-Frank Act says the deputy director will head the agency in the absence of a permanent director. Now we have two dueling CFPB directors, AND there’s a lawsuit. Yay! [The Hill; CNN]

    * FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is so against Chairman Ajit Pai’s “lousy plan” to do away with net neutrality that she wrote an op-ed to plead for help: “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality.” She encourages us to “make a ruckus” about this — and we really, really should. [Los Angeles Times]

    * The layoffs are coming! The layoffs are coming! Along with Sedgwick’s announcement that the faltering firm intends to close its doors in early 2018 comes the news that it will shutter its back office operations center. Up to 75 people are expected to lose their jobs. It’ll be a not-so happy New Year. [American Lawyer]

    * Start placing your bets: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in New Jersey’s sports betting case next week, and is expected to issue a ruling in June. What’s the over/under on the high court overturning the federal ban on sports betting? Come on, SCOTUS, make Atlantic City great again! [NJ.com]

    * Representative John Conyers Jr. will be stepping down from his platoon as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed his former aides. Even though a settlement was made in 2015, Conyers continues to deny the allegations. [New York Times]

    * The InfiLaw System has been lowering the bar for minority law students for years and years and dooming them to hundreds of thousands of dollars of nondischargeable loan debt, and the man who started it all seems relatively disappointed with what’s happened and the awful outcomes students have seen. [Wall Street Journal]

    * “I think when it’s all said and done, what you’re gonna see is there was nothing racial that motivated this.” The lawyer representing the white University of Hartford student who smeared period blood all over her black roommate’s things to get her to move out doesn’t think his client should be charged with a hate crime. [Hartford Courant]

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  • Morning Docket: 07.28.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 07.28.17

    * The Senate rejects the latest GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act — with Senator John McCain casting the decisive “no” vote. [Washington Post]

    * Riley Safer Holmes and Cancila continues its rapid expansion, adding 13 new lawyers — including eight from Bryan Cave, led by former managing partner Joseph McCoy. [Law360]

    * More bad news for the LGBT community from the Trump administration: the Justice Department takes the position that Title VII doesn’t cover discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. [How Appealing]

    * Meanwhile, civil rights and LGBT groups get ready to file suit if President Trump’s plan to ban transgender people from the military becomes a reality (which is not yet the case). [National Law Journal]

    * And these groups might just prevail — Michael Richter and Anna Pohl, chairs of the New York City Bar Association’s Military Affairs and LGBT Rights Committees, lay out the case for why the transgender ban is unconstitutional. [The Hill]

    * Stephanie Francis Ward takes a long, hard look at the woes of Charlotte School of Law — and the rest of the beleaguered Infilaw consortium of law schools. [ABA Journal]

    * Closing statements in the Martin Shkreli case paint very different pictures of the infamous “Pharma Bro.” [Law.com]

    * Nuisance claims, or nuisance suits? Judge James Donato (N.D. Cal.) seems skeptical of a purported class-action case targeting Pokémon GO (which recently added Legendaries to the game). [The Recorder]

  • Morning Docket: 06.22.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 06.22.17

    * Donald Trump told a rally that “the time has come” for a law banning immigrants from getting welfare. Now all he needs is a time machine to go back to 1996 when this law was actually passed. [The Hill]

    * If you’re hoping to score an in-house legal position, it looks like you’re in luck — corporate counsel offices expect to keep hiring as they continue to internalize more and more work. [Law.com]

    * Texting while driving is now legal in Colorado. OMG. LOL. [Explosion Emoji] [Fox 31]

    * Companies should continue their efforts to comply with the FCPA even though Trump called the law “absolutely crazy.” Because you should take him seriously not literally or what have you. [Corporate Counsel]

    * Here’s how important a website is to your small or solo legal practice — this firm didn’t even exist and it got clients because of its web design. [Houston Chronicle]

    * Charlotte School of Law has until August to prove that it’s financially viable. [News & Observer]

  • Morning Docket: 03.28.16
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 03.28.16

    * The ABA has placed Arizona Summit Law School on probation for its poor bar exam passage rates and questionable admissions practices. How will this affect the school’s affiliation with Bethune-Cookman University? Will the Department of Education strip the law school of access to the federal student loan program like what happened with Charlotte School of Law? We’ll have more on this later today. [Arizona Republic]

    * More Democratic senators have announced their opposition to the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit, but the White House is calling for a “fair, up-or-down vote.” Hmm, when the previous administration called for a hearing followed by a “fair, up-or-down vote” for Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit, the request went completely ignored. [Reuters]

    * The Eastern District of Texas is home to more than 40 percent of all patent lawsuits, but the Supreme Court may decide to send patent trolls packing to other jurisdictions when it hands down its ruling in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods. This case may not only resolve a Federal Circuit decision that’s at odds with SCOTUS precedent, but it may bring forum shopping in patent cases to an end. [DealBook / New York Times]

    * As we mentioned previously, it was rumored that President Donald Trump would be nominating White House deputy counsel Makan Delrahim to lead the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. It looks like Trump finally decided to pull the trigger to elevate Delrahim to the position. He’ll need to be confirmed by the Senate, which should be a relative breeze for him compared to other Trump nominees. [Law 360 (sub. req.)]

    * Eric Conn, a Social Security disability lawyer known as “Mr. Social Security,” recently pleaded guilty to one count of theft of government money and one count of payment of gratuities in the largest Social Security fraud scheme in recent memory, submitting false medical paperwork and fake claims to the Social Security Administration to the tune of $550M. He earned himself more than $5.7M in fees as part of the scam. [WSJ Law Blog]