Cultivated Compendium

Andy Grim, a reporter for the Times-Picayune, reports that the Fifth Circuit appeared reluctant "to weigh in on the issue of First Amendment rights of anonymous online commenters" during oral argument on the issue Thursday. A lower court judge ordered the newspaper to turn over information about a pair of anonymous commenters on its website, Grim said. The defendant thought it could show that federal prosecutors were making comments about her case. A new trial was granted to five police officers convicted in post-Hurricane Katrina shootings.

Andy Grim, a reporter for the Times-Picayune, reports that the Fifth Circuit appeared reluctant "to weigh in on the issue of First Amendment rights of anonymous online commenters" during oral argument on the issue Thursday. A lower court judge ordered the newspaper to turn over information about a pair of anonymous commenters on its website, Grim said. The defendant thought it could show that federal prosecutors were making comments about her case. A new trial was granted to five police officers convicted in post-Hurricane Katrina shootings.

 A survey of 292 companies on their legal budgets shows that total corporate spending just increased by 2 percent in 2012, down from a 3 percent increase in 2012 and a 5 percent increase in 2011, the Wall Street Journal reports. The survey also shows that more companies are taking their legal work in-house and using legal outsourcing firms for document review. "None of these trends look terribly promising for law firms that operate much as they did in past decades, when profits were fueled by armies of toiling associates and legal bills went largely unquestioned," the WSJ further reports.

Interesting development for the Philadelphia court system: With Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge John W. Herron having to retire because he has hit the age of 70, The Legal Intelligencer's P.J. D'Annunzio reports that Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Kevin Dougherty is likely to lead the court's trial division next. Dougherty has turned around the family court by dealing with a custody-case backlog and securing a new courthouse, but, on the other hand, his family is politically active. For example, His brother is International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 98, union leader John Dougherty.
 

The "right to be forgotten" has arrived in Asia. According to a report in the Associated Press, a Japansese court has ordered Google to remove search results that "hinted at the man's relations with a criminal organization after he complained his privacy rights were violated."

Europe's highest court made a similar ruling in May; some lawyers say the ruling could lead to the exportation of Europe's privacy laws to the rest of the world.

The Washington Post reports that police in Ferguson, Missouri, have accelerated their efforts to suppress peaceful protests about Michael Brown's killing by a white police officer several weeks ago: "A Washington Post review of county and state arrest records, and interviews with Justice Department officials, Ferguson and St. Louis County police chiefs, dozens of protesters and several civil rights officials reveal that: Hundreds of protesters have been arrested since August for violating unwritten rules and committing minor offenses, such as failure to disperse or unlawful assembly, and for violating a noise ordinance. Many have been taken to jail without being told what charges they may face and are often released without any paperwork. For weeks, officers employed a 'five-second rule' under which any protester who stopped walking was subject to arrest — a policy ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge this week." Protesters also complain that their jail time is increasing and bail amounts for their release are increasing.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected several appeals on Monday in cases in which judges have overturned various states' bans on same-sex marriage. That caused a spur of nuptials among happy same-sex couples until "Justice Anthony Kennedy mistakenly blocked the start of same-sex marriage in Nevada in an order that spawned confusion among state officials and disappointment in couples hoping to be wed." Now a court spokesperson says that order was a mistake, according to the Associatied Press: "Kennedy's order issued a day earlier was an error that the justice corrected with a second order several hours later."

Jeff John Roberts, writing in Gigaom, reports on data that shows that patent trolls, less frequently called "non-practicing entities," have gotten three times the damages in court than "real companies." The reasons for the higher damages awards for patent trolls? Lawyer Michael Strapp told Roberts that includes the "the economic model of patent trolling, which in many cases entails the troll building up a legal war chest by squeezing settlements from dozens of smaller companies, and then suing a big fish." Another reason is suing in favorable venues like East Texas and Delaware.

The Gigaom piece has some great charts, so I highly recommend checking it out.

The Ninth Circuit heard oral argument yesterday on whether it violates the First Amendment for the FBI to gag tech and telecommunications firms from revealing that they have received "national security letters" for customer records, Reuters reports. Tech companies, including Google, Microsoft Corp and Facebook Inc said in court papers "the government may not 'foist a gag order upon the involuntary recipient of an NSL, let alone prohibit the recipient from even reporting periodically the aggregate number of such demands that it receives,'" Reuters further reports.

Ronald D. Rotunda, a law professor at Chapman University Fowler School of Law, has a column criticizing over $64 million in civil forfeitures in Philadelphia when police have seized property during criminal investigations. At issue are people who have had their property seized even though they were not the ones charged with a crime. For one thing, property owners, "not the government, have the burden of proving that they are innocent owners." For another thing, he suggests that the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office is incentivized to pursue forfeitures because it is "almost as if the D.A. works under a contingent fee arrangement. For years, the DA’s Office has had a written sharing agreement with the Philadelphia Police Department that governs splitting forfeiture proceeds between the two agencies." He notes an economic experiment "showed that civil forfeiture laws encourage law enforcement to seize property instead of fighting other crimes, leading to systematic abuse."

A proposed class action has been filed to challenge civil forfeiture in Philadelphia, the Daily News reported last month.