My original reporting on legal events and trends:
Reporting
Reporting
November 12th, 2014
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune regarding a former president of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation who, despite being a strong advocate for American Indian rights, is now serving a federal prison sentence for embezzling from the tribe:
Michael Thomas had a reputation as a "tireless and effective advocate" for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, and he rose to president of the tribal council, a... Continue Reading
November 3rd, 2014
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune regarding a gay schoolteacher's discrimination lawsuit:
A former Hartford elementary school teacher alleges she was forced to quit her job after school administrators mistreated her when they found out she was married to a woman. The case could test the scope of protection provided by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 in claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation... Continue Reading
October 25th, 2014
What if hackers caused medical devices to malfunction? Disrupted healthcare services? Accessed patient information or electronic health record data? Those are examples of potential digital security pitfalls for the healthcare industry. Here's a piece I wrote for the National Law Journal about the need to develop industry standards for cybersecurity for medical devices and other health information technology:
A cybersecurity... Continue Reading
October 20th, 2014
Here's a piece I did for the Connecticut Law Tribune about a new call for Connecticut to cut its prison population:
It's not every day that red-state Texas is pointed out as a paragon for reform that blue-state Connecticut should emulate.
But the author of a new book calling for a mass overhaul of Connecticut's criminal justice system says that Connecticut should adopt some of the best practices that have helped Texas reduce... Continue Reading
October 17th, 2014
Here's a piece I've written for the National Law Journal:
After a protracted fight, a federal judge has ruled on Thursday that all of the evidence that led him to find misrepresentations by plaintiffs in an asbestos-related bankruptcy must be unsealed.
When U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges of the Western District of North Carolina estimated the liability of Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC, in January, he found that Garlock... Continue Reading
October 7th, 2014
I'm writing several times a day about products liability for Law.com/The National Law Journal. Occasionally I cross-post a blog I find particularly interesting.
Garlock Sealing Technologies LLC and two other related defendants are opposing motions to keep sealed the names of asbestos plaintiffs and the amounts of settlements they have reached with those plaintiffs.
The judge presiding over the Garlock’s bankruptcy... Continue Reading
September 9th, 2014
Here's a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune on the state of transgender rights:
Studying landmark cases may be a hallmark of a legal education, but there are times when the lack of case law may be a good thing.
In the three years since Connecticut enacted a law banning discrimination based on gender identity, James J. O'Neill, a spokesman for the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, reports that... Continue Reading
September 1st, 2014
I examined a case for the Connecticut Law Tribune that could test the legal contours of the right to use drones in newsgathering:
A Connecticut television photographer's federal lawsuit could shed some legal light on how far journalists can go to record police activity and what rights they might have to use drones to gather news.
Photographer Pedro Rivera, who works on an on-call basis for WFSB-TV, took his remote-controlled drone... Continue Reading
August 30th, 2014
In a recent piece for the Connecticut Law Tribune, I examined the aspects of the appellate process that mystify lawyers and litigants alike:
An appeal isn't just the second take on a legal dispute.
According to appellate court judges and practitioners alike, appellate practice in Connecticut requires a specialized form of advocacy that is not understood by all litigants who are representing themselves and even by lawyers who handle... Continue Reading
August 19th, 2014
A few weeks ago, an appellate attorney told me that the Connecticut Supreme Court has been taking longer to issue its decisions, but that the court's jurisprudence has become more scholarly. That conversation led me to look into the appellate-court process for the Connecticut Law Tribune, including examining the speed with which Connecticut Supreme Court handles its cases. You can look at the data behind the story here: 2013-... Continue Reading
August 2nd, 2014
After the efforts of Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter's administration to create an Office of Conflict of Counsel faltered, one of the main opponents of that plan has secured Department of Justice funding for a study on the quality of Philadelphia's indigent defense. I'm cross-posting the piece I wrote for Philly City Paper:
One of the main opponents of a plan to create a new Office of Conflict Counsel has secured... Continue Reading
July 28th, 2014
I've been covering an asbestos bankruptcy in which there are major allegations that plaintiffs lawyers misrepresented that their clients were exposed to certain sources of asbestos in the tort system, while indicating something different when seeking payments from opaquely-run trusts formed out of the bankruptcy of companies that made products containing asbestos. Last week, a district court ruled that court proceedings... Continue Reading
July 5th, 2014
A lawsuit over a historical post office in my local community of Stamford, Connecticut, exemplifies the clash between the United States Postal Service's efforts to modernize and downsize its facilities and laws meant to protect America's historical heritage and the local environment. I wrote about the dispute for the Connecticut Law Tribune:
In the early 1900s, federal buildings tended to be monumental—... Continue Reading
June 13th, 2014
There is a growing movement to have dogs provide comfort to distraught victims or other witnesses testifying in court. In an issue of first impression, a Connecticut appellate court has joined a handful of other courts that have said that dogs can come into the courtroom under certain circumstances. Here's the piece I wrote and that was published by the Connecticut Law Tribune:
Dogs in court are a growing national... Continue Reading
June 2nd, 2014
The lodging indsutry, the lending industry and the taxi industry are all being affected by digital disruption from social media and mobile technologies that connect customers to their peers selling a previously untapped economic market. Here's a story I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune about this trend starting up with the Connecticut taxi industry:
An alliance of Connecticut taxicab companies is seeking to shut down two... Continue Reading
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
