Man to get 3 years for failing to secure gun used by his son, 4, to fatally shoot playmate

Corrected: A New Jersey man is expected to be sentenced to a three-year prison term Thursday for failing to secure a loaded .22-caliber rifle with which his 4-year-old son fatally shot a 6-year-old playmate in 2013. Anthony Senatore, 35, pleaded guilty in October to two counts of child endangerment related…

Feb 5, 2015 10:30 AM CST

Claimed ‘digital kingpin’ of hidden Silk Road drug-sale website is convicted, could get life

A California man portrayed by federal prosecutors as the mastermind behind a hidden website that generated $213 million in illicit sales over a period of a little more than two years was convicted Wednesday by a New York jury on all counts. Ross Ulbricht, 30, had argued at trial that…

Feb 5, 2015 10:15 AM CST

Lawyer guilty in cemetery theft; state AG says he stole $1.8M to refund $1M in client escrow money

A New York lawyer is the losing party in a white-collar crime trifecta, according to the state attorney general. On Friday, 55-year-old Timothy Griffin was sentenced to a six-month prison sentence, for tax evasion, by a federal judge in Connecticut, where Griffin lives. On Wednesday, in an unrelated New York…

Feb 4, 2015 1:40 PM CST

S&P to pay nearly $1.4B to resolve allegations it inflated ratings of mortgage securities

Standard & Poor’s has agreed to pay $1.375 billion to resolve allegations that it inflated ratings of mortgage securities before the 2008 financial crisis. The agreement settles allegations by the U.S. Justice Department, 19 states and Washington, D.C., report the New York Times Dealbook blog, the National Law Journal (sub.…

Feb 4, 2015 11:08 AM CST

Judge requests changes to proposed NFL concussion settlement

The federal judge who tossed a proposed settlement between the National Football League and 5,000 former players-who claimed in a suit that the league had covered up or lied about the effects of concussions sustained on the football field-said she would approve the deal if it were expanded to cover…

Feb 3, 2015 2:00 PM CST

Revenge-porn website operator is convicted; prosecutor notes ‘vindictive’ is in his online alias

The operator of a revenge porn website called YouGotPosted.com faces up to 20 years in prison after his conviction on Monday on 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of extortion. Judge David Gill of San Diego superior court in California ordered defendant Kevin Bollaert jailed on $500,000 bond…

Feb 3, 2015 10:37 AM CST

New project rewrites SCOTUS opinions from a feminist perspective

Feb 1, 2015 3:30 AM CST

Business-method and software patents may go through the looking glass after Alice decision

Feb 1, 2015 2:40 AM CST

Federal appeals court agrees with FTC that Pom Wonderful ad claims were deceptive

Rejecting Pom Wonderful’s free-speech argument, a federal appeals court on Friday agreed with the Federal Trade Commission that the pomegranate juice marketer made deceptive advertising health claims which weren’t backed by sufficient medical evidence. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that one clinical…

Jan 30, 2015 5:25 PM CST

Judge says funeral home couldn’t sell Lee Harvey Oswald casket, awards brother $87K plus coffin

When the body of the man accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy was exhumed in 1981, it was reburied in another coffin after the identity of the corpse as Lee Harvey Oswald’s was confirmed. Baumgardner Funeral Home kept the original pine coffin, which was purchased by Oswald’s brother in…

Jan 30, 2015 3:45 PM CST

Jury convicts PI client who, angry over $115 medical bill, physically attacked law firm employee

A former client of a New Mexico personal injury law firm was convicted Thursday of aggravated battery with great bodily harm in a 2013 attack on an employee there. Although there were no visible injuries to the victim, Lovett Law Firm worker Jeffery Reyes, the Doña Ana County district attorney’s…

Jan 30, 2015 12:00 PM CST

Mom accused of faking medical problems to get unneeded treatment for her children takes plea deal

Despite extensive tests, doctors at Seattle Children’s couldn’t figure out why Carmen Boyce’s two young children weren’t eating normally. But they did notice that eating problems arose only when Boyce was alone with them at the hospital. Charged in 2013 with faking medical issues and encouraging physicians to perform unnecessary…

Jan 29, 2015 1:10 PM CST

2nd Circuit nixes libel suit over ‘scarlet letter’ news stories that survived expunged arrest record

Although Lorraine Martin succeeded in making her 2010 marijuana-possession arrest a legal fiction, that doesn’t mean news organizations must expunge their stories about the since-dropped case, an appeals court has ruled. A Connecticut statute “creates legal fictions, but it does not and cannot undo historical facts or convert once-true facts…

Jan 28, 2015 3:20 PM CST

Author tells tangled tale of the $19B verdict against Chevron in ‘Law of the Jungle’ (podcast)

In 2011, an Ecuadoran court found the Chevron Corporation liable for environmental damage caused by oil drilling in the 1970s-80s. Chevron was ordered to pay $19 billion to the plaintiffs who brought the suit, a collection of small farmers and indigenous peoples. Although it is tempting to fit this into a simple narrative-either "victory for oppressed people against an evil corporation" or "responsible corporation preyed upon by voracious plaintiffs attorneys"--the truth just isn't that simple.

Jan 28, 2015 9:15 AM CST

Judge cuts $1.6M jury verdict for lawyer who said she was hounded by sheriff’s office to $300K

Saying that he was required to do so by a legal cap on damages against a government agency, a South Carolina judge has reduced a $1.6 million jury verdict for an attorney who said she was hounded by the local sheriff’s office to $300,000. Kay Paschal contended in her malicious…

Jan 28, 2015 6:15 AM CST