Appeals Court Rules Supreme Court Plaza off-Limits for Demonstrations

The appeals ruling involved the civil rights of protestor Harold Hodge of Southern Maryland. In January 2011 after ignoring three warnings by Supreme Court police, Hodge was arrested while wearing a sign inside of the plaza near the front of the Court’s entrance that read, “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police to Illegally Murder and Brutalize African Americans and Hispanic People.”


Hello Denali!

Needless to say, several Ohio lawmakers are really bent out of shape by the name change. House Speaker John Boehner said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, and Republican U.S. Representative Bob Gibbs said, “This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans, and I will be working with the House Committee on Natural Resources to determine what can be done to prevent this action.”


9th Circuit to Debate California’s Death Penalty

The hearing also comes as California begins resuming executions this fall, introducing a new single-drug lethal injection procedure. The state had issued a defacto suspension of executions since 2006, joining many states’ concerns over the effectiveness and pain level of the established injection substances. It also comes just weeks after Connecticut’s Supreme Court commuted all of its condemned prisoners’ death sentences to life without parole. Voters in that state abolished the death penalty in 2012; however the law that was adopted only abolished it for future crimes, not for those already sentenced.


Will Lexmark’s ‘Ink War’ Reach the Supreme Court?

Lexmark added Impression products to the list of over two dozen defendants in a patent infringement lawsuit filed in U.S. Court for the Southern District of Ohio, a suit that began by the company in 2010. Although all of the other defendants buckled to Lexmark’s clout, either choosing to settle, or with the court granting Lexmark default judgments against absentee defendants, Smith and his attorney stood their ground electing to fight the lawsuit.



Dole Executives Fined $148 Million for Valuation Fraud

Laster believed that the executives fraudulently created grim sales forecasts, as well as drove the stock price down by understating the cost savings of Dole’s 2012 sale of its Asian operations, as well as cancelling a planned stock buyback. These activities led to Murdock purchasing the remaining shares for $13.50 each in a $1.2 billion purchase. Laster ruled that the executives undervalued the shares by $2.74 apiece, ordering that they pay the difference, a total of $148.2 million to the investors, many of them pension funds, that filed the class-action lawsuit.


NLRB Rules in Favor of Increased Bargaining power for Subcontractors, Temporary Workers

IFA president Steve Caldeira released a statement following the ruling, saying “The Board’s tortured analysis will undoubtedly be met with skepticism and will be rejected by local franchise owners, legislators and, ultimately, the courts. IFA and its allies are asking Congress to intervene to halt these out-of-control, unelected Washington bureaucrats to preserve the established joint employer standard.”


Marcy Borders, 9/11 ‘Dust Lady,’ Dies of Cancer at 42

Borders’s death is a stark reminder that many of those who endured the 9/11 tragedy are suffering from long-term health problems. Borders was asked if she thought that the debris from the terror attack, which contained glass and other carcinogenic dust, among other dangerous particles led to her cancer. She responded, “I’m saying to myself, ‘Did this thing ignite cancer cells in me?’ I definitely believe it because I haven’t had any illnesses. I don’t have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes.”


Will the .Law Domain Registry Succeed?

Despite the enthusiasm for the .law registry amid its early rollout, many question whether or not the domains will help firms, and in some respects, can even be considered a mild form of extortion. Well-known firms that rarely acquire new business via the internet will likely be required to purchase the .law extension in order to keep others from buying it in a brand-protecting move.