Nota Bene

The Law Firm Strategy Blog opines:

Have you heard of Twitter yet? Perhaps not. And hopefully not, as this post is intended to explain one of the latest web-tools on our collective horizon.

What you should know is this: Politicians in the current US election are levering it, news outlets like CNN & Canada’s CBC are offering headlines that can be mixed into your reading stream, and companies like Southwest airlines are using it to interact with customers & take feedback.

It’s widely considered the fastest growing tool of web influence, and will at some point have a trickle down effect for the legal industry.

(Via Home Office Lawyer)

The Associated Press reports:

A former USA Today reporter facing fines for failing to reveal her sources for stories about the 2001 anthrax attacks said Saturday that news organizations need to go on the offensive in the fight to protect the First Amendment.

“As we all know, the news business is on a collective nervous breakdown,” Toni Locy told a coalition of open-government and press groups. “It’s time to stop running. It’s time to turn and fight. If we don’t fight for the First Amendment, who will?”

Locy, who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, spoke at the annual convention of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

She said the country needs a shield law that would protect reporters from having to reveal their sources.

“The First Amendment needs some help,” she said. “In this environment that we’re in now, it needs some help.”

Locy is appealing an order from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton that requires her to pay as much as $5,000 a day until she gives up her sources for stories about the government’s investigation of the anthrax attacks.

Fox Business News reports:

New torture claims have been leveled at two U.S. military contractors by a former Abu Ghraib “ghost” detainee who was wrongly imprisoned and later released without charge, according to a lawsuit filed today in Los Angeles federal court by his U.S. legal team.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Emad Al-Janabi, a 43-year-old Iraqi blacksmith, who alleges that he was beaten and forced from his home by people in U.S. military uniforms and civilian clothing in September 2003. He was released from Abu Ghraib without charge in July 2004.

Red Orbit reports

A consortium of health care advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit Monday against the state of California, hoping to block a historic

10 percent across-the-board cut in Medi-Cal and Denti-Cal payments scheduled to take effect July 1.

The groups - including the California Medical Association, the California Hospital Association and the California Dental Association - contend that lawmakers overstepped their constitutional authority, and that the cuts would violate the state’s obligation to ensure that Medi-Cal patients have the same access to health care as the general public.

“Medi-Cal already doesn’t cover the cost of providing care,” said Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Association. “If these cuts take effect, Medi-Cal patients will be forced to seek care in already overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, which undermines access to care for all Californians.”

The U.S. Daily reports:

Dan Rather fired off a new lawsuit against his former network Tuesday, charging that CBS News labeled the anchor “too hot to handle” and prevented him from being hired by other networks after his acrimonious departure.

Rather was rebuffed in an earlier suit, when many of his claims were knocked down by a New York state judge. But the judge also allowed Rather to resubmit his claims.

In the latest filing, Rather claims that CNN, ABC, NBC and other networks met to talk about possible employment but that all eventually declined for reasons that included, according to the lawsuit, Rather’s having had “too much baggage.” The claim says he lost other business opportunities as well. He later signed with HDNet.

CNN reports:

The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, upheld Kentucky’s use of lethal injection as a means of executing prisoners, ruling that the method — used in 35 states — is properly and humanely applied.The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Kentucky’s use of lethal injection is not “cruel and unusual.”

At issue was whether the most common method of capital punishment can cause excruciating pain for death row inmates, violating the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” and thereby giving inmates a proper challenge in court.

The justices had never directly addressed the fundamental question over the constitutionality of the chemical “cocktail” of drugs used to execute convicted killers. All but one of the states that perform executions use the three-drug mixture.

You can read the opinion in Baze v. Rees here.

AP News reports:

A Los Angeles-based company known for its light deserts is shelling out some heavy cash to settle a class action filed by disgruntled customers.Pinkberry chief executive Ron Graves said Thursday that the frozen yogurt chain had settled the suit over whether its product was, technically, frozen yogurt.

Pinkberry acknowledged that it didn’t follow state guidelines requiring frozen yogurt to be made off-site, not in stores. Graves said the product is now mixed in a dairy.

As part of the settlement, Pinkberry will give $750,000 to two Southern California charities.

The LA Times reports:

Prosecutors have long been shielded from lawsuits brought by people who were wrongly convicted. Even if a defendant is later shown to be entirely innocent, the prosecutor who brought the charges cannot be held liable for the mistake.The Supreme Court has ruled that “absolute immunity” is needed so that prosecutors — and judges — can do their jobs without fear of legal retaliation.

But a California case that the high court is considering taking could open a back door for such lawsuits. Prosecutors in Los Angeles are urging the court to block a suit from a man who was wrongly convicted of murder because, they say, it will allow “a potential flood” of similar claims across the nation.

MarketWatch.com reports:

Cisco Systems Inc. and one of its employees are being sued by Texas attorneys claiming the employee anonymously defamed them on a Web site critical of so-called “patent trolls” that sue technology companies over intellectual property rights.

The Cisco employee, attorney Richard Frenkel, had been writing anonymously on the “Patent Troll Tracker” Web site. According to court documents, in October, Frenkel wrote that Texas attorney Eric Albritton “conspired” with the clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to alter official documents in a proceeding involving Cisco.

In a civil suit filed in a Texas court Friday, Albritton claims that by doing so, Frenkel “acted with specific intent to injure” Albritton’s reputation and professional standing. Albritton is seeking unspecified damages.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

For more than 30 years, the District of Columbia has had the nation’s strictest gun-control law — a ban on having handguns at home for self-defense.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to that law from those who say it violates the 2nd Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.

Few would cite D.C.’s gun ban as proof that gun control leads to crime control, as Washington continues to have one of the nation’s highest rates of violent crime. Even some gun-control advocates don’t support it.

The case has drawn wide attention not because of the district’s law itself, but because the court may decide for the first time whether gun rights are truly protected by the Constitution, like the right to free speech and the right to freely practice one’s religion.

If so, it could mark the beginning of new era in which judges around the country are called upon to decide whether the many restrictions and regulations of weapons infringe the rights protected by the 2nd Amendment.

“Whenever there is an individual right [protected by the Constitution], the burden is on the government to justify a limit on that right,” said Robert A. Levy, a libertarian lawyer at the Cato Institute.