Nota Bene

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Authorities arrested a 7-Eleven clerk after a man accused of her pocketing his winning lottery ticket worth $555,000, then handing him a $4 “prize” instead.

Rajinder Kaur, 40, was arrested this week on suspicion of grand theft, and the Mega Millions ticket was recovered, officials said.

The man who picked the winning numbers went to the convenience store in the Sacramento suburb to redeem his prize Aug. 16. He knew he had won something, but did know not how much.

The clerk told him it was worth $4 and kept his ticket.

Fox News reports:

A lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who died at a hospital soon after she was moved to make room for Michael Jackson cannot continue as filed, a judge has ruled.

The family of Manuela Gomez Ruiz had sued Jackson and Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria, claiming she was kept from critical care after she had a heart attack on the same day Jackson was brought in with flu-like symptoms during his 2005 child-molestation trial. Jackson was acquitted in the case.

Judge Rodney Melville — also the judge in Jackson’s molestation case — on Tuesday allowed challenges to the complaint filed by attorneys for Jackson and the hospital, who had argued the facts of the case didn’t justify the complaint.

Melville gave the plaintiffs’ attorney, James McKiernan, 30 days to redraft their complaint. McKiernan said he would refile the necessary documents.

ABC News reports:

Portage County Judge John Plough had assistant public defender Brian Jones arrested for contempt of court last week after Jones refused to begin a misdemeanor assault trial because he said he was unprepared. Jones was assigned to the case one day earlier.

Jones, who started working as a public defender earlier this year, was held for five hours in the local jail before being released on bail, said Ian Friedman, a lawyer with the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

A hearing on the contempt charge, to be held before Plough, is scheduled for Friday. Jones’ attorneys have asked Plough to remove himself from the case, saying he cannot be impartial.

The Metropolitan News Enterprise reports

Voice mail messages about anticipated litigation are privileged, the Court of Appeal for this district ruled yesterday, throwing out a slander suit under the anti-SLAPP statute.

Writing for the court, Justice Richard Mosk opined that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Hess erred in denying an anti-SLAPP motion attacking Sophia Rohde’s complaint against West Los Angeles attorney Michael Wolf.

The case evolved out of a dispute between Rhode and her brother, George Metsos over distribution of their father’s will, specifically over the sale of property and distribution of the proceeds.

You can read the decision in Rohde v. Wolf here.

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Citing concerns about terrorism, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that airline passengers lose their right to object to a search after they go through initial security screenings.

The San Francisco-based court, ruling in a case involving a Hawaii man, said airline passengers couldn’t refuse searches once they place their belongings on an X-ray tray or walk through a metal detector.

It was the appeals court’s second decision in the case of Daniel Kuualoha Aukai because it wanted to clarify an earlier decision on the issue of consent. Last year, the court ruled Aukai couldn’t back out of additional searches even after he no longer wanted to board a flight.

You can read the opinion in United States v. Aukai here.

The Sacramento Bee reports:

A federal judge found Friday that the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego misrepresented its finances and ordered it to explain why its bankruptcy case shouldn’t be dismissed.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Louise DeCarl Adler found the church undervalued real-estate holdings and failed to disclose “material facts” to the court. She named federal statutes that would allow the case to be dismissed on grounds of the diocese’s “gross mismanagement” and “unexcused failure” in its financial reporting.

The judge’s six-page order mentioned an independent auditor’s report filed last week, which detailed how individual parishes violated diocese policy and court orders by neglecting to deposit up to $22 million into a diocese account. The auditor also found that a handful of parishes deliberately hid money from the bankruptcy court.

InformationWeek reports:

Apple, known for zealously guarding information about its products, is being sued for revealing too much information about its customers.

A class action lawsuit against the company was filed yesterday in a Florida federal court alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that put Apple customers at risk for identity theft.

Apple’s offense: printing credit card expiration dates on Apple Store online receipts.

This violates a 2003 amendment to the FCRA which states: “No person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last five digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the card holder at the point of sale or transaction.”

In addition, the copies of Apple electronic receipts included as exhibits in the complaint show — or would show were the information not redacted — the purchaser’s full name, full home address, full phone number and full e-mail address. The inclusion of this information, arguably, increases the risk of identity theft.

The New York Times reports:

The red cross symbol is an icon of relief from disaster. For months, it has also been the subject of a festering disagreement between major American institutions: the health care company Johnson & Johnson and the American Red Cross.

The dispute over rights to the symbol erupted to the surface yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, where J.& J. sued the American Red Cross.Clearly outraged, the president of the American Red Cross, Mark W. Everson, unleashed his vitriol last night on the company, which makes Band-Aids and Tylenol.

In a news release, Mr. Everson said the company’s actions were “obscene” and “simply so that J.& J. can make more money.”

365Gay.com reports:

Four San Diego firefighters claim they were forced to take part in the city’s LGBT pride parade and were subjected to sexual taunts by crowds on the street.

The four have hired Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian law practice, to represent them. Thomas More Attorney Stephen Stirling has asked the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for right-to-sue notices, a first step toward a lawsuit.

“You could not even look at the crowd without getting some kind of sexual gesture. If any crew member were to hang up pictures at the station of what we saw, we would be disciplined,” one of the firefighters is quoted as saying in a press release issued by the Thomas More Center.

“I was forced into a situation that would compromise what I hold true and what I believe in.”

The other Nota Bene blog. Less legal, more useful.  OneNote rocks.