Nota Bene

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.

The Sacramento Bee reports:

A black firefighter’s dog food harassment lawsuit could cost the city more than $7 million, legal experts warned the City Council.

Tennie Pierce filed the racial discrimination suit after his firehouse colleagues secretly laced his spaghetti with dog food. Trial starts Sept. 24 and lawyers warned Wednesday that a jury could hit the city with a huge judgment.

The council spent two hours debating a last-minute settlement offer behind closed doors, the Los Angeles Times reported. Pierce’s attorneys have reportedly indicated a willingness to settle for $3.1 million.

After an attorney for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said any deal above $1 million would be unacceptable, the council decided to talk about it again on Sept. 18.

The First Appellate District upheld the right of the 49′ers football team to implement the NFL’s policy of patdown searches of ticketholders. From the decision:

Appellants Daniel and Kathleen Sheehan sued respondent San Francisco 49ers, Ltd. (49ers) for violation of article 1, section 1 of the California Constitution (Privacy Initiative), based on the team’s implementation of a patdown policy mandated by the National Football League (NFL). They challenge the dismissal of their cause following the sustaining of the 49ers’ demurrer without leave to amend. We conclude that the Sheehans cannot demonstrate that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy under the circumstances, and accordingly affirm the judgment.

Read the opinion in Sheehan v. The San Francisco 49ers, Ltd. (July 17, 2007 A114945) here.

CNN reports:

A federal appeals court Friday ordered the dismissal of an ACLU lawsuit challenging President Bush’s domestic surveillance program.

President Bush secretly instituted the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program after 9/11.

The plaintiffs — a group of journalists, scholars and legal advocates — had no legal standing to pursue their claims because they could not show they were targeted by the National Security Agency’s warrantless spying program, the court decided in a 2-1 vote.

TalkLeft advises that the legal fight over this surveillance is not over yet:

At least one other suit is pending, and standing to bring the lawsuit isn’t at issue and and thus is unlikely to be the basis for dismissal.

Readers may remember that Albany, NY defense lawyer Terry Kindlon, raised a similar challenge to the wiretapping in United States v. Aref (the so-called “terrorism” case from the Northern District of New York).

In December, 2005, while Aref’s case was pending, Terry learned from a New York Times article that his client had been tapped by the NSA. He immediately made some demands, followed up with some motions and, basically, got nowhere (although he did enjoy receiving a Government pleading containing a caption at the top of the first page, a signature at the bottom of the third page, and nothing but blank space (marked CLASSIFIED) in between).

From The Wired Blog Network:

Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone’s privacy without a court order (NSLs don’t require a judge’s approval). That’s when things turned ugly.

The four librarians under the gag order weren’t allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren’t allowed to e-mail.

Legal Brief Today reports: