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BALTIMORE — The Baltimore police officer who drove the van in which Freddie Gray sustained a fatal spinal injury was acquitted on Thursday of second-degree murder and six lesser charges, leaving prosecutors still without a conviction after three high-profile trials in a case that has shaken this city. In his ruling, Judge Barry G. Williams rejected the prosecution’s claim that the officer, Caesar R. Goodson Jr., had given Mr. Gray a “rough ride” in the van, intentionally putting him at risk for an injury by taking a wide turn while Mr. Gray was not secured with a seatbelt. “The court...

Ivanka Trump's shoe line is a shameless knockoff of a wildly popular Italian stiletto ... so claims the Italian shoemaker. Aquazzura claims in a new lawsuit, Ivanka's Hettie shoe is almost a carbon copy of its Wild Thing pump ... a shoe that protects the feet of the famous-ish, including Solange and Olivia Palermo. Aquazzura points to the color, shape and silhouette, as well the fringe covering the toes to the tassel on the heel. Aquazzura says Ivanka jacked their shoes before ... copying its Belgravia shoe and calling it Necila, and also copying its Forever Marilyn shoe and calling...

Some iPhone owners got a nasty surprise in February when, after bringing the device for repairs, they saw an ominous “Error 53” message upon restarting their phones. Translation: Your fancy gadget is now a glorified paperweight.After much confusion and hand-wringing in Apple circles, the company admitted that Error 53 was a sort of over-zealous security feature that kicked in when a non-Apple technician repaired the iPhone’s Touch ID feature.Apple aapl eventually issued a software fix that let people restore their device through iTunes, and apologized to users for the inconvenience. The company also said anyone who had paid out...

No historical evidence locates Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on what is now Liberty Farm in Fauquier County, Virginia, on the evening of July 18, 1861, three days before the First Battle of Bull Run. So why would a prestigious state preservation group represent that as a fact? The current owner of the farm, Martha Boneta, has sued the Piedmont Environmental Council, a nonprofit land trust, accusing the organization of knowingly making a false historical claim when selling her the property. The environmental council, Boneta claims in the lawsuit, told her the celebrated Civil War general bivouacked on the open...

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA – The United States Supreme Court declined on Monday to review a lower court’s ruling refusing to strike down on Second Amendment grounds Connecticut’s ban on certain semi-automatic firearms including the most popular rifles in the Nation. The Connecticut Citizens’ Defense League (CCDL) and other plaintiffs challenged Connecticut’s ban in 2013, arguing that the ban openly flouts the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that law-abiding citizens have an individual right to keep commonly owned firearms in their homes for self-defense.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has rejected challenges to assault weapons bans in Connecticut and New York, in the aftermath of the shooting attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that left 50 people dead. ADVERTISEMENT The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that upheld laws that were passed in response to another mass shooting involving a semi-automatic weapon, the elementary school attack in Newtown, Connecticut. The Supreme Court has repeatedly turned away challenges to gun restrictions since two landmark decisions that spelled out the right to a handgun to defend one's own home.

Supreme Court Rules for Police in Search Case he Supreme Court ruled Monday that evidence of a crime may be used against a defendant even if the police did something wrong or illegal in obtaining it. The justices voted 5-3 to reinstate the drug-related convictions of a Utah man. The ruling comes in a case in which a police detective illegally stopped defendant Joseph Edward Strieff on the streets of South Salt Lake City, Utah. A name check revealed an outstanding warrant for Strieff. Strieff was placed under arrest and searched. He was carrying methamphetamine. Justice Clarence Thomas said for...

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the city of Cleveland, site of next month's Republican National Convention, accusing the city of illegally restricting areas where protesters and residents can congregate. The suit, filed this week on behalf of the city's homeless, objects to the 8.5-square-kilometer "event zone," a secondary security area outside the stricter security perimeter that will circle the convention site, Quicken Loans Arena. The lawsuit contends that security restrictions and rules regarding public demonstrations in the event zone are "arbitrary, unnecessary and unjustifiable." The plaintiffs also include Citizens for Trump, an activist group backing presumptive Republican nominee...

On multiple fronts, conservatives are challenging Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s executive order to restore voting rights to ex-felons who have completed their prison sentences. This week, Judicial Watch, the conservative advocacy group, filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Bedford County, seeking to prevent ex-felons who gain from McAuliffe’s April 22 order from voting in the November presidential election. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several Virginia voters, who claim their “lawful votes” will be “diminished” by the votes of the ex-felons.

As LawNewz.com reported earlier on Tuesday, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company, and The New York Times recently filed a joint Motion to Intervene in the Trump University lawsuit (and apparently snubbed Fox News in making their request). Essentially, the “Media Intervenors” are asking a judge to release portions of the videotaped “Trump Depositions” that are not already public. Major media outlets going after everything Donald Trump should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been watching this election cycle. However, Trump is not the only presidential candidate currently at the center of a...

Full title: Judicial Watch Sues Virginia Gov. McAuliffe Over Executive Order Granting 206,000 Felons Voting Rights (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that it today filed a lawsuit on behalf of several Virginia voters against Governor Terry McAuliffe and other commonwealth official over McAuliffe’s executive order that attempts to restore voting rights to about 206,000 convicted felons. The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Bedford County, VA, requesting an injunction preventing the enforcement of ( Walker et al. v. McAuliffe et al. (No. CL16000358-00)). On April 22, 2016, McAuliffe signed an executive order titled “Order for Restoration of...

The U.S. Navy chaplain who was removed from the military for disobeying a “lawful” order banning prayer “in Jesus’ name” has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and overturn a decade of rulings in his case. The petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed by attorney John B. Wells on behalf of Gordon J. Klingenschmitt. His case was filed back in 2011, after his removal from the military over the issue of praying “in Jesus’ name” sparked years of battles. Since his removal, Klingenschmitt has been leading the PrayInJesusName.org ministry, and he also has been serving...

Oregon resident Jamie Shupe, who identifies as neither male nor female, can legally be considered nonbinary, a judge ruled. In what legal experts believe is the state's first such ruling, Judge Amy Holmes Hehn ruled Friday that Shupe's sex has been changed from female to nonbinary. "It feels amazing to be free from a binary sex classification system that inadequately addressed who I really am, a system in which I felt confined," the Portland resident said. The Army veteran was assigned the gender of male at birth, but Shupe started transitioning to a female in 2013, more than a decade...

Former Yale basketball captain Jack Montague has filed a lawsuit accusing the Ivy League university of wrongfully expelling him over a sexual assault allegation. The suit filed Thursday in federal court in Connecticut names Yale as a defendant along with two university officials who were involved in processing the complaint against Montague.

A fresh food lawsuit has emerged in Massachusetts following an incident at Panera. Boston Magazine reports that back in January, a New England family placed an online order for a meal from the chain's location in Natick. They ordered a grilled cheese sandwich for their six-year-old daughter, noting that it was for a child with a peanut allergy. The parents claim that after taking a bite, the young girl suffered a reaction that sent her to the hospital, and they discovered a dollop of peanut butter inside the sandwich. Luckily an epi pen saved the girl's life, but the family...

Lt. Brian Rice, one of six Baltimore officers charged in the Gray case, filed his lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Maryland on May 2, the same day two of the other officers — Sgt. Alicia White and Officer William Porter — filed a joint defamation lawsuit against Mosby in state Circuit Court. Documents in Rice's case were first unsealed on Monday.

The law firm suing Trump University was founded by a wealthy San Diego lawyer with close ties to the Clintons who served a two-year sentence in federal prison for his role in a kickback scheme to mobilize plaintiffs for class-action lawsuits. William Lerach, best known for winning more than $7 billion in legal settlements of a class action suit he brought against Enron, was found guilty in 2007 of a kickback scheme in which he his firm used intermediaries to pay clients with large stock portfolios a percentage of the law firm’s $11.3 million profits for agreeing to be plaintiffs...

The Kansas Senate is considering a resolution condemning a recent Obama administration decree that public schools allow transgender students to use the restrooms that match their gender identity, not their sex at birth. The nonbinding resolution comes less than a week after the state Supreme Court ruled that legislators failed to equitably fund the school’s 286 public school districts. […] Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, a Hutchinson Republican, said President Barack Obama “overstepped his bounds” by issuing a decree on what should be a state-level decision. …

ICHMOND, Va. -- The debate over whether transgender students should be able to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal appeals court refused Tuesday to reconsider a three-judge panel's ruling on the matter. The Gloucester County School Board had asked for a review by the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a three-judge panel said in a 2-1 decision last month that a Virginia high school discriminated against a transgender teen by forbidding him from using the boy's restroom. In his dissent of Tuesday's decision denying...

[Via Lawnewz] Donald Trump has undoubtedly made the class action lawsuit against Trump University a prime campaign issue. For the last several days, he has been on a tear against federal Judge Gonzolo Curiel who is overseeing one of the class action lawsuits against Trump University. In the lawsuit, former students claim that the University and Trump violated federal law by luring them to sign up with false promises and then defrauded them once they handed over their checks. LawNewz.com discovered that when it comes to politics, Robbins Gellar Rudman & Dowd, the law firm behind the class action lawsuit,...