Free Republic

Speaking via Skype with Newsmax TV last week, Bill O’Reilly revealed that he has plans to fight back against those who brought him down. Clearly foreshadowing litigation but claiming that his attorneys have implored him to offer no information, the former dominant personality of the entire cable news industry is not planning to go away quietly. Bill is not going away quietly It is no secret that George Soros-backed Media Matters has long had a campaign against FNC and its dominant personalities. No doubt others helped with the “Get Bill” project. If O’Reilly sues on the basis of tortious...

Politico reports that James O’Keefe has been sued for an undercover video sting he released last year: O’Keefe and his organization posted some of the videos online last October, purporting to show efforts by Democrats to provoke violence at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies and events. The recordings led two Democratic operatives, Robert Creamer and Scott Foval, to leave their posts even as they decried O’Keefe’s tactics. In the new civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington Thursday, Creamer, his Strategic Consulting Group and a related firm called Democracy Partners accuse O’Keefe and several colleagues of conspiring to violate...

Washington, D.C. – Today, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) called on her colleagues in the Senate to support a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. Sen. Murray has been pushing for an independent investigation for months, but the urgency reached a new level yesterday when President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the person responsible for the investigation.  Excerpts of Sen. Murray’s speech below: “… what happened yesterday was truly shocking, and this is coming from someone who didn’t think that was possible any more with this President. But if anyone was wavering before,...

I was involved in an accident this past Sunday where a lady pulled out of a side street onto my lane and panicked and stopped. I was able to swerve and avoid t-boning her driver's side door. I clipped her rear fender and damaged my vehicle. She admitted her fault, the police reported such, etc. I got an email from USAA, my insurance company, and they said the total repair bill is ~$5,500. The email also said they paid the auto repair company $4,500 as my deductible is $1,000. Is this SOP? The accident was the other party's fault. Should...

SAN FRANCISCO — Embattled biotech startup Theranos Inc. has promoted senior litigation counsel David Taylor to acting general counsel. Taylor's already got a full plate. "He's got a mess on his hands," said Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro partner Robert Carey in Phoenix, one of many lawyers suing the blood diagnostics company for alleged consumer fraud. Carey's suit is one of six similar, separate suits consolidated in the Northern District of California. Aside from that litigation surplus, Theranos is being investigated for investor and consumer fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, respectively. The...

Ever since I ended my joint representation with National Review and fired my lawyers on Boxing Day, the endlessly reprised refrain has been that "Mark Steyn has a fool for a client". As I wrote here: That's an old English joke, of course. Circa 18th century, I believe, when English life was very lightly lawyered. Whether it applies a quarter-millennium on in a sclerotic dungheap of a system that, as my old boss Conrad Black likes to point out, employs as many lawyers as the rest of the planet combined, who between them invoice ten per cent of GDP is...

Using the mechanisms of government, politics, public opinion to pressure you, investigate you, threaten litigation against you or otherwise complicate your life. Banks announce they will not lend money to people who deal in firearms. A major fundraising web site refuses to host campaigns for the targets of ideological harassment. A U.S. senator openly threatens to go after global warming skeptics using a law that was passed to take down the mafia. Governors veto laws designed to protect religious freedom after receiving threats from organizations like the National Football League. And of course, conservative organizations endure harassment from the IRS....

We’ve often reported here on the efforts of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FRFF) to remove all vestiges of “religious” symbols in public places – and by religious, it’s really only the Christian religion they object to. Their actions extend to public schools, military facilities and public offices. Most recently, FFRFF has drawn a red line in the sand in Breathitt County, Kentucky. Jesus must go. For some time, the FRFF has been trying to get a picture of Jesus removed from the courthouse. There’s just one little problem. FRFF can’t find anyone in Breathitt County to act as their...

Though a relatively small organization with only 26 people on staff, WildEarth Guardians’ litigious nature has established the environmental advocacy group as a dominant voice in the national debate about environmental policy. From 2010 to present, Guardians have initiated a total of 152 cases in federal district courts and 55 in the Circuit Court of Appeals for a total of 207 cases. In 2010 alone they filed 61 claims — an average of about one per week. However, Guardians’ pervasiveness in the courts has not gone without criticism. In a 2012 analysis of WildEarth Guardians' legal activity, the conservative group...

The woman now suffers from Burning Mouth Syndrome, loss of taste, numbness in lips and tongue and oral nerve damage, a lawsuit said. Los Angeles - A US woman has sued famous coffee company Starbucks for more than US $2 million, claiming that she was served coffee which contained cleaning chemicals. Cheryl Kingery from western state of Utah said she suffered severe damage to her esophagus after drinking coffee from a Starbucks cafe just north of Salt Lake City. According to a lawsuit, Kingery ingested a Urnex specialty cleaning product for coffee and espresso equipment. She now suffers from Burning Mouth...

NEW YORK--The U.S. Navy is investigating a complaint that seeks the evacuation of civilian and military lawyers from parts of the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following reports of cancer cases among personnel working on the trials of detainees there. At least seven civilians and military members who worked on detainee trials at Guantanamo Bay have been diagnosed with cancer, according to the complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The complaint calls on American military officials to remove personnel from court facilities on the base and test them and the base...

When asked to explain my belief that Obama’s presidency was a construction created from approximately 10 years of pre-thought exquisitely planned detail, many people are puzzled by my reasoning. If you peel back the layers to the Milli Vanilli roadshow – what you will notice is the strategy of putting specific ideologies into the legal affairs offices of all the “non-political” constructs. The Pentagon office of legal counsel, for example, can handcuff the activity of the Pentagon with legal opinion in opposition to the traditional goals of the organization (See Jeh Johnson). Likewise the CIA office of legal counsel, can...

"Persons or entities that purchased gasoline or diesel fuel (“Plaintiffs”) on or after January 1, 2001, in the following States and jurisdictions –– Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands (the “States at Issue”) – brought lawsuits claiming that selling motor fuel without disclosing or adjusting for the effects of temperature violates consumer protection and other laws. All of the cases relating to the States at Issue and all...

I want to second Jonathan’s take on the lawsuit brought by Oklahoma and Nebraska to enjoin the operation of Colorado’s marijuana regulations. Much as I respect Oklahoma’s Attorney General Scott Pruitt, I think this suit lacks merit. Among other vices, it seriously misreads the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Raich, which I litigated on behalf of Angel Raich and Diane Monson from the filing of the complaint to the oral argument in the Supreme Court. The Court in Raich ruled that Congress had the power to criminalize the noncommercial and wholly intrastate cultivation, possession and transfer of marijuana notwithstanding...

Co-blogger Jonathan Adler and Vanderbilt law professor Robert Mikos have pointed out some of the flaws in the lawsuit filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma urging a federal court to invalidate marijuana legalization in neighboring Colorado. In the unlikely event that the plaintiff states prevail, they will also have set a very dangerous precedent – one that conservatives are likely to rue in other areas. Nebraska and Oklahoma argue that Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana under state law, in the face of continuing federal prohibition, harms neighboring states because it facilitates the flow of marijuana across their borders and may increase...

The Pentagon will offer medical examinations and long-term health monitoring to servicemembers and veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq as part of a review of how the military handled encounters with chemical munitions during the American occupation, The New York Times reported Wednesday. An Oct. 15 Times story found that while the United States had gone to war looking for an active weapons of mass destruction program, troops instead quietly found and suffered from the remnants of the long abandoned arsenal. Since that article, which detailed instances of exposure that the military kept secret in some cases for...

Boston Marathon victim sues Glenn Beck for defamation BOSTON (AP) - A Saudi Arabian man injured in the Boston Marathon bombings has filed a defamation lawsuit against Glenn Beck, accusing the conservative commentator of calling him "the money man" behind the attack. Abdulrahman Alharbi, 20, said in the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston that his reputation was "substantially and severely damaged" as a result of Beck's statements on the air linking him to the bombings. The lawsuit, which also names the broadcast companies connected to Beck's show, seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages.

Kate Berry has a nice article entitled “Lenders’ Dilemma: Invest in Tech or Exit Mortgage Business.“ The cost to originate a home loan is skyrocketing as lenders try to comply with stricter rules to catch problem loans, and some community banks and independent mortgage lenders are now facing a stark choice: invest in technology that would help automate the loan process or exit mortgage lending entirely. Origination costs are expected to rise 11% this year from a year ago, to nearly $5,900 per loan, as lenders scramble to meet tough new requirements from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal...

A nationwide drug shortage that's dogging the food and drug administration is hitting home with first responders. For emergency medical technicians, shortages can mean the difference between life and death. Nationwide, anti-seizure drugs including intravenous Valium, Versed, and Ativan are among the dozens of drugs - including cancer treatments - that are in short supply.

Summary: According to a new, comprehensive report by Lex Machina, more than half of all patent lawsuits in the US now come from patent trolls.Patent lawsuits are used as weapons in business wars between companies such as Oracle vs. Google and Apple vs. Samsung. Behind the intellectual property (IP) headlines, however, Lex Machina, a Silicon Valley startup, has found that patent troll lawsuits have increased from 24 percent of cases filed in 2007 to 56% in 2012. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a "patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming...