The San Francisco Chronicle reports that an African American man serving a life term for a 1989 murder is entitle to a new trial says a federal appeals court. Ezzard Charles Ellis learned, “after his lawyer’s death, that the attorney was a racist who regularly expressed contempt for minority clients.”

“After San Bernardino attorney S. Donald Ames died in 1999, his daughter and others described incidents in which he used racial slurs to refer to nonwhites, particularly African Americans. ”

The “state attorney general’s office, which represented the prosecution in Ellis’ appeal, had agreed that the conviction should be reversed.”

Read the San Francisco Chronicle’s article.

Time reports that Michael Avenatti is “being imprisoned in the same chilly cell that once held drug kingpin El Chapo, his lawyer said.”

“Avenatti was put in the most secure section of the federal facility under special administrative measures designed to cut off his communications with the outside world, Srebnick said. The special housing unit has held dozens of terrorism defendants over the past quarter century.”

“His cell, reportedly once occupied by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has an officer posted outside it around the clock and two cameras focused on him.”

Read the Time‘s article.

The Supreme Court will hear a slate of highly charged disputes when the justices return to the bench in the new year and resume one of the most politically volatile terms in recent memory, reports The Hill.

The court already has heard high-profile fights over LGBT rights in the workplace, the scope of the Second Amendment and the deportation status of nearly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants. But the remaining cases on the court’s docket are no less explosive, write The Hill‘s John Kruzel and Harper Neidig.

The top seven cases to be heard this session involve a separation of powers fight over President Trump’s financial records, Louisiana’s abortion law, religious school scholarships, religious exemptions from discrimination suits, the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a fight over how copyright law treats software interfaces, and Bridgegate and public corruption.

Read the Hill article.

The former general counsel of Faraday & Future Inc. sued the company for $106 million Jan. 3, according to a Bloomberg Law article.

Hong Liu, a China expert, claimed in Manhattan federal court that the electric car startup lured him away from a Mayer Brown LLP partnership by fraudulently overstating its prospects.

He alleges top executives made false claims about a pending $2 billion investment to persuade him to abandon his lucrative practice and move his family from New York to California. The investment didn’t materialize, and Liu alleges he was fired after less than a year without receiving the compensation he’d been promised: $6 million in cash and 20 million shares—valued at $100 million—in Faraday affiliate Smart King Ltd.

Read the Bloomberg article.

A financial tug-of-war is emerging over the $13.5 billion that the nation’s largest utility has agreed to pay to victims of recent California wildfires, as government agencies jockey for more than half the money to cover the costs of their response to the catastrophes, reports Insurance Journal.

Pacific Gas & Electric had acknowledged that  its power lines ignited some of the 2017-2018 fires that caused billions in damages. The company declared bankruptcy nearly a year ago as it faced about $36 billion in claims.

“Those claims were settled as part of the $13.5 billion deal that PG&E reached last month with lawyers representing uninsured and underinsured victims,” explains the Journal‘s Daisy Nguyen.

But the settlement leaves open just how much would be used to compensate victims, their lawyers and federal and state agencies for the money they spent on rescue and recovery operations.

Read the Insurance Journal report.

A federal appeals court has issued an unusual reprimand to a Connecticut judge who had decided to allow an accused sex offender to ask jurors to find him innocent by arguing that the laws he is accused of violating were unjustly applied and the accompanying prison sentences too harsh, reports the Hartford Courant.

In the trial, U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill’s ruling would have permitted a defense lawyer to argue a concept known as jury nullification. It applies in cases where juries nullify or ignore statutes that would result in likely conviction because jurors are persuaded the laws are somehow unfair, explains the Courant’s Edmund H. Mahony.

The trial adjourned abruptly the morning it was to have begun so federal prosecutors could appeal.

Read the  Courant article.

Texas legal news in 2019 reflected the debates and court disputes being heard all across the country, according to this year’s list of Top 10 stories highlighted by Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

Each year the Texas-based marketing and public relations agency follows news developments and develops a list of the biggest legal stories.

“Selecting the Top 10 is never easy,” said Androvett founder and CEO Mike Androvett. “There is no question that Texas is at the forefront of national debate over everything from the border wall to gun control measures. But just as important are the local issues directly affecting the lives of Texans.”

The Androvett team has compiled its annual top 10 legal news list since 2011.

Among the headlines featured:

• Court battles have played out in the lawsuits against Austin-based InfoWars TV show host Alex Jones for promoting conspiracy theories claiming the horrific 2012 mass school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary never happened. He has lost some recent rulings.
• A new federal judge took the bench in Waco and immediately positioned the Western District as a challenger to the Eastern District’s stronghold on the patent litigation “rocket docket” title.
• Houston homeowners earned a federal court win against the Army Corps of Engineers over its management of the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs which resulted in catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Harvey.
• On death row for more than 20 years on a murky murder conviction, Rodney Reed was less than a week away from the death chamber when the state granted an indefinite stay of execution to consider new evidence.

The complete Top 10 Texas Legal Stories of 2019 can be found at https://www.androvett.com/news/the-top-texas-legal-stories-of-2019.

The Eight Circuit has rejected a plaintiff’s claim that an arbitration clause in a retainer agreement she signed with a law firm was unconscionable, according to Carlton Fields’ Reinsurance Focus.

The plaintiff claimed she had received a call from a purported agent of the firm informing her of a purported life-threatening medical condition, leading her to have surgery that she considered to be less than successful. She sued the law firm and other defendants, and the firm sought to compel arbitration pursuant to a retainer agreement.

The district court found the arbitration agreement was unconscionable and refused to compel arbitration. Despite acknowledging that the circumstances that gave rise to this lawsuit were “troubling,” the Eighth Circuit determined that the retainer agreement was not procedurally unconscionable.

Read the article.

The University of Phoenix — a for-profit college chain that has been under scrutiny for years — has reached a landmark settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission following accusations of unfair and deceptive practices that will result in widespread student loan forgiveness, Forbes reports.

“Too often, students would graduate from the University of Phoenix with dismal career prospects, minimal ongoing support, and a lot of student loan debt that could be impossible to repay,” writes Adams S. Minsky, a Forbes contributor. “The University allegedly specifically targeted people of color and military veterans.”

Under the settlement, the university will pay $191 million, of which $141 million will be used to forgive some student loans for certain borrowers who attended the university.

Read the Forbes article.

Bloomberg Law reports that a federal judge in Chicago ruled that Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. wrongly shortchanged a tax attorney’s disability benefits by $3,000 per month by determining he became disabled one day before he received a $65,000 raise.

Harlan Ten Pas, a former partner with McGladrey LLP, suffered a heart attack on Sunday over Labor Day weekend in 2014, one day before his raise became effective. The insurer based his disability benefits on his salary without the benefit.

Ten Pas sued, saying he was entitled to an additional $3,000 per month because the date of disability couldn’t be any earlier than the first non-holiday workday after his heart attack.

Read the Bloomberg  Law article.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utah Transit Authority’s former general counsel is suing the agency for $300,000 in deferred bonuses and benefits that leaders had voided as “unconscionably high.”

The agency responded in state district court by counter-suing Bruce Jones, alleging “fraud and legal malpractice.”

Jones claims he negotiated for the bonuses in exchange for keeping his base salary lower. The agency claims Jones represented “both himself and UTA in salary negotiations” on contracts that gave him the generous benefits, which were never approved by the board.

Read the Tribune article.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at a specific product liability case and puts it into context in the larger question of how Amazon and other internet companies try to avoid a legal burden when the products they sell malfunction, causing injury and damage.

The article by Alexandra Berzon tells the story of malfunctioning hoverboards that caused millions of dollars in damages when they burst into flames.

“The cases are testing a longtime argument made by Amazon and other internet companies, one that underpins the modern tech industry,” she writes. “We are just operating a platform that connects buyers and sellers, the argument goes. It’s up to the sellers who use our site to make sure that they meet proper safety standards.”

Read the WSJ article.

An embattled federal district court seat in North Carolina that multiple presidents struggled to fill over the course of 14 years finally has a new occupant, reports Bloomberg Law.

By a 68 to 21 vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed law professor Richard E. Myers to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, eliminating the longest-running vacancy in the federal judiciary and bolstering President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the courts with conservatives, according to Bloomberg’s Madison Alder.

“Myers, who Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said would be the first black judge on his court, is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and is a former federal prosecutor,” writes Alder.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Legal cases concerning President Trump, his finances and his separation-of-powers disputes with Congress are arriving at the Supreme Court, and together provide both potential and challenge for the Roberts court in its aspiration to be seen as nonpartisan, reports The Washington Post.

On Dec. 13, the court will consider whether to schedule a full briefing and argument on the president’s request that it overturn a lower-court ruling giving New York prosecutors access to Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.

Authors Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow quote Walter Dellinger, who argued for President Bill Clinton before the Supreme Court:

“This will be a special moment for the independence of the judiciary and whether the hyperpartisanship that has infected so much of our culture has also infiltrated the Supreme Court.”

Read the  Post article.

The New York Post reports that a New York man who was acquitted of rape has won $280,000 against his former attorney for branding him an “a-hole” and a “dangerous jerk” online.

Citing published reporting, the Post writes that Donald Glassman was awarded the payout against Robert Feldman after a 10-day trial ruled that the lawyer committed legal malpractice and defamed him.

In an online posting, Feldman called his former client a “tragedy,” “total a-hole,” “dangerous jerk” and a “scary person” with “severe emotional and mental problems” including Asperger’s syndrome.

Read the  NY Post article.

Image by Steve Jurvetson

CNBC reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is headed to court to answer a defamation lawsuit filed by a British rescue diver he called a “pedo guy.”

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles ordered the jury trial to begin Dec. 3.

The plaintiff is Vernon Unsworth, a diver who helped with the rescue of a boys soccer team in Thailand.

The dispute between Musk and Unsworth erupted after Unsworth criticized Musk’s efforts to send a submarine to help rescue the team from a cave in Thailand where they were trapped, according to CNBC’s Annie Palmer. In response, Musk called Unsworth a “pedo guy” on Twitter and a “child rapist” in an email to a reporter.

Read the CNBC article.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that employers cannot by contract shorten the statutory limitations period (i.e. the time period within which a claim must be brought) under Title VII, writes Fiona W. Ong for Shawe Rosenthal’s E-Updates.

Ong explains:

“In Logan v. MGM Grand Detroit Casino, the employee signed a job application containing a provision that established a six-month limitations period for bringing any lawsuit against the employer and that waived any applicable statutes of limitation. The employee, 216 days after her resignation, filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC, and after she received a notice of right to sue, brought suit in federal court. The employer moved to dismiss her lawsuit because it was not timely filed within the contractual six-month period.”

Addressing the issue for the first time, the court found  that contractual limitation in Title VII cases to be unenforceable.

Read the article.

The ABA Journal reports that the U.S. Supreme Court is the least transparent among federal appellate-level courts, while the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco is No. 1 for public access, according to Fix the Court, a national nonpartisan organization based in New York City.

The organization ranked courts on such points as to whether the courts provide live or same-day audio or video of oral arguments, how promptly they release calendars and opinions, how often they post press releases, and whether they have implemented judicial wellness and workplace conduct policies, the Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss writes.

Read the  ABA Journal article.

Reuters is reporting that the firearms industry is on the verge on a potentially crushing wave of litigation from the victims of gun violence — in the opinion of the firearms industry, gun owners, the National Rifle Association and states that strongly back gun rights.

Those parties warned the U.S. Supreme Court of that scenario if the justices did not grant Remington Arms’ petition for review of a 2019 ruling by the Connecticut Supreme Court in a landmark gun liability case. The court denied Remington’s petition for review in the case which involves the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The Connecticut court found in the Remington case that the state’s unfair trade practices statute fits into the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act exception for laws “applicable to the sale or marketing” of firearms. That finding raises the specter of nationwide liability because many states have consumer protection statutes similar to Connecticut’s law, Remington warned.

Read the Reuters article.

An attorney who was brought on at the appellate state to represent a pro se litigant who claimed she was discriminated against by her former employer filed a brief that the Seventh Circuit found to be so bad that it ordered him to show cause why he shouldn’t be sanctioned.

Above the Law reports on the case, with a copy of the court’s opinion included. That opinion includes a stinging rebuke, including this passage:

“The patently frivolous nature of this appeal isn’t the only thing that troubles us. The hopelessness of [the plaintiff-appellant’s] cause didn’t deter her lawyer, Jordan Hoffman, from signing and submitting a bizarre appellate brief laden with assertions that have no basis in the record and arguments that have no basis in the law. In so doing, Hoffman violated Rule 28 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure.”

The court also found the brief to be “chock-full of impenetrable arguments and unsupported assertions, and it is organized in ways that escape our understanding.”

Read the Above the Law article.