A bill that expands the rights of Minnesotans to use deadly force, is making its way through the state legislature.

The bill passed the House Public Safety Committee Monday, which is something local gun rights activists say is a step in the right direction, considering recent area incidents.

The incident they are  referring to is the shooting of two males in November of 2010  outside a Sawyer County Bar. According to the criminal complaint the bar owner shot and injured two men as they allegedly tried to break into his business.

To gun rights activists, like Frank Lefevre, this is an example of deadly force used in the right way. It’s just one reason gun owners think Minnesota needs to change their current deadly force law.

“Am I prepared to use a gun if I have to? Yes,” said Lefevre. “But I pray to god I never have to.”

Under the proposed law the property from which a Minnesotan could use deadly forced will be changed. They would be able to fire at an assailant not only from inside their home but in their front yard or inside their vehicle.

“We as citizens have a right and an obligation to defend our families and ourselves,” said Lefevre. Read the rest of this entry »

In boom times, law firms bill tons of hours advising companies on mergers and acquisitions. When things go bust, they rake in fees presented by bankruptcies, reorganizations, and shareholder lawsuits. Yet the billable-hours set was hit especially hard by the crash of 2008 and is only now recovering. Profits per partner (PPP, the industry’s generally accepted bottom-line metric) jumped 8.4 percent last year, according to The American Lawyer’s 2011 Am Law 100 report, which tracks law firms’ financial performance. That came after a flat 2009 and a 4.3 percent drop in 2008.

Law firms’ fortunes rose last year in part because of the economic recovery, which allowed firms to bill more hours and discount fees less. What’s most notable in the data is the extent to which firms drove profitability by cutting head count—even expensive, but historically untouchable, partners.

“For many years, equity partners were protected from the vicissitudes of firm finances,” says Robin Sparkman, The American Lawyer’s editor-in-chief. “Their share of the profits may have gone up or down, but their jobs were secure.” The American Lawyer reports that overall attorney head count fell 2.7 percent in 2010, the biggest drop since the magazine started its ranking almost 25 years ago. Am Law 100 firms posted an average profit per partner of $1.37 million.

Atlanta’s Alston & Bird shows how lucrative keeping the lid on staffing can be. It achieved a 33.7 percent increase in profits per partner (the highest on the Am Law 100) thanks in large part to a 6.7 percent reduction in head count—even as it increased revenue by 3.6 percent in a year that saw it defend Toyota Motor (TM) from safety-related lawsuits.

Shedding attorneys is not unprecedented. Firms jettisoned lawyers after the dot-com crash. What’s “stunning” about last year, says Sparkman, is both the rate of head-count reduction and its breadth across seniority. “Previously,” she notes, “firms closed offices, shed support staff, and cut back on perks. Now they’ve taken an ax to some of the senior lawyers, too.” Read the rest of this entry »

Law enforcement agencies in northern border states for now will still be able to receive border protection grants after Congress nixed an attempt to limit the money to the Southwest.

But it may be a temporary reprieve, with the Department of Homeland Security’s 2012 budget request also seeking to restrict the Operation Stonegarden grant money to Southwestern border states.

Both the 2011 and 2012 budget requests by the department earmarked $50 million for Operation Stonegarden, which local law enforcement agencies in border states use to pay for overtime and equipment meant to help the federal government secure U.S. borders.

But unlike past years, Homeland Security specified in its requests the grant money was to be spent only “to address the nation’s Southwest border security issues.” That limitation was met with dismay from northern lawmakers from Maine to Montana who argued against cutting support to protect the 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border.

Last year, border states in the Southwest received $47.6 million in Operation Stonegarden grants, compared with $11.1 million for northern border states.

The restriction was removed in the budget bill passed by Congress earlier this month, the agency said Friday and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed on Monday.

“Northern border states are eligible for Operation Stonegarden grants in (Fiscal Year) 2011,” DHS spokesman Chris Ortman said. Read the rest of this entry »

Doctors, like patients, have a right to prescription-information privacy, Vermont maintains, while drug marketers argue releasing doctors’ names can save lives.

Both sides are to argue their reasons for and against this before the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday in a case testing whether Vermont’s prescription-confidentiality law violates the First Amendment’s free-speech protections — and whether drug companies typically use the information to persuade doctors to switch patients to expensive, new drugs, some of whose side effects may not be fully known.

“It’s very powerful data and it’s easy to understand why drug companies want it,” Burlington, Vt., family physician Norman Ward tells The New York Times. “If they know the prescribing patterns of physicians, it could be very powerful information in trying to sway their behavior — like, why are you prescribing a lot of my competitor’s drug and not mine?”

But this argument is “an attempt to show a darker side to the process,” IMS Health Inc. external affairs Vice President Randy Frankel tells USA Today.

Without the data, a small biotechnology company with a tiny sales force might have to “visit 1,000 physicians to identify the 10 whose patients might most benefit” from a breakthrough medicine, Frankel tells the Times. “With the data, [the company] would go to the 10.”

IMS, the defendant in the case, supplies the pharmaceutical industry with sales data and consulting services. Read the rest of this entry »

The law firm hired by Republicans in the House of Representatives to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act withdrew Monday amid pressure from gay rights groups. The decision prompted the resignation of a prominent partner, who said he intended to take the case with him to another law office.

Gay rights groups had fiercely criticized the law firm, the 126-year-old King & Spalding of Atlanta, saying that its agreement to defend the law, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages, would hurt its ability to recruit and retain lawyers. The firm’s chairman, Robert D. Hays Jr., said in a statement Monday morning that the firm would no longer defend the law.

“In reviewing this assignment further, I determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate,” he said. “Ultimately I am responsible for any mistakes that occurred and apologize for the challenges this may have created.” Read the rest of this entry »

Alabama is the latest state to consider passage of an Arizona-style immigration reform measure.

The Alabama Senate is debating an Arizona-style immigration bill Thursday in the latest bid to pass legislation combating undocumented immigrants at the state level. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale, said Thursday his bill incorporates ideas not only from Arizona’s law, but also from laws in Oklahoma and Missouri.

A number of states have crafted an passed laws similar to the controversial measure passed and signed into law in Arizona in 2010. Under the proposed measure state law enforcement will have the right to question the citizenship status of individuals suspected of living in the country illegally.

Opponents of the measure argue it is an invasion of privacy and will lead to discrimination. Supporters of the measure say it is necessary in order to combat an influx of undocumented immigrants.

Source

A federal judge in New Jersey tossed out a challenge to President Obama’s health care law Thursday, ruling that the pair behind the lawsuit lacked legal standing.

Nicholas E. Purpura and Donald R. Laster, both of New Jersey, filed the suit last September seeking to derail the law, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will go into full effect in 2014. The law, Obama’s signature domestic achievement, has already ignited a storm of controversy over its cost and the waivers granted since it was enacted a year ago.

The pair’s suit was among nearly two dozen challenging the constitutionality of the law, in particular the individual mandate that would require all U.S. citizens to buy health care or face penalties.

Three federal judges, all appointed by Democrats, have already ruled the law constitutional while two Republican-appointed ones have called it the other way. The Supreme Court is expected to take up the issue next year. Read the rest of this entry »

The NFL said Thursday that it had denied a request from an outside law firm that had sought its permission to represent a class of players in the antitrust suit against the league.

The law firm, which represented the NFL on matters of music licensing, was trying to collect a class of mid-level players that sought to join the NFLPA group suing the league.

The NFLPA posted a letter from the firm to players on Wednesday night in which the firm claimed it received a “welcome” response to a request for a waiver.

But in a statement Thursday to SportsBusiness Journal, the NFL said it had decided not to permit the waiver.

“We notified the law firm that while we do not know the specifics of the claims or the players who would be involved we cannot consent to the firm’s request to grant a waiver,” the league said.

“As a matter of policy, we do not believe it is appropriate to consent to firms bringing suit against the NFL while simultaneously representing league entities even on unrelated matters.”

Source

The Obama administration and environmental interests generally agree that global warming is a threat that must be dealt with.

But they’re on opposite sides of a Supreme Court case over the ability of states and groups such as the Audubon Society that want to sue large electric utilities and force power plants in 20 states to cut their emissions.

The administration is siding with American Electric Power Co. and three other companies in urging the high court to throw out the lawsuit on grounds the Environmental Protection Agency, not a federal court, is the proper authority to make rules about climate change. The justices will hear arguments in the case Tuesday.

The court is taking up a climate change case for the second time in four years. In 2007, the court declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. By a 5-4 vote, the justices said the EPA has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under that landmark law. The same reasoning applies to power plants.

The administration says one reason to end the current suit is that the EPA is considering rules that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. But the administration also acknowledges that it is not certain that limits will be imposed.

At the same time, Republicans in Congress are leading an effort to strip the EPA of its power to regulate greenhouse gases.

The uncertainty about legislation and regulation is the best reason for allowing the case to proceed, said David Doniger, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which represents Audubon and other private groups dedicated to land conservation.

“This case was always the ultimate backstop,” Doniger said, even as he noted that the council would prefer legislation or EPA regulation to court decisions. The suit would end if the EPA does set emission standards for greenhouse gases, he said. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. Supreme Court today pressed lawyers representing Microsoft about changing existing patent law as the software giant argued to overturn lower court rulings that it infringed on patents held by i4i, a tiny Toronto company.

The case has become one of the most important in patent law in years. Microsoft is hoping to create a precedent that would make it harder for companies with patent claims to prove infringement. Several large technology companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, and Cisco, have filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Microsoft’s arguments. At the same time, i4i’s case has drawn support from big pharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists, universities, and the U.S. government.

As the heart of the case is the degree to which companies accused of infringing have to prove that a patent is invalid. In the i4i case, the district court ruled that Microsoft had to provide “clear and convincing evidence” that i4i’s patent–covering the way XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is used in Microsoft Word–is invalid. Microsoft wants the court to lower the standard, requiring defendants to offer only a “preponderance of the evidence” to invalidate a patent.

A jury ruled in 2009 that Microsoft infringed on i4i’s patent, awarding i4i $200 million. Microsoft lost a subsequent appeal. In November, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Just as Microsoft lawyer Thomas Hungar began presenting its arguments, Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Elena Kagen pressed him on the legal precedent in a 1934 case that seemed to mandate using a higher evidentiary standard.

“The language of that opinion is extremely broad,” Kagan said, according to a transcript. “And if you read that opinion, no one would gather from that opinion the kinds of limits that you’re suggesting on it. Read the rest of this entry »