On Tuesday, we wrote about a case involving the First Amendment rights of a protester at a military funeral. Today, we bring you word of another case involving the First Amendment and political dissent, one which hasn't yet reached the Supreme Court, but could.



The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether all Americans, including the president’s critics, have a right to attend his public speeches, or whether the White House retains the right to screen out dissenters.

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We have no evidence that this is true, but we'd imagine that a fair percentage of lawyers have trouble connecting with Mr. Sandman during the night.



It’s time to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, LBers, to bring you a little news you can use (”news,” we admit, is used very loosely here).

It’s not a book recommendation or keys to taking more effective depositions or even advice on getting a job. No, we’re about to give you some tips on overcoming a problem of a more general nature: sleeplessness.

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John Walker Lindh is back in the news. He and another Muslim inmate have asked a federal judge in Indianapolis to allow them and other Muslims to pray as a group, as required by their religious beliefs.



The American Civil Liberties Union last Thursday filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis for summary judgment on behalf of Lindh, 29, claiming that the prison’s policy violates their First Amendment right to free religious expression.

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The cure for Allergan's headache: a $600 million settlement with the feds.



Allergan agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge pegged to misbranding the drug between 2000 and 2005. Allergan also settled civil claims linked to three whistleblower lawsuits, but denied liability with regard to the civil claims.

The Justice Department alleged Allergan tried to boost Botox sales by encouraging doctors to prescribe the drug for uses the Food and Drug Administration hadn’t authorized, such as treating headaches and pain.

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In the wake of the financial meltdown, the world, it seemed, sued the banks, with varying degrees of success. Now it's the banks' turn to try to pin some blame in a court of law.



On Tuesday, New York State Supreme Court judge James A. Yates set a tentative date of January 19, 2011 to start a two-week trial on a case brought last year by 16 U.S. and foreign banks against bond insurer MBIA Inc. and the New York State Insurance Department.

The banks, which include J.P. Morgan Chase, Barclays, UBS and Bank of America, have challenged the legality of a restructuring MBIA undertook in early 2009, which separated its profitable business of insuring municipal bonds from its troubled portfolio of guarantees on soured mortgage securities.

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Intellectual property lawyers who defend major corporations were left scratching their heads after Tuesday's ruling from the Federal Circuit in the Stauffer v. Brooks Brothers case. Many were assuredly wondering how the flood of false marking suits might be stopped now?



The backstory: Patent lawyers had been holding their breath awaiting the outcome of the case to predict the fates of dozens of the suits that had been stayed until Stauffer was decided.

The suits claim manufacturers of everything from Frisbees to Toothpaste have marked their products with expired patents, which is against the law.

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Just when you though the procedural maneuverings in the Prop. 8 case couldn't get any more complicated, well, they did.



A conservative legal group, the Pacific Justice Institute, has filed papers in state court, asking that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown (pictured) be made to defend the law in federal court.

The most natural party to appeal the ruling would be the state of California, which, after all, bears the responsibility of enforcing the law. But Schwarzenegger and Brown have chosen not to. Without their participation, the appeal totters along on shaky legs.

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Arbitration was once known as a faster, cheaper, better way to settle disputes. But has the process become as bogged down as conventional litigation?

Possibly, writes Gina Passarella in the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer on Wednesday. Writes Passarella: “litigators are starting to find the quicker, cheaper, more private aspects of arbitration have turned into lengthy, expensive and often public quasi-trials.”

As a result, an increasing number of attorneys are advising clients either to draft narrowly tailored arbitration clauses or to simply take their chances in court.

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If manufacturers weren't yesterday combing through their inventories, looking to find which of its products claimed to be covered by a patent, you can bet they're doing it today.



The shift is the result of a big ruling made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which on Tuesday upheld Raymond E. Stauffer’s right to sue Brooks Brothers for labeling its bow-ties with numbers from expired patents.

The ruling could pave the way for hundreds of similar suits against major companies to move forward. A separate ruling by the Federal Circuit in December raised the stakes in such cases, potentially exposing product makers to huge liabilities.

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Let's say two men legally married in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage try to divorce in a state that doesn't. What happens?



The story, according to this Dallas Morning-News story, goes like this: Last October, a state district judge ruled that two men who married in Massachusetts then tried to get a divorce in Texas could legally end their marriage. As part of her ruling, judge Tina Callahan ruled that the state’s prohibition against same-sex marriage violates the federal constitutional right to equal protection.

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The opening of the 2010-11 Supreme Court term is still over a month away. Nevertheless, now's the time when the nation's Supreme Court scribes begin previewing the big cases of the upcoming term.

Over at the USA Today, Joan Biskupic on Monday previewed a fascinating case that will come to the justices’ attention on Oct. 6. The case, called Snyder v. Phelps, will ask the justices to consider whether and to what degree protesters who yelled inflammatory words during the memorial service of a fallen Marine back in 2006 are protected from suit by the First Amendment.

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It's often struck us as an obvious question: how can law schools provide better real-world training to students when their faculties are made up of article-writing academics? The answer: they can't, at least according to a new article to be published in the South Carolina Law Review.

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Listen up, Taylor Lautner. We've never seen your movies and can't profess to being a fan. But we do think you'd win us over if you took Brent McMahon up on his challenge.



Let’s explain. Lautner, he of the incredible abs and a star of the “Twilight” movies, recently sued McMahon, the owner of an RV dealership in Irvine, Calif, for allegedly failing to deliver a customized vehicle in time for the shoot of his new movie, “Abduction.”

On Monday, McMahon presented what we can only consider to be an awesome solution to the dustup: settle it with pushups. That’s right: whoever can do more pushups — McMahon or Lautner — wins the lawsuit.

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The ACLU proved itself once again an equal-opportunity litigant on Monday when it filed suit against the Obama administration over an alleged policy of killing American citizens suspected of terrorism.



You’ve got to tip your hat to the ACLU. The organization will sue anyone along the political spectrum at just about any time. All it takes is a violation of one’s constitutional rights. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if the issue is likely to garner a headline or two.

The organization proved itself once again an equal-opportunity litigant on Monday when it filed suit against the Obama administration over an alleged policy of killing American citizens suspected of terrorism.

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On July 8, the day LeBron James announced he would join the Miami Heat next season, we blogged about a lawsuit filed in June against the basketball star. The plaintiff in the case, a Washington, D.C., man named Leicester Stovall, sued James, claiming he's James's father. On Monday, James moved to dismiss the case.



In the suit, Stovell claims he met James’s mother, Gloria James, at a Washington, D.C., bar in 1984. At the time, Stovael was 29 and Gloria James was 15. Stovall claims the sexual encounter was consensual.

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Over at Politico, legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein has an interesting piece on a provocative case to be argued Monday at the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.The case pits the federal government against the organization known as the North American Islamic Trust, one of the nation's most prominent Muslim organizations.

Back in 2007, the government placed NAIT and two other prominent Islamic organizations on a publicly filed list of about 300 unindicted co-conspirators in a Dallas trial of a defunct Islamic charity accused of being a front for Hamas, the Holy Land Foundation.

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The ruling earlier this month by San Francisco federal judge Vaughn Walker declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional might well be overturned by the Ninth Circuit. But for now, it seems it's providing a bit of inspiration to gays and lesbians in Hawaii.



The Hawaii lawsuit focuses not on gay marriage but on legalizing civil unions, which give same-sex partners the same rights and responsibilities as marriage. The Hawaiian Constitution bans same-sex marriage. Still, the Hawaii, lawsuit makes many of the same arguments outlined in the California suit that challenged Prop. 8.

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For the first time in history, the U.S. Supreme Court now has three female justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.But will the presence of three women on the high court really change anything in a meaningful way?



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Barry Grissom, the newly installed U.S. Attorney in Kansas, was a model for years before he got into law.



As we searched for more background on Grissom, who was just sworn into office last Friday, we came across this post by the Main Justice blog.

It turns out that during his early years as a lawyer, Grissom was a part-time model for Wilhelmina Models in New York. Yes, the far-left picture is of Grissom during his more fashionable and svelte Wilhelmina years.

A 1981 graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law, Grissom seems to have a good sense of humor about his modeling years from 1980 to 1986.

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The FCC has appealed a July ruling by the 2nd Circuit that the agency's rule against fleeting expletives is unconstitutionally vague.



At issue in the case, brought by Fox Network and other broadcasters, is a 2004 FCC policy, which authorizes fines against station owners that air “fleeting” expletives. Fox was fined under the policy after Cher and Nicole Ritchie swore on air.

After the 2nd Circuit ruling, we wrote that the big question was whether the FCC would appeal — a move that could put the case on a path to the Supreme Court.

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