Connectu v. Facebook (and vice versa)

A Rhode Island girl who successfully waged a legal battle to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium is now suffering the wrath of her deeply religious neighbors. Jessica Ahlquist, 16, has gotten online threats, and police have escorted her at school. A state lawmaker called her "an evil little thing" on a talk radio program. And three local florists have refused to deliver flowers that a national atheist group tried to send to her. All because Ahlquist, an avowed... more

At the top of his game as Florida's unchallenged foreclosure king, David J. Stern had perhaps 100,000 cases and a back-office legal processing support operation that he sold for $60 million in 2010. Then came allegations of slipshod work and the firm's sudden collapse last year, after Fannie Mae pulled its files. Judges reportedly were left to deal with abandoned cases because the firm lacked the staff or funds to move to withdraw, and now-former employees sued for termination pay. Earlier this... more

The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday to find the right balance between student privacy and public school safety in the case of an Arizona middle-school girl who was strip-searched on suspicion of having an ibuprofen pill.... more

There are two vacant slots on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but as far as many Washington lawyers are concerned one is already spoken for. Lawyers at several D.C. firms, along with the Hispanic Bar Association of D.C., have launched an aggressive campaign to get D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Vanessa Ruiz onto the circuit.... more

[JURIST] Guatemalan Judge Carol Flores ruled Thursday that ex-dictator Rios Montt must stand trial for charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The judge heard the prosecutor's initial statements Wednesday and decided Thursday that the evidence was sufficient to go to trial. Montt is being charged for crimes committed throughout the country's 36-year civil war [BBC timeline], which officially ended in 1996. Montt was a general in the military who became dictator after a coup in 1982 but... more

[JURIST] Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] Thursday reported the recent deaths of several Libyan detainees who were apparently tortured while in custody [press release]. The deaths come amid allegations of widespread torture and ill-treatment of detainees accused of being pro-Gaddafi loyalists and fighters during the Libyan conflict [JURIST backgrounder] last year. AI conducted extensive interviews with detainees in and around Tripoli, Misrarah and Gheryan, many of whom showed... more

If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. You've got dozens to remember - some of them tortuously complex - and on any given day, as you read e-mails, send tweets, and order groceries online, you're bound to forget one, or at least mistype it. You may even be one of those unfortunate people who've had a password stolen, thanks to the dodgy security on the machines that store them. But who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? Like the... more

[JURIST] Judge Carl Barber of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana [official website] Thursday issued an order [text, PDF] that British Petroleum (BP) [corporate website] will be held liable for a portion of the damages owed by Transocean [corporate website] stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. BP will be required to indemnify Transocean against damages created by the pollution itself that are awarded throughout the... more

Updated at 5:23 p.m. The National Park Service alerted Occupy D.C. demonstrators today of its intent to begin enforcing a no-camping rule starting on Monday, and also filed notice (PDF) with the federal judge overseeing the protesters' case against the agency about the warning this afternoon. Attorneys for the Occupy D.C. demonstrators and the U.S. Department of the Interior are due in court Jan. 31 to argue over a preliminary injunction motion. The demonstrators have sued to keep the park... more

Lawyers with Covington & Burling in Washington helped to secure asylum for a Sudanese Episcopalian Bishop after he became a target for his support of South Sudan, the firm said Friday. Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail is a native of the Sudanese province of South Kordofan, which borders South Sudan to the north. Elnail came to the U.S. seeking medical treatment in May 2011. In June 2011, a conflict broke out between the Army of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement in South... more

On almost any given day, Twitter receives a handful of requests to delete tweets that link to pirated versions of copyrighted content-and quickly complies by erasing the offending tweets from its site. That fact itself is probably unsurprising to people familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown process, which gives sites like Twitter a "safe harbor" against lawsuits related to user behavior and uploads-so long as the sites don't knowingly tolerate pirated... more