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A doctor accused of trying to arrange a contract hit on the divorce attorney who had represented his former wife in their divorce, years earlier, kept a hidden camera in his office, a police detective testified Wednesday at a preliminary hearing in Mississippi. And on video from that camera Dr. Ralph Arnold Smith Jr., 70, could be hearing saying of the alleged target, attorney Lee Abraham, "Take a picture of him with a bullet between his eyes," testified Greenwood police detective Jeff Byars,... more

Perhaps 50 of the 300 partners at Dewey & LeBoeuf at the end of 2011 are still with the law firm right now. Associates and staff have been laid off. And a group of retired pension partners are pondering a possible effort to force the firm into involuntary bankruptcy. The final remaining member of what was, until recently, a five-partner law firm management committee exited Dewey Wednesday for Arnold & Porter. However, the struggling firm "is not formally closed," a spokesman tells... 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] A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Monday awarded [opinion, PDF] victims' families over $300 million dollars in damages from the governments of Syria and Iran for their roles in an April 2006 terrorist attack in Israel. The lawsuit was filed by the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center [advocacy website] on behalf of plaintiffs who were injured or lost family members in a suicide bombing attack at the Rosh Ha'ir restaurant in Tel Aviv, Israel.... more

[JURIST] Mass arrests and incommunicado detentions persist at Camp Honor, a prison in Iraq's capital Baghdad that the Iraqi government promised to close [JURIST report] last year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website], reported [text] Tuesday. According to HRW, the Iraqi government is reportedly holding hundreds of detainees incommunicado for months at a time at Camp Honor, as well as two unnamed facilities in the Green Zone. Those being held at these facilities were reportedly rounded up... more

Judge Morris Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit will take over as the presiding judge of a secret federal appeals court in Washington this week, a court official said today. Arnold, appointed to the Eighth Circuit in 1992, will serve as the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review until the remainder of his term, which expires in May 2015. Arnold replaces Judge Bruce Selya of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, whose term on... more

American companies have yet to wake up to Canada's stringent anti-spam law, according to a report by Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. Bill C-28, or CASL, as it's become known, received Royal assent in December 2010, but has yet to come into force. When it does - likely January 2013 - it will contain some of the toughest anti-spam provisions in the world, banning senders from delivering unsolicited commercial electronic messages without receiving express or implied consent from the... more

After nearly three decades with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, Special Counsel Patricia Riley will retire later this year. The District of Columbia Council recently honored her with a ceremonial resolution (PDF) that went into effect on Friday. As special counsel since 1999, Riley has crafted and promoted the office's legislative efforts before the council. She has yet to decide on a formal retirement date, but expects it will be around September. "I hope... more

Skechers USA has agreed to pay $45 million to settle Federal Trade Commission and state charges that it made unfounded claims that its toning sneakers would help people lose weight while strengthening and toning their legs, buttocks and abdominal muscles. "The only thing that got a workout was [consumers'] wallets," said David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, at a press conference this morning announcing the lawsuit and settlement, which were both... more

The so-called "smartphone wars" involving patent lawsuits are just part of the "natural ebb and flow of technology development" and not a fundamental problem with patents or the patents system, the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told a congressional committee today. David Kappos, testifying before a House Judiciary Committee, compared the global battle over the technology inside smartphones to the fights about James Watt's steam engines and sewing... more