Minimum Competence

The US Supreme Court will consider whether Hennepin County's seizure of a woman's Minneapolis condo over unpaid taxes contravened her constitutional rights. Geraldine Tyler had moved out of her home to a senior community when she ran up a tax bill of around $15,000. The county sold the property for $40,000 but refused to give Tyler the surplus. She argues that the action amounts to a Fifth Amendme...

Apple has won its antitrust appeals court battle with Epic Games over its App Store policies, according to the opinion issued by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court largely upheld the district court’s earlier ruling in favor of Apple, which restricted app distribution on iOS devices to the App Store, requiring payments to go through its own processor while preventing developers from...

JPMorgan Chase, the largest financial institution on Wall Street, reportedly requires its workers to give six months' notice before being allowed to leave for another job. A JPMorgan employee posted on the social media platform Blind, which allows career professionals anonymity, that the lengthy notice period may result in a new job offer being rescinded. The worker claims to earn around $400,000...

Update 4/21 1:42PM: Jury found Tesla Autopilot did not fail in the crash. A California state court jury is deliberating in what appears to be the first trial related to a crash involving Tesla's Autopilot partially automated driving software. Justine Hsu, a resident of Los Angeles, sued Tesla in 2020, alleging defects in the design of Autopilot and the airbag and seeking more than $3 million in da...

Old Dominion Freight Line, a transport company facing a federal lawsuit over alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), distributed a one-page waiver to its employees to sign voluntarily, releasing the company from the statute’s obligations. This move follows the state Supreme Court’s Cothron v. White Castle decision, which expanded the potential for huge damages...

Fox News has reached a $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, following accusations that the network had ruined Dominion’s business by airing claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden and against Republican Donald Trump. Fox still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting technology co...

In the shortest news hit we’ve ever provided, the Fox Dominion trial is back on. There has been no confirmation as to what the 24 hour delay was for. All the news stories you’re reading today that try to say more are just speculating. The end.  Dominion's defamation case against Fox poised for trial after delay | Reuters The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal by former mail carrier Gerald...

Two recent US Supreme Court cases merged in a combined ruling, Axon Enterprise v. FTC and SEC v. Cochran allows the SEC and the FTC’s in-house litigation defendants to sue the regulators and is expected to increase the number of constitutional challenges against two of the most powerful regulators, and other federal agencies with a similar structure. The change will allow enforcement targets to ch...

The Biden administration's plan to reduce emissions from the transportation sector through tailpipe emission rules will face industry litigation, but environmental lawyers believe the rule will hold up during inevitable challenges. The proposed standards, revealed by the Environmental Protection Agency, were called the most aggressive ever for cars and trucks. Challengers are likely to argue that...

California is set to become the first US state to require all electronic devices, including laptops and phones, to be charged using USB-C cables under legislation approved by the state Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection committee. The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, requires wholesalers and retailers to give consumers the option to buy an electronic product with or without a...

Ernst & Young (EY) has cancelled the planned split of its consulting and audit practices after its US affiliate opted out of the plan, disrupting almost a year of negotiations to break up the Big Four accounting firm. The firm had intended to spin off its consulting business and tax practice into a standalone public company, but partners disagreed on compensation and resources needed to staff the...

President Joe Biden signed a congressional resolution to end the U.S. national emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic. The emergency measures allowed the government to respond to the virus and support the country's economic, health, and welfare systems. Biden signed the measure behind closed doors after publicly opposing it, but not to the point of issuing a veto. The law signed by Biden on Monday di...

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is offering $8.9 billion to settle all lawsuits over its talc products, which have been linked to cancer, and at least two outside litigation funders stand to benefit. Virage Capital Management and TRGP Capital have invested in hundreds of claims in exchange for a share of any winnings. The funders worked with plaintiffs lawyers handling some of the cases, and their role in...

The IRS plans to use more than half of its $80 billion in new funding to increase enforcement efforts on large corporations and wealthy individuals who are not paying their fair share of taxes. The agency will devote $47.4 billion to auditing “taxpayers with complex tax filings and high-dollar noncompliance,” including large corporations and complex partnerships. The agency has seen a decline in i...

Chipotle has filed a lawsuit against Sweetgreen for trademark infringement, alleging that the salad chain's "Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl" menu item copies the name and branding of Chipotle's burrito bowls. The complaint, which was filed in a California federal court, claims that Sweetgreen's use of the word "Chipotle" in its advertising and the dish's name is likely to cause consumer confusion....

A federal court in Texas has ordered a public library system to put back into circulation over a dozen books that were removed from the shelves. The books, which covered issues relating to LGBTQ+ and racism, had been pulled by the library. Library patrons sued, alleging that the books had been removed due to disagreement with their viewpoint. The patrons also claimed that the library had closed bo...

Donald Trump, former US President and current front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024, has been formally charged and will appear in court today. He will be the first former or sitting US President to face criminal charges. The charges stem from a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels; Trump denies any wrongdoing and will plead not guilty. Trump's lawyers opposed v...

The scores on the February bar exam in the US have fallen for the second consecutive year, with some blame placed on COVID-19 pandemic disruptions in law schools. The national average score on the Multistate Bar Exam was 131.1, a decrease of 1.5 points from the previous year, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The decline is attributed to an increase in repeat test takers and t...

Thanks for reading Minimum Competence! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. When applying to take the bar exam, applicants are required to complete a Character and Fitness questionnaire to assess their ability to perform the duties of a lawyer. Mental health questions are included in the questionnaire in 37 states and Washington, D.C. Fourteen states do not consider mental...

In what is unquestionably the biggest news of the last 24 hours, former US President Donald Trump has been indicted in New York over hush money payments made to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Trump. A grand jury has voted to indict Trump, the first former US president to face criminal prosecution. Legal analysts suggest that...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) is reportedly considering directing a significant portion of the costs related to recent bank failures towards big banks. The FDIC is facing around $23bn in costs related to the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which have reportedly left the deposit insurance fund set to take hits. Officials are believed to be looking at limiting...

Thanks for reading Minimum Competence! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, has been charged with foreign bribery by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, adding to the 13 criminal counts he is already facing, including securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations. The charge stems from an alleged $40m bribe that Mr....

House Republicans are continuing their efforts to oppose a US Labor Department rule on environmental, social, and governance retirement investing, despite failing to override President Joe Biden’s veto of a resolution to kill it. Republican lawmakers are now working on legislation with former DOL Secretary Eugene Scalia that would modify the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to ban r...

Thanks for reading Minimum Competence! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. First Citizens BancShares Inc. has agreed to acquire Silicon Valley Bank after the bank was seized by regulators following a run on the lender. The deal will see First Citizens take on all deposits and loans, including $72 billion SVB assets at a discount of $16.5 billion. The Federal Deposit Insur...

Thanks for reading Minimum Competence! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. You can also subscribe to the podcast in all the usual places. This week, owing to this week’s decision in favor of four book publishers and against The Internet Archive , we’re covering that case, Hachette v. Internet Archive , in brief.  On your mark, get set, go.  First a bit of background … The...