Balough
December 14, 2013
A roommate matching website that gives users pull down menu options with prelisted preferences may be liable for violating the Fair Housing Act, the court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled. The court said because Roommates.com, operated by Roommate.com, LLC, provides menu options that include preferences for age, gender, and whether children will […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A divided California Supreme Court found that a defendant can be enjoined from repeating certain statements after a trial court found the statements were defamatory. The court concluded that the injunction was not prohibited by either the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment or California’s state constitution. The majority opinion found that “an injunction issued following a trial […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A citation issued against a volunteer for Jews for Jesus for speaking and distributing literature in a public park was dismissed because the town’s ordinance was unconstitutionally overbroad and because the volunteer was wrongly told that no permit process existed. Susan Mendelson and two other persons attempted to speak and distribute literature in a park […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
As widely anticipated, a federal judge has found the 1998 Child Online Privacy Act (COPA) violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. found that the Act, which attempts to protect children from pornographic Internet sites by making it a crime for Web sites to allow […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A Vincennes University policy restricting uninvited “solicitations” to a walkway outside the student union and banning such solicitations from the school’s library lawn does not violate the uninvited speaker’s constitutional rights. The policy was initiated after an incident by Brother Jim in 2001 who, uninvited, began preaching on the library lawn of the public university […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Even though a maker of custom vans obtained a trademark registration for “Work-N-Play,” the fact that the company made only one sale that didn’t even use the trademark prevented it from claiming infringement by another van maker using the term “Work and Play.” The Seventh Circuit found that the term “Work-N-Play” was a “descriptive mark,” […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
Attaching a global positioning device on a car to track the suspect’s movements without a warrant does not constitute an unlawful search, the Seventh Circuit has found. However, if the government someday institutes a program of mass surveillance of vehicular movements, then the Court said it would “decide whether the Fourth Amendment should be interpreted […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
An elementary school teacher can be fired for telling her class that she honked her car’s horn in support of demonstrators against the war in Iraq, the Seventh Circuit found. The appellate court said the teacher had been told that she could teach the controversy about the war in Iraq “drawing out arguments from all […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
An attorney who sent a letter to an employer accusing an employee of stabbing an inflatable rat cannot be sued for defamation because the letter was sent to a potential litigant, an Illinois appellate court found. The bar applies even if the attorney did not investigate whether the accusation was true or false. Kevin Atkinson sued […]
Balough
December 14, 2013
A hospital is not liable for a phlebotomist’s casual comment, revealing the results of plaintiff’s pregnancy test, when the comment was made to plaintiff’s twin sister in a bar because the comment was not made in the course of employment, the Illinois Supreme Court found. “The only reasonable inference from the undisputed facts was that […]
