A bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to 9/11 rescue and recovery workers sickened after working in the World Trade Center ruins fell short in the House on Thursday, raising the possibility that the bulk of compensation for the ill will come from a legal settlement hammered out in the federal courts. The bill, which would have provided free health care and compensation payments, failed to win the needed two-thirds majority. The vote, 255-159, fell largely along party lines.
In an important Second Amendment decision that charts a course for evaluating the validity of gun laws now that the Supreme Court has declared the right to be an individual one, the 3rd Circuit has refused to strike down a federal law that bans possession of guns with obliterated serial numbers. Perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from the 3rd Circuit opinion is that courts faced with unanswered questions in the Second Amendment arena should look to the extensive jurisprudence on First Amendment claims for guidance.
The New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday issued a one-year suspension to a Newark lawyer who offered discounted fees to female clients or their family members in exchange for sexual favors. David Witherspoon might consider himself lucky. Two justices wanted him disbarred and said the court should set a bright-line rule like the one that mandates disbarment for trust-fund theft. None of the women accepted his offers, but the women all testified they believed he was proposing to exchange legal services for sex.
The federal government's efficiency in handling discrimination complaints by its own workers is slipping a bit, even as more minorities are landing federal jobs, according to an annual report on the federal work force, released this week by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The report offered good and bad news.
More than 100 lawyers squeezed into a courtroom on Thursday in Idaho to argue before a panel of seven judges about which U.S. courthouse should host the massive litigation over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation appeared receptive to appointing more than one judge. Meanwhile, lawyers pressing claims against Toyota Motor over its recall of Prius hybrids asked the panel to put those cases in Santa Ana, Calif.
