North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Citing judicial immunity, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the dismissal of a multimillion-dollar civil rights lawsuit against a Maryland circuit court judge who ordered a deputy sheriff to use a Taser-like electrical shock to quiet a ...

Tagged with: tazer

Law firms retained to pursue fore­closure against homeowners are “debt collectors” subject to the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, a fed­eral appeals court ruled in a case in­volving law firm Sam­uel I. White PC from Virginia Beach, Virginia. In ...

Tagged with: foreclosure

BALTIMORE, MD — Motorists pulled over during routine traffic stops have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cars such that police officers must have probable cause, reasonable suspicion or reasonably fear for the public’s immediate safety before sticking their ...

Tagged with: Marijuana search and seizure

BALTIMORE, MD — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission must pay nearly $1 million in attorney’s fees for pursuing a race discrimination claim after becoming aware of the “incredibly shoddy work” of its expert witness, a federal judge in Greenbelt ...

Tagged with: EEOC

BALTIMORE, MD – Estate-planning attorneys have taken on increased importance with the rise in blended families over the past generation. Forty percent of marriages are remarriages and, since 1980, the number of people who have married multiple times has nearly ...

Tagged with: Divorce Estate Planning

BALTIMORE — A lawyer’s premature disclosure of her client’s sealed whistleblower lawsuit does not necessarily doom the litigation, a U.S. appeals court ruled Monday in reviving a construction worker’s claim that a Maryland company violated the federal False Claims Act ...

Tagged with: 4th Circuit

Dolan Media Newswires The confirmation of Pamela Harris to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marks a giant step in President Barack Obama’s ongoing quest to transform one of the country’s most conservative appellate panels into one of its ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

The importance of presidential judicial appointments became clear Tuesday when two federal appeals courts reached opposite results on the same question: whether the tax subsidy offered by the Affordable Care Act is available to people who buy health insurance through ...

Tagged with: Obamacare

A federal judge in Maryland has dealt a stinging blow to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s attempt to cast the use of pre-employment background checks as a discriminatory hiring practice. The EEOC maintains that criminal and credit background checks have a disparate impact on minority applicants, who comprise a disproportionate percentage of people with criminal histories or poor-credit records. However, Judge Roger W. Titus faulted the agency’s evidence, saying it would “condemn the use of common sense” to let the case against Dallas-based convention coordinating company Freeman proceed in U.S. District Court.

Tagged with: EEOC

A federal appeals court has awarded more than $32,000 in fees to a law firm that represented a former coal miner in his successful bid to be compensated for the black-lung disease he had contracted during his 17 years on the job. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in issuing the award, said it considered the vast black-lung litigation experience that Wolfe Williams Rutherford & Reynolds attorneys brought to their representation of Harold Gosnell in his claim against Eastern Associated Coal Corp.