Steptoe & Johnson Wins Great Hamburger War

It’s last orders for burger restaurant Rogue States.

A judge has ordered the establishment to shut its doors by 5:30am Wednesday, handing a victory to D.C. law firm Steptoe & Johnson.  The law firm had accused the burger group of sending fumes into the air intake system and causing employees headaches, nausea, dizziness, among other ailments. Here’s what happened during the trial last week.

Judge John Mott said on Tuesday that despite Rogue States’ efforts, the odors and fumes have persisted and are continuing to cause “noticeable, discomforting and annoying” health problems for Steptoe’s approximately 700 employees. Here’s a detailed account by BLT and another take at WashingtonCityPaper.

And thus ends, for now, the great hamburger war. End of post.

Manatt Phelps Pays $550k to Settle Pension Fund Probe

Most following the investigation of New York state’s public pension would probably say that the investigation’s peak came last week, with the guilty plea of former New York comptroller Alan Hevesi.

But we here at LB central were no less interested in Tuesday’s news that the law firm Manatt Phelps & Phillips had agreed to pony up $550,000 to settle charges connected to the investigation with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Click here for the WSJ story, from reporter Michael Rothfeld; here for the Bloomberg story.

Rothfeld explains that the settlement relates to the firm’s efforts to serve as a “placement agent” for public pension funds in New York and California without a state or federal license. Under the deal, Manatt agreed to a five-year ban on working with any public pension fund in New York.

The investigation by Cuomo has led to seven convictions in a corruption probe of the state’s $125 billion Common Retirement Fund, one of the nation’s largest public . . .

Federal Judge Orders Immediate Halt to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

So apparently Riverside, Calif., federal judge Virginia Phillips wasn’t kidding when she found the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy unconstitutional last month.

On Tuesday, Phillips took the next step, deciding to order the military to stop enforcing the policy. Click here for the article, from the San Francisco Chron; here for the AP article; here for the order itself; here for Judge Phillips’s findings.

Judge Phillips’s order was brief. They key component:

Defendants United States of America and the Secretary of Defense [are ordered] immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have been commenced under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Act, or pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 654 or its implementing regulations, on or prior to the date of this Judgment.

Last month, Phillips found that the . . .

After Three-Year Saga, Sharon Keller’s Name Cleared

It’s all over for Sharon Keller.

The presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has been under fire for more than three years for her refusal to keep open the court clerk’s office to allow a death-row inmate to file a last-minute appeal of his execution.

But on Monday, a judicial panel tossed out a public warning that was issued against her. The case is now officially closed. Keller emerges perhaps not unscathed, but without any official reprimands, warnings, or censures. Click here for the story, from the Houston Chronicle; here for earlier LB posts on L’Affaire Keller.

According to the Chron story, not everyone was happy with . . .

Montana Sticking to Its Guns on Campaign-Finance Reform

Montana: They call it The Last, Best Place.

The state might also soon become the Last Place to have a law banning corporations and unions from paying for advertisements supporting or attacking candidates for office. Many states have done away with theirs in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, which struck down such limits as violations of the First Amendment.

But not Montana, reports the WSJ’s Supreme Court correspondent Jess Bravin.

The state is refusing to budge. Writes Bravin: “Sued by three corporations seeking to influence the Nov. 2 legislative election, Attorney General Steve Bullock is arguing that Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act of 1912 remains constitutional—even though the Supreme Court scotched similar provisions of the 2002 federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known after its sponsors as McCain-Feingold.”

A state judge in Helena is expected to rule this week whether to block . . .

Law Blog Obituary: Vanderbilt’s Richard Nagareda

The sad news has begun making its way around the internet: Vanderbilt law professor Richard Nagareda died at his home on Friday, October 8. He was 47.

Click here for the release on his death, issued by Vanderbilt.

Nagareda was the David Daniels Allen Professor of Law and director of the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program.

He was a leading civil litigation scholar whose work focused on class actions and aggregate litigation. He was the author of a book on complex litigation theory, Mass Torts in a World of Settlement (2008), as well as a casebook, The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation, which came out this year.

He had written articles for a variety of law reviews, including the Harvard Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Columbia Law Review and the Michigan Law Review.

According to the release, Nagareda was also widely admired . . .

Would Passage of Prop. 19 Do More Good Than Harm?

Marijuana. Everywhere you look, people are talking about it — and not necessarily condemning its use. It’s bringing families closer and helping fund the arts, fer cryin’ out loud.

The latest ‘Yay, Pot!’ installment comes to us courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Chip Johnson, who writes that Proposition 19, the California initiative that would make recreational marijuana use legal, “has social benefits that go well beyond legal pot parties.”

How would legalization help the state? Let Johnson count thy ways. He starts by opining that legalization of marijuana would provide a boon to public safety in low-income areas where drug-dealing thrives.

He writes:

The residual effect of drug-dealing is violence . . .

Preemption! Fate of Vaccine Litigation Sits in High Court’s Hands

Strike the mind-numbing word “preemption” from any given case that deals with the issue, and chances are you’ll be left with pretty darn interesting sets of factual and legal issues. In other words, open your minds, LBers, to preemption cases. They’re not as ugly as the word might otherwise lead you to believe.

Such is the situation in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, a case that gets its star turn at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

First, the legal issue: In 1986, Congress established a no-fault system to compensate children and others using commonly used vaccines. The law strove to strike a balance between the need to help those injured by vaccines and the desire to shield . . .

Second Circuit Authorizes Religious License Plates in Vermont

Although we have little inclination to sport a vanity license plate, we are glad that others do since vanity plates are a magnet for legal fights.

Earlier this year, for example, we noted the free-speech lawsuit filed in Oklahoma after the state’s Tax Commission denied a college student’s request to put IM GAY on his license plate.

The latest high-profile license-plate battle is being waged in Vermont, where resident Shawn Byrne sued after the state rejected his proposed plate “JN36TN,” a reference to the Bible verse John 3:16. Byrne claimed the denial violated his First Amendment right to be free from religious discrimination.

The 2^nd Circuit agreed, ruling that the state’s denial of the plate violated the Constitution. Here’s an AP report on the ruling.

Vermont, the court noted, allows bespoke plates on various topics, but prohibits certain religious sentiments.  ”This the state cannot do,” the court concluded.

For a more detailed parsing of the ruling, turn to . . .

Where is That Smell Coming From?

Here’s the latest on a legal case that has raised a big stink in a powerful Washington D.C. law firm.

You may recall that Steptoe & Johnson filed a lawsuit against hamburger company, Rogue States - which opened a joint next door - claiming that the burger group had been piping fumes into the firm’s air intake system, which allegedly caused employees “headaches, nausea, dizziness, watery and itchy eyes, drowsiness and distraction.” Here’s an earlier account on the LawBlog.

The case has played out in D.C. Superior Court, and where the smell is coming from is among the biggest sources of disagreement, according to this Washington Post story

Steptoe employees described grilling fumes that left them with watery and itchy eyes, nausea and headaches, while the restaurant produced witnesses who cast doubt on the source of the smell, suggesting it could come from another nearby restaurant that sold kabobs.

A smell expert testifying for Rogue States said he could not conclusively determine the origin of the smell and that perhaps Steptoe could bring in a team of “calibrated noses” to . . .