Court Rulings

A sex video made by actor Colin Farrell and a Playboy Playmate surfaced Tuesday on the Internet despite a court injunction blocking its release. Word about a website carrying the video featuring Farrell and his then-girlfriend, Nicole Narain, Playboy magazine's Miss January 2002, rapidly spread on the Internet through other websites, including IDontLikeYouIn ThatWay.com, which also posted what it said were video stills of the Irish actor and Narain engaged in sex acts.

SAN FRANCISCO - Two Anaheim police officers said they pulled over a van at 2 a.m. after noticing it weaving in its own lane. The officers suspected the driver had illegal drugs. When the driver failed to obey police commands, a struggle ensued. One officer hit the driver on the arm with his flashlight and punched him in the face and head. The other officer hit the driver on the back of his head with a flashlight. When the driver began to accelerate with an officer inside the van, that officer shot the driver in the head, killing him. A divided federal appeals court decided Monday that the officers did not use excessive force in the 2009 incident.

Recreation providers in California may be held liable for gross negligence regardless of the wording on liability waivers signed by participants or their parents, the California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Monday. The state high court decision permits the parents of a developmentally disabled girl who drowned at a summer camp run by the city of Santa Barbara to sue even though her mother had signed an agreement assuming "full responsibility for risk of bodily injury, death or property damage."

Massing the heavy legal artillery of 1st Amendment principles, a federal appeals court has ruled that the federal government can't order businesses to post signs informing employees that they have a right to join a union and to bargain for better wages. It's a troubling ruling. The case stems from a 2011 decision by the National Labor Relations Board that employers must "post notices to employees, in conspicuous places," informing them of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and include the information in electronic mailings.

The nation's home healthcare aides are not entitled to minimum wages or overtime pay under federal law, even if they work for private employers, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 9-0 decision, which keeps in place a long-standing rule that denies minimum wages and overtime pay to those who provide "companionship services" at home, could trigger a move in Congress to amend the law.

The case of a 16-year-old girl accused of torturing and beating an elderly woman to death last July will return to adult court, a San Bernardino Juvenile Court judge ruled Thursday. "She has no compassion, no empathy, no morality or decency," Judge John P. Wade said, explaining why he determined that Christy Phillips, who was 15 at the time of the crime, is unfit to be tried in Juvenile Court.

Only rarely does a judge in a criminal case overturn the verdict reached by jurors in her own courtroom. Still rarer is the judge who admits to committing an error so serious it taints a verdict. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor did both Friday night in an extraordinary ruling that overturned the convictions of three Rampart Division police officers, impressing legal scholars with both her tightly reasoned legal arguments and her unusual candor.

After a Lutheran school expelled two 16-year-old girls for having "a bond of intimacy" that was "characteristic of a lesbian relationship," the girls sued, contending the school had violated a state anti-discrimination law. In response to that suit, an appeals court decided this week that the private religious school was not a business and therefore did not have to comply with a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating.

DirecTV said "the evidence was overwhelming" against O.J. Simpson. But the ex-football star's lawyer said he did nothing wrong. The satellite TV giant on Tuesday was referring to its civil court victory in which a Florida judge ordered Simpson to pay $25,000 for allegedly stealing its signals. The case stems from the recovery in 2001 of two "bootloaders" in Simpson's home that allowed viewers to tap into DirecTV signals without paying for them.

The Supreme Court announced Thursday a potentially significant change in how crime lab reports are used in trials, ruling that a defendant has the right to cross-examine in front of the jury the experts who prepared these reports. Crime labs have been subjected to criticism in the last decade, much of it because of DNA evidence that has shown at least 240 prisoners were in fact not guilty.

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court gave local governments the power Monday to zone medical marijuana dispensaries out of existence, a decision that upholds bans in about 200 cities but does little to solve Los Angeles' years-long struggle to regulate hundreds of storefront pot outlets. The unanimous decision provided clarity for cities and counties that want to rid themselves of the dispensaries, which sprouted up statewide after a 1996 voter-approved measure that sought to authorize medical marijuana but lacked specifics in how it would be regulated.

WASHINGTON - Employers cannot be required to post a notice that tells their workers they have a right to join a union and bargain for better wages, a federal appeals court ruled in the latest setback for the National Labor Relations Board. The so-called poster rule would have required more than 6 million private employers to post a one-page notice in a prominent place. Labor leaders hoped it would help stem the long decline in union membership in the private sector. Only about 7% of private-sector employees belong to unions.

WASHINGTON - Americans do not have a right to obtain public records from states other than their own, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, dealing a setback to businesses and researchers who gather data across the nation. The unanimous decision upheld laws in Virginia and a handful of other states that release some public records only to their own citizens. "This is disappointing. We have a national information economy now, and all sorts of activities depend on data from all 50 states," said Washington attorney Deepak Gupta, who represented two men who had challenged the "citizens only" provision of Virginia's public records law. Despite the ruling, Gupta said the trend has been for states to open their public records on an equal basis.

The federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. But it also has the responsibility to ensure that those it holds while they fight their deportation cases aren't locked up for months, or years, without an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge who can determine whether their prolonged detention is warranted. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Obama administration's obligation to provide such hearings to immigrants detained for more than six months, at least in Southern California.

WASHINGTON - Police officers usually must have a search warrant before requiring a suspected drunk driver to have his blood drawn, the Supreme Court said Wednesday. In an 8-1 decision, the justices rejected Missouri prosecutors' contention that police should have the freedom to act quickly and dispense with a warrant because alcohol dissipates in the blood. Instead, the court said it would hold fast to its view that the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches" means the police usually need a warrant from a magistrate before invading a person's privacy.

President Obama once fretted about the prospect that girls as young as 10 or 11 could walk into a drugstore and buy emergency contraception pills as easily as "bubble gum or batteries. " With his blessing, the Department of Health and Human Services set aside the advice of medical experts and blocked efforts to allow girls younger than 17 to get the so-called morning-after pill without a prescription. That age limit is poised to disappear now that a federal judge has cleared the way Friday for girls - and boys - of any age to purchase the medication without having to notify their parents or a doctor.

Republican critics of affirmative action hailed Monday's Supreme Court decision as a mandate for even more sweeping action by Congress and vowed to press home their attack on federal programs of racial preference.

In a legal brief filed in support of the challenge to Washington's ban on assisted suicide, the survivors of 10 terminally ill patients told of their anguish and their loved ones' suffering. Many of the patients committed suicide, but did so alone so their families would not be prosecuted for helping them. Others experienced prolonged, difficult deaths.

SACRAMENTO -- A federal court this week ruled that two government power agencies are liable for overcharging California ratepayers by more than $1 billion during the state's energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. The California Public Utilities Commission, which has been pursuing the overcharging claims for 11 years, announced that the U.S. Court of Claims in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Bonneville Power Administration and Western Area Power Administration sold electricity at extremely high prices.

In its landmark 1963 decision in Brady vs. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors are required to provide defendants with any information that may help prove their innocence or favorably change the outcome of their trials. That decision recognized that an individual's right to a fair trial is undermined if prosecutors withhold exculpatory evidence. But half a century later, some prosecutors still don't get it. In some cases, overzealous district attorneys willfully fail to comply with their Brady obligations, resulting in egregious miscarriages of justice.