Volume 577
Docket Number: 14-1146
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 22, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Tyson employees working in the kill, cut, and retrim departments of an Iowa pork processing plant are required them to wear protective gear. The exact composition of the gear depends on the tasks a worker performs on a given ...
Docket Number: 14-1209
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 22, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) set aside 104 million acres of land in “conservation system units,” to include “any unit in Alaska of the National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, ...
Docket Number: 14-1406
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 22, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: In 1854, the Omaha Tribe entered into a treaty with the United States to establish a 300,000-acre reservation and to “cede” and “forever relinquish all right and title to” its remaining land in present-day Nebraska ...
Docket Number: 14-10078
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 21, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected ...
Docket Number: 14-10008
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 7, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Walber was murdered in 1998. Two years later, Scott, then incarcerated, contacted authorities and initially reported that Wearry and others had confessed to shooting and driving over Walber, leaving his body on Blahut Road. ...
Docket Number: 14-1382
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 7, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Corporate citizens of Delaware, Nebraska, and Illinois, sued Americold, a “real estate investment trust” organized under Maryland law, in a Kansas court. Americold removed the suit based on diversity jurisdiction, 28 ...
Docket Number: 15-648
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 7, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: V. L. and E. L. were in a relationship from 1995-2011. Through assisted reproductive technology, E. L. gave birth to a child. in 2002 and to twins in 2004. The women raised the children as joint parents. V. L. rented a house ...
Docket Number: 14-181
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 1, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Vermont law requires certain entities, including health insurers, to report payments and other information relating to health care claims and services for compilation in a state health care database. Liberty Mutual’s health ...
Docket Number: 14-8358
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: March 1, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Lockhart pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, 18 U.S.C. 2252(a)(4). Because Lockhart had a prior state-court conviction for first-degree sexual abuse involving his adult girlfriend, his PSR concluded that he was ...
Docket Number: 14-1095
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Musacchio resigned as president of ETS in 2004, but with help from the former head of ETS’s information-technology department, he accessed ETS’s computer system without authorization through early 2006. In 2010, Musacchio ...
Docket Number: 14-280
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Montgomery was 17 years old in 1963, when he killed a deputy in Louisiana. The jury returned a verdict of “guilty without capital punishment,” which carried an automatic sentence of life without parole. Nearly 50 years ...
Docket Number: 14-510
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin contracted with the Indian Health Service (IHS) to operate what would otherwise have been a federal program, pursuant to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDA), ...
Docket Number: 14-840
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The Federal Power Act authorizes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to regulate “sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce,” including wholesale electricity rates and any rule or practice ...
Docket Number: 15-278
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The stockholders, former employees, who participated in employee stock option plans qualified under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1107(d)(3)(A), sued fiduciaries for breach of the duty of ...
Docket Number: 15-493
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Under federal law, a court has discretion to “allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee” in a civil rights lawsuit filed under 42 U.S.C. 1983 or 42 U.S.C. 1988. The Supreme ...
Docket Number: 14-449
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 20, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: A Kansas jury sentenced Gleason to death for killings to cover up a robbery. Another Kansas jury sentenced the Carr brothers to death after they were convicted of rape, kidnapping, and five execution-style shootings. The ...
Docket Number: 14-723
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 20, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Employee benefits plans regulated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) often contain subrogation clauses requiring participants to reimburse the plan for medical expenses if they later recover money from ...
Docket Number: 14-857
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 20, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The Navy contracted with Campbell to develop a recruiting campaign that included text messages to young adults who had “opted in” to receipt of solicitations on topics that included Navy service. Campbell’s subcontractor ...
Docket Number: 14-7505
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 12, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: Under Florida law, the maximum sentence a capital felon may receive based on a conviction alone is life imprisonment. He may be sentenced to death only after an additional sentencing proceeding, Fla. Stat. 775.082(1), with ...
Docket Number: 14-844
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: January 12, 2016
Justia Opinion Summary: The 1995 Prison Litigation Reform Act provides that prisoners qualified to proceed in forma pauperis must pay an initial partial filing fee of “20 percent of the greater of ” the average monthly deposits in the prisoner’s ...
Docket Number: 14-1372
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: December 14, 2015
Justia Opinion Summary: In 1997, Louisville police found the bodies of Malone and Warfield in their apartment. Malone had been stabbed. Warfield, then pregnant, had been strangled and scissors stuck out from her neck. Crime scene DNA matched Wheeler’s. ...
Docket Number: 14-462
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: December 14, 2015
Justia Opinion Summary: DIRECTV and its customers entered into service agreements that included a binding arbitration provision with a class-arbitration waiver. It specified that the entire arbitration provision was unenforceable if the “law of ...
Docket Number: 14-990
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: December 8, 2015
Justia Opinion Summary: Petitioners, a bipartisan group of citizens, requested that a three-judge court be convened to consider their claim that Maryland’s 2011 congressional redistricting plan burdens their First Amendment right of political ...
Docket Number: 13-1067
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: December 1, 2015
Justia Opinion Summary: Respondent, a California resident, filed suit against OBB, an Austrian state-owned railway, after she suffered injuries from falling off the railroad tracks at the Innsbruck, Austria, train station. Respondent had purchased ...
Docket Number: 14-1143
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: November 9, 2015
Justia Opinion Summary: Sergeant Baker, with a warrant, approached Leija’s car at a restaurant and stated that he was under arrest. Leija sped onto I-27. Leija led Baker and Texas Trooper Rodriguez on an 18-minute chase at 85-110 mph. Leija twice ...
Docket Number: 14-848
Court: US Supreme Court
Date: October 5, 2015
Justia Opinion Summary: Kulbicki shot his girlfriend during the weekend before a scheduled hearing about unpaid child support. At Kulbicki’s 1995 trial, an FBI Agent expert on Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis (CBLA) testified that the composition ...
