William Blake once observed that “a truth that’s told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent.” It turns out the Supreme Court agrees, at least for escaping liability under 18 U.S.C. § 1014. In Thompson v. United States (No. 23-1095), a unanimous court held that this statute criminalizes only false statements and not statements that are misleading but literally true.
Patrick
Read More Thompson v. United States (No. 23-1095)When a veteran seeks disability benefits, federal law provides that ties go to the applicant. But if the Veterans Administration decides it’s not a tie—that is, the preponderance of the evidence comes out against the veteran—then it has no occasion to apply this tiebreaking rule. That leads to a question only an appellate lawyer would ask: What standard of review applies to the VA’s determination
Read More Bufkin v. Collins (No. 23-713)In Waetzig v. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., (No. 23-971), the Supreme Court finally settled a question lawyers have been debating from time immemorial: Is a plaintiff’s voluntary dismissal of a complaint without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a) a “final proceeding” for purposes of a Rule 60(b) motion to reopen the suit? A unanimous Court concluded that it was, eliminating a
Read More Waetzig v. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (No. 23-971)In Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger (No. 23-677), the Supreme Court resolved a jurisdictional dog fight over dog food. If a plaintiff files a complaint containing state- and federal-law claims, the complaint can ordinarily be removed to federal court, and that court will have jurisdiction to resolve all the claims. But what happens if, after removal, the plaintiff eliminates the federal causes of
Read More Royal Canin U.S.A., Inc. v. Wullschleger (No. 23-677)On August 19, 2024, Counsel Anjali Dalal and Associate Gautam Rao authored the New York Law Journal article titled, “Public Corruption Prosecutions: Constitutional Issues to Watch.”
Anjali and Gautam discuss United States v. Benjamin and McCormick v. United States and explain how these public corruption prosecutions could test the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent trends: first, the high court’s historical trend of narrowing the scope of
Read More Counsel Anjali Dalal and Associate Gautam Rao Author New York Law Journal Article on Public Corruption Prosecutions