MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.

In most American workplaces, at-will employment clauses in employee handbooks and agreements are as common as break room water coolers.

Employers are increasingly allowing their employees to use their own laptops, tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices for work purposes – and that is creating a plethora of potential legal issues.

We know that wrongful convictions can be reversed, but what about wrongful acquittals?

While the nation has focused on the big cases the U.S. Supreme Court saved for last this term — rulings upholding the majority of the federal health care law and striking down several provisions of the Arizona immigration enforcement statute — the term was marked by several other big cases that will have a major impact, particularly in the employment, criminal and family law context.

The imposition of special union fees on nonunion employees without their prior approval violates the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The Merit Systems Protection Board provides the exclusive avenue of judicial review for federal employees’ adverse employment action challenges, even when those employees argue that a federal statute is unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial where a trial judge erroneously held a particular fact to be an element of the charged offense and then granted the defendant’s mid-trial motion for a directed verdict because the prosecution failed to prove that fact.

President Barack Obama has signed into law a measure that extends for five more years 29 federal bankruptcy judgeships that were set to expire.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that an informal jury poll did not rise to the level of an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes didn’t just draw mixed reactions from the justices themselves. Lawyers are also falling on both sides of the fence, with some expressing fear that the court rolled back defendants’ constitutional rights and others saying the decision comports with current courthouse practices and logic.

A bill that would revamp the way the Food and Drug Administration reviews and inspects drugs and medical devices has passed the U.S. Senate by a wide margin.

As the use of assisted reproductive technologies continues to increase, a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling has family and estate planning attorneys warning their clients of unforeseen consequences from decades-old federal and state laws governing children’s benefits.