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In Savantage Fin. Servs., Inc. v. US, No. 09-5076, the Federal Circuit dealt with the plaintiff’s pre-award bid protest challenging the terms of a request for proposals from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), arguing that the requirements unduly restricted full and open competition in violation of Competition in Contracting Act. As stated in the decision: “Whether an agency’s explanation for its bid proposal requirements is reasonable depends on the particular circumstances of each case, in this case, we find nothing unreasonable in the means DHS has devised to improve its likelihood of success in obtaining the agency-wide financial system that it has pursued, so far unsuccessfully, for more than six years....

Saller v. Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc., B206763, involved plaintiffs’ wrongful death suit based on theories of negligence, strict liability, false representation, and intentional failure to warn, based on the death of decedent from mesothelioma. In reversing a jury verdict in favor of the defendants, the court held that the consumer expectations test applied to the use of asbestos at the oil refinery and his testimony concerning his expectations about its safety in its ordinary use at the refinery were sufficient to require a jury instruction on the issue....

Last week, I got a call from my big brother, a 1L at Louisiana State University. It seems that, while his laptop was sitting in the library, it overheated and fried the motherboard. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow his little bro’s advice and use cloud storage as a back-up. He wants to know what to do, besides start listening to his brother. Here’s how to get back to business, assuming you have a PC (Mac users … just head to the nearest Genius Bar):...

If you have ever waited anxiously for a court decision, then you know what it felt like to be at the Washington Post on June 30, 1971. That moment also serves as the climax for the “The Post,” a movie about how the newspaper survived court scrutiny to publish the Pentagon Papers. President Richard Nixon tried to stop publication of the classified documents, which exposed how the United States muddied itself in the Vietnam War....

The world of baseball has taken a turn for the litigious with A-Rod suing Major League Baseball and Albert Pujols suing Jack Clark. Both lawsuits are about the wonderful world of doping, of course. Alex Rodriguez Lawsuit A-Rod claims the MLB and Commissioner Bud Selig are after “vigilante justice” as part of a “witch hunt” stemming from his Biogenesis of America anti-aging clinic’s doping scandal, reports The Associated Press. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York State Supreme Court, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for tortious interference....

Philadelphia-area police made a “legen-dairy” arrest last month, nabbing the alleged “Swiss cheese flasher” who was caught on camera in at least one incident. Christopher Pagano, 41, who’s also known as the “Swiss cheese pervert,” was arrested at his home in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Investigators determined that Pagano had driven up to women and offered them to watch him place Swiss cheese on his genitals, Philadelphia’s WCAU-TV reports. What was this not-so-Big Cheese charged with?...

Unless your sport is competitive eating, there’s no biting in sports. It’s not just the rules, the law really frowns upon using your teeth against your fellow player. Americans who were stunned by Uruguayan footballer Luis Suarez’s shoulder-chomping action at the World Cup should remember that we’ve hosted our own notoriously “toothy” athletes (cough Mike Tyson cough). And these biters learned the legal implications of taking a bite out of an opponent....

Five former Buffalo Bills’ cheerleaders, better known as Buffalo Jills, are suing the organization and the Jills’ management companies for allegedly failing to fully compensate them for their work. While the lawsuit’s claims are based on wage and labor law violations, the Jills also allege that they were subjected to harassment and degrading sexual comments at team events, The Buffalo News reports. According to the lawsuit, as a condition of their employment on the squad, the Jills had to sign a contract classifying them as independent contractors rather than employees....

Can’t find a sitter for the kids? Take them with you! The babysitter dilemma happens all the time and often ends in the young child coming to work with the parent until other arrangements can be made. This also applies to crimes. If there is no one available to watch the little one, then he or she will serve as a pseudo accomplice to the crime. It only makes sense....

A maintenance worker has been arrested in Fullerton, California and charged with 33 burglaries, all involving women he tracked using the photo-based social media app Instagram. Arturo Galvan allegedly targeted Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton students, and is accused of stealing over $256,000 worth electronics, jewelry, and clothing, including underwear from some of the women’s sorority houses. So how did Galvan identify his burglary victims and find out where they lived?...

California Penal Code Section 26820 states: Like guns? Hate guns? It doesn’t matter, really. This is a law that seems to curtail commercial speech for no discernable reason whatsoever. Store owners can’t put up signs advertising the sale of handguns, but they can advertise sales of shotguns and even “assault” rifles. And any non-dealers (think protesters) are free to post their own handgun-related signs. No handgun or imitation handgun, or placard advertising the sale or other transfer thereof, shall be displayed in any part of the premises where it can readily be seen from the outside....

Can a court use circumstantial evidence, along with blood and breath tests, to conclude that a driver was above the legal limit for alcohol intoxication? That’s the question the California Supreme Court answered earlier this month, and it answered in the affirmative after Ashley Coffey challenged her driver’s license suspension following a DUI arrest. Based on police officers’ observations and on her “poor performance” on several field sobriety tests, Coffey submitted to a breath test, which showed 0....

Former Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson has been charged with felony domestic violence after allegedly strangling an ex-girlfriend in Las Vegas last week, reports TMZ. Johnson faces a maximum five years in jail and a $15,000 fine. The running back has a history of assaulting women. However, Johnson insists that he did not strangle his ex-girlfriend this time. And there may be video surveillance evidence to exonerate him....

Pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, and marijuana: The recipe for disaster in your Wendy’s burger. One Wendy’s employee in Georgia accidentally misplaced her blunt – half-smoked, no less – in a sammy and served it to a customer. Unfortunately for the employee, neither her customer nor employer enjoyed her secret ingredient. She was promptly fired and arrested. Maybe the sandwich’s flavor was a little too smoky? Wendy’s employee Amy Seiber was fired and arrested after a customer at the chain’s Lovejoy, Georgia, location called the cops and reported a half-smoked blunt inside her burger, reports TMZ....

In the never-ending circle of litigation that Google, and other tech companies, are engaging in otherwise known as “Smartphone Wars,” the Federal Circuit has dealt a blow to Google. And, in one of the more interesting patent cases before the Federal Circuit, the court had to determine whether clones themselves, could be patented. It should be noted that the methods for cloning, which are patented, were not at issue in the case....

In the age of #MeToo, it is a wonder that anyone in the public spotlight, particularly government officials, would think suggestively touching colleagues at a work party is okay. As we’ve seen since the movement started, a person doesn’t have to be as bad as Weinstein or Cosby to get taken down. Indiana’s Attorney General is accused of groping four women, in one night, in March of this year, including a state representative....

Officers with Iowa’s Council Bluffs Police Department were dispatched earlier this month when a concerned citizen reported a man dressed in a hot dog costume standing near a school bus stop. Turns out that the suspect was none other than a 6-foot-tall Hot Dog Man statute sporting an American flag cape and a pair of sneakers. Police have taken the statue into custody and are treating it as a “found property” case....

If a new law dean is any indication, it may be a good time to consider anti-discrimination law. Kimbery Yuracko, a scholar in anti-discrimination law, has been appointed dean of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. She joined the faculty there in 2011, and gained national renown for her work in anti-discrimination, gender equity and employment law. With Yuracko at the helm, Pritzker may be the place to go for training in those fields....

We trust our doctors with a lot of personal information and a lot of power. And when they tell us they’re going to use 85 percent of our husband’s sperm and 15 percent of a donor’s sperm for an artificial insemination procedure, we tend to believe them. The only problem, it would seem, is that there are now affordable DNA registry sites like, Ancestry.com, where we can find out that our doctor instead used all of his own sperm to impregnate us, knew the child that was subsequently born was his biological daughter, and never revealed that fact....

The criminal charges against Lenny Dykstra keep mounting. The former New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies star was charged Monday with grand theft auto and drug possession by prosecutors who claim he used phony information to lease a car from a Southern California dealership. Dykstra, 48, was charged with 25 misdemeanor and felony counts of grand theft auto, attempted grand theft auto, identity theft and other crimes. He faces up to 12 years in state prison if convicted....