Election season is upon us, and an interesting opinion came out last week. In Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Republican Nat’l Comm., the Third Circuit upheld a consent decree between the parties that restricted voter fraud enforcement actions.

According to the facts in the case, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was sued for voter intimidation in 1981:

The RNC allegedly created a voter challenge list by mailing sample ballots to individuals in precincts with a high percentage of racial or ethnic minority registered voters and, then, including individuals whose postcards were returned as undeliverable on a list of voters to challenge at the polls.  The RNC also allegedly enlisted the help of off-duty sheriffs and police officers to intimidate voters by standing at polling places in minority precincts during voting with ‘National Ballot Security Task Force’ armbands.  Some of the officers allegedly wore firearms in a visible manner.

Our Justia caselaw summary writers have suggested some interesting cases from last week’s load.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in the case concerning Jared Lee Loughner, who is accused of shooting U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, among others. In United States v. Loughner, the appellate court upheld the trial court’s decision permitting the defendant to be involuntarily medicated. The appellate court concluded that defendant was provided with the substance and procedure demanded by the Due Process Clause before the government involuntarily medicated him: the defendant clearly suffered from a severe mental illness, he represented a danger to himself or others, the prescribed medication was appropriate and in his medical interest, and the district court did not arbitrarily deny the motion to enjoin defendant’s emergency treatment.

Facebook can be a nifty tool for spouses and divorce lawyers investigating suspicions of infidelity. Facebook itself can also tip you off to unfaithfulness by, for example, suggesting friends who are also married to your own spouse.

One Washington State husband, Alan Leighton O’Neill née Alan Leighton Fulk, is learning that the hard way. He faces bigamy charges (read them below) after Wife No. 1 learned about Wife No. 2 via Facebook’s friend suggestion tool.

According to court documents (see below), the FBI and federal prosecutors got help from hacker Hector Xavier Monsegur a/k/a ‘Sabu’ a/k/a ‘Xavier DeLeon’ a/k/a ‘Leon’ to build cases against other alleged members of Anonymous, LulzSec, Internet Feds, and AntiSec hacker groups.

U.S. authorities charged five accused hackers with federal criminal computer hacking violations, while Monsegur pled guilty to a variety of ‘substantive hacking’ violations that included targets like Sony Pictures, Fox Broadcasting, and PBS.

Here is a rundown of February’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Justia Dockets legal filings, Tech Law blog posts, and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.

Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for February 2012

1. Nick Passe, 1,600 points, 32 answers
2. Jerry Lutkenhaus, 1,011 points, 32 answers
3. Andrew Bresalier, 801 points, 25 answers
4. Jeffrey Moore 351 points, 7 answers
5. Peter Navis, 300 points, 6 answers
6. Daniel Marc Berman, 250 points, 10 answers
7. William S. Adams 215 points, 5 answers
8. David Philip Shapiro, 150 points, 3 answers
9. Timothy Belt, 150 points, 3 answers
10. Ryan P. Sullivan, 150 points, 3 answers

The selections from our Daily Opinion Summary writers are pretty varied this week covering a World of Warcraft game gone bad, a tug of war between two District Courts over Park Service limits of snowmobilers, a suit alleging negligence in the prescription of medications which led to murder, and the rights of part-owners of a dairy located in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

First up, we have Laurel’s pick, which she aptly labeled, “every mother’s nightmare.”

U.S. v. Lucas
US 7th Cir (Filed 2/29/12)
While playing World of Warcraft online, defendant requested sexual pictures of CG, a minor. CG blocked him, but reinstated him in exchange for online “currency.” Defendant again sent sexual messages; CG again blocked him. Defendant, on release following arrest for possession of large-capacity firearms, paid to obtain CG’s address, told others he planned to kill CG, dug holes in his yard, and removed the release latch from his trunk. He amassed weapons, drove 20 hours to CG’s home, and impersonated an officer to lure CG out of the house and kidnap him.  CG’s mother refused to allow defendant into the house. He pointed a handgun at her face, but she slammed the door and called police.  He was arrested and pled guilty to brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The district court sentenced him to 210 months’ imprisonment.  The Seventh Circuit affirmed. A district court may consider a wide range of conduct at sentencing, including acquitted conduct and dismissed offenses, and the sentencing ranges for those offenses. The court rejected arguments that the court treated defendant’s psychological conditions as an aggravating factor or impermissibly considered rehabilitation.

The federal judge presiding over the lawsuit by plaintiff Paul Ceglia, the convicted felon claiming to own half of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, just ordered Google to divulge Ceglia’s Gmail account data and logs by March 5, 2012

Ceglia’s email accounts are at the heart of this lawsuit. Some were known, many were only recently discovered by lawyers for Zuckerberg and Facebook after an electronic forensics investigator learned about four previously previously unknown webmail accounts held by Ceglia. The electronic discovery could shed light on whether or not the contract he claims gives him a fifty-percent ownership stake in Facebook is real, or the fabrication that Facebook and Zuckerberg’s lawyers say it is.

Three GOP presidential candidates got slapped with a patent infringement suit yesterday (read it below) by a California partnership that holds a patent with social media implications for the candidates’ Facebook pages.

EveryMD, a California partnership, contends that one of its patents that enables individual Facebook members like Defendants Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich “to create individual home pages (‘Facebook Pages’).” Instead of suing Facebook, however, EveryMD opted to sue the GOP presidential candidates.

What makes this lawsuit particularly fascinating is that it comes on the heels of plaintiff’s unsuccessful attempts to get Facebook to buy its patent. (view the patent below).

In October, we blogged about a lawsuit against the editors of tz info, the time zone database for Unix. The editors were sued by a company called Astrolabe, Inc., who claimed a copyright interest in data used to populate the database.

The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff this week. It turns out the EFF got involved. According to their statement,

“In January, EFF advised Astrolabe that Olson and Eggert would move for sanctions if Astrolabe did not withdraw its complaint. Today’s dismissal followed.”

The 10th Circuit decided an interesting FOIA case this week. In World Pub. Co. v. United States Dept. of Justice, the Court held that Tulsa World magazine was not entitled to six mugshots under the Freedom of Information Act. For more on this case, see posts on Politico and ABA Journal.

The Maryland Supreme Court denied a negligence claim against the state for serving a peanut butter sandwich to an allergic child through the free lunch program. In Pace v. State, the court found that the National School Lunch Act simply establishes a subsidized lunch program to benefit children at participating schools and did not impose a specific statutory duty of care towards children with food allergies.