A coal company’s failure to disclose two pathologists’ reports diagnosing a miner’s  “complicated pneumoconiosis” to the company’s expert pathologists, thereby depriving the miner and his widow of a decade’s worth of black lung benefits, did not amount to a fraud ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Administrative Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

A search warrant for a robbery suspect’s residence directing officers to seize “indicia of occupancy” covered a sales receipt for a $461 Louis Vuitton belt with a variant of defendant’s name, found in a bag in his bedroom, and the ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III Search & Seizure

A plaintiff who earlier won legal protection for his drawings of an image like the “Flying B” logo briefly used by the Baltimore Ravens pro football team loses his suit to enjoin the team’s use of the logo in three ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Intellectual Property Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

The 4th Circuit refuses to order the Internal Revenue Service to bargain with representatives of the National Treasury Employees Union over granting probationary employees the right to use grievance procedures under the parties’ collective bargaining act, and affirms the judgment ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III Labor

An insured roofing contractor who settled a suit for defective work for $1 million is a nominal party in a contribution suit between the contractor’s insurance carriers, and applying the nominal party exception to the rule requiring unanimous consent to ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Civil Procedure Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

The 4th Circuit reverses defendant’s child pornography conviction because police did not give the 19-year-old community college student his Miranda rights until two hours into a three-hour custodial interrogation in the basement of his home, which had been entered by ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

The 4th Circuit rejects plaintiff prisoner’s constitutional challenge to a provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that caps recovery of attorney’s fees for an inmate’s successful civil rights claims, and upholds a district court’s award of $1.40 ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Civil Rights Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

A divided 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given new life to a once-floundering class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination by the Family Dollar discount chain. The ruling allows the plaintiffs in Scott v. Family Dollar Stores (VLW 013-2-185) to ...

Tagged with: Employment Discrimination Federal Courts Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

In sentencing defendant on a conviction for illegal reentry into the U.S., a district court did not err in treating a prior conviction for resisting arrest as a “crime of violence” under federal sentencing guidelines; adopting the categorical approach to ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

The 4th Circuit affirms bank fraud conspiracy and identity theft convictions and a 96-month sentence for a defendant who used local college students to deposit stolen credit card convenience checks and withdraw the funds before the bank could discover the ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III