Notice No. 176: Modernization of the Labeling and Advertising Regulations for Wine, Distilled Spirits, and Malt Beverage; Docket No. TTB-2018-0007 While the Proposed Rule’s liberalization of Certificate of Label Approval (“COLA”) regulations reforms an overly burdensome regulatory system, the Labeling Rule fails to address two principal defects in the Bureau’s COLA scheme. First, at its…

Wide consequences will stem from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision granting qualified immunity to several Fresno, California police officers sued for theft. These consequences will prove hard to unwind unless the court—as it should—rehears the case en banc and fixes it now. Imagine that a police officer, in the…

Originally published in Bloomberg Law on June 17, 2019 Fresno, Calif., police officers may have just gotten away with grand larceny. The Ninth Circuit recently passed on the opportunity to establish—once-and-for-all—that police officers stealing private property while executing a search warrant is, in fact, unconstitutional. The Jessop v. City of Fresno case brings to light a doctrine called…

When government agencies such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) bring charges, their press releases are notorious for their high visibility and inflammatory rhetoric. Within moments, lives are forever altered, reputations destroyed, businesses put on the road to ruin with many livelihoods at risk. What…