Maxwell S. Kennerly, Esquire

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Max Kennerly
Max Kennerly, Esq.

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On March 29, 2019, a divided Fifth Circuit panel issued their decision Gibson v. Collier, No. 16-51148, involving a transgender inmate. The majority’s opinion by Judge James Ho is outrageous, an example of the very worst sort of result-driven judicial activism. The majority cast aside multiple foundational principles of law — including basic respect for the litigants, the right to be heard before judgment is entered, the requirement that a party which seeks court…
Over a century ago, in 1906, law professor Roscoe Pound outlined “The Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice” in a speech to the American Bar Association. After conceding “dissatisfaction with the administration of justice is as old as law,” Pound went on to perform a “diagnosis” of the “more than the normal amount of dissatisfaction with the present-day administration of justice in America.” One particularly “potent source of irritation” was…
Imagine if lights, kitchen equipment, and home electronics didn’t need to be tested for electrical shock and fire hazards, and that no one ever certified that the devices were safe. Would you put them in your home? What about a car that had just one crash test, at low speed, and Congress had passed a special law making it impossible for anyone to sue the car company, so the company couldn’t be held responsible for…
Updated June 28, 2018 in light of the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari. See more at the bottom of this post. I’ve written many times before about the Supreme Court’s opinion Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555 (2009), such as when the opinion came out in 2009 and when opioid manufacturers tried to use it and related preemption case law to stop the cases filed against them. Levine is by and large a good case:…
My prior post went through the basics of the DNC Lawsuit against Russia, the Trump campaign, Wikileaks, and the individuals affiliated with each of them, specifically: Why Now Why The Complaint Alleges Those Causes Of Action Whether Russia And Its Agents Have “Sovereign Immunity” The “Plausibility” Pleading Requirement For The Case To Go Forward Today we’ll follow up with four big-picture issues: The Potential Role Of The U.S. Government The Role Of Parallel Criminal Prosecutions…
Earlier today, the Democratic National Committee filed a massive lawsuit against almost everyone arguably associated with the hack on the DNC’s servers, including the Russian Federation, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency (GRU), the hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0,” Wikileaks, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Roger Stone, and others who have been, in press reports or in filings from the Special Counsel, alleged to have served as conduits between Russia…
Sparked by the #MeToo movement, several legislatures (including Pennsylvania, California, and New York) are considering prohibiting employers from including non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and confidentiality clauses in the settlement of sexual harassment claims. It’s not hard to see why: to take just one example, the gold-medal-winning gymnast McKayla Maroney could potentially have to pay USA Gymnastics $100,000 if she testifies at the sexual abuse sentencing hearing of her former coach because, in December 2016, she agreed…
On Sunday, the Washington Post published a detailed investigative report about how the drug industry snuck through Congress a bill that ruined one of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s key tools in the fight against the opioid epidemic. The DEA’s own chief administrative judge, John Mulrooney, has a forthcoming law review article about how the new law made it “all but logically impossible” for the DEA to stop drug manufacturers and distributors from dumping opioids out…
Equifax, which knows more about you than your own mother, (1) failed to maintain its servers, (2) was hacked and lost sensitive personal data for 143 million people, (3) concealed that fact for months, (4) blamed another company for the problem, then (5) finally admitted it caused the problem. To make matters worse, after the hack but before disclosing it, three executives sold off nearly $2 million in Equifax stock. “What should I do to…
Civil litigators often spend more time in discovery disputes than in trials. Few plaintiffs or defendants are keen on spending time in a deposition, collecting documents, or handing over to their opponent evidence that could be used against them later. Yet, as the Supreme Court said 70 years ago while interpreting the original Rules of Civil Procedure, “[m]utual knowledge of all the relevant facts gathered by both parties is essential to proper litigation. To that…