In the news
Josh Harms of Sibley, Iowa, threatened by city officials with legal action for saying online that his hometown smelled like “rancid dog food,” won a freespeech lawsuit after a federal judge barred the city from threatening Harms, who also was awarded $6,500 in damages and $20,000 in legal fees.
Charlie Lagarde, a Canadian teenager who bought her first $4 scratch-off ticket and a bottle of champagne at a Quebec convenience store to celebrate her 18th birthday, hit the jackpot and will receive just over $775 per week for the rest of her life.
Paul LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, called a federal judge in Maryland an “imbecile” four times for allowing a lawsuit against President Donald Trump on whether Trump is improperly accepting gifts from foreign officials when they pay to stay at his hotel in Washington.
Crystal Amerson, 29, of Pensacola, Fla., told ambulance workers she thought food poisoning was responsible for her excruciating stomach pains but then gave birth to her second child, Oliver James, in the ambulance en route to the hospital.
Jose Cabranes, a federal appeals judge in New York, overturned a lower court judge who banned a man convicted of bank fraud conspiracy from drinking alcohol for four years, calling the penalty unreasonable and unrelated to his crime.
Ashley Despain of Nevada, Mo., was charged with trying to smuggle drugs into a jail after a small bag of marijuana was found wedged between the binding and the pages of a Bible she dropped off for an inmate.
John Russo, a New Jersey superior court judge, faces disciplinary action after he was accused of violating judicial conduct rules by asking a female victim during a court hearing on a restraining order whether she tried closing her legs to prevent a sexual assault.
Angel Arce, 57, a grandfather and Connecticut state lawmaker accused of sending affectionate text messages to a 16-year-old girl, resigned, saying he didn’t want his “presence to be a distraction to the very important work that occurs at the Capitol.”
Ralph Gants, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, who issued a public call for help identifying the person featured in a portrait that hung for decades outside his chambers, says the mystery is solved and the man in the picture is Lemuel Shaw, chief justice from 1830 until 1860.