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Rapid Response

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      All articles — page 2

      The full library in alphabetical order, across every area of law.

      First-Day Relief

      Borrowing After the Filing

      Section 364 authorizes credit in ascending order. Ordinary-course unsecured credit is allowable as an administrative expense without an order. Other unsecured credit requires notice and a hearing. Where unsecured credit is unavailable, the court may authorize superpriority, a lien on unencumbered property, or a junior lien. A senior or equal lien over existing collateral requires both that credit was unobtainable otherwise and that the existing lienholder is adequately protected.

      6 min readFederal law

      Injunctions & TROs

      Certifying the Efforts Made to Give Notice

      Rule 65(b)(1)(B) requires the movant's attorney to certify in writing any efforts made to give notice to the adverse party and the reasons why notice should not be required. The certification is signed by counsel, filed with the application, and read as a representation to the court. It must describe concrete attempts rather than assert that notice was impracticable, and it must give a reason for proceeding one-sided that is tied to the facts of the case rather than to convenience.

      6 min readFederal law

      Emergency Immigration

      Challenging a Refusal to Release

      After a refusal to release, the available routes depend on the detention authority. Where custody rests on the discretionary pre-order provision, redetermination before an immigration judge is available under the regulations. Where custody follows a final order, the agency's own review process governs and there is no judicial redetermination. Habeas remains the route to a federal court on the legality of the custody itself, and it is the only route in some postures.

      6 min readFederal law

      Emergency Orders

      Challenging an Order While the Emergency Continues

      A challenge to an operative emergency order begins with an application for interim relief. An order granting, continuing, modifying, refusing or dissolving an injunction is immediately appealable, so a ruling either way can be taken up at once. A party seeking a stay ordinarily moves first in the district court. Governments argue for deference on a thin record; challengers argue that urgency does not lower the standard of justification.

      6 min readFederal and state

      Emergency Immigration

      Challenging Detention That Has Become Prolonged

      After a removal order becomes final the statute sets a ninety-day removal period and permits continued detention beyond it for defined categories. A regulation supplies a review directed at whether there is a significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future. During proceedings, detention is either discretionary with a bond option or mandatory for defined categories, and the courts have divided on whether prolonged mandatory detention requires an individualized hearing.

      6 min readFederal law

      Judgment Enforcement

      Charging Orders Against an Interest in a Company

      A charging order directs a company to pay the judgment creditor whatever distributions would otherwise go to the debtor member, and constitutes a lien on the transferable interest. Most states make it the exclusive remedy against that interest. Minnesota, Florida and California allow the court to foreclose the lien where distributions will not satisfy the judgment within a reasonable time; Delaware bars foreclosure outright, including for a single-member company.

      6 min readState law

      Emergency Orders

      Closure and Curfew Orders and the Challenges to Them

      Emergency closure and curfew orders draw lines between categories of activity, and litigation over them concentrates on those lines. Governments defend the classifications as public health judgments entitled to deference. Challengers argue that where an order burdens an enumerated right, deference does not apply and the government must justify treating comparable activity differently. Courts have split on both the standard and on which activities are comparable.

      6 min readState law

      Evidence Preservation

      Collecting Data Without Altering It

      An electronic record carries system-generated attributes that establish when it was created, who handled it, and where it sat. Ordinary copying overwrites several of them. Forensic imaging captures a bit-level duplicate and verifies it with a hash value; targeted collection captures defined items with their metadata intact; self-collection by custodians is the least reliable and the most commonly criticized. A chain-of-custody record documents each transfer.

      6 min readFederal law

      Emergency Orders

      Commandeering Property and the Compensation Owed

      California authorizes the Governor to commandeer or use any private property deemed necessary during a state of emergency and provides that the state shall pay the reasonable value. Florida permits commandeering subject to compensation under a separate section, which limits payment by reference to volunteering and to a claimant's own legal responsibility. Where no statute pays, the argument is made under the takings clause, and the scope of an emergency exception to it is contested.

      6 min readFederal and state

      Injunctions & TROs

      Converting a Restraining Order Into a Preliminary Injunction

      A preliminary injunction may issue only on notice to the adverse party under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(a)(1). The court may advance the trial on the merits and consolidate it with the hearing under Rule 65(a)(2), and evidence received on the motion that would be admissible at trial becomes part of the trial record without being repeated. The resulting order runs until final judgment or further order, must state its findings, and requires security fixed on a fuller record.

      6 min readFederal law

      Layoff Notice

      Damages an Employer Owes for a Short Notice

      An employer ordering a covered closing or mass layoff in violation of the notice requirement is liable to each aggrieved employee for back pay at the higher of the average rate over the last three years or the final rate, plus benefits including medical costs that would have been covered. Liability runs for the period of the violation up to sixty days, and never beyond half the days the employee worked. A separate penalty of up to five hundred dollars a day runs to a local government.

      7 min readFederal law

      Emergency Orders

      Declaring an Emergency and What It Unlocks

      State emergency management statutes give a governor power to declare by executive order or proclamation on stated findings, and the declaration then activates suspension, commandeering, evacuation and price control provisions elsewhere in the code. At the federal level a governor requests a declaration on a finding that the situation exceeds state and local capability, and the President may also determine that an emergency exists where federal responsibility is primary.

      6 min readFederal and state