The Justice Department is urging the D.C. Circuit to strike down a ruling that said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can be held personally liable for the alleged torture of an American contractor detained in military custody in Iraq, arguing that the suit impermissibly intrudes on foreign detention policy and conduct in a combat zone.

When does a whistleblower qualify as an “original source” for purposes of a False Claims Act lawsuit? How about when the medical device at the heart of the suit almost killed the whistleblower, twice. That’s one of the takeaways from a ruling in a case against Guidant stemming from its recalled heart defibrillators.

Former Edwards Wildman partners Lawrence Cohen and Jay Rosenbaum have responded to the firm’s motion to dismiss a scandalous suit filed last month in Delaware Chancery Court. Cohen and Rosenbaum argue that Edwards Wildman has no grounds to dismiss the suit and move it to arbitration.

A California judge took after Google’s lawyers Tuesday for breaking rules aimed at streamlining patent-marking issues at trial. The judge even threatened to take away a key Google defense: the argument that Oracle didn’t mark, or provide notification of, some patents in the suit, a position aimed at limiting exposure for past damages.

James Bopp Jr., the lawyer who brought Citizens United v. FEC to the U.S.