Welcome to Court Watch #152. The U.S. government is finally back open, which means court-ordered pauses on thousands of court proceedings involving the Department of Justice have been lifted. As such, a docket flood began. We quieted our nihilistic inner King Louis XV voice (“Après Court Watch, le déluge?”) and embraced our fate of suddenly having fourteen hundred new filing alert emails on a random Thursday.
The end result is a weekly roundup that spans all manner of human interest, be it a church youth group intellectual property theft, threats to teachers, stolen French paintings, Moroccan royalty, and hot girl walks.
The Docket Roundup
Governor Newsom’s former chief of staff was charged in a public corruption investigation. Two others named in the complaint filed plea deals the same day her court document was unsealed.
Move over Louvre heist, it’s America’s turn now. A New York man was indicted for wire fraud over purportedly stealing and selling a French 19th century Gustave Courbet painting.
Laura Loomer needs a new lawyer after her old one was suspended, and HBO wants to know what it means for them.
Yikes. A Pittsburgh man is accused of cyberstalking women he saw at the gym.
It turns out that if your friend says, “FBI HE’S JOKING,” in the middle of purportedly making antisemitic threats, it doesn’t avoid someone from catching a federal charge.
A grand jury indicted a man from Georgia after he allegedly threatened the national head of a teachers’ union.
A federal judge tries to thread the needle on class action injunctions without annoying the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department joined the suit filed in part by the California Republican Party over Prop 50, which approved new congressional districts for the state, arguing that the new map constituted a racial gerrymander. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon recused herself from the case, as her former law office represents a plaintiff in the suit.
The ‘unidentified Does’ in the H3Snark subreddit-Ethan Klein case filed a 133-page brief arguing to keep their identities secret.
GOP donor Elliott Broidy has some objections to a magistrate judge’s decision to dismiss his case against Amex for not giving him a corporate credit card.
One Fast Cat, a company that sells an adorable cat exercise wheel, was sued by a customer who says its website isn’t accessible to blind and visually impaired users.
There are still millions of dollars worth of COVID Medicare fraud happening in Florida in the year 2025.
Using a church youth group to sell knock-off cameras is a new one.
A woman asked a court to declare her Moroccan royalty (no, this one isn’t pro se).
Authorities arrested a California man for allegedly spitting on a Border Patrol agent.
U.S. Postal Service Inspectors are on the hot trail of a fentanyl and fake identity fraud ring.
A Detroit steak house owner is accused of hiding a dozen undocumented workers at his house.
Our favorite docket lately has been a guy suing Twitter in Texas, whose lawyer didn’t file the proper paperwork, was ordered to appear in person for a hearing, and then stopped being the guy’s lawyer, but the judge was so annoyed that he made the guy go pro se and come to a hearing. He dropped his case right before the hearing. And, because we’re comically good at our job, we then noticed he and his former lawyer filed a new lawsuit against Chatbase in the Western District of Virginia that same day.
Ericsson is being sued for allegedly bribing ISIS.
Johnson & Johnson lost its bid to transfer the Tylenol case against it by the state of Texas to federal court.
The gambling scandals haven’t stopped dropping. This time with two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians. Stay tuned for the Jomboy-Court Watch breakdown video.
Matt Taibbi and the Justice Department are still duking it out over whether he gets to sue a Democratic Congresswoman.
There was a self-swatting case involving “expand[ing] terrorism upon his enemies” in Oregon.
Here’s an interesting case out of California of prosecutors using a video stream by folks tracking ICE activities to then charge the person being filmed getting arrested for assaulting an officer.
The feds arrested an Indiana man who allegedly threatened ICE agents on a Twitter account that has an AI-generated profile picture of Sabrina Carpenter and Mr. Bean standing side-by-side. Weird times we live in.
A judge in Rhode Island dismissed a Constitutional challenge under N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen to the prohibition on felons owning firearms. We’ll be watching for similar challenges in the months to come.
A voter registration group for young Latinos sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Benny Johnson’s company settled with a videographer over copyright concerns.
Dish would like its two million dollars stolen by hackers back.
Index Exchange, a Canadian advertising company, sued Google for operating as a monopoly through its internet search browser.
We all need this song of the week in our lives. We’ve been on an Amble kick lately, and we would suggest you join us on the journey.
A Maryland judge disagreed with a judge in the South District of New York, ordering the release of an “arriving” undocumented man who had been in the country for almost a decade.
The City of Pittsburgh was sued by a 30-year veteran of its police force, who claimed she faced gender discrimination by her old female superior.
Here’s an interesting human smuggling case from Guam.
A Boston-area man was accused of selling ghost guns. Also, for those who want to keep track, apparently ‘food’ means ammunition, ‘hammers’ are guns, and ‘work’ is drugs. Just don’t ask us what ‘67’ means next.
In Zoomer news, the creator of “Hot Girl Walk” on TikTok <deep sigh> is suing Fashion Nova for purported copyright infringement. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we wrote about it two years ago when she sued another company for the same thing. Upgrade to a paid subscription, and we might just be able to make it to the third semi-annual Hot Girl Walk lawsuit.
The Pentagon Force Protection Agency arrested a Maryland man who seemingly suffers from mental illness and reportedly tried to get into the Pentagon with a knife in order to commit suicide. The criminal complaint takes a disturbing turn toward child abuse in the sixth paragraph.
A Native American man who allegedly committed an assault on Tribal Land in Washington state has an unfortunate last name for town gossip.
Law enforcement used DoorDash to catch a purported pedophile in Alaska.
An ex-accountant for a college in Florida is suing after she was reportedly fired for social media posts in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.
In related news, a tenured professor at the University of Kentucky sued his university this week, claiming he was suspended after opposing Israel.
Prosecutors say a suspect in Indiana started tracking dockets on PACER almost as closely as we do when he realized he was under investigation (hat tip Court Watch subscriber Jack Newsham). A reminder that systematically tracking criminal investigations never ends well for anyone, unless you’re us.
The cousin of a prominent defense attorney in Charleston, who fatally overdosed several years ago, is set to plead guilty to providing him with fentanyl-laced drugs.
In this week’s worst of humanity news, we have another 764 case and a Tennessee woman who pleaded guilty to sharing videos of monkey torture.
There are some telltale signs that someone is under the influence of alcohol, such as breath, trouble walking in a straight line, slurred speech, and, in the case of one Yosemite visitor, when Park Rangers reportedly saw “him attempt to take a bite from a slice of pizza, miss his mouth, and drop it on the ground where he picked it up and placed it on a paper bag at his feet.”
A former graphic designer for KTLA sued the media conglomerate Nexstar over purported unpaid wages.
NPR asked a judge to tell the General Services Administration to turn over records about the decision to vacate the building housing Voice of America.
There’s some interesting tea in the Royal Bank of Canada’s investment group.
A plumber’s union in Nevada is upset that a training coordinator reportedly bought gift iPads for eight folks.
Thanks for reading. A final note, we applaud this First Circuit judge for correcting the typos in an opinion. Now, please don’t judge us if we miss any in this week’s edition.