According to Scott Cole, within days of being hit with a class action lawsuit for failing to offer meal and rest breaks to its California workforce, Guitar Center fired the man who pioneered the lawsuit and allowed its workers to parade the named plaintiff’s final paycheck around the workplace. In immediate reaction to these events, the plaintiff’s attorneys at Scott Cole & Associates amended the Complaint today to allege a wrongful termination and invasion of privacy claim.

“If Guitar Center thinks it can send a message to its workers that standing up for their rights will cost them, this new wrongful termination claim sends a stronger message right back,” says Scott Cole, the principal lawyer on the case. “Firing our client was a big mistake.”

The lawsuit is entitled Pellanda v. Guitar Center, Inc.

Oakland-based Scott Cole & Associates, APC is one of California’s premiere class action law firms and is devoted to representing individuals in employment and consumer rights litigation. For more information about our practice and cases, visit www.scalaw.com or call (510) 891-9800.

The Supreme Court seemed split Tuesday on whether to require police to read Miranda rights to prison inmates every time they interrogate them about crimes unrelated to their current incarceration.

The high court heard arguments from lawyers from the state of Michigan who want a federal appeals court decision overturning Randall Lee Fields' conviction thrown out.

Fields was serving a 45-day sentence in prison on disorderly conduct charges when a jail guard and sheriff's deputies from Lenawee County, Mich., removed him from his cell and took him to a conference room. The deputies, after telling him several times he was free to leave at any time, then questioned him for seven hours about allegations that he had sexually assaulted a minor. Fields eventually confessed and was charged and convicted of criminal sexual assault.

Fields was then sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison but appealed the use of his confession, saying that he was never given his Miranda rights on the sexual assault charges.

On appeal, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati threw out his confession and conviction, ruling that it is required that police read inmates their Miranda rights anytime they are isolated from the rest of the inmates in situations where they would be likely to incriminate themselves.

This case is another example of the courts' recent struggle to clearly define Miranda rights, which have been litigated since they first came into being in 1966. The courts require police to tell suspects in custody they have the right to remain silent and the right to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.

The tale of returned mail and a missed deadline might seem comical, if it did not involve a man trying to stave off execution. Supreme Court justices had harsh words Tuesday for lawyers who abandon their clients and a state legal system that does not seem overly concerned.

At the end of a lively hour of arguments, it appeared that the court would order a new hearing for Alabama death row inmate Cory Maples, who lost the chance to appeal his death sentence because of a mailroom mix-up at the venerable New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell and the diffidence of a local court clerk.

Two Sullivan and Cromwell lawyers were pressing Maples' claim that his earlier legal representation was so bad that it violated the Constitution -- until they both left the firm without telling Maples or the Alabama courts.

Deadlines usually matter a lot at the Supreme Court, where a few years back a defendant who was late to file an appeal because the judge gave his lawyer the wrong date still lost his case. Another principle to which the court often holds dear is that it's tough luck for defendants whose lawyers make mistakes.

But Tuesday's case, perhaps because it involves the death penalty, was the rare instance when the court seemed prepared to grant some leeway on both counts.

The Supreme Court won't hear a Maryland man's argument that the Second Amendment allows him to carry a gun outside of his home for self-defense.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Charles F. Williams Jr., who was arrested in 2007 for having his legally-purchased handgun outside his home without a state permit.

The high court has ruled there is a right to keep a gun in the home for protection. But gun advocates say people also have the constitutional right to carry their guns outside the house for self-protection.

Maryland courts say if the Supreme Court agrees with that theory "it will need to say so more plainly." The high court refused the opportunity on Monday.

A U.S. soldier has been found not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility in the killing of a Hungarian civilian contractor in Iraq, military officials said Saturday.

Pfc. Carl T. Stovall had pleaded not guilty in the March 2009 shooting of Hungarian laborer Tibor Bogdan near Camp Taji, just north of Baghdad. Bogdan was shot while digging a hole at the camp.

The shooting came less than a month into Stovall's third deployment to the Middle East.

He opted to be tried by a military judge at Fort Hood instead of a jury. Testimony was heard this past week.

In a statement Saturday, officials with the military post said the court ordered Stovall to receive a psychiatric/psychological evaluation before a post-trial hearing is conducted on Nov. 10. Stovall faced a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Stovall had allegedly once told investigators he believed Bogdan, who worked for a contractor specializing in trash and waste removal, was a terrorist planting a roadside bomb. Prosecutors, however, said Stovall, now 28, has changed his story multiple times, allegedly denying any involvement in one version.

The Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to order a new court hearing for an Alabama death row inmate who lost the chance to appeal his death sentence because of a mailroom mix-up at a venerable New York law firm.

Both conservative and liberal justices indicated they would throw out a federal appeals court ruling that relied on the missed deadline to refuse to consider Cory Maples' claims that he received inadequate legal representation, dating back to his trial on charges he gunned down two friends in 1995.

Justice Samuel Alito, a former federal prosecutor, said he did not understand why Alabama fought so hard to deny Maples the right to appeal when the deadline passed "though no fault of his own."

Justice Antonin Scalia was the only member of the court who appeared to agree with the state's argument that Maples' protests are overblown because he was never left without a lawyer. The state also says the role of Maples' lawyers in missing the deadline is unfortunate but nothing the court should correct under its earlier rulings.

Gregory Garre, a former solicitor general who is representing Maples in the Supreme Court, said the earlier legal work for Maples was so bad that it violated the Constitution.

Whatever the shortcomings of Maples' trial lawyers, he appeared to "win the lottery" when two lawyers at Sullivan and Cromwell agreed to represent him for free in his appeals, Garre said. The New York-based firm has 800 lawyers and offices in a dozen cities.