Salil Parulekar must have thought he was pretty smart.

He had a management job at Tesla, overseeing the company's relationship with global suppliers. When he saw Tesla was cutting off one supplier, he figured out a way to impersonate another supplier and divert $9.3 million to himself.

At least that's how prosecutors described the scheme in United States of America v. Parulekar. For Parulekar, it means he'll have to figure out how to avoid 20 years in prison and about $2.5 million in fines.

"Dueling Dinosaurs" is not a remake of "Deliverance," starring Burt Reynolds and Jon Voigt.

In the movie with the famous "dueling banjos," four friends battle wild mountain men while canoeing. It doesn't end well for at least two of them.

In Murray v. Bej Minerals, it doesn't end well for a couple of ranchers who were fighting over dinosaur fossils found under their property. The "dueling dinosaurs," and several property owners, were locked in combat.

In a recent panel decision out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the district court issued injunction staying the full rescission of DACA was upheld.

Despite the federal government's pleas for the Supreme Court to intervene ahead of the circuit court, and the federal government's assertion that the injunction forces the government to violate federal law, the Ninth Circuit panel all agreed that the plaintiffs had satisfied the likelihood of success on the merits factor, at least as to the equal protection claim.

There's a big problem in the chocolate industry that many of the big manufacturers don't want anybody to know about: A large chunk of the world's chocolate is farmed by child slaves (and child labor) in Africa's Ivory Coast.

Yes. Child slaves and child labor. It is heartbreaking to read or hear about. The problem goes deep and is both systemic and institutionalized.

And the Ninth Circuit just reversed a Central District of California dismissal in a case brought under the Alien Tort Statute by former child slaves against Nestle and other chocolate producers for aiding and abetting slavery.

A federal appeals court ruled that county doctors should not have examined children without parental consent.

In Mann v. County of San Diego, the parents sued after the County of San Diego took their kids and medically examined them. The parents soon won a decision against the county for not having sufficient evidence to take custody from them.

And then the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, saying the county violated the parents' and the kids' rights by doing gynecological and rectal exams on the children.

A federal judge handed President Trump another loss in his battle against sanctuary cities.

Judge Richard Jones said Trump's executive order to withhold funding from Seattle and Portland was unconstitutional. It was the second time in three months that a federal court has struck the president's order.

"Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States" was the name of the order. "Unconstitutional" was the ruling in City of Seattle v. Trump.

In the latest lawsuit related to the recent Catholic priest sexual abuse scandals, the Vatican and Bay Area archdioceses will now have to reply to a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco.

That case is making headlines due to the big allegations including hundreds of priests who are alleged to have sexually assaulted children. The case also comes on the heels of another significant Catholic priest sexual abuse case filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court earlier this month against nearly every archdioceses in the state.

Though federal courts around the country have been more and more accepting of LGBT litigants over the years, the federal appellate court bench has been rather devoid of LGBT representation.

President Trump has nominated an openly gay judge to one of the open seats on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Notably, the nominee, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Bumatay, would be the second ever openly gay federal appellate court judge, and the first for the Ninth Circuit (Judge Walker was not open about it and did not confirm his sexual orientation until after retiring from the bench).

Facebook grossly overstated the amount of time viewers watched videos on its platform, according to a new lawsuit.

It reportedly did not relate directly to paid advertisements, but could have misled companies into thinking Facebook was holding on to viewers longer than it was. The complaint says the social media company actually admitted it.

If you think you've seen this movie before, that's because you have. The plaintiffs are suing Facebook again.

Who are the Chamorros?

The simple answer is: the indigenous people of Guam. But it leads to a more complicated question in a case pending before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Who should be allowed to vote for the political future of the island? That is a question the appeals court must answer in Davis v. Guam, and it won't be easy.