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Hannah Storm hosted the Rose Parade yesterday, her first on-air appearance since she suffered severe burn injuries on Dec. 11. The ESPN anchor suffered first- and second-degree burns to her face, hands, chest, and neck in a propane gas grill accident at her Connecticut home, reports Yahoo! News. She also lost half her hair in the accident as well as her eyebrows and eyelashes. While Storm appeared fine during the telecast, she did remind viewers of the seriousness of her injuries by stating that she was wearing a wig and had on fake eyebrows and eyelashes....

A lawsuit accusing Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones of sexually assaulting a former stripper has been dismissed. The lawsuit stemmed from an alleged 2009 incident in which 27-year-old Oklahoma woman Jana Weckerly had accused Jones of grabbing her genitals and kissing her in at a Dallas hotel, reports ESPN. Weckerly had been seeking $1 million in damages in the lawsuit. Why was the lawsuit dismissed? Suit Barred by Statute of Limitations For civil lawsuits such as personal injury claims, statutes of limitation serve to limit how long a person who has been injured can wait to file suit....

NFL players and the NFL Players Association have long complained that Commissioner Roger Goodell is acting as judge, jury, and executioner under the league’s disciplinary system. But every now and then, his decisions are reviewed by other, real judges. And in almost all of those cases, the judges side with Goodell and the NFL. Last month, it was the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstating Tom Brady’s punishment in Deflategate. And this week, it’s the Eighth Circuit upholding Adrian Peterson’s suspension and fines from a child-beating incident in 2014....

Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to reduce the state’s prison population will almost certainly make it onto the ballot in November, after surviving a Supreme Court challenge on Monday. The ballot imitative had originally been put forward with a major focus on reforming the juvenile justice system. Amendments by the governor’s supporters shifted that focus to the entire prison population. The California District Attorneys Association sued, arguing that the changes were too extensive to allow the imitative to go forward without new public comment....

Guantanamo Bay detainees’ lawyers could once again be fighting for their clients’ constitutional rights before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. You may recall the Boumedienne v. Bush — the landmark Supreme Court decision holding that Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus — matriculated from the D.C. Circuit. The latest issue to evolve from that decision is whether a detainee has a continued right to access counsel after a habeas petition is denied....

There’s this nightmare, where you are crossing a bridge and it suddenly runs out. There you are, looking at the vast below and the bridge starts to crumble behind you. You have no place to go but down. That’s what it feels like when you face a question on the bar exam and you don’t know the answer. Nothing prepared you for this. Now what do you do, besides panic?...

In plaintiff’s action against a grocery/liquor store owner claiming discrimination on the basis of his disability because architectural barriers denied him entry to the store, summary judgment in favor of defendant on all causes of action and award of attorney’s fees in the amount of $118,458 are affirmed as: 1) the court of appeals rejects the preemption analysis in Hubbard v. SoBreck, LLC, 554 F.3d 742 (9th Cir. 2009); 2) thus, the attorney’s fees were properly awarded to defendant as a prevailing defendant under Civ....

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court came to bat for one of their own last week, finally quashing a class action matter against a former probate judge. Judge Robert M. A. Nadeau was being sued in his capacity as a former York County Probate Judge by a litigant whose case was delayed when the jurist decided to change around the court calendar and his schedule. What makes this case all the more noteworthy, though, is that the judge had requested additional hours and pay, and was denied the hours, but granted the pay increase....

On May 30, 2014, Sharon Prost succeed Randall Rader as Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit, and earlier this month Judge Alan Lourie told us the “State of the Court” at the Federal Circuit Bar Association’s 16th Annual Bench & Bar Conference. Amidst all of this change and review for the court, last week Judge Randall Rader had his last day on the Federal Circuit bench and sent an open letter to his colleagues....

Attorney Christos Vasiliades apparently thought street justice would work better than criminal justice. Vasiliades was defending an alleged rapist, and he told the victim’s husband that they should settle the case out of court. He offered to pay $3,000 if the victim didn’t testify, and said they should take it out on his client later in the street. “I think you should find him and kick his ass, personally.” Vasiliades was recorded saying....

We all have at least one friend who stuck around for an LL.M. degree. Some of them really wanted that extra knowledge, but most of them were just trying to delay the inevitable: A demoralizing job search in a disastrous economy. And paying off student loans. Turns out such avoidance may not have been a good thing. In fact, legal recruiters are now advising some attorneys to remove LL.M. degrees from their resumes....

The NFL has announced it will agree to a new concussion settlement, one without the $765 million damages cap. The National Football League had agreed in August to an estimated $765 million in settlement funds for former NFL players and their families; the judge rejected it. Now the League says it supports a new settlement agreement that “will not be capped at any specified amount.” What else does this revised settlement agreement provide, and will it be enough for the judge?...

Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims judgment denying claim for service connection for an acquired psychiatric disorder is affirmed where: 1) the regional office appropriately issued a supplemental statement of the case on remand in denying plaintiff’s claim for service connection; 2) the Board did not exceed its jurisdiction by affirming that ruling; and 3) there was no merit to plaintiff’s claim that the notice he received was inadequate under 38 U....

Did you ever think the road-less-traveled might just be a dead end? Not to rain on anybody’s pond, but maybe the signs pointing away from law school are a warning. Maybe the law school financial crisis, job scarcity in the profession, and the future of legal tech are pointing to, well, the future. And now the federal government may cut back student loans?! No worries, this is actually a good thing....

A new Harvard study, which claims lawyers are more liberal than the general population, has been making the rounds in the ABA Journal, The New York Times, and on Above the Law. The study aims to determine whether the judiciary is politicized, as has been claimed in the media for a long time now – at least, depending on whether you agree with the judge’s decision (which is problem one here)....

Not everyone gets hired into good situations. Sometimes, a person is hired to replace an employee that was fired, or abruptly left for greener pastures. Occasionally, a new employee’s first duty will be to clean out their predecessor’s old desk … hopefully after they’re gone (talk about awkward). When this happens with an in house attorney or general counsel, the new attorney can often feel like they unknowingly walked into a swimming pool, while blindfolded and wearing a weighted suit....

Law firms are traditionally stereotyped as a good ol’ boys club. In other words, it’s a place where old, white men reap in big salaries. But as more and more women and minorities enter law school, the stereotype is slowly evolving. That said, some firms have evolved more quickly than others. Vault and The American Lawyer recently came up with separate rankings for the top Big Law firms in terms of diversity, writes Above the Law’s David Lat....

So the law school rankings are in. No, not the one where they rank the quality of the schools. It’s the law school rankings for best website design. The rankings were made by Jason Eiseman of Yale University and Roger V. Skalbeck of Georgetown University Law Center as part of a law review article. They clearly put a lot of work into the methodology of the rankings. They say they used “objective criteria,” analyzing and ranked for twenty elements....

Defendant’s drug and firearm possession convictions are affirmed where it was reasonable for the police to believe evidence relevant to defendant’s weapons-possession offense would be found inside his briefcase. Read US v. Vinton, No. 07-3125 Appellate Information Argued December 10, 2009 Decided February 5, 2010 Judges Opinion by Judge Brown Counsel For Appellant: Beverly G. Dyer, A.J. Kramer and Neil H. Jaffee, Assistant Federal Public Defenders, Washington, DC For Appellee:...

The Trump brand has always been good for lawyers’ bottom line. There are the bankruptcies, coupled with the constant lawsuits, on top of the constant threat of lawsuits. All of it adds up to plenty of billable hours, if not always the clearest respect for the rule of law. Now, with Trump posed to take over the highest office in the land, BigLaw lawyers are expecting an increase in work should Trump follow through on his promises to upend everything from international trade, to health care, to tax law....