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In Boyajian v. Ordoubadi, No. G041311, the Fourth District faced a challenge to the trial court’s judgment precluding the assertion of a pre-petition claim for equitable indemnity against the debtor in concluding that plaintiff’s claim for equitable indemnity was discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding in 1994 in plaintiff’s suit for indemnity against the defendant. In affirming the decision, the court held that the bankruptcy law allows for discharges of contingent claims, including claims against the debtor for indemnity before the time the indemnity claim against the debtor can be precisely measured....

If you’re an able-bodied individual who’s beginning to slip into self-pity, consider people like Haben Girma, the first deaf and blind person to graduate from Harvard Law. Now look reassess your situation. But if you have a physical disability like Ms. Haben Girma, her story should invigorate you. At the very least, her example destroys common assumptions about what’s possible for those with physical disabilities. From Eritrea to the the US Girma’s mother escaped Eritrea sometime in the early 80s when the chaos of the Eritrean-Ethiopian civil conflict was near its zenith....

In a recently filed employment lawsuit against social media behemoth Facebook in the Northern District Court of Illinois, an employee is seeking class action status to pursue FLSA claims of overtime theft due to employee misclassification. Basically, the lawsuit alleges that Facebook’s “Customer Solutions Managers,” “Client Solutions Managers,” “Account Managers,” and other similar “manager” jobs, were not actually management jobs at all. The plaintiff claims the jobs should not qualify for exempt status, and thus, these alleged “managers” should have been receiving overtime....

A Las Vegas judge has agreed to postpone Floyd Mayweather’s jail term so he can train for a fight on Cinco de Mayo. Though he has no opponent, his managers have reserved the MGM Grand Garden Arena and made arrangements for pay-per-view television. Mayweather was sentenced to 90 days in jail last month after he pleaded guilty to domestic violence. He was accused of violently attacking his ex-girlfriend while two of their children watched on....

Have you ever quit a job and felt compelled to send a company-wide resignation letter? Did you want to insult your former boss? How about incite your ex-colleagues into a full blown rebellion? Or did you just want to humorously say goodbye? Eh, we’ve all wanted to do something similar at one time or another. Most of us don’t – and for good reason. The few who do live on in infamy, ultimately becoming fodder for posts like these....

Juvenile court’s imposition of a requirement for gang registration under Penal Code section 186.30 is affirmed where: 1) the juvenile court did not abuse or fail to exercise its discretion in finding defendant’s violation of the gang injunction was gang related under section 186.30 and requiring him to register; and 2) defendant cannot demonstrate prejudice by showing he would not have entered into the plea if he had received an advisement about gang registration....

Legal ethics and musical theater, a match made in heaven? Well, not exactly, but at least one troupe of lawyers is looking to make legal ethics CLE programs a little less monotonous and a lot more entertaining by taking a note from Broadway. A group of Texas lawyers calling themselves the Ethics Follies has been putting on musical legal ethics performances for years. Their most recently production was a riff off Monty Python’s Spamalot, entitled, appropriately, Scamalot....

Junior Seau’s family is suing the NFL, claiming that the league was responsible for his suicide last year. Last May, the 43-year-old Seau shot himself in the chest. It was speculated that the former linebacker chose to shoot himself in the chest (as opposed to the head), so that he could preserve his brain for research purposes. Many former pro football players have suffered severe brain trauma during their playing days, resulting in bizarre and oftentimes tragic behavior as they get older....

Two men in Kentucky were sentenced on Tuesday for forcing another man to eat his own beard. At knife point, of course. The defendants, Troy F. Holt, 47, and James E. Hill, 51, are now on probation and, if they do not further break the law for the respective periods of five and four years, they will have all charges against them dismissed. How did we get here? Although the event, er, crime took place in 2009, “details about the beard-eating were not widely known until last week....

The San Francisco Law Library filed a lawsuit this month against the City and County of San Francisco, alleging that officials are violating a City Charter provision that mandates proper funding and adequate space for the law library. San Francisco has allegedly violated the charter provision since 1995. The San Francisco Law Library is an autonomous agency established by state law in 1870 to provide free access and use of legal reference materials....

Who is the kettle and who is the pot in this story? A maid surreptitiously recorded herself having sex with her boss. It was to be part of a sexual harassment case against him. Now the maid is on trial for recording the sex act. She says her lawyers made her do it. Somebody is going to get cooked. Waffle House Along with the maid, attorneys John Butters and David Cohen face charges of unlawful eavesdropping on Joe Rogers, Jr....

For Denver Broncos All-Pro tight end is famous for a his football prowess. He’s also famous for his mouth, offering a plethora of brash quotes such as: “I’ve got a better chance of winning the Kentucky Derby on the back of a donkey than they have of winning the Super Bowl with Kyle Boller.” Sharpe was an eight time Pro Bowler and won back-to-back Super Bowls in 1998 and 1999, before winning a third super bowl with the Baltimore Ravens in 2001....

Well, this is a new one in the annals of Lawyers Behaving Badly, and maybe the worst in the category of Judges Behaving Awfully: A state court judge in Jackson, Mississippi, finds himself deservedly in trouble for allegedly “knocking down, slapping and kicking” a mentally disabled black man. Oh, and did we mention he used a racial slur against this disabled black man after he knocked him down and kicked him?...

Minnesota babysitter Amanda Rose Owens, 18, has a porn addiction. And it led her to burglary. Owens is accused of crawling through her neighbor’s doggie door and stealing items to fuel her love of porn. The burglarized neighbor set up a camera inside his house when he started to notice items were missing. He hoped to catch the culprit red-handed, and he succeeded. Video footage of the burglary showed Owens squeezing through the doggie door, rummaging through belongings and downing a Red Bull energy drink from the fridge....

Told you we’re screwed. We’re the many, the sad, the Class of 2011. And ladies and gents, we are rock bottom, at least in terms of employment. That being said, from the data released last week, any gains over last year were modest, and those were barely above the year before, so while 2011 may mark the low point for law graduates, 2013 is barely a hair better. How bad is it?...

The NFL lockout has been lifted by a Minnesota federal judge. Judge Susan Nelson granted the request of the players for an injunction that forces NFL teams to open for business and continue football operations, The New York Times reports. Nelson’s ruling gives the players an early victory in their battle with team owners over a new collective bargaining agreement, the LA Times reports. Owners locked out the players after negotiations broke down on March 11 and the players decertified their union....

Litigation is a notorious time sucker, but a patent case dragging on for ten years? That’s just too long according to the Federal Circuit, who not only vacated and remanded the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) decision, but urged a “speedy resolution.” Patent 6,554,446 History Tivoli owns patent 6,554,446 ("‘446"), relating to a reflective material “stair-step lighting apparatus” to “alert users to the location of step edges in darkened or low light environments....

Here’s some Mel Gibson drama in the California Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals in the Second Judicial District of California (i.e., Los Angeles) has rejected a bid by Oksana Grigorieva to remove Mel Gibson’s attorneys from a child custody case on the grounds of conflict of interest, reports the Associated Press. Grigorieva was Mel Gibson’s girlfriend, once upon a time. Now, she’s in a bitter child custody case with her former beau, over the couple’s 20-month old daughter....

People have long believed in the power of prayer to heal and have even paid for prayers. The practice of trying to cover the bases with God extends to many religions and sects and has now found its place on the web. The problem, however, is that promising prayers will deliver certain results and not being able to back that up violates consumer protection laws. Now, a Seattle, Washington man is being ordered to pay users millions of dollars, money they gave him and fictitious pastors invented by him for the power of their prayers....

Penn State administrators including Athletic Director Tim Curley supposedly had a plan in place to report Jerry Sandusky to authorities back in 2001, according to Penn State email messages leaked to news reporters. Then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary had just walked in on Sandusky in the Penn State showers with a 10-year-old boy, and the administrators developed a plan of action that actually made sense: Report Sandusky to law enforcement. However, these plans were allegedly derailed after the administrators had a talk with Joe Paterno, as suggested by the leaked emails, reports the San Francisco Chronicle....