It’s another swing and a miss for the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF). For years, the ALDF has been trying to put an end to the annual Kaporos ritual held in the streets of Brooklyn. As they did last year, the New York Appellate court ruled once again that they do not intend to force an end to the ancient Orthodox Jewish atonement ritual that slaughters 50,000 chickens in the Brooklyn streets every year....
The holidays can cause stress for all of us. This must particularly apply to those slaving in Santa’s workshop. One case in point: 45 year old William C. Caldwell, III, surely the frontrunner for 2009 Angry Elf of the Year. It may come as no surprise to anyone that your local mall Santa receives excellent security training these days. And a good thing, too. On Wednesday evening, the mall Santa on duty at Southlake Mall in Morrow, Georgia came face to face with a potentially explosive situation....
A Missouri police officer has been accused of recording hidden-camera bathroom videos of men pooping and then posting the videos on his porn site. David Cerna, 33, who’s been – ahem – relieved of duty since his arrest, will face a Clayton, Missouri, grand jury in July on invasion of privacy charges for his alleged hidden-camera bathroom antics, reports St. Louis’ KTVI. What’s the scoop on Cerna’s poop shoots? Cerna’s alleged poop-filming enterprise was uncovered by KTVI’s investigative reporter, who tipped off local police that someone was secretly filming men using the bathroom at a gas station in Chesterfield, Missouri....
Watch out, Elizabeth Warren! Wall Street has a powerful ally in the fight against financial reform. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is turning out to be a banker’s best friend. While many cases involving Wall Street banks are heard in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the D.C. Circuit serves as the second-to-last stop for all regulatory agency related appeals. This would include appeals to regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission....
The New York Times had a feature on the current challenges faced by BigLaw firms, with White & Case as the star. Free podcast! About job-hunting! The ABA Journal has details. Here’s the Texan take on the state of the law job market, courtesy of the Austin American-Statesman. Career options: the National Law Journal reminds you that your military is hiring lawyers. The case for BLS: Above the Law says that at Brooklyn Law School, you can learn from a real-life mob lawyer!...
Juvenile court’s order terminating the parental rights of a mother to two of her children is affirmed as: 1) although evidence of a legal impediment to adoption by an identified prospective adoptive parent is relevant and therefore admissible when a social worker’s opinion that a child is likely to be adopted is based in part on the the prospective adoptive patent’s willingness to adopt; 2) on the record, the trial court neither barred such evidence nor was compelled to consider whether there was or could be a legal impediment to adoption by the children’s prospective adoptive parent in evaluating whether it was likely the children would be adopted....
Trial court order adjudging Y.G. as a dependent child under Welfare and Institutions Code sec. 300 (b) is affirmed where the statutory language does permit the juvenile court to consider a parent’s misconduct with an unrelated child in determining a Welfare and Institutions Code sec. 300 (b) allegation. Read In re Y.G., No. B210847 in PDF Read In re Y.G., No. B210847 in HTML Appellate InformationAPPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Robert L....
Every now and then, or more often, we hear news about how the legal profession is dying. Whether it’s robot lawyers, the apocalypse, or the robot lawyer apocalypse, you don’t have to worry about the legal profession dying. The profession isn’t going anywhere. Your job on the other hand, well, that’s another story. If you’re one of the countless miserable lawyers out there reading professional doomsday blogs, it isn’t much comfort knowing that you’re not alone....
Cue the woman screaming. Pyrotechnics. Action! “Tents are on fire, people fighting for food,” a frantic fan tweets as crowds run haphazardly through a refugee scene. No, this is not a disaster movie. It’s just Philip DeBerard advertising for business. The personal injury attorney is looking for clients to sue over an ill-fated music festival. “Did you pay for and attend the 2017 Fyre Festival in the Bahamas?” he asks on his website....
A lawsuit alleges that USA Swimming coach Norman Havercroft sexually abused, harassed and humiliated a female teenage swimmer for over five years. The lawsuit, brought by Jancy Thompson against the coach, West Valley Swim Club and Pacific Swimming alleges that the abuse began when she was about 15 years-old, beginning in the 1990s. The suit further alleges that Havercroft abused another female swimmer and that USA Swimming was aware of the abuse and did not fire Havercroft....
Family inheritance situations can be a hot mess. Though parents may be interested in leaving equal portions of their estate to their children, sometimes parents may want to skip a generation, and leave a child’s portion to their grandchildren. Perhaps one child has made a fortune, and they believe it would be a better tax advantage to give an estate portion directly to the grandchild to avoid the estate eventually being taxed twice....
An elderly man kills roommate over singing. Yes, you read the headline right. 81 year-old William Leo McDougall will be arraigned at a Santa Ana, California, courthouse for the death of his roommate after he killed him for singing in their shared room at a Southern California healthcare center. No word on what song it was. The LA Times Blog reports on the deadly tunes: “William McDougall was recovering from hip surgery at the Palm Terrace Healthcare Center when he allegedly became angry with Manh Van Nguyen, who had begun singing in Vietnamese....
Women want to talk about their feelings, and men just want sex. Whether or not you subscribe to this long-standing presumption, one woman is putting it to good use. Meet Sarah White, the naked therapist. After studying the subject as an undergraduate, Sarah White was “uninspired” by modern psychology. Taking matters into her own hands, she launched her website, The Naked Therapist, where she advertises $150 Skype “therapy” sessions, reports the Daily News....
November, appropriately, is National Adoption Awareness Month. When families are giving thanks for their blessings, many are thankful for their adopted sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. Families can grow and change in so many ways, with adoption just being one of them. But adoption isn’t so easy as just adding a family member. Adoption can be a lengthy and complicated legal process. Here are a few of the biggest legal considerations and questions when it comes to adoption....
Kevin Turner played eight seasons in the NFL with the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles. Turner was also the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the NFL over the league’s handling of concussions. “It’s about helping people who had their brains affected in a very drastic way, and to make their lives so much more livable,” he told The New York Times in 2014, “not just them but their families, and to supplement their health care....
One Cook County judge is learning a hard lesson: People, and especially the people in your courthouse and chambers, don’t want to know about the sexual conquests, or failures, of judges, no matter how sad you are that a former classmate you may or may not have been intimate with snubs you. Also, judges shouldn’t refer to former classmates (or anyone for that matter) as a “bitch,” even if you’re talking to someone else....
Trial court’s conviction of defendant for robbing a jewelry store is affirmed as, when the owner of a store consents to an “inside job” robbery that occurs while the store is under the control of employees who are unaware of the owner’s plan, the owner’s consent does not vitiate the felonious taking element of robbery. Thus, if the property that is taken was in the possession of the owner’s innocent employees or agents, that is sufficient to make the taking felonious, even if the owner himself is secretly in league with the perpetrators....
Inside courtrooms across the country, people are often afflicted with the desire to punch the lawyer prosecuting them, or sometimes, even their own lawyer. But doing so is a really fast way to end up with assault charges as courthouses are not only under near constant video surveillance, law enforcement officers are rarely not nearby. Sadly, this seems to be what happened recently in an Ohio courtroom when a 42-year-old criminal defendant was sentenced to 47 years, and then punched his attorney right in the face, and, apparently, also bit him on the butt....
If you’re drinking Starbucks beverages and miffed that all the ice is depriving you of your due liquid, fear not. Someone has taken up your cause. A class action lawsuit was filed in Northern Illinois Federal Court last week on behalf of Starbucks iced beverage drinkers whose cups are being underfilled compared to hot java drinkers, reports Courthouse News Service. The suit’s lead plaintiff, Stacy Pincus, says Starbucks iced beverage drinkers are being deprived of the amount of liquid advertised in any particular size cup when they buy iced drinks, and that Starbucks is disproportionally profiting from iced drinks....
Everybody has an idea of how to fix law schools. Tuition is too high. Student loan debt is crippling recent graduates. There are no jobs for recent graduates. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. Today’s visionary is Mark Chandler, the senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary and chief compliance officer of Cisco. On the ABA Legal Rebels blog, Chandler outlined a few ideas that he found particularly compelling, and which tech company Cisco has already implemented in a sort-of pilot program....
