One New York man is making headlines after his arrest for first degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle. Darwin Barnes, of Rochester, New York, has somehow managed to have his driver’s license suspended 46 times. What makes this even more shocking is that Barnes is only 51 years old. Hold off on doing the math for a minute. On Monday, Barnes was pulled over doing 30 mph over the speed limit....
The California Supreme Court ruled on an issue involving the state’s overtime laws as they apply to out-of-state workers who work in-state for parts of the year. The issue was first raised in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a possible class action is pending. The federal appellate court deferred the question of California labor law to the California Supreme Court, writes Reuters. In a unanimous ruling that came out on Thursday, the California Supreme Court held that out-of state residents working for California companies can benefit from California overtime laws when traveling to California for business, reports The Los Angeles Times....
You can’t say we didn’t warn them. How many times have we spent warning about the dire statistics regarding employment opportunities for law school graduates? How much additional breath has been spent on the need for transparency of law schools to let prospective students know about fewer jobs and high debt? And yet, it is all seems to be wasted breath. Some would have already reached that conclusion, but this story brings it home....
Prominent upstate New York attorney James D. Doyle was busted for having sex with a prostitute after he was allegedly caught asleep in his car with a young lady named Alicia Guastaferro. What garnered national headlines was not the fact that Doyle is a particularly notable or famous attorney, because he’s not. He’s a bit of a big deal in the small town of Greece, New York, so think somewhat big fish in a very small pond....
A Rhode Island man who’s suing Cristiano Ronaldo over the soccer star’s upcoming underwear line has run into a problem: Ronaldo is seemingly nowhere to be found. Christopher Renzi filed a trademark lawsuit earlier this year against Ronaldo and Danish underwear company JBS Textile Group after learning the company had planned to market underwear in the U.S. using Ronaldo’s “CR7” nickname, reports The Associated Press. Although Ronaldo sells clothing and underwear in Europe under the CR7 name, Renzi owns the U....
For those lawyers out there dreaming of landing that celebrity client to help their practices take off, the following is a cautionary tale. Sometimes chasing and serving celebrities can land a lawyer in a whole lot of trouble. Suge Knight’s former attorney was recently arrested on bank fraud charges. He is alleged to have deposited 21 U.S. Treasury checks from tax refunds, totaling over $1 million in various client trust accounts....
What stinks even more than a texting driver? One who crashes into a manure truck. Authorities in Wisconsin say that 37-year-old Matthew Bruhn was texting from behind the wheel of a rented Ford Mustang convertible. Proving that texting while driving can get you into deep doo-doo, he then crashed into a truck that was hauling a trailer filled with liquid manure. The truck driver was luckily not injured, but Bruhn himself had to be treated for a broken finger, UPI reports....
Hyphenating your name can be pretty tricky – you’ll know this if you’ve ever tried to buy something online. Some websites accept the hyphen, some don’t, you just never know. Fast forward another ten years and my husband and I have our first child. After the birth of our child, I decided to “join the team” and drop the hyphen, not because I changed my views, but out of convenience. Now that I had a child who had the “team” last name, I didn’t want any sort of confusion about who her mom was at school, at the hospital, or anywhere else....
This may have been an interesting legal case, if it wasn’t already all-but-decided by the California Supreme Court earlier this year. The City of Live Oak passed an ordinance in 2011 that banned all cultivation of marijuana, regardless of whether the grower was doing so for personal use, medicinal use, or retail. The city did so due to fear of property damage, increased crime, the nuisance of noxious odors, the inability of the state laws to prevent recreational use, and because the city wished to comply with federal law....
A Virginia man accused of child endangerment has agreed to get a vasectomy in exchange for a reduced prison term. To some, the plea deal recalls Virginia’s dark history of forced sterilizations during the eugenics movement of the early- to mid-20th century. But according to The Associated Press, prosecutors see the deal as being the best way to keep the man in the case – who reportedly has at least seven children with six women – from fathering any more children....
Fooooood fiiiight … and arrest, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In the strong tradition of FindLaw Blogs covering legal, illegal and downright ludicrous activities on, about, or around fast food, let us now have the story of the fight over food at a Wendy’s in West Hartford, Connecticut. There are several conflicting facts, as in every tale of crime and mayhem, but we will try to address all sides of the story....
When companies are looking to hire in-house counsel, apart from the actual stated requirements of the job, there’ll usually be a couple other highly desirable characteristics. Highlighting these personality traits and characteristics on your resume, or during an interview, can potentially give you a leg up over other applicants, assuming all other things are equal. Generally, these qualities are geared toward going beyond the requirements of the job to focus on whether an in-house counsel will be a good fit, professionally and culturally....
Melania Trump has been busy lately. Not only is she helping her husband, Donald Trump, run for president, she’s now sending a bevy of cease and desist letters to media outlets who’ve written about rumors that she worked as an escort when she first came to New York from Slovenia. Of course, accusations of defamation are to be expected when someone makes such claims; no one is surprised by that....
Bank vaults, safety deposit boxes, and underneath the mattress are all viable places for a prudent person to store their valuables. Tiffany Giummo, 20, decided to keep her valuables a bit closer to home - inside her vagina. Giummo, 20, was caught hiding 47 balloons of heroin inside her lady parts by police in Ohio last week. No, Giummo was not trying to birth a baby made entirely out of heroin....
Beyoncé lives in an alternate reality filled with couture and yachts and talent and fabulousness. Most lawyers – and judges – do not share that world. But at the federal courthouse in Oakland, Queen B’s words about girls running the world ring true. All six judges at the federal courthouse in Oakland are proud members of the XX-chromosome club, according to The California Report. In a time when everyone wants to talk about Lean In, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new mission to develop women as leaders, these women are proof female mentorship can make a difference....
Twenty-four percent of workers telecommute at least some time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while more than a third of professionals and managers do. And working from home doesn’t mean sleeping in or slacking off. Research shows that telecommuting employees are slightly more productive. But, work from home policies aren’t a panacea. If not correctly instituted, telecommuting programs can raise significant legal risks. America’s home-based workforce has grown drastically in the past few years....
Big Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) news this week has included the announcement that retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter is set to deliver the commencement address at Harvard, which also happens to be the Justice’s undergraduate and law school alma mater. Appointed in 1990 by President George H. Bush, Justice Souter proved to be a moderate liberal, even-keeled SCOTUS justice who notably dissented in Bush v. Gore and joined Supreme Court Justices Kennedy and O’Connor in a plurality position in Planned Parenthood v....
Driven largely by “sexting” between partners, so-called “revenge porn” websites have sprung up online. Now, one such U.S.-based website is being sued. If you aren’t in the know, a “revenge porn” website is basically a site where a vengeful person posts your naked pictures online – along with personal information like your name, address, and telephone number, reports Wired. How do these sites get the photos and information? Typically, from bitter exes....
Fight on. Although the University of Southern California may not be having the winning football season they have enjoyed in past years, there is one place they are putting up a victory – at the Supreme Court. In the battle of the USCs, pitting the Southern California school against the University of South Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld (by denying to hear the case) the SC trademark dispute concerning the school’s logo in favor of the Trojans....
So you’ve been hearing a lot about how lawyers are all unemployed and make no money, how law school is expensive, and how there are no jobs for graduates. We can see how you would reasonably infer that the legal profession is having a bit of a hiccup. Cheer up! No, seriously! This year, 2015, promises to be a good year for lawyers and law graduates, thanks in part to some good stuff that happened in 2014....
