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A whale sushi scandal has already led to dismissed criminal charges and the closure of The Hump, a once-popular sushi restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Now the sushi chefs are on the chopping block again. The scandal broke in 2010 when federal officials discovered that two of The Hump’s sushi chefs, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto and Susumu Ueda, were allegedly selling illegal whale meat to customers. The chefs were charged with misdemeanors, but those charges were later dropped....

Within a day, a single Tumblr post about the color of a dress had been viewed over 28 million times. Caitlin McNeill, who attended a wedding in Scotland, asked an innocent-enough question: Is this dress white and gold or black and blue? With all the strong opinions floating around social media (using the hashtag #TheDress), you’d think she asked if it was OK to strangle a puppy. But, no, war broke out over how people perceive the color of a dress (your author thinks it looks white and gold, by the way, though my editor disagrees)....

A nasty divorce may not necessarily remain a secret, as NASCAR chief Brian France has learned. Court documents unsealed Wednesday reveal details of his finances and his acrimonious divorce. The documents were finally obtained by the reporters after a five-year court battle. France wanted the divorce files kept under seal, reports The Charlotte Observer. With nosy media types scrutinizing celebrities and their personal lives, is there a way to keep the details of a divorce under wraps?...

There are just over four weeks left until the July bar exam. That’s four weeks to get your pneumonic devices straight, four weeks to master IRAC, four weeks to figure out what the deal with mortgages is and why no one ever taught you about them in law school. That is to say, there’s a lot to be done. Here are some tips to help you through it. You’ve had a month to study now....

If you’re a law graduate from Thomas Jefferson School of Law, chances are you’re applauding the Education Department’s proposed rule to modify the defense to repayment in favor of defrauded students. But if you’re a taxpayer who didn’t go to law school, you’re probably a little less jubilant. It’s a touchy subject: student debt forgiveness. For years, the general taxpayer was up in arms about proposals of providing debt relief for overburdened undergrad students who couldn’t find a job....

A Long Island woman who broke up with her boyfriend can keep the $10,000 ring he gave her, even though he called it an “engagement” ring, a New York judge has ruled. New York, like many other states, typically requires women to return engagement rings in the event a proposed marriage is broken off, reports The New York Post. However, 48-year-old Debbie Lopez successfully argued to keep the ring given to her by her ex-boyfriend in 2010, despite having broken off the relationship in 2012....

If there’s anything that proves that common sense is not required to practice law, it would be the attorney murder-for-hire scheme out of Algonquin, Illinois, which has left 29-year-old Jason Smiekel behind bars and at least $15,000 in the hole. Arrested after passing $7,000 to an undercover federal agent, Smiekel reportedly wanted his girlfriend’s ex-husband dead prior to an upcoming divorce court hearing, believing that the man would reveal information that could potentially ruin his career ....

Anyone with a cell phone has probably experienced the embarrassing phenomenon of the “butt dial.” However, one man in Winnetka, Ill. got the surprise of his life when his “butt dial” summonsed out the SWAT team. The Huffington Post reports that his accidental cell phone call to his wife led to a SWAT team storming into a Chicago suburb’s school where the man worked. For those of you readers who don’t know what a “butt dial” is, Winnetka Police Chief Joseph De Lopez explains it best: “You know how when you sit on your phone when it’s in your back pocket and it calls the last number that was dialed?...

#DearFindLaw: It’s like Dear Abby, but for masochists masquerading as legal scholars. What are this week’s topics? The first is all about revising your legal writing (especially in law school) using checklists. Also, a wise man in a warm, humid place wants to know what a “3-2-1” study schedule is. Legal Writing/Editing Checklist Dear Matthew, Checklists? Editing? When we walked uphill both ways to Civil Procedure II, we didn’t have time to revise – we were too busy “networking” at a law student social event....

Six American Samoans are getting a chance to challenge a federal law in the D.C. Circuit that labels them as U.S. nationals, but not citizens. The D.C. District Court granted the government’s motion to dismiss, but the D.C. Circuit has decided to give the American Samoans a chance to argue their case, according to the Pacific News Center. According to the original opinion, the State Department classifies the country as an “unincorporated territory....

It’s not often that stadium security has to eject a fan. And a fan would need to work pretty hard to get banned for life from a stadium. Well, dropping a racial slur, then confirming the slur to neighboring fans, just one night after other fans in the stadium made national news for racially abusing a visiting player is hard work enough to get banned for life. Such was the fate of one Boston Red Sox fan, who was ejected, then banned for life from Fenway Park earlier this month after making a racist remark about a Kenyan woman who had just finished singing the national anthem....

In Strategic Hous. Fin. Corp. of Travis County v. US, No. 09-5078, the Federal Circuit faced a challenge to the order of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC) dismissing plaintiff’s suit against the U.S. to recover its arbitrage rebate for lack of jurisdiction under I.R.C. section 7422(a). In affirming the dismissal, the court held that section 7422(a) prohibits a court from asserting jurisdiction to hear a bond issuer’s claim to recover an arbitrage rebate when the issuer failed to first seek an administrative refund from the IRS....

This week, the White House announced the signing of a new Executive Order which shakes up the appointment process for administrative law judges in federal agencies. As many commentators have noted, the executive order removes some of the more stringent (and objective) requirements candidates need to qualify for an appointment to a federal administrative law judgeship. It is appropriately titled: “Executive Order Excepting Administrative Law Judges from the Competitive Service.”...

The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has held that it can hear an appeal on patent infringement liability before the trial on damages has occurred. The court ruled it could hear Pylon Manufacturing’s liability appeal of an infringement decision in favor of Robert Bosch LLC over patents related to windshield wipers. The ruling could lead to more bifurcated patent trials, reports Reuters. After the district court ruled for Bosch, Pylon appealed....

Yale Law School consistently ranks at the top, giving law graduates a degree that can land jobs at high-paying law firms just about anywhere. So why do more Yale law students go for federal clerkships than from any other law school? Before you answer that, remember clerks make only a fraction of what first-year associates make at BigLaw firms. Yes, we know that law students typically apply for clerkships. But post-graduates who can make $200,000 right out of law school to go to BigLaw?...

Gilbert Arenas’ Basketball Wives battle with ex-fiancé Laura Govan ended yesterday when a federal judge gave the go ahead, allowing her to appear on the newest season of the VH1 reality show. Arenas had sued Govan, who also happens to be the mother of his four children, arguing that her appearance would infringe on his trademark and misappropriate his likeness. He also didn’t want anyone to think they were married....

When a former state supreme court justice sues the governor and the entire legislature, you know something has to be wrong. Actually, everything looked wrong when the West Virginia legislature voted to impeach the whole supreme court. One member of the court has pleaded guilty and another is facing charges in the government-spending scandal. Robin Davis, however, is not going down without a fight. She says she did nothing wrong, sort of....

Lakers star Kobe Bryant’s latest lawsuit involves a bitter family dispute against Goldin Auctions LLC and his mother Pamela. The dispute involves some memorabilia that she intended to sell for profit, including jerseys from Kobe’s high school days and two NBA All-Star rings, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. A federal judge has set a mediation session in an attempt to settle the suit before trial, currently set for June 17....

For those aspiring lawyers looking to work in-house at one of the top tech companies, you might not need to have that Ivy League pedigree. A recent scraping of publicly available data showed that Apple’s most represented law school wasn’t the Harvard of the West (Stanford), or the Michigan of the West (Berkeley), but rather Santa Clara University School of Law. Now most of you must be asking: Santa Who?...

Exercise is a good thing. But according to a New Balance class action lawsuit filed in Boston, shoemaker New Balance has been hawking TrueBalance and Rock Tone sneakers that falsely claim to have health benefits. New Balance ads claim they increase muscle activation by at least 27 percent and increase calorie burn by up to 10 percent with each step using a spring sole. However, shoe buyers are remaining obese, and not seeing any increased toning....