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Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Jack Johnson has earned more than $18 million over his nine-year NHL hockey career. But according to bankruptcy documents filed last month in federal court, it’s almost all gone. Not only is Jack Johnson broke, but Johnson has outstanding debts of as much as $15 million, reports The Columbus Dispatch. And while the story of a professional athlete squandering large sums of money is nothing new, Johnson’s path to bankruptcy has an especially cruel twist....

It’s easy to understand why most people would automatically conclude that a felony conviction would keep them from ever becoming a lawyer. If you have had some trouble in the past, don’t let a felony conviction cause you to completely write-off ever becoming a lawyer. The process is not as complicated as might think. And besides, here’s proof. Can a Felon Become a Lawyer? The short answer is yes! A convicted felon can become licensed to practice law, though not in all states....

We’re back with another installment of Dumb Laws, and guess what? We’re talking about carnival folk today! Now, you have to remember that before there was religious intolerance, there was religious intolerance. People were a bit afraid of anything that wasn’t part of a Judeo-Christian lifestyle, and they took it out on their fellow countrymen. How did they do this? Well, the states pretty much collectively outlawed carnivals. Carnivals may have been a staple of your youth, but back in the day, some people were wary of the mysticism, freak shows, deceitful magicians, and people who sold their souls to the devil for endless flexibility....

Whether you think the law is dumb or there are just dumb laws, you can’t deny that legislation sometimes goes a bit too far. And no, I’m not talking about light bulbs. Not destroying the earth is good. Because dumb laws are plentiful in this little country of ours, it was difficult to choose just which laws to highlight. Seeing as how everyone loves a good animal story, our subservient (and sometimes not so subservient) friends seemed like a good choice....

Nobody likes NFL games on Thursday night. Teams don’t like them. Players don’t like them. The media don’t like them. And fans don’t like them. Nobody likes NFL games on Thursday night except for the league, and Twitter, apparently. The ever-evolving social media app allegedly plunked down $10 million for the right to stream 10 Thursday night NFL games during the 2016-17 season. Considering the NFL started the bidding at $250 million, that’s a cut-rate price to air a product most people want cut from the schedule entirely....

It’s like my mother always told me: put criminal court proceedings in Florida on a live webcam, and you just might end up with a porn star flashing the judge. Now that might sound like nothing more than folksy wisdom to you, but that’s exactly what happened in a Broward County court last week. Popular county judge John Hurley and the rest of his courtroom caught an eye-full when Susan “Kayla Kupcakes” Surrette attempted to demonstrate injuries she received during her arrest....

Maybe you think your career has hit a dead end, or you’ve asked for a raise several times and been shot down. Perhaps what you imagined would be an exciting and challenging position has turned out to be not as great as expected. You might only be open to being poached, or actively sending out resumes, but fact is – you’re thinking about changing jobs. So how do you know when the time is right to say goodbye to one job and find another?...

Juvenile court’s visitation order is reversed where it was an abuse of discretion to delegate to the children’s legal guardian the determination of the details of his visits with his children, and the matter is remanded to the juvenile court with directions to specify the frequency and duration of the father’s visits. Read In re Rebecca S., No. B216227 [HTML] Read In re Rebecca S., No. B216227 [PDF] Appellate Information...

Judge Glenn Devlin must have had a big lunch. The Texas judge released nearly all the defendants in his juvenile courtroom. He had only one condition: that they promise not to kill anybody. According to studies, that kind of leniency usually occurs after a judge has had a satisfying lunch. Or it could be Devlin was fed up? Voters’ Choice? The Republican judge had just lost his job in an election....

When a lawyer from Los Angeles, trashed his hotel suite at the Encore in Las Vegas, did he think that the Wolfpack from “The Hangover” would let him into their entourage? While it sounds pretty similar to what Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis’ characters did in the movie (their friend who keeps disappearing for 90% of the film doesn’t count), it’s slightly different. Apparently, Pearman had not only trashed his suite, but supposedly adamantly refused several times to pay for any of the damage when Encore requested that he did....

Magic Johnson is being sued by his former personal flight attendant for wrongful termination. Lanita Thomas was Johnson’s personal attendant on his private jet from 2004 until she was fired a month ago. Thomas says that she was fired for being 15 minutes late to work on one occasion. The 45-year-old woman does not deny being late. But Thomas says that the deli meat wasn’t the real reason she was fired....

The Silicon Valley anti-poaching mega-class-action has turned into quite the show: First, there were estimates that the suit could cost the companies involved (Adobe, Google, Intel, and Apple) billions in damages. Then, it settled for a relative pittance: $324 million. An objecting plaintiff, and a motion to intervene by a bunch of mass murderers later, the settlement was nuked and a trial date was set. Now? While the four tech titans appeal Judge Lucy Koh’s holding that the settlement was unreasonable, other lawyers are lining up to take on other tech companies that may have had similar anti-poaching agreements in place....

In an equitable contribution action between two insurers, trial court’s judgment is affirmed where: 1) substantial evidence supports the trial court’s findings regarding the project completion date; 2) the court did not err in ruling that the contractors warranty endorsements in defendant’s policies were enforceable preconditions for coverage; and 3) coverage was not available under defendant’s umbrella policy. Furthermore, substantial evidence supports the trial court’s allocation of relative responsibility to the carriers, and the court properly exercised its discretion in setting the amounts of equitable contribution Read N....

A new NFL lawsuit has surfaced. This time, the NFLPA has been sued by 28 retired players. The retired players, including Hall of Fame players Carl Eller, Chuck Bednarik and John Hannah, allege that the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) had no authority to negotiate or agree to terms regarding retirement benefits after the group was decertified on March 11th. The NFLPA was decertified right before the NFL players were locked out last spring, Yahoo!...

Defendant’s conviction for felony false imprisonment of a child under the age of 14 and sentence to state prison for the upper term of three years and a concurrent term of 365 days in county jail on a related misdemeanor is affirmed as substantial evidence supports the conviction of felony and misdemeanor false imprisonment. Read People v. Dominguez, No. B212967 [HTML] Read People v. Dominguez, No. B212967 [PDF] Appellate Information...

Defendant’s conviction for burglary, attempted robbery, and related crimes is affirmed as, although the trial court erred in refusing to allow defendant to exercise his personal statutory right to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGI) and in failing to remove defense counsel who refused to allow defendant to enter his NGI plea, both of the errors are harmless in light of abundant, uncontradicted evidence in the record demonstrating there was no factual basis for a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity where defendant claimed he was hallucinating from crystal methamphetamine use while playing the video game Grand Theft Auto for 10 hours....

The owner of a Florida reptile store is facing criminal charges after allegedly slapping employees with a bearded dragon, putting the animal in his mouth, and swinging it in the air. Benjamin Siegel, the 40-year-old owner of Siegel Reptiles in Deerfield Beach, was arrested and charged with battery and animal cruelty, reports The Sun-Sentinel. Siegel’s bizarre reptile assault was reportedly captured on the store’s video surveillance system. And as you may recall, this isn’t the first time Siegel and his store have made strange headlines....

This sexual harassment case wasn’t even three degrees of Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein harassed half of Hollywood’s ingenues, but nobody at the Red Cross. According to reports, however, former Red Cross executive Gerald Anderson sexually harassed workers there. Now David Metzler, general counsel for the organization, has resigned over the disclosure. It’s barely a connection, but close enough in the Weinstein era. Almost a Weinstein No one alleges Metzler harassed anybody, but he was responsible for an investigation into Anderson’s behavior five years ago....

A California jury has acquitted a sidewalk chalk writer of his Crayola vandalism charges for writing slogans on sidewalks in front of banks. A jury in San Diego deliberated for five hours before acquitting Jeff Olson, 40, of 13 misdemeanor charges that could have sent him to jail for 13 years and forced him to pay up to $13,000 in fines. Though Olson was acquitted, the lesson to learn here is that even sidewalk chalk can potentially be considered vandalism....

A recent paper released by a University of Maryland Law professor comments on how the theory of a “practice ready” law graduate is a heavily loaded myth, reports The Wall Street Journal. In a very generalized nutshell, the author is saying: stop blaming your joblessness on your law school. Professor Robert Condlin, in calling the concept of a practice-ready graduate a “millennialist fantasy,” makes a fair point in noting that the BigLaw (and SmallLaw, and MidLaw) job market are often beyond the control of law schools themselves....