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The battle between Pete Rose, best known for having the most hits all-time in baseball and also being banned from the sport, and John Dowd, best known for preparing the report that got Rose banned, continues, and continues to get ugly. In court documents obtained by ESPN, Rose allegedly had a sexual relationship with a woman for several years in the 1970s that began before she turned 16. The woman’s affidavit is part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Rose against Dowd, who claimed in a 2015 radio interview that the former Cincinnati Reds great had underage girls delivered to him at spring training....

One of the not-so-new hallmarks of a legal education is the prohibitive cost. And while there are student loans available to most law students, the risk of taking on massive student loan debt when the legal job market isn’t that strong is not insignificant. It is generally accepted that student loan debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, or at least that it is next to impossible. And that still may be the case, but some bankruptcy court judges are, as the ABA Journal explains, getting creative and finding some “wiggle room” to get student borrowers some relief....

Maile Mae Hampton, a young African American woman, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Sacramento last January to speak out against police violence against minorities – and ended up being charged with felony lynching. Hampton is accused of pulling a fellow protestor away from police, which prosecutors felt met the definition of lynching in California: “the taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of a peace officer....

Here we are again. In 2007, Anna Nicole Smith died from an apparent overdose of legally prescribed drugs. In 2009, Smith’s domestic partner and agent Howard K. Stern was charged – along with a Dr. Khristene Eroshevich – with conspiracy to provide prescription drugs under false names. Stern was convicted by a jury on two counts of conspiracy and acquitted on nine other counts. Stern moved for a new trial, which the trial court granted, and dismissed the conspiracy counts, finding that Stern used a false name to obtain prescription drugs for Smith “only to protect her privacy....

If you’re a California lawyer with a stand-alone blog, you can probably keep blogging without worrying that your posts are violating rules on attorney advertising. That’s because the State Bar of California’s ethics committee recently finalized an ethics opinion holding that many common forms of attorney blogging don’t count as communications subject to attorney advertising rules. There are some important caveats, however, especially regarding blogs on your firm website. Here’s what you need to know....

In an action brought against the State of California Highway Patrol and two of its officers by the family of a decedent who died in an automobile accident, judgment of the trial court in favor of the defendants is reversed where: 1) the trial court erred in sustaining the officers’ demurrers as to the invasion of privacy cause of action for dissemination of the pictures of decedent’s decapitated body, as family members have a common law privacy right in the death images of a decedent, subject to certain limitations; 2) the trial court erred in sustaining the demurrers as to a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress as plaintiffs’ allegation that the officers had acted with the intent to cause them emotional distress, is sufficient to withstand a demurrer; 3) the trial court erred in concluding that plaintiffs had no cause of action for negligence as, applying the Rowland factors, CHP and its officers owed plaintiffs a duty of care not to place decedent’s death images on the internet for the purposes of vulgar spectacle; 4) trial court properly sustained the demurrer of the CHP as to the section 1983 cause of action against it based on the doctrine of sovereign immunity; and 5) the section 1983 causes of action against the officers also fail as plaintiffs did not plead facts sufficient to allege that the actions of the officers violated any clearly established constitutional right....

Metropolitan D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier sharply criticized the actions of the veteran off-duty police officer for brandishing a gun during a good-natured snowball fight game. Chief Cathy Lanier watched the videos that were widely circulated on the Internet of the off-duty plainclothes police officer pull his gun after snowballs hit his private car after a record snowfall. CBS/Associated Press reports that off-duty police detective Michael Baylor must give up his gun and his badge....

In hindsight, mutuality of obligation seems quaint. Probably because it’s one the first concepts we learned in contract law. (Mutuality is to law school what “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” is to piano lessons.) But according to California’s Third Appellate District, mutuality still matters in employment agreements. In Wisdom v. AccentCare, a California staffing agency included a clause in its employment application that stated, if hired, all disputes between the employee and the agency must be submitted to binding arbitration....

Curt Schilling personally sued? Yep, the former ace pitcher has been sued for $2.4 million by Citizens Bank over a video game loan. As you may have heard, Curt Schilling’s dip into the video game market has not been very successful. His company, 38 Studios LLC, filed for bankruptcy protection last week. But while creditors of the company may be out of luck, creditors of Schilling personally, may still be able to get its money back....

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the government can continue funding embryonic stem cell research through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), despite claims that the work destroys human embryos, reports The Washington Post. Opponents argued that embryonic stem cell research violates the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law, which prohibits federal funding for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero....

In KYD, Inc. v. US, No.09-1366, the Federal Circuit faced a challenge to a decision of the Court of International Trade affirming the Department of Commerce’s antidumping duty rate determination for polyethylene retail carrier bags that are manufactured by a Thai company and imported by plaintiff. In affirming the decision, the court held that substantial evidence supports the antidumping margin assessed against plaintiff, and that the AFA dumping margin determined in accordance with statutory requirements is not a punitive measure....

Facebook’s IPO is one step closer, thanks to the company’s in-house lawyers and two large law firms with Silicon Valley offices. Facebook filed its Registration Statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, naming the attorneys and firms who’ve been working on its much-anticipated IPO. You can read Facebook’s S-1 filing in its entirety at FindLaw’s Courtside blog. The firms and attorneys named in Facebook’s filing are: Fenwick & West LLP: Based in Mountain View, Calif....

Howard O. Kieffer should have a rule named after him, the kind of rule that says “don’t go there.” He started by breaking the rule against unauthorized law practice. Then he violated the “fool-for-a-client” rule by representing himself in his criminal case. But he broke the mold when he appealed his conviction, only to expose a sentencing error and double his prison term. Kieffer might want the legal equivalent of a Mulligan rule, but there are no do-overs in this story....

The owners of the Ultimate Fighting Championship are being sued by current and former UFC fighters over claims that the company violated antitrust laws. Zuffa LLC, the parent company of the UFC, was sued in California state court on Tuesday, alleging that it prevented fighters from working with other mixed martial arts (MMA) promoters and made itself a monopoly. According to ESPN, the Federal Trade Commission started investigating the UFC for antitrust violations in 2011, but stopped in early 2012....

Antitrust Drug Price-Fixing Action In In re: Lorazepam & Clorazepate Antitrust Litig., No. 08-5044, an action claiming that defendants entered into exclusive licensing agreements enabling defendant to raise the prices the insurance companies paid for two prescription anti-anxiety medications, the court vacated judgment for plaintiff where plaintiffs’ self-funded customers were required to be counted as parties for diversity of citizenship purposes, and thus the district court needed to examine the issue of its own jurisdiction....

A 66-year-old Florida grandmother shot her son-in-law three times at point-blank range when he came to pick up his son. Sal Miglino, the victim, captured the entire incident on film using his iPhone. He said he expected “something stupid to happen,” according to ABC News. The shooting occurred last week when Miglino came to the grandmother’s home to pick up his 3-year-old son. The grandmother, Cheryl Hepner, is the mother of Miglino’s estranged wife....

There was an interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday: a few law schools cut tuition and their enrollment numbers rebounded from the dismal depths of last year, with little impact to their admissions standards. Which schools? The WSJ cites three that cut the sticker price: the University of Iowa College of Law (#27 per USNWR), Roger Williams University (Rank Not Published per USNWR), and the University of La Verne College of Law (Unranked per USNWR) and a fourth that introduced a grant for in-state residents, Pennsylvania State University’s Dickinson School of Law (#51 per USNWR)....

The Obama D.C. Circuit nominees – Patricia Millett, Cornelia Pillard, Robert Wilkins – made their grand debut to the spotlight last week. Since the announcement, much of the discussion has focused on the political reaction to President Obama’s nominations. But what about the nominees themselves? Patricia Millett is an established appellate lawyer who spearheads Akin Gump’s Supreme Court practice and serves as the co-head of the firm’s national appellate practice. Until recently, she held the impressive record for the most Supreme Court arguments by a female lawyer, according to the White House press release....

Just five days after a Nebraska woman filed a federal lawsuit against all homosexuals, the case was emphatically dismissed by the court: “This Court is not the place to seek opinions regarding theological matters; this particular forum is closed and the case will be dismissed.” Sylvia Driskell had filed the handwritten complaint as an “Ambassador for Plaintiffs God, and His, Son, Jesus Christ,” asking “To be heard in the matter of homosexuality....

District court’s ruling that plaintiff was not barred by res judicata from litigating his infringement claim against the defendants and finding that there was no infringement of the U.S. Patent No. 5,474831 (the ‘831 patent) is affirmed on alternative grounds where the plaintiff waived his right to pursue an infringement claim under the doctrine of equivalents in the first infringement suit brought against the defendant. Read Nystrom v. Trex Co., Inc....