Posts

After the president of the State Bar of Texas issued a call to action for Texas lawyers, the enormous response from the legal community did not end with just the law firms and lawyers responding to that call. Throughout the state of Texas, law students and faculty have also stepped up to provide what help they can after Hurricane Harvey. Due to the damage and destruction wrought by Harvey, local law schools followed suit with the courts and closed down as well....

Sandy Kane, a.k.a. The Naked Cowgirl, is suing the city in which she performs after an alleged wrongful arrest last year. She may have “rebuilt Times Square … and made Manhattan and Times Square history,” as she told the New York Post, but the guitar-toting, pastie-sporting performer is now seeking $2 million in damages from the City of New York. Kane is representing herself in her civil suit against the city....

Probate court judgment ordering plaintiff to pay monetary sanctions to the court and attorney’s fees to the court appointed attorney for defendant is reversed where the orders are legally erroneous, unsupported by the record, and a prejudicial abuse of discretion as the court failed to follow proper procedures in giving notice of the proposed sanctions and in awarding them for the express or implied reasons disclosed by the record. Read Negrete v....

Forget the golf course as a casual place to meet with clients. Instead, professional women in New York are turning to manicures as a way to connect and close important deals. Instead of a loud bar, an overfull coffee shop, or a distracting sporting event, the nail salon could be the perfect place to meet with a new client and have an informal chat while still appearing professional. It’s an interesting twist on the traditional locations since the nail salon offers a benefit that no other location can....

At the direction of President Trump, the USDA has announced new, more stringent, work requirements for people receiving Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. This new set of rules may keep an estimated 755,000 from receiving SNAP benefits, commonly known as foods stamps. Current SNAP Rules Allow for More People to Receive Benefits Currently, there are about 40 million people receiving SNAP benefits every month, which is about 12.4 percent of Americans....

In a bizarre lawsuit against the city of Detroit, the city found itself in hot water for allowing their employees to wear perfume. Susan McBride, a city planner, received $100,000 to settle a lawsuit, due to breathing sensitivity to chemical products. The lawsuit was filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act and complained about a co-worker’s perfume. Under the ADA, a person who is considered “disabled” is someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits “major life activity....

Oregon death row inmate Gary Haugen wants to die. He’s “cool with it.” In fact, he’s so cool with it, he and his attorney have asked a state court to re-issue a death warrant, which would force the state to carry out his execution. The move comes after a November 22 order by Gov. John Kitzhaber, who has decided to suspend all executions while he is in office. Haugen believes this move was “legally ineffective” as applied to him because he does not accept the reprieve....

Trial court’s adjudication of an 82 year-old defendant as a sexually violent predator and placement in involuntary commitment for an indeterminate term is affirmed and defendant’s petition for habeas relief denied as the trial court did not err by precluding one of defendant’s expert psychologists from testifying about studies and research conducted by nontestifying mental health experts concerning whether pedophilia is chronic. Furthermore, even assuming that the Office of Administrative Law is correct in its determination that the assessment protocol is invalid, any error in using the evaluations based on that protocol did not deprive the trial court of fundamental jurisdiction over the SVPA commitment petition....

Postjudgment order awarding restitution following defendant’s conviction of driving under the influence while committing an act forbidden by law and causing bodily injury to another person is affirmed in part and reversed to the extent it awarded attorney fees and costs as a trial court may apply the doctrine of comparative negligence in awarding victim restitution against a criminally negligent defendant when the court finds the victim’s contributory negligence was a substantial factor in causing his or her injuries....

A grunting Texas “vampire” assaulted a woman in her home in Galveston over the weekend, telling police he “needed to feed” on her blood. Lyle Monroe Bensley, the “vampire” in question, was later arrested on charges of burglary and assault. Bensley made his way the woman’s house early on Saturday. There, he made growling noises while he hit the woman on the head and tried to bite her neck. At some point, Bensley managed to drag the woman out of the apartment....

Have you ever been stuck sitting in the courthouse with absolutely nothing to do? Or well, absolutely nothing you want to do? It can make you so stir crazy that you start contemplating a conversation with your neighbor. Human interaction. Gross. Enter the smart phone and tablet. They’re great time wasting – and people avoiding – tools. You just need to know how to get the most bang for your bored buck....

For decades, if you wanted to surf Martin’s Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay, there was only one way to get there: the private access road. The landowners charged a few bucks, opened up a store along the way, and no one really minded because they could get to the picturesque beach, which is surrounded on two sides by cliffs. Now, if you want to get to the beach, you’re going to need a boat....

University of Washington tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins was arrested on suspicion of a DUI this weekend. Seferian-Jenkins was arrested near Seattle’s University District late Saturday and was released from custody, reports The Seattle Times. UW football coach Steve Sarkisian said that Seferian-Jenkins will face internal discipline. It is still not clear what criminal charges the star tight end might face. Generally, prosecutors will consider several factors when determining the penalties they seek for a DUI....

An Easter egg hunt at a zoo in Seattle turned “rotten” when two mothers started to fight, according to police. Police say that one mother allegedly shoved a child to allow her own child to get to some brightly colored eggs. The other kid’s mother was obviously not happy, and confronted the allegedly pushy woman. Things quickly escalated, and the two women started fighting. The fight was so intense that the women had to be separated three or four times only for them to go back at each other, reports USA Today....

It’s not just us either. The ABA and the Daily Report are pleading for a resolution to the pleaded versus pled debate. Meanwhile, we’ve turned to bottles of two buck chuck after arguing for common usage over technicalities in the drunken drunk debate. In fact, both seem to be a matter of common usage versus traditional usage. While ABA readers have so far voted 69.22 percent to 30.78 percent in favor of the shorter past participle of plea, one very bored guy’s research on the courts’ usage found that SCOTUS has used pleaded in more than 3,000 opinions while only using pled in 26 - many instances of which were quotations....

Prosecutors officially dropped perjury charges against Shayanna Jenkins. Jenkins is engaged to former NFL tight-end and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez, and the two have a 2-year-old daughter together. Prosecutors had alleged Jenkins lied during her grand jury testimony, but in light of her truthful testimony during Hernandez’s murder trial, decided not to pursue the charges. A Transaction for Testimony Jenkins consistently maintained she did not intentionally lie to the grand jury....

In an action claiming that certain regulations of the District of Columbia Department of Transportation governing the placement of posters in the District violated the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause, dismissal of the action for lack of standing is reversed where: 1) an affidavit by plaintiff’s executive director plainly qualified, at the stage of a motion to dismiss, as a credible statement of intent to commit violative acts; and 2) Younger abstention was improper to the extent that plaintiff’s suit challenged the constitutionality of other postering regulations that plaintiff had not been accused of violating, so long as the invalidity of the challenged regulation did not, presumably through inseverability, imply the invalidity of any regulation that plaintiff had been accused of violating....

In a dispute involving disability insurance benefits, district court’s judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part where: 1) the court properly awarded summary judgment to plaintiff’s former employer, as plaintiff did not demonstrate she had a reasonable cause for complaint against the employer; and 2) the court erred in granting summary judgment on the breach of contract and declaratory relief causes of action against defendant, as plaintiff raised a triable issue of fact as to whether she was entitled to extended disability payments....

California’s egg law is still causing consternation in Washington, but while politicians are fighting over the farm bill, California has moved on to vaccines, booze tasting and fracking. As we get closer to January deadlines for new laws to take effect, here’s a roundup of how these law are progressing. Governor Brown signed SB-4, which regulates hydraulic fracking, in September, 2013. The law doesn’t go into effect until January 1, 2014, but last Friday, California’s Department of Conservation published proposed regulations for implementing SB-4 into law....

Boniface v. Dept. of Homeland Sec., No. 09-1095, involved a petition for review of a 2009 order of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, denying petitioner’s request for waiver of a rule barring him from receiving a hazardous materials endorsement (HME) for his commercial driver’s license because of his 1975 conviction for possession of an unregistered explosive device. The court of appeals granted the petition, on the grounds that 1) petitioner could not collaterally attack his conviction in pursuit of an HME; 2) the regulation at issue did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause; but 3) the TSA was arbitrary and capricious in treating his appeal as a request for a waiver and simultaneously denying that request....