If what researchers are saying is true, law students might want to start demanding a more diverse faculty. A study found that first-year students at a top law school were three percent less likely to get an “A” or “A-” when the class was taught by a person of the opposite sex. If the professor was a different race, the bad news for students bumped to 10 percent. Also, this problem affected non-white female students the most....
Nevada, the one state open to legalized sports betting, is shutting down fantasy sports sites that insist they’re anything but. State regulators have determined that daily fantasy sports operations constitute gambling and therefore must obtain official licensing to continue operations. Without a license, fantasy sites like DraftKings and FanDuel will no longer be able to operate in the state. Gaming the System After a months-long legal investigation, the Nevada Gaming Control Board determined that daily fantasy sports constitute gambling....
“You’re not you when you’re hungry,” or so Snickers’ latest slogan says. And one New York City man should’ve heeded they’re advice. Instead, he shoved an uneaten Snickers bar in a stranger’s face, and proceeded to pummel him in the Times Square subway station last week. Victim Ian Sklarsky says attacker Eliexer Reyes was unprovoked when he shoved a Snickers candy bar in Sklarsky’s mouth. Sklarsky asked Reyes what was wrong with him and Reyes responded with a flurry of punches....
If you are a student considering a degree even higher than the undergraduate one you recently earned, you’re most likely in that unenviable position of wondering how to finance that degree. Well, recently Sallie Mae became the latest lender to offer its own version of the new type of “parent loans” called “Smart Option Student Loan” intended to help well-meaning family members fund their children’s education – maybe yours. It’s nice to have additional options for funding, but as always – read the fine print....
In a patent infringement action by a French company that specializes in home-cooking appliances against a Hong Kong corporation, involving a patent which claims a deep fryer with an inexpensive plastic outer shell or skirt, judgment of the district court is affirmed where: 1) there is no manifest of injustice in honoring a jury’s finding of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents; 2) there is no prejudice to defendant in the district court’s conclusion at the preliminary injunction stage that prosecution history estoppel did not apply; 3) the district court did not err in admitting plaintiff’s expert testimony; 4) the jury’s finding of inducement is justified, and the damage award, even if it was based on inducement alone, stands; 5) district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant’s motion for JMOL on discovery misconduct grounds; 6) district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to grant a new trial to defendant based on the summation of plaintiff’s counsel; and 7) there is no detectable error in district court’s decision to set aside its original awards of enhanced damages and attorney’s fees....
In SpongeBob we trust? Defrauded investors of Peregrine Financial Group may have no choice but to trust SpongeBob as they now work at recovering the millions they may have lost. Peregrine’s CEO, Russell Wasendorf, confessed to nearly 20 years of fraud while at the helm of the futures brokerage, reports Reuters. His house of cards fell apart this month and his company declared bankruptcy. Wasendorf was arrested and an investigation of Peregrine’s assets revealed a trove of silver SpongeBob SquarePants coins in company vaults....
Say you’re an indentured servant at a big corporate law firm. You bill thousands of hours a year. You sleep under your desk when necessary. You miss your girlfriend’s birthday party because a deal is going through. Do you think you’ll be more loyal to your firm if they gave you a spring bonus? Well, apparently you wouldn’t, you ungrateful employee! Spring bonuses actually do nothing for employee loyalty, according to a recent survey of midlevel associates....
While you recover from your post-bar hangover, you have some important decisions to make about the next few months of your life. Besides applying for permanent positions, should you go on a post-bar trip? Should you volunteer? Should you find a paying non-legal job? Should you sit on your butt eating pizza and drinking beer until November? While this last one is especially appealing, it’s probably not the best option....
Failing the bar exam is hard enough without people rubbing it in your face. Not that anyone would deliberately point out your failure, but sometimes people do it in ways without thinking. The bar examiners in the District of Columbia did something like that, but worse. The DC Committee of Admissions published a list of people who passed the exam on its website. Unfortunately for a couple of dozen individuals, the list was wrong....
The number of women in Big Law with house husbands is on the rise. With more women in traditionally male dominated fields, like BigLaw and Wall Street, it’s no surprise that the number of stay-at-home “house husbands” is increasing. However, until recently, female partners didn’t like revealing the fact that their spouse took care of the house, the ABA Journal reports. This shift in gender roles should be embraced rather than hidden, so here are some thoughts on making it work in your family....
‘Go West, young man,’ Horace Greeley’s admonition, could apply to law students, too, with some exceptions for states like California. According to a new study on the best value for cost, the least expensive states for students to attend law school are public colleges in the West, such as Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii. Brigham Young University, a private school, also has a low base tuition. Overall, the study says, tuition has declined at most middle-ranked schools in states with public colleges....
A Wisconsin man who posed as a Denny’s manager didn’t make a grand slam in the kitchen. But he had a message for customers as he was hauled off to the slammer: “This is why you don’t dine and dash, kiddies,” he yelled out, the Associated Press reports. James Summers, 52, of Madison, Wis., wore a tie and carried a briefcase when he strode into a Denny’s restaurant and proclaimed he was the new manager....
As ABC’s “How To Get Away With Murder” ramps up toward its “Winter Finale” (which seems like a new method of normalizing the “it’s reruns until February” phenomenon), things kick into high gear. The scandal multiplies to levels not even seen on “Scandal,” and we’re only one week away from finding out who killed Sam! Spoilers follow. You know the drill. This Week’s Murder: Fairly Irrelevant This week’s murder was phoned in, basically filler between the more salacious bits....
To 3Ls across the country that will be graduating this spring: If you haven’t enrolled in your bar prep course yet, now is the time to sign up. While it is frustrating to have to choose so early and plop down a chunk of money on a deposit, future-you will thank you for doing it now. There are definitely advantages to signing up early, but if you’ve waited until your 3L fall semester to do it, those advantages will rapidly disappear if you wait any longer....
As a trial winds down on a lawyer’s whistleblower case for $8 million against his former employer in San Francisco, a federal judge has already decided a significant issue for in-house counsel on the attorney-client privilege. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Spero said that the defendant Bio-Rad waived its privilege when it disclosed documents from a related case. In administrative proceedings with the Department of Labor, attorney Sanford Wadler had alleged the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act....
Denial of petitioner’s request for extraordinary relief, wherein the trial court agreed with the director of the state Department of Social Services that plaintiff was not entitled to any IHSS-funded in-home service provided by her mother is reversed as Welfare & Institutions Code section 12300(e)’s reference to full-time employee does not include providing in-home, full-time, IHSS funded care by a parent to a child so as to bar the parent from being compensated for providing in-home, full-time, IHSS-funded care to another of her children, and to interpret the statute otherwise would frustrate the IHSS programs’ very purpose....
We’ve discussed how to get your case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in a different blog, but what about having your case heard by the California Supreme Court? Are the strategies any different? California Lawyer Magazine has an informative article on the topic of securing high-court review in California. You see, it’s not that easy to have the California Supreme Court hear your case. As such, you really need to have your game-face on and make the best pitch....
After more than two decades as general counsel at Bio-Rad Laboratories, Sanford Wadler was fired from the company after he attempted to report corrupt practices to the company’s board, Wadler says. So he sued. Last week, Wadler won his lawsuit – and nearly $11 million. A federal jury awarded Wadler $2.9 million in back pay and stock options and $5 million in punitive damages. That award will increase another $3 million under the Dodd-Frank Act, which allows double back pay for damages in whistleblower retaliation cases....
In proceedings arising from city’s imposition of a “transient occupancy tax” against a number of online travel companies (OTC) in the collective amount of more than $21 million, city’s petition for writ of mandate challenging the overruling of its demurrers claiming that the OTCs should abide by the “pay first” rule to challenge the tax is denied as: 1) the city cannot invoke article XIII, section 32 of the California Constitution in this case because that constitutional provision applies only to actions against the state or an officer of the state; and 2) there are no alternative legal grounds upon which the city can impose a “pay first” requirement upon the OTCs in this case....
In a personal injury action arising from a construction accident, trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff’s contention that the defendants were required to comply with OSHA requirements fails as a matter of law because they were not plaintiff’s employer; and 2) to the extent plaintiff seeks to hold defendants liable as homeowners on a concealed danger theory, defendants had no duty to inspect the roof for ‘soft spots’ in order to ensure the safety of the workers as a matter of law....
