Posts

Arizona Summit Law School will soon be appearing in the obituaries section for law schools. The school has been on life support for months, and the American Bar Association just pulled the plug on its accreditation. It’s apparently the first ABA law school to have its accreditation revoked. They can put that on its tombstone because this school is all but dead. Either that, or “We Told You So.” “We Told You So” Where to begin the sad story of the “for-profit” law school?...

A man seeking to marry his computer as a not-so-subtle legal protest against gay marriage was denied by a judge on Wednesday. Marc Sevier sued to intervene in a same-sex marriage case in Florida by claiming that he had the “right to marry [his] preferred sexual object” – namely, his porn-filled laptop – much like same-sex couples were arguing for the right to same-sex marriage, reports Newser. A judge tossed his computer-marriage motion, but Sevier isn’t done yet....

Anna Bacon-Silveira was denied a bikini wax. The Iowa City woman then assaulted a salon employee with a towel. The strange “bikini wax” assault was spurred on by anger. Well, that and she was drunk. It all started when Bacon-Silveira, 39, showed up at a local salon demanding a bikini wax at around 1 p.m. on Monday. Employees denied her the service because she appeared intoxicated. Perhaps Bacon-Silveira was just trying to use alcohol as a form of pain control....

Judges tend to be a staid sort. On the bench, they’re meant to be sober, serious-minded, impartial. For the most part, their life outside the court reflects this. Justice Scalia, for example, goes wild by hunting. Ruth Bader Ginsburg parties down at the opera. Then there are the judges who have hobbies that are truly out of the ordinary. Awesome, weird, awesomely weird, these jurists spend their off hours pretending to be goblins, playing air bongos, and more....

Most of us have to come to terms with the fact that there is always someone younger, better looking, smarter, or just cooler than you nipping at your heels. Case in point: California’s Botox Bandit Melissa Chesney, who might have felt the cool breeze of Florida’s Beauty Bandit Maria Elizabeth Chrysson when she joined the stealing beauty club back in July of this year. But, it is all Evian face mist under the bridge now, because the Botox bandit is on her way to a jail cell in a bright, orange jumpsuit....

Buy-one-get-one-free deals can be really costly if your company sells a ton of them. It’s not the typical loss-leader sales; it’s the typical class-action lawsuits. In Burger King’s case, it was a $4 breakfast sandwich that turned into $185,000 in attorney’s fees and $10,000 in expenses. That’s how much the company has agreed to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys, plus $5 or a $2 gift card for customers who claim they were overcharged for a modified sandwich....

Congrats Morgan Lewis: you’ve now an even bigger BigLaw firm. Last week, Morgan Lewis acqui-hired most of Bingham McCutchen, bringing on 525 lawyers and staffers, as well as 226 partners from the now-former firm. The move expands Morgan Lewis to around 2,000 lawyers in 28 offices, reports the ABA Journal. It means more or expanded practice areas for ML, and a few fleeing partners from the new conglomerate – of the 307 listed partners at Bingham, 226 are making the move....

More than 170 jurisdictions have passed “inclusionary zoning laws,” which require a developer to either set aside a portion of new units for low to moderate income buyers, to pay fees to fund affordable housing, or to otherwise contribute to the cause. San Jose is the latest to pass such a law, doing so in 2010. A local court quashed the law in 2011, holding that the city had to demonstrate some nexus between the planned housing developments and the ill to be cured (lack of affordable housing)....

If the state seizes your client’s cash, it has to preserve the value of that cash, just in case your client actually gets his money back. This week, California’s Second Appellate District offered further insight into how that cash must be preserved. Cardan was convicted as charged and sentenced to prison, but the state botched the forfeiture action. Because the forfeiture action for the cash was not tried in conjunction with the criminal case, the Second Appellate District court ruled in 2009 the state could not keep the money....

As a newly minted lawyer facing your first real interview for a job as a lawyer, being prepared is critical. Unfortunately for the uninitiated, getting prepared can be an anxiety inducing whirlwind of scouring the internet for information and talking to yourself in the mirror. Since the most common place to start when preparing for anything is with the man in the mirror, below, you can find a collection of blog posts to help you prepare for your interview the right way....

Former Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Josh Kuiper was sued earlier this year after an alleged DUI crash injured another individual. In addition to the civil suit, he was charged criminally, and Kuiper resigned from his position. However, the civil suit against Kuiper has gotten a whole lot more interesting since the plaintiff has now added three new defendants under a dram shop theory of liability. Kuiper allegedly stopped at three different local downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan establishments, drank at each, then drove away....

Donald Sterling had a minor win in court, as a judge declined to grant restraining order against him based on alleged threats he made in a call to his estranged wife’s attorney. Pierce O’Donnell, an attorney for Sterling’s wife Shelly, told the New York Daily News that he had been threatened over the phone by Sterling, who said he would “take [her] out.” O’Donnell perceived this as a threat against his life and proceeded to file for an emergency restraining order against the embattled Clippers owner....

Most people use social media to arrange dates or outings with friends, but some are actually using websites to organize Facebook “flashrobs.” What exactly is a “flashrob”? A growing trend of coordinating, through social media, a robbery or a theft. A recent incident that was initially described as a “flashrob” was a theft that occurred inside a Victoria’s Secret store in Washington, D.C. Basically, the groups organize themselves on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter....

This is kind of like telling a 5-year-old that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. But apparently, video game icon Super Mario may be a real-life groper. Sorry, Super Mario Brothers fans. A fully grown New Jersey man who enjoys dressing up in costume as Super Mario was arrested for groping a 58-year-old woman in New York’s Times Square. Police say Damon Torres, 34, dressed up as the video game hero and grabbed and groped the unsuspecting woman....

In dependency proceedings, trial court’s jurisdictional findings and orders that pertained to plaintiff despite having ruled that he was not the presumed father, are affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded where: 1) the evidence established plaintiff’s presumed father status; 2) the finding of jurisdiction under Welfare and Institutions Code, section 300(b) is reversed as there is no causal nexus between the court’s findings of serious injury and the findings relating to plaintiff; 3) court’s finding of jurisdiction under section 300(g) is affirmed as it is supported by plaintiff’s failure to provide financial support for over a decade combined with his demonstrated lack of interest in the children’s welfare; and 4) on remand, the trial court must make the inquiry concerning plaintiff’s possible Indian ancestry required by ICWA and the California Rules of Court....

A Northern California federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. For California’s same-sex couples, however, the ruling will not provide immediate relief. Karen Golinski, a staff attorney for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sued the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to obtain health insurance benefits for her spouse, Amy Cunninghis. While same-sex marriages are still on hold in California pending the outcome of further appeals in the state’s Proposition 8 battle, Golinski and Cunninghis were legally married during the brief period in 2008 when the state permitted same-sex marriages....

Considering the tiresome glut of superhero movies hitting the theaters over the last decade, it’s no surprise that two of the biggest names in the industry trademarked the term superhero back in the 70s. It was something that a small-time entrepreneur had to battle against almost four decades later. It was a win for the little guy in the end. Managing to get the makers of Thor, Iron Man, and Superman to back off?...

I can still remember when Party of the First Part and I fell in love. Our eyes met across the court room aisle and I knew he would be mine – so I drafted a dating contract and got ready to negotiate. Let me tell you, there was some very valid consideration. Of course, none of that is true because I’m not a sociopath. We can’t say the same thing for all lawyers....

Mother-in-laws. Can’t live with them. Can’t shoot them. Or, can you? One Sunday afternoon, a Georgia man was armadillo hunting in his yard. He killed the armadillo and got his mother-in-law too! According to reports, the man, let’s call him Armadillo Dundee, fired a 9 mm pistol at the armadillo. The bullet killed the armadillo, ricocheted into a fence, through the back door of his mother-in-law’s mobile home, through the back of a recliner, and into her back....

If you needed more proof that Long Island, New York, doesn’t want people to have any fun, look no further than the man who was ticketed for laughing too loud. Robert Schiavelli was charged twice with “disturbing the peace” after his neighbor complained about him laughing loudly. The neighbor said the laughter, which came from Schiavelli’s own home, could be heard across the driveway. It’s true that the law requires people to act respectfully towards neighbors and keep noise down most of the time....