We’ve written a lot in these pages about mentors – how to get them, why you need them – but we’ve never talked about mentors you don’t want. Having these people as mentors could hurt your career, either by giving you bad advice or by being associated with them and their bad reputation. So try to avoid these people; you can do better. As UCLA football coach Red Sanders (not Vince Lombardi) said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing....
In a petition for review of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) imposition of passenger security fees on airlines, the petition is denied where: 1) petitioner’s technical objection to the TSA’s use of nonrandom judgmental sampling in auditing airlines is unfounded; and 2) the auditors’ sampling methodology drew broadly from flights in every year during the audited period and the sampling was designed to select a fairly representative sample of the audited population....
In another “of course this happened in Florida!” story, a Tampa man who’d been told by building management to quell his masturbating ways was arrested on suspicion of felony arson after his apartment complex went up in flames. Kenneth Haskins, 58, is accused of setting the fire as an act of revenge Sunday night, after building managers asked him to “stop masturbating in front of his open windows and front door,” according to UPI....
While it is basically accepted that Valentine’s Day is one of those ‘Hallmark holidays’ that became sensationalized in order to sell greeting cards; that is simply no justification for not showing your loved ones that you care. Regardless of what the anti-Valentine’s Day conspiracy theorists would have you believe, if there’s a law student in your life, whether friend, family, spouse, or S.O., getting them a little something for the occasion is a great way to show them you care....
As the needles go into their arms, patients might be nervous to know that their medical internist is at the end of a 20-hour shift – for the seventh day in a row. It’s a troubling reality in the medical profession and it needs to change for obvious reasons. Nobody performs well if they are sleep-deprived. That’s true for trainee doctors and lawyers-to-be as well. If you want to perform your best in law school – especially during exams – get good sleep....
When the California Supreme Court said employees are guaranteed a day of rest for each workweek, it left the math up to employers. It requires some calculations, but on balance it means that full-time workers are entitled to no less than one day’s rest for every seven. In Mendoza v. Nordstrom, Inc., the court said the law protects the day of rest for anyone who works more than six hours a day....
The San Diego Chargers’ Ryan Matthews suffered minor injuries after getting into a car accident. He’s listed as day to day for practice. As he got onto a highway this week, the running back says he lost control of his BMW and struck another car, reports The Associated Press. Matthews describes the accident as a “freak thing that happened.” The California Highway Patrol officer believes that Matthews may have been driving too fast at the time of the accident....
What goes into your body when you Do the Dew? Apparently, enough chemicals to dissolve a mouse into goo, Mountain Dew’s manufacturers claim. Lawyers for PepsiCo revealed that little-known fact about Mountain Dew’s secret formula in court documents filed in Wisconsin, The Record reports. The disclosure was part of a man’s lawsuit against PepsiCo. Ronald Ball claims he got a mouthful of dead mouse when he drank from a can of Mountain Dew in 2009, according to The Record....
People say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but according to one Sacramento woman, her picture is apparently worth $2.2 billion. In her recently filed lawsuit against Chipotle, she is seeking the $2.2 billion due to the burrito behemoth’s use of an unauthorized photograph of her on in-store displays. The lawsuit alleges that the woman was photographed while eating alone in a practically empty Chipotle restaurant in 2006. However, the woman did not file her case until more than two years after she discovered her photo was hanging in a Chipotle’s restaurant in December 2014, which could present a statute of limitations problem....
Competitive eaters. Like other performers or athletes, they can be a bit high-strung. However, that was not all that was at the bottom of a disruption of the famous Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island, in New York this 4th of July. Below the seething anger that ended in arrest for one former champ, was something many entertainers of all persuasions can relate to: a contract dispute. According to the New York Daily news, it seems that watching his arch-enemy Joey (Jaws) Chestnut compete in and win a contest he was not allowed to take part in was too much for former champ Takeru Kobayashi, a....
The courtroom is a battleground for attorneys. After all, our legal system is designed specifically to arrive at the truth through an adversarial process. But judges generally prefer if profanity, yelling and invitations to “step outside” are not part of the fight in court. In one Stockton, California, courtroom last week, however, things got just a bit out of hand. The Stockton Record reports that San Joaquin County Public Defender Peter Fox, usually responsible for defending people from criminal charges, is himself the object of a criminal investigation for losing his cool in court and threatening the prosecutor....
It can be hard enough just to get courts to release opinions in a timely manner, but to have them tweet out their every move? Instant gratification. And there’s no need to go searching around for every court’s Twitter account either. Twitter lets you organize Twitter users into groups, making it easy to manage what how you see tweets – and making it easy to follow whole groups at once. To help you out, FindLaw has assembled a number of Twitter lists, including Courts That Tweet, featuring the best of the legal Twittersphere....
Oakland Raiders fans have been tied to the beating of a Cowboys fan, following a Thanksgiving Day game in Texas. After the Cowboys’ win, the victim was found on the sidewalk at Cowboy Way and AT&T Way unconscious, ESPN reports. The name of the victim has not yet been released, though his injuries are reportedly not life-threatening. Police are currently still looking for witnesses to the incident. Once more details unravel, what charges do the Raiders’ fans look to face?...
A Los Angeles Dodgers fan died Wednesday after a stabbing near the ballpark in San Francisco. Jonathan Denver, 24, of Fort Bragg, California, had just attended a baseball game against the Giants with his father, who works as a Dodgers security guard. Denver was allegedly stabbed to death by Michael Montgomery, 21, of Lodi, the Los Angeles Times reports. Montgomery’s father, however, claims that his son was only acting in self-defense....
Patent trolls have a bad rap, understandably so, and recently the Federal Circuit ruled against a patent troll whose actions were described as “unethical to say the least,” by one print media consultant. The Federal Circuit brings to a close litigation that the troll brought against the likes of Xerox, EFI, Konica Minolta, Fujifilm and Ricoh. The Patent Digitech is the current assignee and holder of U.S. Patent No. 6,128,415, a patent originally filed by Polaroid in 1996, which is “directed to a device profile and a method for creating a device profile within a digital image processing system....
Coachella is an annual music festival in the California desert that draws stars of all stripes – from pop goddesses like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift to Victoria’s Secret Angels. So you might imagine that people who attend are too cool to worry about taxes, or so rich that someone else has to manage all that wealth. You’d be wrong. In fact, it turns out some of the festival’s attendees tried to mail their taxes from a makeshift post office on the grounds....
An angry litigant walked into an attorney’s office and shot him to death. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it happens far too often. Many people hate lawyers – especially the adversaries – and will rage on them. Antonio Mari, however, was not a typical lawyer. People really liked him. Popular Teacher, Lawyer In another life, Mari was a popular high school teacher. He taught social studies for ten years in Bartow County, Georgia....
In plaintiff’s suit against the Secretary of Army claiming sex discrimination after the Army granted a promotion to a male colleague instead of plaintiff, United States Court of Federal Claims’ dismissal of her suit is affirmed as 28 U.S.C. section 1500 applies and divests the Court of Federal Claims of jurisdiction over her Equal Pay Act claim because plaintiff’s claims arise from the same operative facts and seek the same relief as the pending claim in the district court....
New year, same problem. The issue of political diversity amongst law professors has come up yet again – this time thanks to Teresa Wagner and the 8th Circuit. The appellate court has unanimously agreed to reinstate her lawsuit against the University of Iowa College of Law. A conservative Republican, she claims that she was denied employment because of her political beliefs. The suit even names professor Randall Bezanson as her “primary, vocal opponent....
Misappropriation of taxpayer funds; “unnecessary and lavish” spending; authorizing salaries over state law restrictions; misuse of state resources, including cars and computers; and even using state money to frame personal photos, documents, photos, and artwork. They sound like charges levied against corrupt congresspersons or city officials. But nope – those are all parts of 14 articles of impeachment filed against the four sitting justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals on Tuesday....
