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Fruity fraud. Ripened rip-off. Peeled pretender. Banana sham? When a company called Rasta Imposta sues Kmart, accusing the store of selling carbon copies of its copyrighted banana costume, the puns will follow, so we’ll get them out of the way here. And while this may sound like an open-and-shut case of an object so ubiquitous as to defy copyright protection, wait until you hear what the Supreme Court said about cheerleading uniforms....

Bike theft is at the center of every bicyclist’s sweat-soaked nightmares, but one recent case ended with an endearing apology that’s gone viral. The anonymous thief had the courtesy to return the bike, attaching a handwritten letter of apology for getting “straight white girl wasted” and being “too broke to afford a cab, so I borrowed your bike without asking.” “It was a lusciously smooth ride from what I remember,” the thief continued....

While parents were worried about in-app game purchases and whether teachers are properly using iPads, it turns out hackers were finding yet another way to access your information – your kid’s Barbie doll. According to Vice, bugs in the Hello Barbie doll’s cloud infrastructure and smartphone apps could allow hackers to listen to your child’s conversations. So what secrets has your toddler been telling Barbie? The Hello Barbie doll in question is Internet-connected and equipped with voice recognition software....

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the families of enemy combatants who killed themselves in their Guantanamo prison cells cannot sue the U.S. government for damages. Talal Al-Zahrani and Ali Abdullah Ahmed Al-Salami sued the United States as representatives of their deceased sons’ estates, seeking money damages relating to the alleged mistreatment and eventual death of those sons while they were detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba....

The Department of Labor is supposed to be the watchdog for labor related legal issues in the U.S. but in this case, one of their former employees is accusing the Department of not practicing what they preach. The case involves classic retaliation claims in connection with an employee’s whistleblowing. Whistleblowers are protected under federal law but here, a whistleblower within the Department of Labor was let go, reports Reuters. Whitmore claimed that he was fired in 2009 because he publicly criticized OSHA for allowing companies to under-report workplace injuries....

What is it with people who post confidential information on Facebook? Do they think that the information will only be seen by their “friends”? Or do they think they can erase errant disclosures by “unfriending” someone? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Leslie Lynn Heburn didn’t get it, and now she faces up to 10 years in prison. That can happen when you post confidential information on social media. Grand Juror Heburn is a special case of grand-juror-gone wrong....

The California Court of Appeals presided over a unique probate case earlier this year. Ever heard of a rogue will? No, it’s not Sarah Palin’s will. Rouge is certainly an apropos term especially in this case, because here, the will was quite inaccurate and the personalities involved were pretty preposterous. A rogue will is that random, unknown little will that sneaks up on the presumptive heirs and catches them off guard....

Thirst can make you crazy, and it seems to have just done that to an 18-year-old in Springdale, Arizona. The young man, Cody Morris, is facing felony charges after an attempt to steal soda turned into a felony. The crime was publicized on the local police’s Facebook page and is making its way around the Internet, albeit with a deceptive headline that police find frustrating. It indicates that the young man was charged with a felony for stealing soda from the fountain....

They don’t make many T.V. dramas about IRS attorneys. John Grisham has yet to write about the sexy world of EPA rule making. But that doesn’t mean a job in a regulatory position isn’t exciting. Working in government regulation, whether for a regulated industry or for the government itself, can be an engaging and rewarding career. Your work in regulatory affairs can affect the operations of entire companies, industries and even whole government agencies....

If you want a fight, take up boxing. Go to a country bar. Play a video game. Find a sibling. Hit yourself in the head. Just don’t call 911 looking for a fight. No, not even if you’re drunk and you have some lingering anti-police aggression. And definitely not if you’re a sex offender with a long criminal record. When John Pacella of Willowbrook, Ill. didn’t heed this advice, he landed himself a cozy spot in the DuPage County Jail....

The investigation into Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse may have taken too long, according to a report released Monday by Pennsylvania’s attorney general. The 339-page report by Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane concluded that her predecessors had made “crucial missteps and inexplicable delays” in arresting and charging Sandusky for his crimes. Philadelphia’s WCAU-TV reports that it took prosecutors “a year to recommend filing charges against Sandusky,” one of many revelations unearthed by the new report....

As we predicted would happen, baby “Messiah” got to keep his birth-given name after all. What we didn’t predict are the disciplinary charges the judge is now facing. In August, Tennessee Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew ordered a baby’s name changed from “Messiah” to “Martin,” saying the former was reserved for the original JC (as in Jesus Christ). Ultimately, another judge deemed Ballew’s ruling unconstitutional and restored the child’s name to Messiah....

In a way, law school administrators could see it coming. Two months before Matthew Riehl killed a sheriff’s deputy in a mass shooting, he had posted on Facebook that he dreamed about raping a former professor at his law school. Ten years earlier, when he attended the University of Wyoming law school, faculty had noted he was a good but “troubled” student. Their attention and precautions may have saved lives....

At first, mechanical problems seemed to blame, but soon it was discovered that a disgruntled employee had remotely disabled cars, allegedly committing a computer security breach to do so. Customers who bought their vehicles from a Texas auto dealership complained about mechanical problems. But later, police found that the real culprit was Omar Ramos-Lopez, a man who was fired from the dealership and allegedly used the Internet to remotely disable ignitions, AOL News reports....

Marqise Lee is suing Lloyd’s of London, alleging the insurance marketplace failed to pay on a disability injury policy regarding the 2014 NFL draft. The Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver was injured during his junior season at USC and was drafted later than expected. As you may know, disability insurance policies are fairly common for college football players, especially those who expect to go early in the NFL draft. In some cases, schools are assisting players to pay for insurance....

A federal pilot program to allow Mexican trucks to operate on U.S. highways was upheld in the D.C. Circuit on Friday, denying appeals by both the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. In two consolidated cases, the D.C. Circuit Court found that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) pilot program which allowed Mexican trucks to operate in the U.S. was not in violation of parallel federal laws, but did find that the two petitioning organizations had standing to challenge it....

Oh hey, Brooklyn Law School Dean Nick Allard. It’s been awhile. When we last heard from the heavily indebted school’s leader, he was making a number of optimistic (and some might argue, unrealistic) predictions for law schools in 2014. One of them was that schools will slash tuition rates (and by extension, merit scholarships). “2014 will be the year law schools begin to attack not only the quality issue – that is the value proposition of a JD – but also the affordability issue....

Are you clueless about what you should do if you can’t find a ride? Maybe you should take a page from New York man Andrew Hickey. On Christmas day, he stole an entire Greyhound bus in order to visit his friend. He was arrested and charged with criminal possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a vehicle. Officials caught up to the daring thief after Greyhound disabled the bus electronically....

Here’s a reason to be extra-careful when mailing a worker’s compensation check to an injured employee: If you mail the check to the wrong address, you may have to pay twice. Last week, California’s Second Appellate District Court ruled that an employer remained liable to a former employee for proceeds of a settlement of a workers’ compensation claim when a check for the proceeds was mailed to the wrong address and then fraudulently endorsed and cashed by someone else....

Conviction of defendant for assault with a semiautomatic firearm and related crimes for firing shots at another moving car is affirmed as the evidence is sufficient to support convictions for assault with a semiautomatic firearm as to both occupants of a car even if defendant did not actually see the backseat passenger. Read People v. Trujillo, No. E045598 [HTML] Read People v. Trujillo, No. E045598>People v. Trujillo, No. E045598 [PDF]...