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As we recently discussed, Pennsylvania college students Leslie Pope and John Wagner were arrested by police last week for refusing to pay the 18% mandatory gratuity tacked onto their bill at the Leigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. That two-person crime wave came to an abrupt halt when, even after explaining they had received terrible service and would not be leaving any gratuities, pub employees had the students arrested. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said today that the Bethlehem commissioner planned to drop the charges....

Over the weekend, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher fatally shot his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins and then himself in what police describe as a murder-suicide. Sadly, the fatal act of domestic violence may not have been entirely unpredictable. Perkins’ friends and family describe the relationship between the two as “strained,” especially after the birth of their daughter, reports NBC News. The night before Perkins was killed, she was reportedly out late at a concert with some friends....

Mary Jo White announced last week that she would resign her post as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission when President Barack Obama leaves the White House in January, despite having three years left on her term. White has been one of the longest serving SEC chairs, overseeing the agency as it implemented the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and took a more aggressive stance to enforcement....

Perhaps it’s the century or more that their culture was systematically dismantled and almost destroyed completely that makes Hawaiians especially protective of certain words, phrases, and concepts, along with the very descriptor, “Hawaiian.” They weren’t too happy when a Chicago eatery called itself Aloha Poke, and tried to trademark the phrase, to say nothing of the mainland’s general bastardization of the concept of aloha or the poke dish. And some mainland customers were none too pleased when they found out the “Hawaiian” beer they were drinking wasn’t so Hawaiian....

The American Bar Association is accrediting another law school, even as the organization is suspending others in an era of declining law school enrollments. The ABA gave provisional approval to the University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law, reviving hopes that the lower-cost law school will break a disturbing mold in legal education. Some law schools are in jeopardy of losing their accreditation, largely due to low admission standards and poor bar pass rates....

Call it a family law case for the modern age. The question of who controls a couple’s frozen embryos after divorce goes before the San Francisco Superior Court today in what could be a precedent setting trial. The case is the first in California to address what happens when one half of a couple wants to preserve embryos that the other half wants destroyed. As a result of the increasing popularity of in vitro fertilization, there are more than 600,000 frozen embryos in the United States, according to the San Francisco Chronicle....

A California farming interest league has filed a complaint in Fresno County Court alleging that Assembly Bill 1513, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last year, is unconstitutionally vague, according to Court House News. The law is essentially an updated version of a pay scheme that California has had in place since the turn of the century. But now its critics have argued that the latest updates are an opening for harm to farmers and even to workers....

An Oregon couple having sex in a car parked outside a city jail were themselves taken to jail after their vehicular tryst caused traffic to back up. Kelli Knutson, 24, and Logan Jackson, 33, had been at a local strip club in Springfield, Oregon, reports KVAL-TV. When the couple left the club and walked back to their car, they say they got “caught up in the moment,” according to police....

If most lawyers can’t understand a patent case, then what are we to expect from jurors? The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a new decision, which essentially places the decision making power back in the hands of the judge in patent cases. The ruling, C.R. Bard v W.L. Gore & Associates, stated that the judges are in the best position to determine whether a defendant’s conduct in a patent dispute is reasonable, reports Thomson Reuters News & Insight....

Luckily for Californians, breakfast has been saved. After a California judge said coffee products must include a cancer warning because of a chemical in roasted coffee beans, the legislature jumped in to save the bean. Then another judge ruled against cereal-makers because of the same carcinogen. But a state appeals court threw out the ruling in Post v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County. And no, the carcinogen is not caffeine or sugar....

Dallas Mavericks guard DeShawn Stevenson, arrested for public intoxication late Tuesday night, apparently likes to fraternize with the little people…even if he doesn’t know them. Still partying two days after helping the Dallas Mavericks win the NBA Championship, he was picked up for stumbling around alone in an apartment complex in Irving, Texas. (Where were teammates Jason Terry or Jason Kidd?) There is also no indication that he knows anyone who lives at the complex....

Confession time. We love David Bowie. Ziggy Stardust. Labyrinth. Iman. How could you not like Bowie? Much like Samson found his strength in his hair, we believe that David Bowie finds his greatness in metallic jumpsuits. (Additional support for the jumpsuit theory? Freddie Mercury.) But we digress. When we discovered this week that David Bowie was the appellant in a case before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, there was squealing like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert....

Would you like to get a package of pot from the government? If you do, you’re out of luck. There are only a handful of Americans who legally get these “special packages” in the mail. One of them is Elvy Musikka, an Oregon woman who suffers from glaucoma. She’s part of a relatively unknown federal program that administers medical marijuana. Those itching to sign up for the program should be warned: the program is now closed and is no longer accepting new patients....

Welcome to “First Week at the Firm,” a new FindLaw feature for beginning associates, focused on helping you navigate the transition into firm life. We hope you’ll enjoy this new series and come back regularly for more insider tips. As you get settled into your new office, you should know that at a law firm, as in any organization, there are people who can get things done. Non-lawyer support staff have thankless jobs, but in reality, they often hold a lot of sway in terms of making your day easy or difficult....

It turns out that if you have extra time on your hands, you can hire out your services to 0Ls who want to apply to law school. About a week ago, a law school hopeful on Craigslist advertised that he’d be willing to pay $50 per hour for consulting services to get him into … “cunny” law school. Our guess is that this student is already working – perhaps as a paralegal – and is getting seduced into the idea that being able to append the letters “esq” after your name means guaranteed fame and success....

Just about every state has enhancement statutes that allow misdemeanor thefts to become felonies if the value of what’s stolen exceeds a different dollar amount. Missouri certainly thought it was one of those states. But a recent state supreme court ruling determined that a flaw in how Missouri criminal statutes are worded means that most stealing offenses in the state can no longer be charged as felonies, no matter how much was stolen....

Some kids dream of trading in their Power Wheels for a real car, other kids just have a midnight craving for Chinese food. A six-year-old Michigan boy whose name is not Macaulay Culkin tackled both dreams when he was found driving around in the family Ford Taurus at 6 a.m. to pick up Chinese takeout. The little dude could hardly see over the dash, which sounds adorable, but is actually quite scary....

Justice Antonin Scalia, who began his legal career aspiring to teach the law, will continue that path through the Antonin Scalia Professorship of Law at Harvard Law School. The law school announced the endowed professorship, “which stands as both a testament to Justice Scalia’s legacy on the Supreme Court and as a vote of confidence in a new generation of scholars,” said former Harvard dean Martha Minow. “Justice Scalia had a singular impact on statutory analysis and legal thought,” Minow said....

In a tort action against the U.S. based on the Coast Guard’s decision to phase out single-hulled oil barges such as those operated by Plaintiff, the dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where Plaintiff identified no duty that could give rise to liability under state law. Read Hornbeck Offshore Transp., LLC v. US, No. 08-5225 Appellate Information Argued April 14, 2009 Decided June 30, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Brown...

Yesterday, the ABA Journal reported that layoffs, and even closures, might be coming to some of our nation’s many law schools. With the declining job market and exponentially rising tuition, the glitz and glamour of becoming versed in jurisprudence has waned, along with the number of law school applicants. In 2004, there were 100,000 applicants. This year, the expected number is somewhere around 53,000. In the Third Year Program, traditional casebooks and sleeping 3Ls are replaced with clinics and simulated practicum courses....