The First Law of Holes states that ‘if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.’ Case in point: If you hired a hit man to kill your wife, and that hit man turned out to be a cop, you probably don’t want to hire another hit man to kill the first. Chances are, that hit man is a cop too, and you’ve just added another count of “using facilities of interstate commerce in connection with the hiring of a person to commit a murder” to your record....
Stevie Hickey, and her pot-laced margarine, exemplifies all that which is simultaneously wonderful and horrible about unhindered access to the internet. After learning how to make pot-laced margarine online, the 22-year-old Pennsylvania woman fed it to three children, including a 12-year-old girl she was babysitting. Brings new meaning to I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, eh? It’s unclear how it happened, but the Associated Press reports that the mother of the 12-year-old girl called Upper Burrell Township police after finding the pot-laced margarine....
Richard Heene, the father responsible for the balloon boy hoax, will get his runaway balloon back after all. The runaway UFO-like balloon that was said to be carrying his 6-year-old boy, Falcon is back in the hands of the parents who pleaded guilty to the hoax, the Associated Press reports. Court records also indicate the Heenes were in financial trouble and working with a production company to create a reality television show based on their lives, as previously discussed....
In California, the right of publicity isn’t reserved for “reality” stars and actual famous people: it applies to everyday types, too. Last month, Facebook settled a claim with California residents over the company’s “Sponsored Stories.” The plaintiffs challenged the posts, arguing that using a person’s image to promote a product without the person’s consent violates the state’s right of publicity laws. This week, the terms of the Facebook settlement became public: Facebook will cough up attorneys fees and $10 million cy pres to charity....
Back in 2014, years before avowed racist Dylann Roof slaughtered nine black parishioners in a Charleston church and drew national attention to states still officially incorporating the Confederate Battle Flag into official locations and ceremonies, California passed a law prohibiting the state from displaying or selling merchandise emblazoned with the Confederate flag. So does that law cover a citizen’s Civil War painting depicting the flag displayed at a county fair? One resident and Civil War buff is trying to figure that out, and he’s suing the state to do it....
It’s important for an attorney to have a niche. Attorney “Cowboy Bob Clark” knows this as well as anyone: “Cowboy Bob” Clark is representing a Mobile, Alabama man who stands accused of having sexual relations with a miniature horse, which could also be called animal rape. The man, Eric Easley, is charged with cruelty to animals and for killing or disabling livestock after allegedly tying up the horse and sexually assaulting it in the horse’s pen, according to the horse’s owner....
When the FBI gets involved, you would expect some cloak-and-dagger story. This is not that movie. In Gill v. United States Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, the real-life drama is about as interesting as a long case citation. Basically, agent Kaiser Gill lost his security clearance because he searched an FBI database without authorization. One detail, however, caught the attention of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia....
Das v. Bank of Am. N.A., B221002, concerned a challenge to the trial court’s dismissal of the complaint in a daughter’s suit for elder abuse against Bank of America, claiming that the bank failed to report financial abuse involving her father and engaged in other misconduct, including predatory lending. In affirming the dismissal, the court held that as section 15610.30(b)’s 2008 amendments to the statutory scheme were substantive, rather than procedural, and the Legislature did not state that the amendments were retroactive in effect, they are inapplicable to plaintiff’s claims....
Carrie Ann Lucas lived as she died: a disabled champion. A nationally known disability rights attorney, Lucas suffered with muscular dystrophy. It put her in a wheelchair with a ventilator the last years of her life. Ultimately, her health problems killed her. From a disability claimant’s perspective, however, her insurance company was to blame. “An Arbitrary Denial” Her family announced her death on Facebook. “Carrie Ann Lucas, a disability rights attorney who pioneered representation for parents with disabilities, died after an arbitrary denial from an insurance company caused a plethora of health problems, exacerbating her disabilities and eventually leading to her premature death....
New regulations mean more work for lawyers. Reform on Wall Street through the Dodd-Frank Act has created a whole lot of work for attorneys in a move The New York Times has dubbed “Dodd-Frank Inc.” Is your firm capitalizing on the new regulations? Debevoise & Plimpton is. The BigLaw firm has pumped out a 17-page letter about the new regulations at a hefty cost of $100,000. And, don’t expect the paperwork to end there....
Introducing our Ex-Lawyer of the Week: David Baldacci. Baldacci is a well-known lawyer-turned-bestselling author. His first novel, Absolute Power, became a major motion picture in 1997; its plot, about a Secret Service scandal, may seem like it was ripped from today’s headlines. But the ex-trial lawyer prefers to write fiction. “I like to sort of blend my own stories together,” Baldacci said on “CBS This Morning” last week. “But some of these facts [in the current Secret Service scandal] might end up in a book later on down the road....
The NFL is already facing a head injury lawsuit by former players that will likely cost them close to a billion dollars. Now, another group of former players (including several of the plaintiffs from the former lawsuit) have filed a separate lawsuit alleging the NFL illegally provided painkilling drugs to players to encourage them to play despite serious injuries. Who are the players behind this latest suit, and what are they asking for?...
A Florida woman hit a cop and now everyone knows. Alexandra Espinosa-Amaya stood outside the Orlando Police Department with a homemade sign, apologizing for hitting a police officer. That was her punishment. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the 24-year-old college student agreed to wear the public apology sign as part of her no-contest plea to two misdemeanor charges: simple battery and resisting an officer without violence. Espinosa-Amaya was punished for pushing Sgt....
Every part of my tech-geek soul loves this. According to a press release from our dear Judicial Council, mandatory e-filing may be in our near future for civil cases. Normally, the word “mandatory” makes us shiver, but this change could be one of the rare instances in which “California courts” and “efficient” actually belong in a sentence together. Forget about the environmental impact of millions of fewer printed pages for a second, because who really cares about the environment?...
A Colorado man was convicted on gun charges after shooting himself in the groin. David Leroy Blurton claims he was trying to fight off a mugger when he fired a handgun into his groin at a local parking lot. Blurton said he was attacked by an unknown assailant in a grocery store parking lot in Colorado, who hit him in the back of the head. When he went to draw his gun, it discharged and he shot himself in the groin....
When it rains it pours and when it pours you know it’s raining. University of Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel might want to get a poncho because another member of the football team has been arrested. The arrest comes amid an offseason with three DWI arrests in August, which Gary Pinkel said “were his responsibility.” On Monday, starting tailback and team captain Derrick Washington was charged with deviate sexual assault, a felony....
“I Wish I Knew How to Quit Booze” If horses dream, they probably see themselves sprinting down the home stretch and winning the Kentucky Derby as 50-to-1 long shots, as Mine That Bird did on Saturday. If they have nightmares, they’re probably about ending up like the two horses in Georgia that last week had to try to keep the jostling to a minimum, so that an evening’s worth of Pabst and corndogs didn’t end up in their manes....
Where can you go to view over a million pages of free case law or browse over 600,000 pages of federal and state codes? FindLaw is where the law is when it comes to cases and codes. And that fits well with law students and associates who find themselves chasing codes and counting cases to find exactly what they are looking for. Here are a few quick facts about FindLaw’s Cases & Codes it’s free updated daily includes case law summaries with relevant facts and concise holdings features U....
How many opinions did the California Supreme Court release in the last year? How many death penalty appeals did the Court consider? We have all the answers, thanks to the Court’s Annual Report on Workload Statistics. The total number of petitions and filings decreased from 10,144 in 2010-2011 to 8,977 over the last year, but the number of opinions issued by the court increased. In 2010-2011, the court issued 86 opinions....
It appears Eisenhower-era buzz cuts will soon be the order of the day at a Dallas suburban school district where the controversy rages on over 4 year-old Taylor “Tater Tot” Pugh’s hair. The pre-kindergartener’s hair has grown longer than is permitted by the school dress code and the tot has been isolated at school for it since November. A hearing on the matter was convened by the Mesquite School Board on Monday night....
