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A former president of the Brooklyn Bar Association was recently disbarred and is now facing criminal charges due to his alleged theft of nearly $160k from two clients. The disbarred attorney, a former trusts and estates practitioner, is alleged to have withheld the proceeds from the sale of homes related to the settlement of the clients’ respective estates in 2015. One client was owed nearly $40k, while the other didn’t get paid the $120k that was coming to them....

Jason Nissen seems like a swell guy. Fourteen years ago, as a math teacher at a Queens high school, Nissen sold his students tickets to a free Dave Matthews Band concert. And it turns out he’s been turning to shady ticket sales tactics ever since to turn a profit. Nissen has been charged with wire fraud after using a fake premium ticket exchange as the cover for a Ponzi scheme. Nissen’s NECO....

Gone are the days of man’s best friend. These are the days of dog shoots owner. Indeed, Fido’s gone crazy. Or at least Eli the bulldog has. Things turned ugly over the weekend when the once-friendly pup headed out with owner Billy E. Brown as his longtime deer-hunting companion. The trio was happily riding in the front seat along with Brown’s loaded shotgun when they came upon a bumpy road....

Petition for writ of habeas corpus is denied and order to show cause discharged where in light of Medeelin, defendant is precluded from renewing his claim under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations since he previously raised the issue and was denied relief on its merits. Defendant’s petition is thus successive, and he fails to demonstrate any change of circumstance or the applicability of any exception to the procedural bar of successiveness that would warrant reconsideration of his claim....

Patents can be invalidated for a number of reasons— inequitable conduct being one of those reasons. Last week, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals broke down the concept of inequitable conduct in the case of Outside the Box v. Travel Caddy. The District Court held the patents to be unenforceable due to inequitable conduct in the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). In order to establish inequitable conduct, the court drew on Therasense, Inc....

The future is here for athletes. Performance enhancing drugs will soon be a thing of the past once performance enhancing sports apps become more widely used. Last month, news broke that Intel is betting hard on a performance enhancing sports app. Their $9 million investment in Kinduct could pay off big time if the company is able to deliver on its promises. Kinduct allows athletics programs to monitor their athletes in ways never before possible all in one system....

The next time you drive through Georgia you might see an Adopt a Highway sign from your friendly local KKK. A local chapter in Northern Georgia applied to adopt a stretch of highway as part of the state’s partnership with private organizations to beautify stretches of state highway. Georgia denied the application, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to stop the KKK. Time to introduce the exalted cyclops of the Klan’s Realm of Georgia....

It’s the new year. You’ve probably made new year’s resolutions to really do something with your life. Well, the following piece will either give you a much needed kick in the pants, or will make you feel really useless. Every year, Forbes releases its “30 under 30 for Law and Policy,” which highlights the movers and shakers aged under 30. This year, some of our fellow officers of the court made the list....

When it comes time to make sure you’ve got all your MCLE credits, realizing you forgot to satisfy your Elimination of Bias requirement can be frustrating. This one can be especially frustrating because the courses offered online can often be horribly outdated, not to mention overpriced, and pretty much worthless. Fortunately, The Rutter Group has a worthwhile, in person, 1 hour course that actually focuses on current issues surrounding the elimination of bias in the legal profession....

‘I Went to Malawi and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt’ Madonna’s bid to adopt a second child from the African country of Malawi was turned away today by that nation’s High Court. According to Reuters, the ruling is good news for Malawians who felt that Madonna received special treatment when she was allowed to adopt a 13-month-old boy in 2006. Reports that the Material Girl’s Plan B included an attempt at adopting the Honorable (and reportedly downright adorable) Judge Chombo were apparently just rumors....

Jeremy Combs is a man who loves his Taco Bell hot sauce. Combs likes the hot sauce so much that he apparently became more than a little irritated when he returned home from a Missouri Taco Bell drive-thru sans hot sauce. He was so infuriated that he drove back to the restaurant. And no, he didn’t just politely ask the employee for a few extra packs of sauce. Combs went into a hot sauce-deprived rage and pulled out a shotgun, frightening the employee who scrambled to get away from the takeout window....

Athletes need to stop sending naked pictures of themselves. Mark Jackson, the Golden State Warriors coach and an ex-NBA star, had an affair with a stripper named Alexis Adams six years ago, reports The Smoking Gun. Jackson is a father of four and has been married for 22 years. When Jackson refused to leave his wife for Adams, Adams allegedly hatched a scheme to extort him. During their almost one year tryst, Jackson committed the cardinal sin in this digital age – he sent naked pictures of himself to Adams....

There’ll be no justice for Justice. Justice, the neglected and emaciated horse at the center of an animal neglect conviction in July 2017, cannot sue his former owner for future costs associated with the horse’s ongoing care due to the neglect. An Oregon judge dismissed Justice’s lawsuit, brought on behalf of Justice by the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), with prejudice. Judge Knowles declared the $100,000 lawsuit may not proceed because the horse is a “non-human animal....

The NHL is breathing a sigh of relief as their standoff over contracts and the collective bargaining agreement is finally over. The NHL agreed to a revised contract of Llya Kovalchuk, who plays for the New Jersey Devils. The dispute between the NHL player’s union and the league involved long-term contracts. The league had been questioning several long-term deals of players including Marian Hossa, Roberto Luongo, Chrop Pronger and Marc Savard....

Convictions of defendants for attempted murder and assault with a semiautomatic firearm and finding true various enhancements is reversed in part and remanded as, the trial court erred by imposing a minimum 15-year parole eligibility requirement for the attempted premeditated murder conviction as it was barred under the gang statute. Read People v. Gonzalez, No. B207856 [HTML] Read People v. Gonzalez, No. B207856 [PDF] Appellate Information Filed January 12, 2010...

Prosecutors in a Virginia sexting case have reportedly obtained a search warrant to take pictures of a teenage boy’s erect penis. Prince William County prosecutors are hoping to use the photos as evidence that the 17-year-old boy’s erection is the same one seen in a “sexting” video allegedly sent to his 15-year-old girlfriend, The Washington Post reports. The story has many wondering: Can police actually do this? A juvenile court magistrate signed off on the search warrant last week, Washington, D....

A man who broke up with his ex-fiancee by text message has lost his legal claim over a $53,000 engagement ring that he wanted back. A New York judge ruled that Louis J. Billittier Jr., 55, couldn’t get the expensive ring back from his former would-be-wife because of what he said to her during the text-message breakup, reports The Buffalo News. Did a loose-lipped text crush Billittier’s engagement ring case?...

More and more it seems that the limitations of what can be patented are defined only by the USPTO’s ability to craft walls around petitioner’s dance steps – which are likely patentable. In this piece, we look at the non-precedential case of In re Brown. So, can you patent a haircutting selection technique? Most likely not, especially if you characterize it the way the Patent Trial and Appeals Board did....

Finally, that LLM you got in Zombie Law is about to pay off! The California Supreme Court ruled on Monday that wills may be amended post-mortem. That’s a drastic shift from the categorical bar against modifying an unambiguous will. Of course, those wishing to amend their wills after death won’t need to reanimate a corpse or two – though it wouldn’t hurt. Clear extrinsic evidence of the testator’s intent should be enough....

A Colorado man known as the “porta potty peeper” has pleaded guilty to burglary and unlawful sexual contact, after admitting to hiding in public toilets across the state. Luke Chrisco, 31, was caught after he emerged from a portable toilet, covered in feces, at a yoga festival in Boulder in 2011. His attorney is hoping for a “community based” sentence for the titillated toilet tenant, reports Boulder’s Daily Camera. Chrisco may have enjoyed his prior exposure to women’s excrement, but this time it’ll be Lady Justice giving him the flush....