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Obviously there are benefits to kids playing sports. And most parents are well aware that with sports comes some possibility of injury. But it can be jarring to learn about new injury concerns, like concussions and severe abdominal injuries, or to hear some injuries are far more common than you thought. For example, before a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Ophthalmology, you may not have guessed how many eye injuries occurred during youth sports, or which sport is responsible for the most eye injuries....

The Federal Communications Commission has repealed its sports blackout rules, calling the regulations “outdated.” In a press release, the FCC announced that it was doing away with rules that prohibited cable and satellite operators from airing sports events that had been blacked out on a local broadcast station. That rule may be most commonly associated with NFL games; the NFL’s current policy requires local stations to black out games that does not sell a certain percentage of tickets 72 hours before the game....

Age discrimination laws apply to federal employees, even if the employees are stationed abroad. That’s what the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals says, reports The Wall Street Journal. John R. Miller was an employee at the U.S. embassy in Paris. Due to French retirement laws, he was forced to retire in 2007 at age 65. Note that Miller was a U.S. citizen employed by a U.S. federal agency. He brought suit, alleging that the forced retirement was in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act....

For the second time, D.C. area attorney Garland Stillwell is suspended from practicing in D.C. and Maryland for at least 60 days, reports the Blog of Legal Times. Stillwell can petition to be reinstated after that time period. Stillwell was disciplined for mishandling his client’s matters and funds. In case you missed last week’s CLE on disciplinary no-no’s, Garland Stillwell’s suspension will inspire you to avoid being another tale of bad lawyering....

Bullying has changed quite a bit since the start of the internet age. While bullies used to have to depend on their physical stature, with social media being as prevalent as it is today, anyone can be a bully (a cyberbully, at least). Whereas all you needed to do before, according to every sitcom and after-school special, was stand up to the bully, and they’d back down, that’s not necessarily the case in real life....

In an action arising from injuries plaintiff sustained in a vehicle accident caused by the negligent driving of defendant’s employee, grant of defendant’s motion to reduce by $130,286.90 a jury’s special verdict award for plaintiff’s past injury-related medical related expenses to $59,691.73 is reversed and remanded where in a personal injury case in which the plaintiff has private health care insurance, the negotiated rate differential is a benefit within the meaning of the collateral source rule, and thus the plaintiff may recover the amount of the differential as part her recovery of economic damages for the past medical expenses she incurred for care and treatment of her injuries....

In plaintiff-i4i’s patent infringement action against Microsoft alleging that the patented custom XML editor in certain versions of Microsoft Word infringed plaintiff’s patent, district court’s award of $40 million in damages in addition to the jury award of $200 million in favor of plaintiff after finding Microsoft liable for willful infringement and entry of a permanent injunction is affirmed for the most part where: 1) district court’s claims constructions and the jury’s findings of infringement and validity are affirmed; 2) district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting plaintiff’s evidence as to damages or in granting enhanced damages; but 3) the district court erred by ordering Microsoft to comply with the injunction within sixty days as there were no other or competing evidence as to how long it would take, and as such, the effective date of the injunction is modified to five months....

After a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue of prayers at public meetings, the town of Greece, New York, is awaiting an atheist’s secular invocation at its town board meeting tonight. The Supreme Court determined in Town of Greece v. Galloway that sectarian prayers before town hall meetings were constitutional, even if the lion’s share of the invocations were distinctly Christian. Key to the High Court’s decision was the fact that anyone was allowed to open a town hall meeting, even those of non-Christian faiths....

Velcro’s marketing department scored a huge victory this week, as their heavily bleeped music video featuring actual in-house attorneys imploring consumers to say “hook and loop” rather than “Velcro” went viral. If not, these company lawyers explain, Velcro may “lose our circle R,” or trademark on their own company name. Known in intellectual property law circles as “genericide,” a trademark can be deemed to be abandoned if the mark becomes the generic name for the goods or services on or in connection with which it is used....

At last, after all the news and speculation regarding the extortion attempt made by Karen Sypher on Louisville coach Rick Pitino, charges have been filed by authorities against Ms. Sypher (as you may recall, she is the estranged wife of Pitino’s equipment manager, Tim Sypher). So now everything’s out in the open, right? Not nearly. Missing from the charges and news reports is pretty much any specific detail about just what information Karen Sypher was using to allegedly extort Coach Pitino....

Federal Circuit Judge Richard Linn will receive the inaugural 2011 Mark T. Banner Award on August 6 at the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law Luncheon to be held during the ABA Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada. The award was established to recognize individuals who have made an impact on IP law and practice through extraordinary contributions to teaching, scholarship, innovation, or the judiciary. Prior to his appointment to the Federal Circuit in 1999, Linn practiced intellectual property law after serving as patent examiner at the U....

A Manhattan teacher deserves an A for effort for trying to get out of work – but an F for forging a fake jury summons that was filled with elementary spelling errors. Mona Lisa Tello, 61, has agreed to retire from Manhattan’s High School of Graphic Communication Arts after an internal investigation uncovered her fraud, the New York Daily News reports. She also faces criminal charges. Prosecutors allege Tello forged a jury summons to get excused from 15 days of work in 2010 and 2011....

Withholding or altering exculpatory evidence has long been considered an major violation of a prosecutor’s duties. After all, “Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted, but when criminal trials are fair,” as Justice William Douglas wrote in 1963’s Brady v. Maryland. The consequences for violating that duty can include overturned convictions, mistrials, and damaged careers. Soon, those consequences could include a felony conviction. Earlier this month, Governor Brown signed legislation that ups the penalties for prosecutors who alter or withhold evidence, making what was previously a misdemeanor a felony crime....

On Thursday of last week, former NFL player Joe McKnight was gunned down in the middle of the day during an alleged road rage incident in Louisiana. Friends, family, fans, and the local community are still mourning the loss of the 28-year-old McKnight. Despite police having obtained a confession, the shooter has been released. While law enforcement has warned that media reports of the story are inaccurate, witness descriptions provided to the media immediately after explain that the shooter pulled McKnight out of his car, then stood over McKnight and fired three shots....

Sure, Ron Artest is a good basketball player for a top team, but the Lakers forward makes just as many (or more) headlines off the court than he does on it. The latest Ron Artest news is no exception. Artest was recently pulled over for driving a small race car through the busy streets of Los Angeles, according the CBS Sports. The cherry red ride is an Eagle Roadster – a two seat car designed to look and drive like an Indy car....

Now that the lockout is over, new trouble may be brewing in the NFL between the Raiders, Terrelle Pryor, and Commissioner Roger Goodell. As a condition to taking part in Monday’s supplemental draft, which landed him with an offer from Oakland, Pryor had to agree to start the NFL season with a five-week suspension as punishment for the tattoos-for-memorabilia scandal that ended both his career and that of Ohio State coach Jim Tressel....

Here’s a story to pull at your heart strings. A North Carolina judge recently made headlines after he sent a Special Forces veteran to jail for parole violations – then joined him in the cell to serve the full sentence alongside him. Joseph Serna did three combat tours in Afghanistan before returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder. Soon after his return, he was charged with a DWI and found himself in District Court Judge Lou Olivera’s court....

Whether the world is actually getting weirder or we’re just more aware of the odd things that people do these days, one thing is for sure: People do a lot of strange stuff. Often, these off-the-wall events have legal consequences. In 2014 there was certainly no shortage of legally weird occurrences. And since the name of this blog is Legally Weird, we went ahead and wrote about them. So without further ado, here are our 10 most popular Legally Weird blog posts of 2014....

Gun. Knife. Baseball bat. Ax. Wasabi covered jeans. What do the above all have in common? Apparently, they all can be used as dangerous weapons. Just ask 22-year-old Massachusetts college student John McGuinness who was arrested last week on a strange wasabi attack on his girlfriend. The wasabi attack was prompted when McGuinness’ girlfriend received a text from another guy – a guy that McGuinness’s girlfriend had supposedly slept with at school – reports The Smoking Gun....

Only Michigan offers a 10-cent recycling refund for bottles and cans, as savvy soda sippers (and “Seinfeld” fans) can attest. But the refund is only supposed to apply to bottles and cans purchased within the state of Michigan. At 10 cents each, the Great Lakes State offers about double what most others pay for empty bottles and cans. That’s led some to bring their recyclables to Michigan so they can cash in on the extra money....