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When Adam MacLeod got a traffic-cam ticket, he wasn’t about to just cut a check and call it a day. Being an associate professor of law, MacLeod decided to fight the ticket. Or rather, as he describes it, to turn “a routine traffic ticket into the constitutional trial of the century.” Not one to toot his own horn, MacLeod says he’s recounting his tale of legal terror and triumph “only to show how our ruling elites have corrupted the rule of law and to suggest why this matters for the American experiment in self-governance....

On Monday, May 21, a Philadelphia jury acquitted a man of murder. One may ask, why the acquittal? That the victim died after being shot by the defendant, there was no question. One small additional fact, the victim died 41 years after the shooting occurred. According to Reuters news service, Officer Walter Barclay was shot in the line of duty by the defendant, William Barnes, during an attempted robbery back in 1966....

If you went into the law because you were looking for something that was low stress, boy did you ever choose the wrong profession. It was well known before you attended law school that the law is a high stress, often thankless job. Lawyers, at their worst, can be heart attack-prone pessimists. But we can also manage ourselves. Here are a few things to watch out for during your work day and solutions to help you manage your stress....

Companies cannot patent their observations on a natural phenomenon. That’s what the U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday, in a decision that overturned a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision. The Supreme Court Justices voted unanimously in the case, rejecting two patents on a blood-monitoring method used to determine the optimal dosage for a drug. Prometheus sued for patent infringement, but Mayo won the first round in district court. The case went to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the method used by Prometheus was a “transformation” which could be patented....

Fast food is addicting. The salty fries, greasy burgers, and decadent shakes can cause some major cravings. For 25 year-old Melodi Dushane, her chicken McNugget attack takes craving to a whole new level. New Years Day footage from a Toledo, Ohio McDonalds shows the snack attack gone wrong. Dushane tried to order Chicken McNuggets during a time when McDonalds was only serving their breakfast menu. Not accepting defeat and settling for an egg McMuffin, Dushane got out of the car and hit the drive-thru employee in the mouth....

In plaintiff’s products liability lawsuit for injuries caused by exposure to asbestos-containing products aboard United States Navy vessels, trial court’s judgment for plaintiffs is reversed where plaintiffs have not shown that defendant manufactured, supplied, or distributed the products which caused his exposure to asbestos. Therefore, under Taylor v. Elliott Turbomachinery Co., Inc. (2009) 171 Cal. App. 4th 546, defendant is not liable in strict liability for failing to warn of the dangerous properties of those products or for a design defect in those products....

There are mothers-in-law. And then there are mothers… in law. No offense, but we prefer the latter. To celebrate Mother’s Day, we combed our archives and found the Top 10 legal cases involving moms. If you think your mom’s weird… she probably is. But these cases involving moms are (hopefully) even weirder: Your Mama’s So Mad, She Hacked Your Facebook: One Arkansas teenager got a valuable lesson about logging-out of social networks when his mom hacked into his Facebook account and started posting mean and vulgar messages on her son’s page....

Washington Gas Light Co. v. FERC, No. 09-1100, concerned a petition for review of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of a construction project that would allow a natural gas importer to import greater quantities of liquefied natural gas and distribute it in gaseous form. The D.C. Circuit denied the petition, holding that, by imposing a post-expansion limit on the project that matched the pre-expansion limit, FERC satisfactorily ensured that the expansion would not result in an increased risk of unsafe natural gas leakage....

In bad news for all of us with a malicious little 10-year-old inside us, it turns out you can’t get unemployment benefits if you’ve been fired from your job for posting violent and sexually explicit videos featuring LEGO characters as stand-ins for your coworkers. And courts are not gonna buy your excuse that you were using characters from movies and rap songs in your videos, and it was a mere coincidence that you used songs or movies with names similar to those of your coworkers....

Brittany and Brienna Delgado, wrestling sisters who take to the mat for Oklahoma City University, used their moves for a different purpose on Saturday when they chased down a hit-and-run driver, tackling him to the ground and keeping him subdued until police could arrive. The pair, who have been wrestling since a young age, didn’t think twice about going after the suspect, who is incredibly lucky that neither he, nor the girls and their grandma, appear to have been injured by the incident....

Good people of the country looking to mix their love of the virgin birth and The Walking Dead are under attack this holiday season. Jasen Dixon, of Sycamore Township, Ohio, claims vandals trashed his “Zombie Nativity” scene, as the AP put it, “beheading the ghoulish-looking Mary figure and flipping the greenish baby Jesus into the yard.” This attack on religious freedom should be unsettling for any American who believes in both the impending zombie apocalypse and the inevitable rapture....

The permanency of a tattoo is something people often seriously consider before putting ink to skin. The design and the location are also factors up for reflection. A forehead tattoo is perhaps one of the more visible tattoos an individual can get, and one that is virtually impossible to hide absent an extensive hat collection. Another factor to mull over is how a tattoo will implicate you criminally. There is perhaps no better example of this last consideration than the South Florida iPhone thief whose “I’m Me” forehead tattoo helped lead to his arrest....

Recently, Justice Ginsburg was ‘interviewed’ by a TMZ ‘reporter’ as she walked through Reagan National Airport in D.C. During the brief encounter, as the reporter briskly walked alongside the justice and what appeared to be her security personnel, he asked such astounding questions as: While the justice did seem to be a little vexed at first, she did answer the second and third questions rather clearly. In response to being asked whether she loved Judy, she said: “I don’t watch television....

It’s only the second week in September and the law school application season is well under way. In fact, applications for early admission to law school may be due as early as next month. But before checking that box for early law school admission, you better make sure that you really want to go to that school. The decision to apply for early admission into law school is not a decision made lightly....

Some crimes are so absurd that even police think they are funny. “Kind of comical” is in fact how one Salem, Massachusetts police lieutenant described the night this week when he saw two men arrested for drunk driving in the same car after switching seats during a series of small crashes. The accused are Erik Leibowitz, 43, and Juan Rodriguez, 46. The two were recorded on surveillance cameras and were reportedly seen switching seats repeatedly....

California’s appeals court affirmed a lower court ruling that denied an actresses’ special motion to strike a “soft-core porn” production company’s counter-suit against her. A secondary issue in the suit was whether or not attorneys’ fees could be recovered under California’s anti-SLAPP statute because the “speech” involved took the form of court filings. Facts of Femme Fatales For those of you who may have seen Femme Fatales, you probably heard the rumors that the production company responsible for the show was embroiled in a lawsuit with one of its actresses....

After some of the terrible stories in the news about the fallout from high speed police chases, this will come as a refreshing report of a low speed chase that ended fairly well. Except that is, for the horse. That’s right, the horse, because this is a story of police pursuit in Amish country. Cops tried and initially failed to bring wild-child Levi Detweiler, an Amish teen, to a stop after they witnessed him, his horse and his buggy running a stop sign....

Beware, California lawyers! Malpractice lawsuits just became a bit easier. In April, the California appellate court case of Callahan v. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher found against Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in a result that should raise red flags for all California attorneys, particularly those who draft documents for client consumption. According to Thomson Reuters News & Insight, the 2nd District California Court of Appeal held that the law firm’s clients had a malpractice claim against the firm, based on a faulty family limited partnership– over a decade after the documents had been drafted....

While there are plenty of suspected origins for the old rhyme “good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite,” one California Landlord is learning one of the lesser known reasons why bed bugs should be avoided: Million dollar jury awards. After several months of living through a bed bug infestation that left a young boy permanently scarred, a family was recently awarded just under $1.6 million by a jury....

Fullerton Redevelopment Agency v. S. Cal. Gas Co., No. G041781, concerned an action arising out of damage to property caused by hazardous waste contamination. The court of appeal affirmed the trial court’s order holding that the good faith settlement agreement between two of the involved parties barred any claims against defendant for contribution and indemnity asserted by plaintiff under Health and Safety Code section 25363, holding that the principles of Code of Civil Procedure sections 877 and 877....