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We’ve profiled lawyers behaving badly before, but Matthew McLaughlin ushered in a whole new category earlier this month when he filed a proposal for a voter initiative called the “Sodomite Suppression Act.” The proposed ballot proposition would make it a crime to be gay or lesbian in California, prohibit gays or lesbians from holding public office, and would authorize civilians to “put [gays and lesbians] to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method....

On Friday night, Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 of 48 charges relating to sexual abuse of minors and likely faces the rest of his life in jail. But despite the overwhelming evidence against him, there is already talk of Jerry Sandusky appealing the result. The primary grounds for appeal appear to stem from Sandusky’s lawyer, Joe Amendola, and his strange interviews and dealings with the media since he began representing Sandusky....

Frank Stephenson, a former director of research communications at Florida State University, has sued the school alleging that he was wrongfully terminated once administrators were made aware of his battle with alcohol. The FSU lawsuit, which is premised on the American’s with Disabilities Act, requests $75,000 in damages, and claims that the university should have provided Stephenson with a reasonable accommodation for his “handicap of alcoholism.” The school learned of Stephenson’s alcoholism when a subordinate complained of verbal abuse and mistreatment, pinning it to his after-hours drinking habit, according to the complaint....

Bees face a no-win situation when attacked: if they sting back, they die. Fortunately for California’s bee population, EarthJustice lawyers fought for them and won a life-saving battle. A state appeals court has reversed a decision that would have unleashed deadly pesticides on the honeybee. “This is a win for public health, the environment – and in particular honeybees,” said Paul Towers of the Pesticide Action Networks, plaintiffs in the case....

In Carlisle, PA, the nightmare is finally over for two men that were, for some time, trapped with the mentality of children. One man/child, Richard Cantor, 56, went out of his way to throw a toothpick on “the sidewalk in front of another man’s home” (The Patriot-News). The natural response from the other man/child, Brian Taylor, 43, was to do an equally ridiculous action: call the police. When they arrived, instead of a simple littering charge, Cantor was cited for harassment....

Whether you’re a seasoned 3L looking to diversify your wardrobe (or you need a new wardrobe after three years of lunchtime “pizza provided” meetings and lectures), a 2L looking to start your wardrobe, or an honest, no-foolin’ lawyer who hasn’t bought a new suit in years, the fact is: You need a suit. (It actually is necessary to keep up with contemporary styles so that you don’t look like you bought your suit in the 1970s....

It turns out that federal judges are just as big of gunners as the fledgling lawyers who want to work for them. You see, once upon time, there was this thing called the Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan. (Maybe we shouldn’t speak about the plan in the past tense. Technically, it still exists. So do 8-tracks. That doesn’t mean that anyone uses them.) The big news this week is that the D....

You are a product of your time and culture, so you too – like just about everyone else – walk around, distractedly, with a cell phone in hand and your face in a screen. As a result of your fascination with tech, you have become a menace on the streets. Distracted walking is, in fact, a growing international problem as more people around the world grow engrossed with their phones, rather than paying attention to their surroundings....

Arrested in April for attempting the in-home circumcision of her 3-month old son late last year, Keemonta Peterson of Portland, Oregon pled guilty to one count of first degree criminal mistreatment on Monday, with prosecutors agreeing to drop all other charges. As per the plea agreement, the mother of four was sentenced to 5 years probation, ordered to seek mental health treatment, and must work with a specialized mental health probation officer while she serves her sentence....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action claiming that the District of Columbia lacked probable cause to secure an arrest warrant against plaintiff for allegedly violating firearms laws, dismissal of the complaint for lack of standing is reversed where the warrant for plaintiff’s arrest revealed that the district had already targeted him for prosecution, and its concession signaled that it expected to prosecute him in the future. Read Ord v. Dist....

When police arrived at Jeremiah Carmody’s home he tried to destroy the evidence of his marijuana plant in a creative way: by eating it. Police arrived at the man’s Scranton, Pennsylvania home with a warrant on Monday and Carmody panicked, or maybe he just got a little hungry. Whatever the reason, police say he tried to eat his pot plant before they could stop him. But it wasn’t enough to save him from arrest....

It’s not going to be a simple matter to seat a jury in the Barry Bonds case. San Francisco Judge Susan Illston is facing that problem as she prepares to attempt to seat 16 jurors from San Francisco to decide the fate of all time home run king and former Giant Barry Bonds, The New York Times reports. Bonds has been charged with knowingly lying to a federal grand jury in 2003 about his suspected use of steroids and performance enhancing drugs....

Trial court judgment denying plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees is affirmed where the trial and appeal are a single proceeding and defendant was still the overall prevailing party after plaintiff dismissed its suit against it, despite plaintiff’s success on an appeal of the award of attorney’s fees. Read Wood v. Santa Monica Escrow Co., No. B205939 in PDF Read Wood v. Santa Monica Escrow Co., No. B205939 in HTML Appellate InformationAPPEAL from Ventura County Super....

There has been a general decline in law school applications of late - about a 10 percent drop. The drop in law school applications may be a result of recent media coverage of the bleak job market and crippling debt that await law school graduates today, Wendy Margolis, Director of Communications for the Law School Admission Council, told the Yale Daily News. And there has been a lot of bad press around law school graduates finding themselves jobless of late....

Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. claims it’s 205 years old. That’s a lot of birthdays. Its next celebration may not be so happy, since it will start paying back 80 years worth of royalties it collected from the tune “Happy Birthday to You.” A U.S. judge ruled that Warner/Chappell’s copyright on the song was invalid, meaning the company could owe millions it has collected in commercial use licenses. While Warner/Chappell wasn’t running around enforcing its now-invalid copyright against every party at Chuck E....

Chesapeake, Virginia is one of many cities that announced plans to use teenage trick or treating laws to cut down on vandalism. Though falling short of saying it would use the laws arbitrarily and capriciously, the city did state that “a thirteen year old safely trick or treating with a younger sibling is not going to have any issues. That same child taking pumpkins from porches and smashing them in the street more likely will....

Have you heard? You don’t have to take the LSAT to get into law school anymore! Cue the articles about how “some schools” – two – are eliminating the requirement and how pretty soon no one will have to take the LSAT. Sort of. As Bloomberg Business reported Tuesday, the ABA did change its rules in August to allow schools to admit up to 10 percent of students in an entering class without taking the LSAT....

In the first major ruling interpreting California’s decade old sex education law, a Fresno court has ruled that the northern California town of Clovis failed to provide adequate education when it adopted a ‘abstinence-only until heterosexual marriage’ curriculum. After the Clovis school district refused to change the program, parents and the American Academy of Pediatrics sued. Clovis revised its program and the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their suit, but filed for attorneys fees....

The law finally caught up with Scott J. Wolas – and Eugene J. Grathwohl, Allen L. Hengst, Drew Prescott, Frank Amolsch, Endicott Asquith, and Cameron Sturge. These are names Wolas used over the 20 years that he was on the lam. A former partner at Hunton & Williams, he vanished 20 years ago in the midst of an investigation into a Ponzi scheme. Wolas has been arrested and charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in an unrelated investment fraud....

Temperatures might be cooling down, but legal action regarding heat stroke injuries may just be heating up. Those summer training sessions to prepare for fall competition can be grueling, but when do those sessions cross a legal line? Perhaps when the sun heat index on the field is north of 130 degrees and athletes don’t have access to a trainer, cold water, shade, or rest breaks. Those were the conditions of one summer training session for a Virginia high school soccer team, leading one player to suffer a heat stroke after he got home....