With a push from #MeToo, BigLaw has become more transparent about sexual harassment at law firms. Nobody is putting a spotlight on sexual harassment among lawyers – now. That problem may take a generation to resolve. But some large law firms are leading the way by abandoning the cloak of mandatory arbitration in hiring agreements. That means some lawyers are going to sweat when the public spotlight hits their firm....
Tip-free restaurants may sound like a great idea for customers, but not so much for waiters, waitresses, and unhappy plaintiffs. In federal court, plaintiff Timothy Brown alleged that tip-free restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City conspired to fix prices. Potential plaintiffs everywhere may have agreed. But a judge dismissed the proposed class action. It’s hard to bake make a price-fixing case against just a handful of restaurants, he suggested....
President Obama recently fielded questions from audience members at his town-hall-meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, including one question from an enthusiastic Tulane 2L: How can I and my friends be more like you and the First Lady? January 14 Town Hall Meeting The President was in Louisiana mid-January for a citizen town-hall meeting discussing his aspirations, hopes, and goals before he left the office. Of course, the usual topics included the environment, criminal justice, and education....
With the Summer Olympics just three months away, some legendary Olympic athletes are suing Samsung over an Olympics-related Facebook app. Samsung’s “Olympic Genome Project” app allows Facebook users to see how they may be connected to, and what they have in common with, famous Olympic athletes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The app cross-references a Facebook user’s profile information with a database of about 3,000 Olympic athletes. But Samsung never got permission to use the athletes’ names and images, the lawsuit by 18 famous Olympians states....
Ring Plus, Inc. v. Cingular Wireless Corp., 09-1537, concerned plaintiff’s suit for infringement of its patent, related to a software based algorithm and method for generating and delivering messages over a phone line during a “ringing signal” period. In reversing the district court’s judgment of unenforceability for inequitable conduct, the court held that the district court clearly erred in finding that applicants acted with specific intent to deceive the PTO. The court affirmed the district court’s entry of summary judgment of noninfringement, because it did not err in construing the disputed claim terms....
Last week, the California Supreme Court concluded that the primary assumption of risk doctrine, though most frequently applied to sports, applies to bumper car rides. The court further concluded that an amusement park’s limited duty of care under the primary assumption of risk doctrine – the duty not to unreasonably increase the risk of injury over and above that inherent in the low-speed collisions essential to bumper car rides – did not extend to preventing head-on collisions between the cars....
Aspen Publishers ticked off a lot of people this week. The casebook publisher sent out an email to professors announcing it’s new “CasebookConnect” program, a glorified casebook rental program that provides access to a digital version for life! It was a terrible plan for many reasons. As Professor Blackman noted when he publicized the email, the license agreement would require students to return the books at the end of the year....
The City of San Jose filed suit against Major League Baseball in federal court Tuesday, claiming a conspiracy by the baseball association to deprive the city of the A’s franchise. Moving the Oakland A’s about 35 miles south to San Jose has been an open question for years; in 2009, MLB began a survey of the A’s stadium options, reports the San Jose Mercury News. In the city’s complaint, San Jose alleges that the MLB’s control over team-moving is in violation of antitrust law – a field in which professional baseball has long been exempt....
Under his latest tough jail policy by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, inmates must use pedal power in order to watch television. Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls his new program “Pedal Vision,” in which inmates must pedal stationary bikes to generate electricity for television sets, the Associated Press reports. The bikes are designed to turn on and connect to TV sets at Phoenix’s Tent City Jail. An hour of pedaling generates 12 volts of electricity and equals an hour of television....
Thanksgiving get-togethers can be a whole lot of trouble. Turkey, booze, and prickly personalities are often a recipe for confrontation – and can also set the table for legal retribution in a Thanksgiving lawsuit. Of course we’re not encouraging you to get litigious over leftovers, or threaten to sue for distress over your Aunt Sue’s dessert. But there could be a cornucopia of ridiculous results if you take some familiar Thanksgiving scenarios to their legal extremes....
For the fifth year in a row, the number of entering law students with high LSAT scores has dropped, leading to hand-wringing concern that the lawyers of tomorrow won’t be as smart as the lawyers of yesterday. Indeed, less than half as many entering 1Ls had scores above 165 in 2015 as they did in 2010. Do America’s best and brightest no longer want to be lawyers? The drop in average test scores matches the drop in the amount of students applying to law school....
Tiffany Trump, the first member of the reigning First Family to go to law school, will be close to home when she starts at Georgetown University next fall. She will attend classes at the Washington, D.C. campus, which is about a mile and a half from the White House. It will be convenient and fitting for the President’s daughter, who will be able to enjoy the comforts of home while going through the challenges of law school....
Along the lines of the recent push across the nation to remove monuments and tributes to historic individuals that held racist beliefs, the University of California at Berkeley is considering changing the name of its law school. The Berkeley School of Law, also known as Boalt Hall, is named after John Henry Boalt. Boalt was a Nevada attorney who moved to California in 1880. Upon his death, his widow, Elizabeth Boalt, donated parcels of property in San Francisco to the University of Berkeley in order to build a building for the law school....
You might think: “What a great idea – an undergrad law degree!” After all, isn’t this what the rest of the world is doing? The University of Arizona just launched the nation’s first B.A. in Law*, a degree that teaches legal concepts and analytical skills to undergraduates. But it’s a degree in law that won’t allow you to become a lawyer (unless, of course, you go on to law school)....
A New Mexico man has won the right to toke medical marijuana on his employer’s dime, as a New Mexico court ruled that his prescription pot must be covered by worker’s comp. Gregory Vialpando, 55, was a mechanic with Ben’s Automotive Services, and his employer and its insurer, Redwood Fire & Casualty, refused to reimburse him for using medical marijuana as treatment for a back injury. Reuters reports that Tamar Todd, a staff attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance, believes this case may be “fairly unique” in allowing a worker to be paid for his medical cannabis....
A woman convicted in connection with a “Cat Woman” robbery could spend some of her remaining nine lives in prison. Shanna Spalding, 29, of Astoria, N.Y., drew notoriety after a police sketch of her silly “Cat Woman” robbery disguise spread around the Internet. The New York Post has posted the police sketch here. The “Cat Woman robber” moniker is a far cry from Spalding’s other persona – she performs as “Purgatory” when she’s singing for her death-metal garage band “Divine Infamy....
If you’re looking for a break this week, might we recommend ‘Loving,’ the new-ish film written and directed by Jeff Nichols? The film tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple whose relationship led to the Supreme Court’s landmark Loving v. Virginia decision invalidating anti-miscegenation laws and declaring marriage a fundamental civil right – a decision which continues to reverberate today. ‘Loving’ isn’t a courtroom drama. You won’t see great legal oration or be regaled by high-minded judicial arguments....
A California Appeals Court decision is facing some heat from AIDS groups. The Los Angeles Times reports that a local AIDS group is planning to appeal the California Appeals Court ruling in the Second Appellate District, which shot down the request to order county authorities to take stronger action in preventing the spread of HIV by requiring the use of condoms on porn film sets. In 2009, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation requested a judge to compel local public health officials to help combat sexually transmitted diseases “stemming from the production of hardcore pornography in Los Angeles County....
As Black History Month ends again, we’re reminded that a month simply isn’t enough and that important black individuals should be studied year-round alongside other American historical figures. Notably, the concept of Black History Month started back in the 1920s, but was only for a week. It wasn’t until the 1970s that it became a month-long event. It started at Kent State University in 1970, and quickly took off at educational institutions across the country....
Lawyer-hopefuls can now rejoice: California’s Supreme Court has conferred its approval for the State Bar of California’s shortening of the bar exam from three days to two. Lucky examiners will get to try out the new test in July of 2017. We lawyers here at FindLaw would probably be lying if we didn’t admit some envy for law students who will dodge California’s storied 3-day bar exam. For as long as anyone can remember, the three day exam has been prompting divorce, causing heart attacks, and more....
