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Why would a federal judge leave a lifetime appointment, opportunities for advancement, and an excellent retirement plan to go back to the trenches of law practice? Three words: mandatory minimum sentences. Judge Kevin H. Sharp sentenced a young man to life because it was mandatory under sentencing guidelines, but he regretted the decision. “If there was any way I could have not given him life in prison I would have done it,” Sharp told the Tennessean....

A California mother lost her appeal this week asking the Second Appellate District to reunify her with two of her eleven children, T.W. and S.W. Instead of asserting that the children would benefit from reunification, or that her parental rights were improperly terminated, the mother challenged the validity of a 2009 disposition order denying the reunification because the clerk had failed to include her ZIP code when mailing the written notice of her writ petition rights in the case....

A former toll-taker for New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway has filed a lawsuit against her ex-employer, claiming that her supervisor instructed her to stop saying “God bless you” to motorists. Cynthia Fernandez claims that her civil rights were violated when her boss at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority allegedly told her to stop giving customers her customary blessing because somebody might get offended. According to a spokesman for the Turnpike Authority, there is no policy against toll-takers saying “God bless you....

Ex-NFL star Brian Holloway has learned that his New York home was trashed by teens who threw a rowdy party over Labor Day Weekend. However, instead of parents coming forward to help pay for damages or apologize, some are threatening to sue, United Press International reports. The plot thickens, however, because these threats stem from the fact that the former New England Patriots player posted the teens’ names on a website – including photos and tweets made by the partiers....

It’s been a long and strange road on the way to net neutrality, and the D.C. Circuit has been a key part of that journey. As of Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to drop any plans to appeal the D.C. Circuit’s striking of the Commission’s anti-blocking rules, opting instead to do a re-write, The Washington Post reported. Can we expect the FCC to produce viable net neutrality guidelines this time around?...

Here at FindLaw, we understand the pressures of being a legal professional - most of us are recovering lawyers - so we want to help by tossing you that preferred life preserver of the legal profession, the short list. Today’s offering: five things to know about disaster preparedness plans. The D.C. Quake of 2011 closed all of Washington’s federal courts and most local courts, according to the ABA Journal. While the courts were back in business on Wednesday, federal employees were offered the option of taking leave or working from home....

This is a growing scandal, sending out small tendrils of lawsuits where ever it can. As discussed in a prior post, the American wine maker Gallo was shocked, shocked to find that its wine producers in France were selling what Gallo believed to be French Pinot Noir, only to discover it was a less expensive wine instead. Gallo of course, sold the wine they received from the French fraudsters as Pinot, which lead to the current law suit, for wine fraud, filed last week in a California court....

A homeless man is suing his parents for not getting enough love. Bernard Bey, 32, of Brooklyn, blames his joblessness and homelessness on his parents. Bey alleges he was not loved enough and neglected as a child, reports New York’s WNBC-TV. As a result, he finds himself in his current predicament: filing a lawsuit against his parents for being homeless. Not surprisingly, the lawsuit is self-written. Bey claims that his parents caused him mental anguish and made him feel “unloved and beaten by the world....

The San Jose Mercury News report that police in Brentwood, California were contacted after a man who purchased ice cream from a local ice cream truck received a baggie of methamphetamine mixed in with the change from his purchase. When he told the driver he didn’t want the drugs, the driver told him he didn’t know how the drugs got there and to throw the baggie away. Brentwood Ice Cream Man Accused Of Dealing Drugs From His Truck (KPIX-TV)Drug Trafficking / Distribution (FindLaw)Ice Cream Man Sold Oxycodone Pills from His Truck (FindLaw’s Legally Weird)‘Sno Cone Joe’ Buste in Ice Cream Truck Turf War (FIndLaw’s Legal Grounds) You Don’t Have To Solve This on Your Own – Get a Lawyer’s Help Civil Rights Block on Trump’s Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court...

An order sustaining a petition under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602 after the juvenile court found defendant possessedcri tools to commit vandalism or graffiti and related crimes is affirmed as there is sufficient evidence to support the finding that the defendant violated section 594.1(e)(1). Read In re Miguel H., No. B214864 [HTML] Read In re Miguel H., No. B214864 [PDF] Appellate Information Filed January 12, 2010 Judges Opinion by Judge Jackson...

Hell hath no fury like a man scorned who has access to an online dating app. A New York man says his ex-boyfriend created a multitude of fake accounts on the dating app Grindr to send 1,100 men to his home over the past five months, all looking for sex as part of a “rape fantasy.” And now he’s suing the app, claiming product liability, fraud, and deceptive business practices for Grindr’s failure to address the issue....

Many lawyers are not numbers people. The aversion to all things math may be a reason one enters the literature-heavy profession. Take South Carolina lawyer Harry Pavilack. He owed creditors and various other people more than $72.5 million. He claimed he only had $50,000 in assets. Being bad at math, he forgot the other $8.9 million he had, and the $1 million in cash he had stored away in his closet....

Every year, on the first Friday of November, Love Your Lawyer Day just gets better and better, at least for the lawyers that are loved. It’s pretty much one big marketing holiday, and given how dreaded legal marketing is, you should be willing to take all the help you can get. People are generally friendlier, the amount of online vitriol is generally less (or at least drowned out by the love), and if you happen to get called out for it on social, it could actually boost your social cred....

One New York City attorney has had enough of his neighbor’s Christmas display and has filed a lawsuit. While some might think he is going overboard, the display includes speakers that play Christmas music from 7 a.m. to midnight, daily. The plaintiff has grown rather tired of hearing the same songs over and over again. While there is no shortage of neighbors that enjoy the display, the man who filed the lawsuit lives right across the street....

Divorces are one of the more emotional encounters an individual will have with the legal system. A divorce attorney often takes on the dual role of lawyer and therapist as he or she guides their client through the legal process of a divorce. You may not appreciate his or her soon to be ex-spouse’s legal counsel. So what does a Nevada man do to vent his frustration with his wife’s attorney?...

The developer of a Noah’s Ark-based theme park wants to require his future employees to swear to their belief in creationism and the Biblical flood. The proposed park, called Ark Encounter, is slated to open in Williamston, Kentucky, in 2016, but President Mike Zovath may not get to have his park be the Eden of his dreams. Reuters reports there’s been a slight snag in allowing Ark Encounter LLC to receive a tourism tax credit from the state of Kentucky, based on Zovath’s plans to only hire creationists....

Groundhog day just passed, and although famed Pittsburg Punxautawney Phil did not see his shadow, it looks like it’s going to be a cold winter for Purdue Pharma, maker of the blockbuster drug Oxycontin. The pharma company lost big when the Federal District Circuit Court sided with Epic Pharma, et al, in this widely watched patent lawsuit. In the opinion of the court, the alleged changes that Purdue made to OxyContin were not significant and Purdue’s attempts to couch a toxicity removal of a base form (oxycodone) of its drug actually was not substantial enough to be considered a break from prior art....

Trial court’s imposition of 84 year sentence on a defendant convicted of attempted murder and related crimes is reversed and remanded where: 1) trial court erred in calculating defendant’s sentence for the attempted murder count; 2) trial court erred in applying the criminal street gang enhancement to defendant’s sentence for shooting at an occupied vehicle; 3) absent different discretionary sentencing choices by the trial court, on remand the court should impose the aggregate sentence for shooting at an occupied vehicle, while staying the sentences attempted murder charges pursuant to section 654; and 4) trial court improperly sentenced defendant on the unlawful gun possession and ammunition counts....

You’ve done it and seen it done. People driving and drinking … coffee. Doesn’t seem like a crime, right? But it could be distracted driving, a violation of traffic rules that could get you ticketed in Minnesota. On Monday morning, Lindsey Krieger was pulled over for sipping java while driving on I-94 in St. Paul. She told Fox 9 News, “I was completely dumbfounded. I thought it was a joke!”...

In a Privacy Act action against the Bureau of Prisons concerning the loss of plaintiff-prisoner’s good-time credits, dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where: 1) inmate records were exempt from the relevant provisions of the Privacy Act; and 2) plaintiff’s damages claim was not cognizable unless plaintiff first secured relief through a writ of habeas corpus. Read Skinner v. US Dep’t of Justice, No. 05-5284 Appellate Information Argued September 14, 2009...