Guest post by Jennifer K. Halford, Esq. Better make sure the game isn’t on the next time you need medical help. Daren Scott reportedly learned this lesson the hard way. Scott, a bus driver, is suing Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was driving from Boston to New York on in 2009, when he suffered a persistent and disabling erection. He claims staff at an affiliated facility failed to promptly and properly treat his erection....
On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments in Klayman v. Obama, a case that has the potential to alter the Fourth Amendment – if the court will let it. Back in December, District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction to block the NSA’s “metadata” surveillance. Though Leon wasn’t ruling on the constitutionality of the program (because likelihood of success on the merits is one element of issuing an injunction), he said the program was very likely unconstitutional....
Petition to file notice of appeal by a vexatious litigant is denied, and the court holds that a vexatious litigant who falsely claims not to be a vexatious litigant when such a claim is so readily disproven by a simple comparison of addresses has manifestly failed to show an arguable issue on appeal when the issue on appeal itself is the identity of the vexatious litigant. Read Kobayashi v. Superior Court of Orange County, No....
The U.S. News and World Report law school rankings are out, reports Above the Law. Suddenly, the universe has meaning. Except a school ranking doesn’t make you more employable if you’re years out of law school. It doesn’t make your student debt disappear. It doesn’t make you more likely to pass the bar exam should you ever have to sit for it again. (If that fate befalls you, hopefully it happens before the MBE changes in 2015....
File the results of this survey under, “Duh.” CareerBuilder commissioned an online survey of over 3,600 full-time workers, conducted by Harris Interactive. The topic? Packing on the pounds at work. Fifty-five percent of workers consider themselves overweight. Forty-one percent have gained weight at their present jobs, with fifty-nine percent gaining over 10 pounds and 30 percent gaining over 20 pounds. The list, of course, includes mostly sedentary professions. Legal professionals place sixth, with forty-eight percent of lawyers, judges, and other legal professionals reporting weight gain on the job....
A Baltimore man notorious for faking seizures to escape paying his check had a hefty prison sentence put on his plate. Andrew Palmer, 47, was sentenced to five years in prison after years of peddling his dine-seizure-and-dash routine around Charm City. The Baltimore Sun reports that his latest act, refusing to pay $89 at a restaurant called Oliver Speck’s last fall, was the one that may have him spending years in prison....
In a judicial catch-and-release, the California Supreme Court said the state has authority to delist an endangered species in light of new scientific evidence. Reversing a lower court decision that side-stepped the issue of delisting an endangered species, the high court sent the case back for a determination of the fate of the coho salmon. The justices unanimously said the Fish and Game Commission has the authority under the California Endangered Species Act to reconsider its prior decision to list the salmon has endangered....
A quick scan of NASCAR’s website reveals that not a single one of its 48 Sprint Cup drivers is black, none of NASCAR’s senior management is black, and only one of the 18 teams has even partial black ownership. And now a lawsuit is citing the lack of diversity and claiming that NASCAR officials actively prevent black-owned teams and drivers from competing in its top flight. And the plaintiffs are looking for a $500 million judgment against the racing league....
In plaintiff’s suit alleging breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, and other claims, trial court’s grant of plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs and denial of defendant’s motion for same is reversed as, where a defendant withdraws a second Code of Civ. Proc. section 998 settlement offer, the plaintiff’s recovery must be measured against defendant’s first settlement offer for section 998 purposes. Read One Star, Inc. v. Staar Surgical Co....
Veterans Court’s refusal to permit the daughters of the deceased veteran-claimants to be substituted for their fathers is reversed and remanded where: 1) with respect to the deceased veteran’s daughter’s accrued benefits claim, assuming she has preserved her rights as an accrued benefits claimant, she is entitled to substitution on her father’s claim and to the benefits of the Veterans Court’s decision in his favor; and 2) with respect to the claim for attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), 28 U....
Many lawyers are turning to social media and it’s not always clear what the rules are. The State Bar Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct issued a proposed ethics opinion on how California attorneys should conduct themselves when using social media. Here’s the thing California lawyers need to know– Facebook advertising is subject to the same rules as more traditional forms of advertising. This means that California Business and Professions Code applies to attorneys’ online advertising, as does Rule 1-400 of the State Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct....
In a class action by insurance adjusters seeking overtime benefits under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), summary judgment for plaintiffs is reversed where the undisputed fact that the adjusters exercised “some discretion” meant that they were exempt from overtime pay as administrative employees under the FLSA. Read Robinson-Smith v. Gov’t. Employees Ins. Co., No. 08-7146 Appellate Information Argued October 15, 2009 Decided January 5, 2010 Judges Opinion by Judge Henderson...
Men visiting the Tewksbury, Massachusetts, Public Library told police that a woman was offering to help them straighten out their Longfellow. Only they weren’t talking about the poet. According to Boston’s WBZ-TV, when police sent a plainclothes detective to the library to investigate the reports, 20-year-old Brittany Mcintyre of Nashua, New Hampshire, quietly passed the officer a note offering to exchange a sex act for $60. What kind of charges will this literary lover be facing for her alleged solicitation in the stacks?...
Franklin Brown was a chairman and general counsel for Rite Aid before he was convicted of criminal fraud and sentenced to ten years in federal prison. Brown was accused of being “the hub of the conspiratorial wheel” in the company’s early late-90s accounting fraud scheme. Brown has spent years, naturally, challenging his conviction. And he’s arguing that Rite Aid needs to cover his attorney fees. His case was recently taken up the Delaware Supreme Court....
Super Bowl injuries usually happen on the field. Or at the very least in the bleachers. This time, they happened outside of the stadium. Dallas has been experiencing some crazy weather, including a massive ice storm on Tuesday night. The storm, followed by freezing temperatures, left behind sheets of ice and snow on top of Cowboys Stadium. The weather thankfully decided to warm up for game time, causing the ice and snow to melt....
Done with OCI? First off, congrats! It can’t have been easy to run around campus in your best wrinkle-frees, while trying to make it to one of the most crucial (no pressure) job interviews of your career, and juggle law school on top of that. Now that you’re done, though, it’s time to first take a breather and then move forward. As a 2L, there’s always something that needs to be done (and that’s on top of the actual school part - yikes)....
Some things are just not okay. An Uber driver making unwanted, lewd, sexually harassing comments to riders, male or female, underage or not, just shouldn’t happen. As a result of an Uber driver doing so to a 16-year-old rider, the company is now facing a lawsuit. The teen alleges that, earlier this year, her driver pulled over on the side of a California highway and asked her if she wanted to get in the front seat....
People who bill massive amounts of hours in a tall building sometimes lose touch with what’s going on out on the street. So here’s an inspiring story of heroics at a bank. Ah, did the word bank perk up your interest? Thought so. Well if you ever actually set foot into a bank branch again, keep in mind the story of again in your life, remember what Helen Dunsford did at her bank recently....
An “aggressive mopper” at a Connecticut hotel was arrested on Monday after allegedly terrifying hotel staff and taking the cleaning into his own hands. John Thornton, 30, apparently wasn’t satisfied with the job that a hotel employee was doing with her mop, because he grabbed the cleaning tool from her and started his “aggressive mopping,” as a police report described it. The hotel worker was left “shaken and crying,” Hartford’s WFSB-TV reports....
The Keystone Cops were fictional, incompetent policemen. Some San Francisco police may not be fans, but they did a fair re-enactment. While patrolling the Golden Gate Park, four police officers arrested one of their own. They thought Bret Cornell, an off-duty police trainee, was running away from them. As it turned out, he was just jogging. Lost Job Cornell sued the officers and police department in Cornell v. City and County of San Francisco....
