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Legal News

It's (Barely) Legal

A regular compilation about the law and legal news from Glen Ashman, who has been a municipal judge since 1988 and a lawyer since 1980
By Glen Ashman

Post Frequency: 3.2/day

Last Entry: March 24, 2011 at 11:49:36

Facebook,MySpace full of sex offenders

Posted on February 19, 2009
Facebook, MySpace remove 95,o00 sex offenders AP - RALEIGH, N.C. - Facebook has removed more than 5,500 convicted sex offenders from its social networking Web site since May, Connecticut's attorney general said Thursday...Earlier this month, rival networking site MySpace announced it had removed 90,000 sex offenders in a two-year period.

Man beheads wife at NY TV Network

Posted on February 18, 2009
Muslim TV exec accused of beheading wife in NY Wed Feb 18, 2:06 AM ET AP ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - The crime drips with brutal irony: a woman decapitated, allegedly by her estranged husband, in the offices of the television network the couple founded with the hope of countering Muslim stereotypes...

Get rid of your State Farm insurance?

Posted on January 28, 2009
Ask a group of personal injury lawyers which insurance company is the worst one out there for handling claims and I bet you hear State Farm at least 90% of the time. That's reason enough to get insurance with a top-line company rated highly by Consumer Reports, Clarkhoward...

A double victory for criminal defendants

Posted on January 13, 2009
A double victory for criminal defendants National Law JournalThe Supreme Court issued two opinions this morning, both of them striking down lower court opinions that had favored prosecutors. In one decision, the justices agreed that a failure to report to prison is not the kind of prior "violent felony" conviction that triggers a 15-year mandatory prison sentence for someone found guilty of illegal possession of a firearm...

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Sheriff jailed for starving inmates

Posted on January 08, 2009
Federal judge arrests Ala. sheriff over jail food Wed Jan 7, 10:46 PM ET AP DECATUR, Ala. - A federal judge ordered an Alabama sheriff locked up in his own jail Wednesday after holding him in contempt for failing to adequately feed inmates while profiting from the skimpy meals...

Legal Public Interest Groups Hit

Posted on January 04, 2009
Legal Public Interest Groups Hit by Madoff The National Law Journal Dozens of public interest legal organizations have been hit financially by the collapse of Bernie Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and are scrambling to make up the shortfalls...

When photo lineups are wrong...

Posted on January 03, 2009
Dallas police to participate in photo lineup study AP - Thu Jan 1, 6:26 PM ET DALLAS - Police in Dallas, where numerous convictions based on eyewitness testimony have been overturned, are taking part in a study to determine the best way to prevent witnesses from picking the wrong suspects in photo lineups...

School tempts students with free tuition

Posted on December 24, 2008
SoCal law school tempts students with free tuitionAP - Wed Dec 24, 1:30 PM ET IRVINE, Calif. - A new law school opening next fall in Southern California is offering a big incentive to top students who might be thinking twice about the cost of a legal education during the recession: free tuition for three years...

Former Judge Loses $67 Mil. Pants Case

Posted on December 20, 2008
A title="http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202426869941" style="FONT: bold 14px Verdana; COLOR: #18359d" href="http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202426869941" target="_blank"Former Judge Loses $67 Million Pants Case/ABR /FONT face="verdana,helvetica" size="2"SPAN style="FONT: 11px verdana"Legal Times/SPAN/FONTBR /BR /FONT face="verdana,helvetica" size="2"SPAN style="FONT: 11px verdana"Former administrative judge Roy Pearson?s infamous $67 million pants case has finally ended, and according to a ruling handed down Thursday by the U...

Meet Charles White, one mean S.O.B.

Posted on December 11, 2008
Charles White wins the award for the meanest S.O.B. in Oregon. Tow driver demands 'drop fee' from assault victim AP – Wed Dec 10, 4:43 pm ET WILSONVILLE, Ore. – Neither a bloody face nor a deputy's plea could stop a tow-truck driver from doing what he's paid to do...

More are getting away with murder in US

Posted on December 09, 2008
� More are getting away with murder in US AP - Mon Dec 8, 5:30 PM ET CHICAGO - Despite the rise of DNA fingerprinting and other "CSI"-style crime-fighting wizardry, more and more people in this country are getting away with murder. FBI figures reviewed by The Associated Press show that the homicide clearance rate, as detectives call it, dropped from 91 percent in 1963 ? the first year records were kept in the manner they are now ? to 61 percent in 2007.

Maybe prison is a bit too plush?

Posted on December 06, 2008
Maybe Germany is being a bit too kind to those in prison? German inmates have right to aftershave: top court Tue Dec 2, 12:07 PM ET BERLIN (AFP) - Even hardened criminals have a right to aftershave and hand cream, Germany's highest court said Tuesday, approving the appeal of a male inmate against gender discrimination.

Man must support another man's child

Posted on December 06, 2008
Paper: Man forced to support someone else's child AP - Sat Dec 6, 2:04 AM ET HARRISBURG, Pa. - A Philadelphia man was forced to pay more than $12,000 in child support for another man's daughter and spent two years in jail for falling behind on payments...

More Americans serve as their own lawyer

Posted on November 24, 2008
More Americans serving as their own lawyers AP - Mon Nov 24, 2:37 PM OMAHA, Neb. - When Danielle Nitzel found her three-year-old marriage drawing its last breath in 2004, she couldn't afford the minimum of $1,000 she was told she would need to hire a divorce lawyer...

The Christmas present no one should give

Posted on November 23, 2008
Beware Of Gift Card 'Gotchas'Forbes Weakened and bankrupt retailers may leave consumers stranded with $100 million of worthless store gift cards this year, according to some estimates, though many stores are honoring their cards, at least for now. Circuit City is one...

Is Chief Justice Roberts Bored?

Posted on November 18, 2008
Chief Justice Roberts Adds a Touch of Noir to His DissentLegal TimesIs Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. already getting bored with traditional opinion-writing? Or, as one mystery writer and former attorney speculates, could he have lost a bet to Justice Antonin Scalia? In an extraordinary dissent from a Supreme Court denial of review issued in a fairly routine drug arrest case, Roberts starts off with two paragraphs that hark back to the best, or worst, of the hard-boiled mystery genre...

Today's Dumbest Criminals

Posted on November 11, 2008
All from today's AP newswire:Man calls cops but leaves pot pipe in plain sight�� AP SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - A 28-year-old man reporting a burglary faces drug charges after responding officers say they found a marijuana pipe in his bedroom. A criminal complaint filed Tuesday said officers saw the pipe in plain view in Justin Luecke's bedroom and found marijuana stems and seeds in the living room...

Today's dumbest criminals

Posted on November 06, 2008
Victim drives sleeping rapist to police station Wed Nov 5, 10:15 AM ET WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand rape victim drove her rapist to a police station when he fell asleep in his car after assaulting the woman, local media reported on Wednesday...

Federal judge solicited prostitutes

Posted on November 02, 2008
10th Circuit Drops Judicial Conduct Probe of Former Federal Judge The National Law Journal The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has dropped its judicial conduct investigation of U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham of the District of Colorado, who was accused of soliciting prostitutes and spending thousands of dollars at a topless nightclub...

Typos and Errors Lead to Slashed Fees

Posted on October 28, 2008
The Legal IntelligencerSubmitting a pleading riddled with typos and other errors has cost an attorney some big bucks. A federal judge spent three pages describing the errors, and ultimately slashed the $180,000 in requested fees to about $26,000. The attorney said in an interview that he relies too heavily on spell-checking software and that he accidentally filed an unproofed draft while using an electronic filing system...

Forget the lawyers. Let the jury ask.

Posted on October 06, 2008
An evolving trend is to let jurors participate in trials. Some stories on this change: From 2000: From American Lawyer Media "What? A jury ask someone on the stand questions? Unbelievable. But in a case of first impression, two judges of the 6th U...

"a gang rape ... by a bunch of lawyers"

Posted on October 02, 2008
Client's 'Frivolous' Motion in Divorce Case Leads to Attorney SanctionNew York Law JournalA judge has taken an attorney to task for standing "blindly behind" a matrimonial client's recusal motion and her "fifty-three page diatribe" against the court for rejecting her bid to relocate to Texas with her children...

New software to copy DVDs

Posted on October 01, 2008
Studios Sue to Bar a DVD Copying ProgramNew York TimesBy BRAD STONE Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program Movie Studios, RealNetworks Sue Each Other In DVD-Copying DisputeInformationWeekRealDVD software lets people rent DVDs from a legitimate video-rental store and build a library of copied movies without ever buying a DVD...

You can be jailed for having a blog

Posted on September 28, 2008
Italy Makes Blogging A 2 Year Jailable Offense A Sicilian judge ruled earlier this year that blogging, under Italian law, is the same as publishing an unregistered newspaper. In Italy, publishing an unregistered newspaper is a crime of "stampa clandestina," and is punishable by large fines and/or jail...

Fart at cop; go to jail

Posted on September 25, 2008
Charge dropped against man accused of passing gas AP - Thu Sep 25, 5:06 PM ET CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A West Virginia man accused of passing gas and fanning it toward a police officer no longer faces a battery charge. The Kanawha County prosecutor's office requested that the charge be dropped against 34-year-old Jose Cruz.

$8-a-Day Award for Amputee Unfair

Posted on August 26, 2008
$8-a-Day Award for Amputee 'Miscarriage of Justice'New Jersey Law JournalIn an unusual, if not unprecedented, parsing of a medical malpractice verdict, a New Jersey appeals court held last week that a $100,000 pain and suffering award was too low because it amounted to $8 a day for the rest of the plaintiff's life...

Obama, McCain Name Least Favorite Judges

Posted on August 20, 2008
Obama and McCain Pick Their Least Favorite Supreme Court JusticesLegal Times The Supreme Court, usually an also-ran as a presidential election issue, got some significant attention at the Rev. Rick Warren's televised Saddleback Civil Forum on Saturday night...

Married to the Big-Firm Machine

Posted on August 20, 2008
Fulton County Daily ReportLawyers are often described as being married to their jobs. Indeed, the journey through big-firm employment is very similar to a long-term romantic relationship. Humor columnist The Snark describes the stages: infatuation, intrigue, disappointment, failed expectations and unexpected surprises...

When you get too nosiy during sex

Posted on August 15, 2008
Man banned from girlfriend's home after noisy sex AP - Thu Aug 14, 9:00 PM ET LONDON - A British man has been banned from visiting his girlfriend's home after neighbors complained about noisy sex... A court barred Adam Hinton, 32, from being within 110 yards of his 29-year-old girlfriend Kerry Norris' apartment...

Calif. Bans Most Non-Compete Clauses

Posted on August 13, 2008
Calif. High Court Brightens Rule Against Non-Compete PactsThe RecorderIn a ruling long awaited by the employment law sector, the California Supreme Court on Thursday effectively rejected the use of most non-competition agreements in California. The unanimous court held that a state statute with roots in 19th century laws gives California workers great freedom to switch jobs, to compete against old employers and to solicit former clients...

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