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Legal News

Legal Blog Watch

Tracks the daily musings of Law.com bloggers.
By Lisa Stone

Post Frequency: 34.5/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 17:07:51

Reader Poll: What Will Zombies Do With Settlement Dollars?

Posted on August 23, 2010
Remember back in February when we told you about the 8th Circuit decision reinstating a lawsuit brought by a group of people who dressed up as zombies and wandered the streets of Minneapolis to protest against "mindless consumerism," and were arrested for their trouble? Well, the city has settled with the zombies...

DUI Defendant Doesn't Want Expert Testimony Recorded on iPhone

Posted on August 23, 2010
Here's an interesting plot line out of Arizona, and it's got nothing to do with immigration or ... immigration (funny, I can't remember anything else for which that state is known anymore). Courthouse News Service posted a copy of an "Emergency Petition for Special Action" filed by a defendant in a driving under the influence prosecution in Pima County Superior Court...

Silly Tax Disclaimers in All Attorney E-mails Explained

Posted on August 23, 2010
Anyone who's ever sent or received an e-mail from a decent-sized law firm has probably seen (note, I did not say "read") that text blurb that magically appears at the bottom, mentioning something about the Internal Revenue Service and "Circular 230." When I was working at a firm, I knew that I sure wasn't giving any tax advice, but the little note telling recipients of my e-mail, "not to use the contents thereof to avoid paying taxes," showed up anyway...

Try 'Legalry' for One-Stop Legal News Shopping

Posted on August 23, 2010
I know this might be hard to believe, but there are some people out there whose thirst for legal knowledge is not completely slaked by the hard-hitting investigative journalism we crank out here at LBW. Of course, there are quite a few listings of legal websites and blogs out there, and we're all capable of cruising around them and setting up an RSS feed...

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What Do Law Students and Puppies Have in Common?

Posted on August 20, 2010
Nothing. Which doesn't mean the former, specifically 1Ls, can't learn some valuable lessons from the latter, according to Neetal Parekh's post on the Greedy Associates blog this morning. Parekh doesn't explicitly suggest learning not to pee on the rug, but distills canine wisdom for baby law schoolers into six nuggets...

Saudi Judge Considering Spinal Cord Damage as Sentence for Assault

Posted on August 20, 2010
Maybe this is why some commentators are so concerned about U.S. courts relying on foreign law. On his It's (Barely) Legal blog, Georgia Municipal Court Judge Glen Ashman linked to an Associated Press report about a judge in Saudi Arabia who appears to be taking the concept of the punishment fitting the crime a wee bit too far...

DOJ and FTC Issue New Merger Guidelines; Commissioner Hates Them

Posted on August 20, 2010
Yesterday, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission released the long-awaited update to the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. And, as reported by the Blog of Legal Times, FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch signed on to the new version with reservations -- to put it gently...

NY Court: OK to Serve Servants on Sunday

Posted on August 20, 2010
What days do you not want to be served with process? I believe Clay Walker has an answer to that question. But a little known (to me) provision in the New York General Business Law actually prohibits service on Sunday. Or does it? The Religion Clause blog posted a link yesterday to an opinion out of New York Supreme Court in Nassau County, holding that service on Sundays is valid as long as you can be sure that you're not disturbing the "repose or religious liberty" of the defendant or the person accepting service...

If the Dingo Ate Your Baby, Shouldn't the Death Certificate Say So?

Posted on August 19, 2010
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton sure thinks so. She is the (in)famous mother of Azaria Chamberlain, the nine-week-old girl who disappeared in the Australian Outback back in 1980. Chamberlain-Creighton and her husband claimed that little Azaria had been snatched by a dingo...

Iowa Restaurant Fined for Toad-Licking Chef

Posted on August 19, 2010
I ate a meal in Davenport, Iowa once. Once! But alas it was not at the Osaka Restaurant, which was issued a fine by the Scott County Health Department last week. Not for the usual "evidence of vermin" or "insufficient refrigeration of uncooked meat." No, Osaka was fined $335 because of a YouTube video showing its head chef "kissing and licking" toads, and then shoving them in his mouth...

How the Sausage Was Made: Corporate Counsel Interviews Robert Jackson Jr.

Posted on August 19, 2010
If you've read the 2,200 page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama last month, well, you're a better man than I. But even those of us who haven't read it page by page and line by line probably know that it's kind of a big deal...

Oklahoma City Bomber Doesn't Like Prison Food, Judge Doesn't Care

Posted on August 19, 2010
Remember Terry Nichols, the other guy who was involved in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? Nichols has been making his home in Florence, Colo. since his 1997 conviction on charges related to the bombing. Last year, Nichols decided to file a lawsuit, claiming that the food he was being served -- which he described as "dead and refined" -- constitutes cruel and unusual punishment...

Is PACER Providing Sufficient Public Access to Federal Court Documents?

Posted on August 18, 2010
Pop quiz: Do you know what PACER stands for? I, admittedly, had to look it up, despite having been a frequent user in years past. But it's Public Access to Court Electronic Records. We've previously covered the ongoing crusade (led by Carl Malamud) to make court documents, PACER and otherwise, available for free in several posts...

D.C. Circuit Has Fun With Freud and Solon

Posted on August 18, 2010
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler pointed to an opinion issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday, in which the court refreshingly found a way to weave some whimsy into an otherwise not particularly funny incident...

Motivation vs. Belief and Objective vs. Subjective in Criminal Law

Posted on August 18, 2010
In an interesting post on the Dorf on Law blog this morning, Sherry Colb explores the difference between motivation and belief in assessing the actions of both criminal defendants and police officers. Colb's post is an extension of her column posted at FindLaw, in which she criticizes the Supreme Court's decision in Michigan v...

Passing on 40-Year Plea Deal, Paralegal Indicted for Embezzling $1 Million

Posted on August 18, 2010
Out in the west Texas town called El Paso, a former paralegal and office manager has been indicted for allegedly embezzling over $1 million from the law firm where she worked between 1999 and 2007. According to the ABA Journal (via the El Paso Times), Rosanne Stogner's duties at Oaxaca, Bernal & Associates included "paying bills...

Tuesday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on August 17, 2010
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere. 1) Question: I'm at Starbucks. All I want is a plain bagel. Period. But that stupid barista won't serve me a plain bagel unless I specifically utter the words, "no butter or cheese...

'Simplicity Guru' Alan Siegel's 'Simplified Credit Card Agreement'

Posted on August 17, 2010
Via Public Citizen's Consumer Law and Policy Blog I came upon the great video below featuring Alan Siegel, a branding expert and "simplicity guru." One of Siegel's missions is to put legal documents for government and business into plain English, and he has offered up a stellar example of that in the form of a simplified credit card agreement (click the thumbnail below to see full size): Siegel says he locked himself in a room and created this simplified agreement after hearing President Obama ask why credit card companies could not offer customers a clear, one-page agreement explaining the terms of the relationship...

Using CiteStack for Legal Research and 'Bluebook-Quality' Citations

Posted on August 17, 2010
Back in May 2010, in this post about the possibility of abolishing The Bluebook from the legal world, I wondered if there could at least be a 21st century alternative. For instance, couldn't Microsoft bake the 400 pages of The Bluebook into a lawyer-focused version of its Word software, which you could then use to automatically correct citations in your work? I still have not seen such an alternative (confession: I have not been looking all that hard), but today I did discover via the Futurelawyer blog an interesting citation and research tool called CiteStack...

'Our Hearts Are With Jesus, but Our Bodies Are at the Foxhole' Strip Club

Posted on August 17, 2010
Grab a box of tissue before you read this post, as your eyes will surely be moist when you learn the latest developments in last week's "Creative Counter-Protesters" post about a church that protested a strip club, which led the strip club to then protest the church...

Monday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on August 16, 2010
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere. 1) Question: I'm a 26-year-old woman at a topless beach in Italy. Why are the police standing by my towel and giving me a hard time about being topless? Answer: Sometimes police will open an investigation if a furious mother on the beach complains that an ?attractive? sunbather is rubbing lotion on her body in a way that ?troubled her sons aged 14 and 12...

Canadian Case Finds Children Have No Duty to Supervise Elderly Parents Living Independently

Posted on August 16, 2010
Via a post by David Cheifetz on the Slaw.ca blog, I came across the Ontario case of Morrison v. Hooper, 2010 ONSC 4394. Morrison addresses the interesting question of whether adult children have a legal duty to supervise an elderly parent who is living independently...

The Rise of 'Sextortion' Against Teens Posting Racy Photos of Themselves Online

Posted on August 16, 2010
We've seen plenty of examples recently of men using "sex-by-trick" to get women to sleep with them (e.g., pretending you are a "Jewish bachelor looking for a serious romantic relationship" or pretending you are a good-looking male model whose elderly dad (actually you) "requires constant sex to stay alive") -- but The Associated Press reports that a far creepier tactic is now on the rise: "Sextortion...

Twitter Law: What Damages, Crimes and Injuries Has Twitter Led To?

Posted on August 16, 2010
Let me preface this by saying that I do not know the answer to the question in the headline above, and the answer may well be "none." But ever since I got Twitter installed on my BlackBerry, it has occurred to me that we cannot be far away from a time when we will regularly be reading articles with headlines such as "Six Car Pileup Results After Man Checks TwitterFon on Beltway" or "Local Woman Walks Into Manhole While Posting TwitPic...

Friday's Three Burning Legal Questions

Posted on August 13, 2010
Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere. 1) Question: Chad Johnson was allowed to change his name to Chad Ochocinco. Why can't I change my name to "Boomer the Dog?" Answer: Some judges feel that "Boomer the Dog" could result in "confusion in the marketplace," and could lead to chaos if Boomer the Dog tried to call 9-1-1 emergency, for example...

One Very Tough Job: Music Copyright Enforcement Agent

Posted on August 13, 2010
Via the Entertainment & Media Law Signal blog I came across a great article in last week's New York Times about what appears to be a very tough job: "licensing executive" at a performing rights organization such as Broadcast Music Incorporated. PROs license the music of the songwriters and music publishers they represent, and their licensing executives have the unenviable task of going out into a hostile world to try to collect royalties whenever that music is played in a public setting...

Are These Posters Sold at Sears Pornographic or Merely 'NSFPL'?

Posted on August 13, 2010
On Wednesday, I discovered the "Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood" and its brave crusade against the "horrifying" action figures currently found in McDonald's Happy Meal boxes. Today's discovery: the "American Family Association" and its battle to get Sears to stop selling the type of posters that most teenage boys have had on their bedroom wall at one time or another...

Miami Drug Court Judge in Minivan Nabs Skating Camera Thief

Posted on August 12, 2010
One of the things I love about this gig here at LBW is that it gives me an excuse to read some fairly obscure legal blogs. For instance, I can't imagine why else I might find myself randomly checking out the Justice Building Blog, which is dedicated to the goings on in and around the Richard E...

Philadelphia Utility Threatens to Send Overdue Balance of $0.00 to Collections

Posted on August 12, 2010
Nobody likes to be threatened with having their alleged unpaid bills turned over to a collections agency. I imagine that Avi, some guy from Philly, likes the threat he received from Philadelphia Gas Works even less than the average consumer. At Consumerist, Phil Villarreal has posted a copy of the collection notice Avi received, which encourages him to pay his outstanding balance of $0...

Court Orders Skyping as Part of Matrimonial Case

Posted on August 12, 2010
The future is here, and I am officially old. I have reached this conclusion because of a story in today's New York Law Journal about a New York judge ordering a mother to make her children available for Skype video chats with their father, as a condition of allowing her to relocate to Florida...

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