Craft brewery regs, Peter Angelos has another special bill in Annapolis, county council vetoes on development, and more in my latest Maryland roundup [Free State Notes] Oh, that pro bono: celebrity lawyer’s pro bono contract for sex accusers included up to one-third commission on selling their stories to media outlets [John Solomon and Alison Spann, The Hill] Forget that Viking cruise down the Mississippi River, Jones Act makes it a no-go [WQAD] “The Jones Act costs all Americans too much” [Bloomberg View editorial; earlier here, etc.] Cato Daily Podcast with firearms policy •. “In Memphis, an entrenched legal culture has made bankruptcy a boon for attorneys while miring clients in a cycle of futility.” [Paul Kiel with Hannah Fresques, ProPublica/The Atlantic] Under federal bankruptcy law, people overwhelmed by debt have a choice: They can either file under Chapter 7, which wipes out debts and, since most filers lack significant assets, allows them to keep what little they have. Or they can choose Chapter 13, which usually requires five years of payments to creditors before any debts are eliminated, but blocks foreclosures and car repossessions as long as debtors can keep up. In most of the country, Chapter 7 is the overwhelming choice.

Only in the South, in a band of states. Florida, California, St. Louis, New York asbestos courts, and Philadelphia top this year’s annual ATRA “Judicial Hellholes” list; Also getting attention, Louisiana, with legal climate ranked last among US states in business survey thanks in part to car-crash litigation, government-backed suits [Dee Thompson/Louisiana Record, local reform groups Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch and Coalition for Common Sense] Survey of last year’s (i.e. 2016’s) civil justice landscape [Andrew C. Cook, Federalist Society] “Wheels come off fundamentally dishonest minibus claim” [John Hyde, Law Gazette (U.K.)] “Phoney Lawsuits: How To Sue Your Way Out Of College Debt” [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine/Forbes] Cold.

Veteran journalist Claire Berlinski has a contrarian warning regarding the #MeToo momentum on sexual harassment and assault: “Revolutions against real injustice have a tendency, however, to descend into paroxysms of vengeance that descend upon guilty and innocent alike. We’re getting too close.” [The American Interest] Related, Emily Yoffe on the workplace and the Title IX example [Politico] Tags: celebrities, harassment law, scandals, sexual assault Claire Berlinski on #MeToo is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system • • •. Prospective client Diane has a complex legal issue in Illinois. Her matter will likely generate millions of dollars in revenue. She receives two referrals, one for Grace and one for Alan.

Think more Creatively: 블로그; 서재; 메모; 태그; 안부.

Diane decides to search for these lawyers on the ARDC website (this is the disciplinary agency that regulates lawyers in Illinois) to learn more about them. Diane learns from the website that Grace does not have legal malpractice insurance; but Alan does. They have both been active Illinois licensed attorneys for 10 years.

Who does she pick? This is not only not a silly question, but read the answer and the changes now being implemented for those who don't have malpractice insurance. Illinois is leading.

Catch-22 It would be great if there was a company that would simply buy your idea and give you a stack of money and ongoing royalties. Unfortunately, there is no such company. The market for raw ideas is small, very small. For every dollar looking to invest in an idea, there are hundreds of ideas chasing that dollar. As a result, investors screen out only the best and/or most protected ideas. Why should investors waste their time with bad ideas in a buyer’s market? One reason the market for idea funding is so small is that you cannot sell your idea without telling someone what your idea is.

But if you do tell someone what your idea is, there is nothing to prevent them from simply taking your idea and. A Business Decision vs.

A Legal Decision The question of whether you need a patent is more of a business decision than a legal decision. While a patent attorney can help you make that decision, by providing you with information regarding the costs and benefits of a patent, only you can make the final determination as to whether a patent is right for you or not. Will a Patent Increase the Value of My Invention? Think of a patent as a safe to store your valuables. If your invention (your valuables) is extremely valuable, a patent is probably right for you. If your invention is not valuable, a patent is probably not right for you. Another way to look at a patent is as a value multiplier.

If your invention. Trout has been selected by his peers for inclusion in the 23rd Edition of The Best Lawyers in America® in the practice areas of Information Technology Law and Patent Law. The Best Lawyers in America® publication is the oldest peer-reviewed publication in the legal profession. Since 1983, Best Lawyers® continues to be regarded, by both professionals and the public, as the definitive guide to legal excellence in the United States.

The Best Lawyers in America® The 2017 Best Lawyers in America® publication covers the largest and most targeted audience of any legal profession peer-review listing. Excerpts from the Best Lawyers® publication appear in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times. CLICK CLICK CLICK: Kim Kardashian West is interning at an entertainment law firm. Click on it, there's no use fighting it. KIRKLAND & ELLIS JOINS THE BONUS PARTY: Apparently most associates are getting 30-40 percent more than market rate. Kathryn has the low down. TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION POLICIES ATTACK LEGAL IMMIGRANTS: He's doing it quietly though, so most people aren't noticing.

SHOULD YOU GO TO LAW SCHOOL TO FIGHT TRUMP? On the one had, he's not going to be president forever. On the other hand, he might be president for a long time after he repeals the Constitution. On yet another hand (foot?), will your legal training be all that useful when the law is basically 'whatever Trump and the Nazis say it is?'

Kirsten Anker, McGill University, has published Law AsForest: Eco-logic, Stories and Spirits in Indigenous Jurisprudence at 21 Law Text Culture 191 (2017). Here is the abstract. Taking up the suggestion that minor jurisprudence may consist either in the perpetual critique of the outsider to major jurisprudence or in the initiation of new grounds for jurisprudence, this essay wonders whether some forms of Indigenous jurisprudence – with a focus on the articulations of North American scholars – might do both. Emerging out of embodied relations with sentient forests, mountains, rivers and other non-humans, practices of Indigenous jurisprudence are at once a living critique of the disenchanted.

Laurent de Sutter, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, has published On the Magic of Law at 21 Law Text Culture 123 (2017). Here is the abstract. This essay focuses on a forgotten and ill-reputed category, long used by anthropologists and historians to describe the origins of law: the category of “magic.” At the end of the 19th century, many scholars found in the idea of “magic” something that could explain why some sort of a necessity could be attached to certain actions, paroles or rituals from which concrete, practical effects were expected in “primitive” societies. “Magic” was a concept embodying a complete theory of performance, and of the necessity of the consequences produced. ICYMI: Gordon Hull, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Department of Philosophy, has published Building Better Citizens: Hobbes against the Ontological Illusion at 20 Epoche 105 (2015). Here is the abstract. By way of a discussion of the demonology chapter in Leviathan, this paper analyzes Hobbes’s political arguments against what I call the “ontological illusion,” the constitutive human tendency to take presentations of the imagination as extramental entities.

Hobbes’s claim, made primarily in part four of Leviathan, is that managing this tendency is critical for the stability of the state. The first section describes the psychology of fear in Hobbes. The second describes the process of the. I am not thrilled that the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Jerusalem Passport Case, Zivotofsky v.

I continue to think the case is non-justiciable (though not for political question grounds rejected by the Court in their prior encounter with the case), for reasons I will explain in a subsequent post. But I’ve increasingly taken a more generous view of the separation of powers merits. Recall that Congress passed a law requiring “Israel” to be listed as the country of birth of those Americans born in Jerusalem, but a series of presidents have refused to so, simply letting it say “Jerusalem,” without a country. President Obama claims that complying with the law could have disastrous foreign.

At oral argument two weeks ago in Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Justices did not appear to be taken with any of the unconvincing distinctions that the bakery’s counsel and the U.S. Solicitor General were offering with respect to which refusals of service would, and which would not, be constitutionally protected under their compelled speech rationales, such as:-- between pre-made and made-to-order custom cakes; -- between jewelers on the one hand and, for some reason, make-up artists and hair stylists on the other; -- between cake-makers and architects[1]; -- between a chef designing a beautiful presentation for a couple’s anniversary celebration and the baker’s work in this case on a cake for a party to. [UPDATE as of early Tuesday morning, 12/19: The developments are coming fast and furious and are a bit confusing--bear with me here. (If you haven't yet done so, you should probably read the main post, below, for context.):1. On Monday evening, Judge Chutkan issued the TRO, which applies to both girls. It requires the defendant ORR officials to 'allow J.R. To be transported--promptly and without delay,...

To an abortion provider, in order to obtain any pregnancy or abortion-related medical care and to obtain the abortion procedure itself, in accordance with the abortion providers’ availability and any medical requirements,' and restrains those defendants 'from interfering with. Lord knows there's enough to be outraged at in the Trump administration's world.

But the so-called 'ban' on seven words at the CDC doesn't seem to me to be one of them -- or, at least, the thing to focus on is not the 'ban' but the reason for it.As far as I can tell from the reporting, the story is this: It's time to work on budget documents for next year. Some of those documents have been prepared and sent up the chain for review. When the higher ups saw several of the words in those documents, they sent them back down for revision (and added several other words to the list).

The reason is that the higher-ups either thought that using those words was inappropriate or -- I think more likely -- were. That includes informing models in advance that they would be expected to undress; making sure the subject is comfortable posing unclothed; refraining from commenting on a model’s body; keeping the atmosphere professional and avoiding personal questions. According to the women who spoke to The Times and HuffPost, Mr. Close violated this code, making inappropriate comments about their bodies, probing into their private lives and holding out the prospect of their being painted by a venerated artist to lure them to his studio, with what seemed to them no real artistic intent or result.' From 'Chuck Close Apologizes After Accusations of Sexual Harassment/Several women complained that the celebrated artist. A passage in David Lipsky's 'Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace.' I found this so interesting but it is a little confusing.

The book is based on a transcript of an interview with David Foster Wallace. The words are the voice of Lipsky, the interviewer.

And the key quote, which is why I'm writing the post, comes from John Updike's memoirs ('Self-Consciousness') — and Updike is himself talking to a photograph of himself. So the 'you' Lipsky is talking to is Wallace, but the 'you' in the quote within the quote is the younger version of Updike to whom old man Updike is speaking:This is just for color; so the fact that you’ve gotten the readership.

Here is this week's Daily Record column. My past Daily Record articles can be accessed here. ***** 2017 holiday gift guide for the tech-savvy lawyer Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, the relentless holiday gift-giving season is upon us. Like it or not, it’s time to buy gifts for your loved ones and friends. If you’ve got a lawyer on your list, you may be struggling with choosing an appropriate gift, since lawyers can be a notoriously difficult bunch to buy gifts for. Fortunately, you’ve stumbled upon this article, so problem solved! Consider buying the tech-savvy (or not so tech-savvy) lawyer in your life one of these gifts.

Then you can cross that name off your list and rest easy knowing. Here is this week's Daily Record column. My past Daily Record articles can be accessed here. ***** Must-have Apple Watch and iPhone apps for lawyers The iPhone celebrated its 10-year anniversary this year. In 2017, a decade after its release, it’s still the most popular smartphone with lawyers according to the recently released American Bar Association’s 2017 Legal Technology Survey Report. Of the lawyers surveyed, 96% used smartphones for law-related purposes while away from their office.

And, the iPhone was the most popular smartphone by far, with 75% of lawyers surveyed using an iPhone rather an Android. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, just celebrated its 2-year anniversary. Here is this week's Daily Record column. My past Daily Record articles can be accessed here. ***** In recent months, I’ve written about a handful of ethics opinions from different jurisdictions whereby the ethics committees rejected the use of various online lawyer lawyer directories and lawyer-client matching services such as Avvo, Legal Zoom, and Rocket Lawyer. Virginia now joins their ranks with the issuance of Legal Ethics Opinion 1885. At issue in this opinion was whether a lawyer may ethically participate in an online attorney-client matching service (ACMS) which operates as follows: The prospective client selects the advertised legal service and chooses a lawyer identified on ACMS’s.

Young lawyers often dream of breaking free and going solo. Working for a large firm has its benefits, but it’s easy to get disillusioned with the process if you’re doing all the work and getting little of the credit. Going solo is one option, but it isn’t something for the light-hearted. You need to be headstrong and confident in your ability.

At a networking event recently, I spoke to three lawyers who told me all about the mistakes they wish they could have avoided along the way. Underestimating the Bureaucratic Process Meredith Rech – “When you break free of the large firm, it can feel liberating for a short while, like you’re finally in charge of your destiny. It doesn’t take long for you to miss the. The City Bar’s LSAT/Law School Prep Series is a two-day seminar covering admissions, financing, and transitioning with regard to law school, with panels, sample LSAT prep classes, and a networking fair designed for undergraduates and recent graduates considering applying to law school. Students will have the chance to hear from and meet representatives from Harvard, Cornell, UC Berkeley, PowerScore, Princeton Review, and many more! January 4 & 5, 2018, 3:30-7:45pm Where? NYC Bar Association, 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY How?

Register here: A full agenda is. If you do good work and can promote yourself, career doors will open for you. As a new female lawyer or soon to be lawyer, there are many things to learn as you develop who you are and what you will do in your career. One key facet to master is learning how to promote yourself at work and build a book of business. As a lawyer you will need to learn how to market yourself and communicate your expertise to clients early in your career.

If you can do that effectively, you will be an asset to any firm. If you can do good work and keep bringing in clients, doors will open for you. Once you start practicing law, it is important to get exposure by finding ways to publish your work, speak on panels and. In American Innotek v.

US, the patent at issue covers a urine containment bag and the patentee alleges that the “Piddle Pak with powder” bought and used by the US government infringes United States Patent No. The lawsuit here is against the U.S. Government – as such, it was filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims without right to jury trial, punitive damages or injunction. At the CFC, the court held the patent invalid – finding it obvious even as of its 1989 priority date. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed, although only after rejecting the lower court’s misapplication of obviousness law. [Decision] Role of Objective Indicia of Nonobviousness: The district court suggested that. Travel Sentry v.

2017) Today’s opinion is the Federal Circuit’s third in this dispute between Travel Sentry and David Tropp over Tropp’s patented luggage inspection system. The basic idea is that the luggage has a lock and TSA has a master-key. This allows the government to search the bag and then re-lock the baggage before throwing it onto the plane. The problem with Tropp’s method claims is that they require both (1) supplying the special lock (done by Travel Sentry) and also (2) the TSA (“luggage screening entity”) using the provided master key.

This is a problem because infringement ordinarily requires a single-entity who practices (or controls the practice) of every step of a. By Dennis Crouch My former bosses Paul Berghoff and Alison Baldwin (at MBHB) won an interesting case today on behalf of Genzyme and its corporate parent Sanofi-Aventis. Genzyme Corp. Reddy’s Labs., Ltd. 2017) Genzyme’s patent No. 7,897,590 is an important part of modern stem-cell practice in the treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

The patented process stimulates mobilization of a donor’s bone marrow by administering both a “granulocyte-colony stimulating factor” and also plerixafor (See Claim 19). The plerixafor drug (sold under the brand name Mozobil) is no longer patented, but the treatment protocol is patented. In the ANDA lawsuit, the generic defendants. First Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Of Tulsa, (OK Sup.

19, 2017), the Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, withdrew its Feb. 2017 decision (see prior posting) dismissing on church autonomy grounds a suit challenging a church's publicizing of plaintiff's baptism, and replaced it with a majority opinion reversing the trial court's dismissal of the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. At issue are tort and breach of contract claims against a Presbyterian congregation. Plaintiff is a Syrian, Muslim refugee who became interested in converting to Christianity and agreed to be baptized only after it was agreed that his conversion would be kept private. However Presbyterian Church.

The Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission has voted to reprimand now-retired Family Court Judge W. Mitchell Nance. In In re Nance, (Jud. 19, 2017), the Commission concluded that Nance had violated Canons of Ethics that require judges to decide cases fairly and impartially when, based on his religious views, he issued an Order recusing himself from any case involving adoption of a child by a gay or lesbian. As described by the Commission:On April 27th, 2017 the Respondent issued General Order 17-01 declaring that “under no circumstance” would the adoption of a child by a homosexual be in the child’s best interest.

Acknowledging that this declaration constitutes a “personal bias. Catholic Health Initiatives, (10th Cir., Dec. 19, 2017), the U.S.

10th Circuit Court of Appeals held that Catholic Health Initiatives retirement plan for employees of 92 hospitals qualifies as a 'church plan' under ERISA. One of the issues in the case was resolved by the Supreme Court while this appeal was pending. Resolving the other issues, the 10th Circuit held that CHI's internal benefits committee qualifies as the statutorily required organization associated with a church that maintains a retirement plan. The Court went on to conclude that the 'church plan' exemption does not violate the Establishment Clause.

It held that the exemption meets all three prongs of the Lemon test.. Note: This was first posted on December 12, 2008.

On review in 2016, it became apparent that a great many of the links were dead. Considering the choice between keeping the outgoing links to worthy blogs still in being and maximizing available content without the painstaking effort of checking the viability of each and every link, I chose the latter.

I have not checked again in the last year, but as of 2016, the post had been essentially “restored” from the version archived on the Wayback Machine, and should bring the reader hours of bloggy pleasure. For the record, again, at that time I also changed the spelling of the holiday to “Hannukah,” which is the standard transliteration, as opposed to the way. Originally posted 2014-03-14 10:40:47. Republished by Blog Post PromoterTom Crandall considers “When A Gripe Site Is Manipulated By A Competitor” — and gets a crack expert opinion in there. Says Tom: I believe we are entering a very dark period of the web, folks. The vitriol and deceit of political players and media in the U.S.

Is trickling down to the culture of business. In my work I have identified and helped prosecute businesses that fabricate consumer generated media and promote malicious falsehoods against competitors in the guise of an abused customer or industry expert.

Some of them are dumb enough to publish links to their competing sites. Tom may be selling the grassroots short on their creative.

Check out the December edition of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, covering Texas criminal justice policy and politics. Two great interviews this month - one with reporter Brandi Grissom Swicegood about the alleged abuse and turmoil at the Gainesville State School, and another with Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the national Innocence Project, regarding forensic-science reform. You can listen to the latest episode here, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, or SoundCloud. If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now to make sure you won't miss an episode. Topics this month include:Top StoriesUS v. Carpenter: SCOTUS appears likely to require a warrant for cell-phone location.

Here's a brief, browser-tab clearing roundup of items about which I haven't had time to blog, but of which Grits readers should be aware:Forensic commission can't address 'forensic hypnosis'First, updating an earlier Grits report, I communicated with Lynn Garcia, General Counsel for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, who informs me that forensic hypnosis does not fall under their jurisdiction, even as a general area they're authorized to study, because it does not involve 'physical evidence,' which is defined in the statute as something tangible. She said they've received complaints about the practice in the past, including one recently, and agrees it's problematic, but doesn't believe it falls within. Local, mainstream media coverage of the Austin police union contract - which was rejected Wednesday night after a dramatic, 8-hour special-called city-council meeting - has been disturbingly bad. People whom I've considered good reporters on other topics have written pablum-filled junk on this one. For the most part, journalists appeared to go out of their way to avoid reporting factual information when it was provided by advocates or movement leaders, and instead chose to report spin and outright falsehoods from the police union and (to a slightly lesser extent) police department management.With the exception of Michael Barajas at the Texas Observer, most reporters leading up to the council vote portrayed. Twelve days ago, I noted that 'the Government won a preliminary skirmish in the Supreme Court in the battle over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.'

Today the Government won a battle, but the war goes on.In the case of In re United States, et al., No. 17-801, the Government asked the Supreme Court for relief from an order to add to the administrative record a broad array of vaguely described documents. Today, the high court held:Under the specific facts of this case, the District Court should have granted respondents' motion on November 19 to stay implementation of the challenged October 17 order and first resolved the Government's threshold arguments (that the Acting Secretary's. Think one vote never makes a difference? Take a look at the Virginia House of Delegates. Jim Morrison and Fenit Nirappil have this report for the WaPo.The election for District 94 in the Virginia House was previously thought to have been decided by one vote. However, one vote for that had previously been thrown out has now been found to be a valid vote for the erstwhile loser, leaving a tie.If the Republican wins this seat, the House will be 51-49.

If the Democrat wins, it will be 50-50. By state law, a tie race is decided by lot.I will bet that more than a few people in this district are wishing they had voted now. The tent has finally folded on the Reginald Clemons circus. As with so many other poster boys for the anti-death-penalty crowd, he is indeed guilty. Robert Patrick and Joel Currier report for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:Reginald Clemons, who was sentenced to death for the 1991 killings of two sisters at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge before his conviction was overturned in 2015, pleaded guilty to murder and other charges Monday in exchange for multiple sentences of life in prison.Clemons, 46, pleaded guilty to five counts in all: two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of rape and one count of first-degree robbery.Clemons admitted that he and three others met Julie Kerry, 20, and Robin Kerry, 19.

The Supreme Court today released the calendar for its February sitting, which starts on Tuesday, February 20 (because Monday, February 19, is a federal holiday) and ends on Wednesday, February 28. The justices will hear nine oral arguments over five days, with the highest-profile argument of the sitting coming on February 26 in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the challenge to the constitutionality of the fees paid by government employees who are represented by, but do not belong to, a union. The justices have already held oral arguments on the question presented by Janus twice before; they did not decide the issue the first time, while they deadlocked the second time.

Twelve days ago, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower-court order that would require the federal government to turn over additional documents connected to the decision to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, known as DACA – a Obama-administration program that allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. In litigation challenging that decision, a federal district court ordered the government to submit documents in addition to those that it turned over during discovery, and the court instructed the government to “be ready to file” a complete set of documents by December 22. At the government’s. It is that special gift-giving time of year and Sharon Nelson and I have the tech toys for your holiday gift-giving.

Our ‘Tis the Season: Tech Toys for the Holidays 2017 Podcast is ready for your listening pleasure. From doorbells to submarines, from smart watches to smart toilets, we cover a range of different ideas. And, really, don't you think that special someone in your life would like a smart toilet as a gift? 😊 OK, maybe not.

But we have several other ideas for you. This podcast is a lot of fun to research and record.

But it wouldn't be near as much fun if we didn't know that many listeners tell us how much they enjoy this one. Have fun listening and Happy Holidays to every one! Did you know that students entering law school have same rate of depression as the general population (approximately 7%), but by the time they finish their first year of law school 34% experience depression? This statistic is from a new book from the ABA, The Full Weight of the Law: How Legal Professionals Can Recognize and Rebound from Depression. I'm no expert, but that statistic indicates something is wrong.

It is well documented that lawyers suffer from depression and problems related to stress and depression at rates greater than the general public. A recent column in the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Stephen Ilardi, Why Personal Tech Is Depressing, noted that the U.S. Is the most technologically. In this episode of The Digital Edge, Sharon Nelson and I talk to Brett Burney about the latest Apple products and how they can serve lawyers.

Our podcast is titled The Apple Product Cheat Sheet for Lawyers and if you are unsure as to what iOS apps or other Apple products, you should be using in your law practice, this podcast is for you. Many of you already know of Brett Burney from his Apps in Law site which hosts podcasts, video and tips. Brett focuses his attention on which Apple tools will save lawyers time and effort in their business. We discussed topics ranging from Face ID to iOS 11.

We also discuss the top apps that attorneys who use Apple products should download and use. This is a high. Exigent circumstances permit a drug search despite defective warrant – VA Exigent circumstances permit a drug search despite a defective search warrant, says the Virginia Supreme Court.

Campbell, __ Va. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know about exigent circumstances all too well. Exigent circumstances are an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s search warrant rule, says Fairfax criminal lawyer In Campbell, a confidential informant — previously found reliable by the police — and independent police investigation found that Cambpell was preparing to cook up methamphatemine after acquiring enough Sudafed as his key ingredient. The prosecutor presented convincing testimony that. Winning criminal cases with martial arts & contemplative practice Winning criminal cases for the defense requires ability, knowledge and experience by the criminal defense attorney. As a Fairfax, Virginia criminal lawyer, I repeatedly crystallize my ideas about the path to court victory, including the benefits of martial arts and contemplative/mindfulness/meditative practice.

Winning criminal cases calls for constant practice and attention While the principles of my martial art taijiquan, and of contemplative practice may be easy to understand, they are profound and call for correct and regular practice. Taijiquan is all about harmonizing imbalanced situations so that any bows and arrows that come my way.

Winning court cases by aiming beyond the target and unblocking – Fairfax Winning court cases calls for aiming beyond the target of success and eliminating blockages on the path to winning. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I am always pursuing new paths of winning and refining the victorious approaches that I already know. Winning court cases involves aiming high and following through, says Fairfax criminal lawyer For starters, I follow the lesson of a taekowndo/ Korean karate practitioner who told me that when he breaks boards with his hands and feet, he aims for a point beyond the board, which both assures the break and reduces the risk of breaking a bone. I add that when we aim for a point beyond our goal. The day has finally arrived.

It’s time to announce the Worst Employer of 2017. To remind you, we had three finalists in contention for this honor: The Cancerous Boss — An employee was diagnosed with kidney cancer and required immediate surgery to remove the tumor.

His employer denied the request for a 10-day leave of absence, while telling him she doesn’t “need people with cancer working in her office this is America and in America you have to work even if you’re sick.” She finished by informing him that “with your illness, people die and I cannot keep you as a worker not knowing what is going to happen to you.” The Horny Head of HR — A male HR employee complained that the. So much of the news lately has focused on sexual harassment, that it’s easy for one to forget that other types of harassment also exist. For example, racial harassment. Since we are but a week away from Christmas, I thought it appropriate to use a holiday-time example to illustrate. The plaintiff in Bradley v. Arwood (6th Cir. 8/29/17) was an African-American employee of the Michigan Department of the Attorney General.

She claimed that her direct supervisor, Susan Przekop-Shaw, created a racially segregated and hostile work environment. For example, the office had a black holiday party and a white holiday party. Przekop-Shaw denied the black Detroit secretaries’ request to have a holiday party that. Last week, the NLRB started making good on its promise to roll back some of its more controversial Obama-era reforms—its assault on employee handbooks and its liberalization of joint employment. Employee Handbooks If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you are well aware of the NLRB’s assault over the past few years on garden-variety and facially neutral employee handbook policies. For the uninitiated, the Board, over scathing dissents by its more reasonable members and scorching critiques from business groups, applied its longstanding Lutheran Heritage rule to find that a variety of employment policies violate employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted activity under.

Here's the link to my interview of Dr. Scott Lilienfeld. If you listen in, I believe you will appreciate his expertise, words of caution, and wisdom.

My thanks to Purposeful Planning Institute (PPI) for offering many programs of value, including this one. The description of the Lilienfeld interview distributed by PPI: Guest Speaker: Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D., Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Visiting Professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia Host: Stephanie West Allen, JD, PPI Dean of Neuroscience and Contemplative Practices The amount of neuromythology and other kinds of pseudoscience to which we are exposed to through popular media and other. Update [added April 14, 2017]: Click to listen to the interview.

Please join us next Tuesday (April 11) for my interview of writing expert Dr. George Gopen. The phone-in teleseminar is generously sponsored by Purposeful Planning Institute (PPI). Beginning at noon EST, the event will last for one hour. For those of you who are not members of PPI, you may get a complementary guest pass by requesting it at this email address.More information below and at this link. Effective Writing Through Understanding Reader Expectation Approach Date: April 11, 2017 Time: Noon ET (60 Minutes) Guest Speaker: George Gopen, JD, PhD Host: Stephanie West Allen, JD, PPI Dean of Neuroscience and Contemplative.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of interviewing Deborah Dana, an expert on Polyvagal Theory (PVT). The program was sponsored by Purposeful Planning Institute, an organization about which I have blogged here several times in the past (to see the posts, search to the right on 'purposeful planning').

Below is more information about the interview and about Deborah, and a link to a recording of the interview so you can listen to this valuable hour. Grace Under Pressure: A Polyvagal Guide to Reducing Stress and Creating Compassionate ConnectionsAudio File: Download/Play Recording Date: January 31, 2017 Guest Speaker: Deb Dana, LCSW, Developer of Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Host: Stephanie West.

My colleague, Jarad Lucan, returns today with a very special post on a ground-breaking week at the NLRB. For Connecticut employers, the decisions change a lot of what has been going on at the NLRB for the last several years.

Back in January of 2013, I wrote an article for the Connecticut Law Tribune entitled “For the NLRB, a December to Remember,” which you can read here if you are interested. In that article, I discussed a slew of Obama Administration Labor Board decisions that were handed down in December of 2012 and that construed labor law in a way favorable to employees and unions. Based on decisions last week from the new Trump Administration Labor Board (issued just before Chairman Philip. This post is for the employment law nerds out there. You know who you are. You pore over the statistics that show a correlation between the unemployment rate and EEOC filings. (I see you Lawffice Space.) You rate who the “Worst Employer” is of 2017.

(Can’t wait for the announcement next week, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog.) You listen to podcasts about employment law. (Yes you, Hostile Work Environment podcast from Marc Alifanz.) And, if you’re the publisher of this blog, you pore over meeting minutes of the Connecticut Commission of Human Rights and Opportunities. Someone has to do it. And in reading the minutes of an August 2017, I saw a references to a new Case Assessment Review process in place since. I’ll never forget the day I drove into Newtown, Connecticut. As NBC 30’s Gerry Brooks tweeted this morning: How could you? It was probably the first time I had made my way to that town outside of Danbury.

But that wasn’t the reason I remember that day. It was the empty hearse outside a church. Outside a Newtown church It was the massive flag on the history Newtown flagpole at half-mast, blowing in the wind on a crisp December day. It was the countless makeshift memorials and signs reading “Pray for Newtown” that dotted the road.

And it was days after one of the worst events in Connecticut and in the nation’s history. Today marks five years since that awful, despicable day in Newtown when 26 children and. In Comparison, This December 2017 Regulatory Action By FDA In The US: 'new class warning.

For all gadolinium-based contrast agents' (Posted by Tom Lamb at DrugInjuryWatch.com) There seems to be a consensus among the United States FDA and the United Kingdom MHRA drug safety agencies that low levels of gadolinium can be retained in the brain and other tissues after administration of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) for months to years after receiving these drugs. Another point of agreement between those agencies is that certain linear GBCAs -- such as Magnevist, Omniscan, and OptiMARK -- result in more gadolinium retention in the body than macrocyclic GBCAs.

There is a difference. Reports Of Drug-Induced Liver Injury And Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis Are At Center Of This Unusual Drug Safety Controversy (Posted by Tom Lamb at DrugInjuryWatch.com) According to the 'What is Limbrel?' Page of the Limbrel.com website (accessed 12/8/17) which is presented by Primus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Limbrel contains flavocoxid, a proprietary blend of natural ingredients from phytochemical food source materials. Flavocoxid is comprised primarily of the flavonoids such as baicalin and catechin. From the 'FDA Limbrel Alert' page of the Limbrel.com website (accessed 12/8/17): Limbrel has not been recalled though the FDA has asked Primus to make a voluntary recall. Primus is waiting to obtain the.

Jardiance Seemingly Not Associated With Amputations Per Reexamination Of Drug Company Funded EMPA-REG OUTCOME® Trial Data (Posted by Tom Lamb at DrugInjuryWatch.com) In April 2016 the European Medicines Agency (EMA) warned that Invokana and Invokamet were linked to an increased risk of amputations, especially of the toes. Ever since then we have been monitoring the medical literature concerning the risk of lower limb amputations and drugs in the sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor class, such as canagliflozin (Invokana / Invokamet), empagliflozin (Jardiance / Glyxambi / Synjardy), and dapagliflozin (Farxiga / Xigduo / Qtern). On November 13, 2017 Boehringer Ingelheim published on. In the latest turn in a [mesothelioma workers compensation claim] that was appealed by both the widow of a lifetime tile installer who died of complications related to asbestos exposure and the employer and insurer who say a new law was misapplied to the case’s arguments, the Court of Appeals of Missouri in Kansas City is sending the issue to the state’s Supreme Court. According to a decision filed Tuesday, two points of contention surround Accident Fund Insurance Co.; E.J. Robert Casey, employee/Dolores Murphy: The insurer stated that Mr. Casey, who was last exposed to toxic asbestos in 1990, was not insured under a 2014 law governing workers compensation cases with asbestos exposure.

Purpose: Despite intense research, treatment options for patients with mesothelioma are limited and offer only modest survival advantage. We screened a large panel of compounds in multiple mesothelioma models, and correlated sensitivity with a range of molecular features to detect biomarkers of drug response. Experimental design: We utilised a high-throughput chemical inhibitor screen in a panel of 889 cancer cell lines, including both immortalised and primary early passage mesothelioma lines, alongside comprehensive molecular characterisation using Illumina whole exome sequencing, copy number analysis and Affymetrix array whole transcriptome profiling. Subsequent validation was done using functional assays. Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive tumor and the prognosis is still dismal despite the various proposed multimodal treatment plans.

Currently, new palliative treatments, such as talc pleurodesis, are being explored besides traditional surgery. This review reports survival rates after talc pleurodesis in comparison to surgery in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. A systematic literature search yielded 49 articles eligible for this review. The mean survival in the talc pleurodesis group was 14 months compared to 17 and 24 months for the pleurectomy decortication (P/D) group and extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP) group, respectively. Few studies reported on the 1-, 2- year overall. A year ago today, marketer and author, Seth Godin shared that it’s never enough. There are more people, better off, with more freedom, more agency and more power than at any other time in our history.

That’s not enough. As we use technology and culture to create more health, more access and more dignity for more people, we keep reminding ourselves how inadequate it is in the face of the injustice and pain that remains. That’s how we get better. Better not for us, but better so as to serve others. We must focus on the less fortunate and the oppressed not because the world isn’t getting better but because it is. It’s our attention to those on the fringes that causes the world to get better. I relayed to a.

Law blogging has come a long way in the last fifteen years. Not all of it for the good. Real lawyers engaging on real subjects in an authentic fashion, for many lawyers and law firms, has gone the way of content marketing sold as a billboard for eyeballs by web development companies. Rather than contributing to the discussion on the law and making a sincere effort to make the law more digestible for average folks, we have lawyers buying content from marketers to slap on a website with the only goal being search engine traffic.

My friend, Scott Greenfield, a New York criminal defense lawyer and long time blogger at Simple Justice, is right that blogging takes effort and desire. Most people just don’t. I received an email this afternoon from Edwin Khodabakchian (@edwk), the founder of Feedly. He relayed that together, we’ve read 1.2 billion articles on Feedly this past year. Feedly is a news aggregator, and by far the most popular one that I know of. By news aggregator I mean an application that runs as a mobile app or on a desktop browser that pulls in and organizes the news and information you want to see. Blogs, columns, mainstream news reports, you name it.

You can subscribe by source (ie, abovethelaw.com) and get all the stories from the source or subscribe by subject (FMLA) and get all the stories from influential sources reporting on a subject ala FMLA. Using feedly is a huge plus. The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Marc P. Berger has been named Director of the New York Regional Office. He will join the agency in January 2018.

Berger is presently global co-head of Ropes & Gray LLP’s Securities and Futures Enforcement Practice. Before joining Ropes & Gray, Mr. Berger spent 12 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, including serving as Chief of that office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. Via SEC.gov Marc P. Berger Named Director of New York Regional Office – SEC Press Release •. Cybersecurity is a business risk and therefore a board issue, experts say.

But cybersecurity oversight can be a challenge for directors, many of whom may not fully understand the issue. Pete Chronis, chief information security officer at Time Warner’s Turner division, and Myrna Soto, the global chief information security officer at Comcast Corp., sat down with Wall Street Journal Business Editor Jamie Heller to discuss the board’s role in cybersecurity.

Via The Corporate Board’s Role When It Comes to Cybersecurity – WSJ. It is often said that social determinants of health are more important than many of the things we think of as more closely associated with health, such as health care services, health literacy, engagement in one’s own health care, adherence to prescribed health care treatment and medication. In some of my recent podcast interviews, I’ve discussed population health with guests on Harlow on Healthcare. Not surprisingly, clinicians working for healthcare technology, health data or digital health companies have a perspective on population health that is closely aligned with the tools and services they provide. Once in a while, health care provider organizations are able to pull back, take a broad perspective.

As Chief Medical Officer at BaseHealth, Dr. Nick van Terheyden (aka “Dr.

Nick“) serves as the voice of the physician at the company. He provides strategic insights in product development and marketing as BaseHealth works to bring to market a predictive, evidence-based and data-driven population health management platform. Base Health is working from the ground up to build a new approach to population health, focusing on the individual patient, what Base Health calls “the invisible patient.” This is the individual we all know exists who is going to have a catastrophic interaction with the health care system but we don’t yet know who and what – this is the patient who presents in the emergency room.

Dave Chase, co-founder of the Health Rosetta Institute, is seeking to identify and scale successes in health care that deliver on the Quadruple Aim. He is focused on the current state of the healthcare industry as an “extractive” industry, and the need to change it by changing health care benefits and services purchasing behavior among the country’s employers. As he puts it, we didn’t get better lighting by optimizing oil lamps.

The current evolution of Dave’s thinking is captured in his recent book, CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream: How to Deliver World Class Health Care to Your Employees at Half the Cost (available via the Health Rosetta Institute website). In his view, we need to. Lee Aase is the Director of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network. In that role, he is responsible for building and maintaining the Mayo Clinic’s leadership in the use of social media to reach and serve its various constituencies. He is also responsible for building on the Mayo tradition, which goes back to the Mayo brothers’ history of going out into the world to learn and to teach, in creating the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network, which provides training, resources and community for other health care organizations. As Lee observes, “It’s the right thing to do.” I caught up with Lee recently, not long before the upcoming MCSMN annual meeting.

I’ll be one of the keynote speakers at the event. I am partnering with Healthcare NOW Radio to transition my occasional podcast interviews and webinars of the past into an internet radio show of the future. Starting on Monday, November 13, 2017, you can listen to Harlow On Healthcare online. As each new show goes live, the previous one will be added to the on-demand archive.

I hope you’ll give a listen. Check out the introductory post announcing the show. Catch it as it’s webcast, weekdays at 8:30 am, 4:30 pm or 12:30 am ET.

Or listen on demand later. Join the conversation on Twitter at #HarlowOnHC. Discussion will range from topics covered in broadcasts to anything and everything about innovation in health IT and across the broader digital health. The Denver Post reports that according to a report from cybersecurity firm Rapid7, several popular Internet-connected baby monitors are vulnerable to basic hacking methods. The research examined nine baby monitors and found “serious security problems and design flaws in all of the” tested cameras, the Post says. According to the researchers, some monitors had unchangeable passwords that could be used to access the devices, others failed to encrypt their data.

“In the Rapid7 study, researchers rated the devices’ security on a 250-point scale. The scores then received a grade of between ‘A’ and ‘F.’ Of those tested, eight received an ‘F,’ while one received a ‘D,’” the Post. If you’ve been injured in a car accident or other scenario, you’ll likely want to file legal action. Being injured can be a huge setback for your life as well as a tremendous financial burden.

However, you won’t be able to sue without a solid case. You need to make sure you have the proper grounds. Here’s how to know if you have a strong claim. At Fault or Not Were you injured in a car accident because you turned the wrong way down a clearly marked one-way street? If so, you’re not going to have any luck fighting against any drivers you collided with.

In fact, it’s much more likely that they’ll sue you. There’s no way you can do something oblivious that gets you injured and hold others. Cara Hack Yahoo Email Password 2015. Workplace accidents can happen at any time and it is best for workers to know how best to proceed with filing a workers’ compensation case.

It’s essential that workers, particularly with the assistance of a workers’ compensation attorney, seek reimbursement for medical bills for any injuries sustained during work, as well as any lost wages. Read on for the five best tips on what to do if you or a loved one has been injured on the job. Report All Injuries It’s essential for workers to report all accidents to their company as soon as possible.

Oftentimes, employers and employees’ compensation insurance businesses attempt to deny workers’ claims when the harm has not been reported. You’ve probably at least known someone who has been in jail. It’s a facility most people want to get out of as soon as possible. Fortunately, there are some ways that you can get through the hoops of the legal system to get your loved one or a friend out of jail in a short time.

Bail Bondsman This is one of the most popular and easiest ways to get someone out of jail without worrying about the legal ramifications. However, you need to find a reputable bondsman who won’t charge too much for the bail amount. Most companies charge between 10 and 20 percent of the bond. Your loved one will need to follow a few guidelines after being released, such as not missing court and not leaving the area unless.

When you say “social-emotional learning,” you’ve said something that prompts wide-ranging and provocative conversations about kindergarten through twelfth grade education. That was the case Wednesday at a morning-long conference in the Lubar Center of Eckstein titled “What K-12 Students Need: Striking a Balance between Social-Emotional and Academic Learning.” The session included moderated conversations with two nationally-known education commentators and a panel discussion with Wisconsin educators who are working on increasing the success of schools in helping children deal with their personal needs as a step toward improving their success in school in beyond. The conference, a program of the Law. I was recently visiting a relative in the hospital when the attending physician struck up a conversation with my family. When he found out that I am an attorney, he asked about my area of practice. I told him that I practice product liability defense and intellectual property litigation.

He then asked me the following question, a variation of which has been posed to me dozens of times over the past five years: “What type of engineer are you?” I am an English major, and I practice IP litigation. Not only do I not have a science background, but I made a concerted effort to avoid science classes in college. Law schools precipitate a myth that you can’t practice IP without a science. A cycle in which expansion of the right to vote is followed by efforts to suppress voting can be traced back to the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Professor Atiba Ellis.

And the cycle continues now in ways that are keeping many people from voting and making voting much harder for others. “We seem to be repeating the same pattern over and over again,” Ellis said at an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program Thursday in the Lubar Center of Marquette Law School. Ellis, the Boden Visiting Professor at Marquette Law School this fall, is a professor at the West Virginia University College of Law who has made study of voting rights a focus of his scholarship. Joining Ellis in. Don’t make assumptions.

Every journalist knows that assumptions can lead you astray. So if you’re talking with five guys in Richland County in southwestern Wisconsin about their guns and chain saws, you might guess they voted for Donald Trump for president a year ago. Wrong for all five of them, Craig Gilbert, the Washington bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, found during a recent reporting trip. Gilbert found that a lot of assumptions some might make about the political views and voting patterns of people in the largely rural, largely white, and not wealthy part of Wisconsin were wrong. Many communities in southwestern Wisconsin voted for Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012 and. My husband Brad and I are proud parents of a 20-month-old daughter, Lucille.

Having to balance being a mom and a litigator at a large firm is probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. But it’s also an accomplishment of which I am very proud, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t pretend to be an expert, and I still have a lot to learn. But based on the past 20 months, here are some tips that I’ve acquired to support a “work-mom” balance: It takes a village. I won’t sugarcoat this: I’d have to quit my job if it weren’t for my husband and my mom. My husband works predictable, regular hours and, with rare exception, does not have to work at night or on the.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted in 1918 to protect the migratory bird population from overhunting and poaching. The Federal government has in recent years threatened that anyone involved in an otherwise legal activity may be subject to criminal liability for the unintentional death of any one of over 1,000 species of birds protected under the Act. But in a 2015 decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversing a misdemeanor conviction after 10 birds were found in two large open-top tanks at a Texas refiner, Federal Judge Edith H. Jones wrote, If the MBTA prohibits all acts or omissions that “directly” kill birds, where bird deaths are “foreseeable,” then all owners of big windows. Earlier this fall an apartment in Kiev became the first real estate purchased using blockchain, portending a new era in the sale of land and improvements. It is suggested blockchain may do for the $217 trillion real estate market what the Internet did for communication. Blockchain will address high transaction costs, long time delays, and heterogeneity, accelerating both the investment good and the consumption good of real estate across sectors and the globe.

Blockchain, a digitized, distributed ledger that records and shares information, could enable the real estate industry to address its inefficiencies. Many think of blockchain as the technology, or better yet the operating system, that supports Bitcoin. Green buildings generate large quantities of data. In an age when many have opinions about Edward Snowden’s disclosures, foreign state sponsored hacking, and Uber’s massive customer data hack, most people have not considered matters of data protection from their real estate, green building or otherwise.

The topic is too broad to comprehensively address in a brief blog post, so this post will consider, within the realm of green building, what a business needs to know about protecting people’s personal information, no matter where the data is processed, stored or sent, even outside the four walls of the building, as may often be the case when it is transmitted over the Internet. There is no single.

Next week will be a year since the launch of Arc. Already approaching a Billion square of projects not only in the United States but also from India to Sweden and Israel to Bhutan, if you are not familiar with the Arc platform, that helps a building owner measure performance and benchmark against others, you are missing out on what is transmogrifying the built environment.

I had an opportunity just days ago to talk with Scot Horst. Scot serves as the CEO of Arc Skoru Inc., the technology company established to build Arc, the digital platform created by the U.S. Green Building Council and its sister organization, the Green Business Certification, Inc. Previously, Scot was the chief product officer at the. The announcement of the upcoming release of the new LEED version 4.1 by the U.S. Green Building Council was no doubt the biggest story at Greenbuild 2017 in Boston last week. And that is saying a lot because Greenbuild is the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building and there was much to be excited about in the aisles of the expo floor.

But when USGBC announces a new version of the most widely used green building rating system in the world, that certifies 2.2 million square feet daily and has more than 92,000 participating projects in more than 165 countries and territories, it is big deal. That LEED v4, originally released as LEED 2012, is growing and changing in response to the. The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling this week that reverses the Board’s ruling issued under the Obama administration in regards to who can be held a “joint employer.” The ruling is critical to businesses in the franchisee industry as well as businesses that use contract workers. This Friday’s Five reviews five keys issues on the NLRB’s ruling in Hy-Brand Industrial Contractors and Brandt Construction Co. And the joint employer test for California employers: 1. The Hy-Brand decision overrules the NLRB’s prior holding in Browning-Ferris In Browning-Ferris, the Board held that even when two entities have never exercised joint control over essential terms and conditions of.

With the fires effecting large portions of Southern California and Los Angeles this week, it is a good time to review some of the obligations employers have in regards to pay and leave issues during times of natural disasters. The picture above is one I took showing the smoke covering the northern part of Los Angeles on a flight to Napa on Thursday night. It was just a couple of months ago I wrote about this topic when Napa faced the same situation of wild fires in October. So for regular readers of the blog, this article will be a refresher course, but I thought it would be important to cover this topic again in today’s Friday Five: 1. Reporting time pay obligations California law requires an. Matt Lauer’s abrupt departure from NBC illustrate important lessons employers should take away from this week’s events in how to investigate and respond to harassment claims.

It is important it note that NBC is not like most employers in that this one of the most newsworthy and public harassment allegation cases in the nation and it must manage public relations at the same time of mitigating its legal liability. However, there are still lessons employers should pay attention to arising out of this case, leading to this Friday’s Five: 1. Be up-front and as accurate as possible in any initial reports or disclosures to the public Employers need to be very careful in issuing any public statements. Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone is getting some time to relax and enjoy some time with their families. Entering the holiday season, it is a good time to review employer’s obligations to accommodate requests for time off for holidays and best pay practices during holiday leaves. This Friday’s Five covers five reminders for employers about holiday leaves and pay: 1.

California employers are not required to provide employees time off for holidays. There is no requirement that California employers provide time off (except for religious accommodations – see below) for holidays. California’s DLSE’s website states the following: Hours worked on holidays, Saturdays, and Sundays are treated. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 2, 2017 in Epic System Corp.

And while the case may not make headline news, it has very important ramifications for employers across the country. At issue is whether employers can legally compel employees to enter into arbitration agreements which contain class action waivers. The decision is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this December. Below are five issues regarding the Supreme Court’s decision and the impact it may have on employer’s businesses going into 2018: 1. There is a split in Circuit Courts regarding if arbitration agreements with class action waivers are enforceable Many courts have been upholding. Done right, your law firm blog should be a hub for your social media outreach efforts, but did you know that it can also help you maximize SEO results for your website?

Here are some simple ways to use your blog for SEO gains: Name it right. Do NOT just name your blogBLOG. Incorporate your keywords if possible to create a more descriptive name. Add keywords to the page title of the blog as well so the correct description will appear in search results. Target your posts. If you have more than one practice area, you need to be sure that you have posts written for each different segment of your target market with their respective keywords included.

Watch your URL structure. To simplify your reporting, you. There are a number of skeptics in the legal world who question the effectiveness of newsletters. Whenever an attorney comes to me and tells me that they’ve sent a newsletter in the past, but found it to be ineffective, I know they did something wrong. Here are some cardinal mistakes you need to avoid: Frequency – A newsletter isn’t an annual update.

You need to send 12 newsletters per year to be effective. Length – Your newsletter needs to be interesting and to the point. People are too busy to read lengthy pieces. Keep it to less than two pages. Tracking – If you aren’t using an email service like Constant Contact – and checking the statistics – then you are wasting your time.

How do you continue to build relationships with referral sources when you are always crunched for time? Just like anything else that matters, you have to carve some time out for the things that are meaningful to you — and few things are more meaningful when it comes to building a profitable law practice than a constant source of referrals. Developing that referral network takes time and attention, but if you get organized, you can still do it no matter how many balls you have in the air. Here are 3 steps you should take to keep the referrals coming your way: Step 1: Be Proactive There is an old saying that “to have a friend, you must first be a friend.” Don’t wait for someone to take the initiative. When business slows down over the holidays, it’s the perfect time to start planning for how to make next year your most profitable ever. And you can start this planning process by joining me for a free 60-minute legal marketing webinar: How to Develop Your Law Firm Marketing Plan, where you will learn A proven legal marketing system that has helped 18,000 attorneys convert more prospects into paying clients. Step-by-step actions you should take throughout the course of the next 12 months to substantially increase your revenues.

Effective strategies to win clients in today’s hyper-competitive online focused marketplace. Creating a marketing plan for your law firm is the first step in building a. We’re about a week out from the annual gorge-fest known as Thanksgiving, the top of the inevitable slide toward the New Year. I find this time of year a blur business-wise, with many people’s minds on everything but work. But who said these things have to be mutually exclusive?

What if you could really enjoy your holidays and enjoy learning something that would make a real difference in the success of your law firm in 2018? So while you’re digesting your turkey and fixin’s, consider watching our online training video on How to Get Great Google Rankings in 2017. It’s free — and the tips will work in 2018 too. This webinar is available to you free and on-demand. A click of your mouse will take you. [This post is being published simultaneously on our blog] At the end of a year that saw the news take a more central role in our lives and when so much is uncertain, some things remain constant and one of them is the list of cases that is most accessed on CanLII.

All of the top three cases were in the top three last year, and only one of the top 10 cases was issued in 2017. Eight of the cases were on the list last year. Six of the cases are the same as were on the list in 2014.

As this year comes to an end I take comfort in the fact that the principle of stare decisis continues to ensure decisions are made in the same way over time and which evens out the upheavals of the day. If you’d like to know more. The rules of civil procedure in Manitoba are about to undergo significant changes. Amendments to the Court of Queen’s Bench Rules, effective January 1, 2018, will introduce an overarching requirement that the Court considers proportionality in making orders and directions under those Rules.

A new Practice Direction outlines the breadth of the changes about to come into force in respect of case management of civil proceedings, scheduling of trials, use of judicially assisted dispute resolution and summary judgment proceedings. The Practice Direction describes the objectives underlying all the changes as follows: Animating the comprehensive amendments to the Court of Queen’s Bench Rules coming into force. Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about. For this last week: 1. Jones, 2017 SCC 60 [1] The appellant, Mr. Jones, was convicted of several firearms and drug trafficking offences. His convictions rest on records of text messages seized from a Telus account associated with his co-accused pursuant to a production order obtained under s.

487.012 (now s. 487.014) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. C-46 (the “Production Order”).

As in the courts below, the appellant challenges the Production Order under s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is fascinating to recognize that you can get fired by legislation. OK, that is over-dramatic, but I got your attention. About legislation. During the busy holiday season.

#DIGJAM In Alberta there has been an ongoing review of public Agencies, Boards, and Commissions. Read more if you are curious at the Public Agency Secretariat. The secretariat promotes a consistent approach to public agency governance, recruitment and compensation. On December 15, the Alberta legislature wrapped up the session and Bill 21 Agencies, Boards and Commissions Review Statutes Amendment Act, 2017 was assented to. In what will no doubt baffle legal researchers who are asked what happened to such and such agency.

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research, writing, and practice. Research The Conflict of Laws – What Are the Sources?

Ken Fox Conflict of laws, also known as private international law, is a topic concerning the rules governing what happens when two or more legal systems clash in a private dispute. Pitel & Rafferty’s text on Conflict of Laws identifies three key questions: (1) whether a court has jurisdiction, (2) what law the court will apply, and (3) whether a judgment from another jurisdiction will be enforced. Unlike public international law, conflict of laws is not the same everywhere, but is. This is a Video Privacy Protection Act case. Plaintiff downloaded the WatchESPN channel on his Roku device and used it to watch videos. When he watched a video, ESPN disclosed the plaintiff’s device serial number and video title to Adobe Analytics. Plaintiff alleged that Adobe used the information to “identify specific consumers” by connecting the data shared with existing data in Adobe’s database.

Adobe obtained the information in its database (used to identify consumers) from sources other than ESPN. Adobe gives the data it derives back to ESPN in an aggregated form, and ESPN “in turn provides advertisers with aggregate information about its users’ demographics.” Plaintiff alleged Adobe used the data. Facebook allegedly improperly tracked the activity of logged-out Facebook users on third party websites. Plaintiffs asserted claims based on common law rights and based on federal and state statutes, but the court previously rejected those. In the latest ruling, the court dismisses Plaintiffs’ claims based on breach of contract and breach of the duty of good faith.

Plaintiffs argued that Facebook promised not to track logged out users, but these promises were contained in documents other than Facebook’s terms of service (its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities”). Plaintiffs cited to language from Facebook’s “data use policy” stating that Facebook receives data from the websites that. Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee will markup the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (abbreviated to “FOSTA”). It appears a new substitute version of FOSTA will be marked up, not the bill as introduced. This makes a total of four bill versions: SESTA as introduced, SESTA as amended, FOSTA as introduced, and the new substitute FOSTA. This post recaps this complicated situation. While I continue to believe that none of the bills are good policy, the substitute FOSTA version is better than SESTA as amended and FOSTA as introduced.

Thus, compared to the existing options, I prefer substitute FOSTA. However, it needs some changes that I discuss below. [Note: a few. [It’s impossible to blog about Section 230 without reminding you that it remains highly imperiled.] This is one of the multitudinous 1-800-LAW-FIRM lawsuits against social media services for allegedly providing material support to terrorists. It has filed at least two new cases in the last few days.

This particular case involves a 2016 shooting of five Dallas police officers by Micah Johnson, who allegedly was radicalized by online content from the terrorist group Hamas. Three prior courts have rejected the suits, principally on Section 230 grounds but also with causation concerns. See Fields v. Twitter, Cohen v. Facebook, and Gonzalez v.

Like the others, the court dismisses the. [It’s impossible to blog about Section 230 without reminding you that it remains highly imperiled.] This opinion is a contender for the most interesting Section 230 ruling of 2017.

It deals with the troubling situation of user-to-user online drug sales; it discusses the thorny language of what it means to “develop in part” content; it decisively rejects the latest anti-Section 230 theory that data mining and targeted content recommendations somehow foreclose the immunity; it emphatically rejects a “failure to warn” workaround to Section 230; and the judge embraces Internet exceptionalism. My apologies for the length of this blog post, but there is a lot to unpack in this opinion.

This is simply mindboggling.' We’ve seen mortgages being taken out to buy bitcoin. People do credit cards, equity lines,” Joseph Borg, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, told CNBC today. “This is not something a guy who’s making $100,000 a year, who’s got a mortgage and two kids in college ought to be invested in.”It should be obvious that this is not a good idea, but according to Joe Borg, folks are actually taking mortgages on their homes to buy Bitcoin.Put aside for the moment whether Bitcoin' valuations have a factual basis, and whether it is real or not.

You cannot mortgage your home to make any investment - not IBM, not Google, not Berkshire. By now, most registered representatives are aware that FINRA has been actively investigating the backgrounds of registered persons for undisclosed judgments and liens. There have been questions as to how they are conducting those investigations, and a few folks have suggested to me that FINRA is running credit checks on brokers.That would be of questionable legality, but there is no evidence that it is happening. What has happened is FINRA was very successful at sanctioning registered representatives who did not fully disclose such items. Some reps were charged with willfully failing to disclose, which is a small trap laid by FINRA. You see, while FINRA will take a settlement with a fine for a willful.

I have been representing targets and witnesses in securities fraud investigations and litigation for decades. I have litigated the aftermath of Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps and bubbles for investors, and have represented countless witnesses and targets in SEC and FINRA investigations.Aside from my extensive securities litigation experience - 30 years and counting and am also more computer literate than most. I have litigated dozens upon dozens of cases caused by the crash in 1987, the tech bubble in 2001, the housing crisis in 2008 and dozens of fraud cases in between, as well as Internet securities fraud cases.However, I don't know that any of us have seen anything near this Bitcoin craze, and the losses.

FINRA seeks comment on establishing a roster of arbitrators with additional training and specific backgrounds or experience from which a panel would be selected to decide an associated person’s request for expungement of customer dispute information. The arbitrators from this roster would decide expungement requests where the underlying customer-initiated arbitration is not resolved on the merits or the associated person files a separate claim requesting expungement of customer dispute information. The Notice also proposes additional changes to the expungement process that would apply to all requests for expungement of customer dispute information.This proposal is one in a series of regulatory initiatives. The Securities and Exchange Commission obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud that raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.The SEC filed charges against a recidivist Quebec securities law violator, Dominic Lacroix, and his company, PlexCorps. The Commission's complaint, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, alleges that Lacroix and PlexCorps marketed and sold securities called PlexCoin on the internet to investors in the U.S. And elsewhere, claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354 percent profit in less than 29 days. The SEC also charged Lacroix's. Happy Birthday (Photo credit: Wikipedia) It was 9 years ago today that I announced the creation of Construction Law Musings with two lines, no picture and some vague idea that I wanted to share my thoughts and insights into Virginia construction law.

Back in 2008, Musings was on the Blogger platform, my kids were much younger (they’re now a junior at WVU, a freshman at Appalachian State University, and a freshman in high school!), and I had yet to start my solo construction practice. Needless to say a lot has changed since then. Over that 9 years, I’ve tried to keep up with the changing landscape of construction law and, hopefully, shared a few things that you, the readers, find interesting. Originally posted 2013-08-12 10:45:29. Republished by Blog Post PromoterMap of the United States District Courts in Virginia, showing the boundaries of the Eastern and Western Districts, and their divisions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The title of this post may seem obvious. Of course you need to name the right people.

“Why even write about this?” you may ask yourself. The answer to this question is that the list of all of the parties necessary to a successful lawsuit may not be so obvious. One example is the case of a Virginia mechanic’s lien lawsuit. The obvious parties would be the contractor or subcontractor that owes the money and the owner of the property. However, you can’t stop there.. Thank you, once again, to the Virginia legal community that continues to elect me to the Virginia Business Legal Elite.

The eleven years in a row of election to the Legal Elite in the Construction Category spans my time at my prior firm and my time as a solo construction attorney. The fact that you all have continued to elect “100%” of the lawyers at The Law Office of Christopher G. Hill, PC for the last seven years is most gratifying. For the complete list of the great Virginia construction lawyers that were elected along with me, see the 2017 Virginia Business Legal Elite in Construction Law.

So without further ado, thank you to all of you who voted for me. I truly appreciate your continued.

Originally posted 2013-03-29 09:00:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter Image via Wikipedia Over the past week or so, several great pieces have been written across the web relating to green building and other construction industry related topics. Without re-hashing the great analysis found in those articles, I thought that it would be helpful to point them out. On the green building front, the International Green Construction Code or IGCC (2.0) was introduced at Green Build to much debate and acclaim.

As pointed out by my friend and fellow LEED AP construction attorney, Doug Reiser (@douglasreiser) in his Builder’s Counsel Blog, several states and municipalities have adopted this construction. Originally posted 2015-06-01 09:00:41. Republished by Blog Post PromoterVirginia General Assembly (Photo credit: Wikipedia) As always seems to be the case, this year, as in others, the Virginia General Assembly has seen fit to “tweak” a few construction related statutes. All of these changes will go into effect on July 1, 2015. The big one, and one that I posted about a while back is the change to the Virginia mechanic’s lien statute to prohibit contractual waiver of lien, payment bond or claims for additional costs prior to the furnishing of labor or materials.

This one is big because it relieves a bit of the angst in the pre-contract negotiations between subcontractors and general. In Brinkley v Monterey Financial Services Inc., the Ninth Circuit vacated the district court’s remand order, and held that a plaintiff cannot remand an otherwise valid CAFA case to state court when only a portion of the class meets the two-thirds citizenship requirement.

The plaintiff filed a putative class action in California state court alleging that the defendants recorded or monitored its telephone conversations with customers without providing proper notice. The plaintiff asserted claims for invasion of privacy, unlawful recording of telephone calls, and violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law. After the defendants removed the action to the federal court under CAFA, the plaintiff. Chesapeake Operating LLC, No 5:16-cv-01073-M (W.D. In this action, a district court in Oklahoma denied the plaintiff’s motion to abstain under the home-state mandatory abstention exception to CAFA finding that the plaintiff cannot rely solely on the allegations in his class action petition to establish that two-thirds or more of the members of the proposed class are citizens of Oklahoma, but must make some minimal evidentiary showing of the citizenship of the proposed class.

The plaintiff brought a putative class action for breach of lease, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, deceit and constructive trust against the defendants in the state court of Beaver County, Oklahoma. Credico (USA) LLC, et al., 2017 WL 4210994 (N.D. In this case, while remanding a case to the state court, a district court in California found that gross wages, paid and unpaid, should not be used in the amount in controversy calculation when the plaintiff seeks recovery of only unpaid wages. The plaintiff brought a putative class action against the defendants in Alameda County Superior Court alleging several violations under the California Labor Code and California Business and Professions Code. The defendants removed the action to the federal court pursuant to CAFA. The District Court, sua sponte, expressed its concern regarding lack subject matter jurisdiction under.

Continental Resources, Inc. Case No. 5:15-cv-00611-M, (W.D. This order concerned a motion to remand a case to state court based on the plaintiff’s assertions that the defendant had not filed a sufficient removal notice. The plaintiff brought a putative class action alleging that the defendant failed to make proper payments owed to her and the class members on royalty interests in oil wells. The defendant removed this case to federal court alleging jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(d) and 1452. In its notice of removal, defendant stated that “hundreds” of royalty owners have out-of-state addresses, as its basis for establishing diversity of citizenship.

Publisher’s Comment: This “Blast from the Past” comes from Psychotherapist Donna F. She was kind enough to share this article with us 8 years ago. Excellent advice then and now from Donna! If this is your first Christmas since the separation and divorce, the anticipation can fill you with sadness and trepidation. Here are some solid, easy tips to help make the holidays less painful and hopefully, maybe, even (surprisingly!) enjoyable! Let go of traditions that no longer work for you.

This is an opportunity to re-invent your holidays. Keep the traditions that you enjoy and get rid of the ones that you don’t.

No one expects you to be on your best behavior during this time, so you can probably pull. Survey reveals increase in the number of millennials requesting prenuptial agreements in the last three years. In a previous blog entry, Joseph Balmer discussed the need for antenuptial agreements as an effective, estate planning tool. In his article, he explained how the mention of the word “prenup” can send a newly-wed-to-be into a frenzy, as such agreements have historically carried a negative connotation and often served as a buzz kill for happily engaged couples. However, the millennial generation, ages 18-35, seem to be shaking up this archaic way of thinking. In a recent survey conducted by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 51% of the 1600 attorneys surveyed reported an increase in.

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This article on divorce was originally posted on January 19, 2013. I have now added the last 5 items. The list keeps evolving with the advances in technology and social media platforms and the advent of the legalization of same sex marriage.

Attorney Mark Chinn of Jacksonville, Mississippi, caught my attention with a divorce post to his family law blog about some items that are frequently forgotten in many divorce agreements. Mark is the author of three American Bar Association books about family law issues and is a frequent writer and lecturer in the field of family law. The first eleven in the divorce list were Mark’s, the rest were some that I have added. We live in a world that is dominated by cutting-edge technology. By the time that the latest and greatest technology is released, manufacturers are already beginning their search to find the next best thing. Nowadays, the easier we can make it to accomplish things, the better.

For many, this means making things more accessible online and limiting the amount of human interaction that a person must have: whether it be ordering a pizza online, scheduling and cancelling doctor’s appointments, or even ordering groceries to be picked up at your local Kroger. By completing these tasks on the internet, we are cutting out the middlemen: the receptionist that answers the phone, the employees who take phone orders. In the process of doing her monthly visit, a social work case manager notices another child in the foster home. The child is moaning softly and seems listless and groggy. There are no noticeable bruises, no bleeding, no obvious broken bones.

The child is not a client of the case manager, nor even of the worker’s agency. When the case manager gets back to her office she casually mentions her concern regarding the child to her supervisor. Both are mandated reporters but neither calls the state child abuse hotline. A week later they find out that, tragically, the child died a few days after the case manager had made her visit.

The cause of death was non-accidental blunt force trauma. Months later a lawsuit. We take a break from Casey's BS series and point you to a historical review of the 'cutthroat' legal research industry as it moved from print, hardbound reporter sets, to the online legal research systems which we know today. Whenever an industry is disrupted by a new technology, the players within the industry can play hardball with each other, and that typically leads to litigation as everyone scrambles to protect their stake in that industry. Legal publishing was completely disrupted in the 1990s, and Alan Sugarman from HyperLaw was on the front lines of this battle. Sugarman tells his story to Sam Glover, over at The Lawyerist, and it is definitely worth a listen. Sugarman describes the history of his.

My friend John Grant made a mistake. Many moons ago he was consulting on process improvement for a large law department. He surveyed in-house counsel on their biggest complaints about outside counsel. The response was that outside counsel: Don't understand my business Can't tell me how long anything will take Overwork a problem/introduce complexity Don't give me output in a format I can use Familiar enough. And so far so good. John's misstep is that he put the same question to internal clients of the law department.

The response was that in-house counsel: Don't understand my business Can't tell me how long anything will take Overwork a problem/introduce complexity Don't give me output in a format I can. It's that time of year: time for top 10 lists for 2017. What is your favorite top 10 list for 2017? Well, here's one more: our top ten 3 Geeks blog posts for 2017 in true Letterman style.

10 Legal News Publishers: Stop Using the Term 'Non-Lawyer' No. 9 The Best Law Firm Marketing Bullshit — Tier 1 No.

8 'Do You Miss Me Yet?' - Reestablishing the Corporate Librarians No. 7 My Remarks and Highlights from the AALL 2017 Conference No.

6 One more time: law firm libraries are not about space No. 5 Law Firm BS - Tier 3 No. 4 Who leads the law library?

How about law librarians? 3 Why sole provider isn't really a thing and I'm not going to say it anymore No.

So, it was snowing in Houston today. My sister texted a photo full of snow at 6:30 am--a neighborhood once covered in Harvey now covered in snowflakes. Just finished my analytics reports. Not sure how many of you use Google Analytics. It has changed a lot since I first started using it back in the good old days.

Analytics is the favorite aspects of my job, probably because I like using Excel and running calculations. Analytics are an important part of of monitoring a site to ensure that you are still on target and achieving your goals.

Benchmarking--before and after shots prior to a launch--will help you better tell your success stories. Google Analytics I use GA to track web site and blog traffic. Watching YouTube with purpose by Lihsa How many of you out there regularly watch YouTube videos?

Mostly people randomly watch videos. But it is possible to follow YouTube in much the same way you follow a podcast.

I've been a YouTube subscriber for about 7 years and really active for the last 4 – 5 years. It is a great way to learn the learn new skills, follow a hobby or even catch up with cable TV shows. Many times, I'll go straight to the government agency to watch speeches that I might have missed on TV. Not to mention that if you really get into YouTube, you can opt into YouTube Red for $9.99 a month and have an ad-free experience. YouTube perks and channels Another perk is that any movies. So they decided - narrowly, but astounding given the place and the choice - that they'd rather not send the guy who yearns for the time of slavery, who thinks the amendments striking down slavery and allowing blacks and women to vote, who thinks homosexuality should be a crime, and who doesn't believe that his state is bound by the decisions of the U.S.

Supreme Court on the Constitution, the guy who maybe, probably, spent his thirties trolling for14 and 15 year old girls...They decided they'd rather send to the Senate a guy who favors abortion on demand and prosecuted members of the Klan.Alabama, it seems, is showing a bit of envy. It's like it wants to be, at least a little, like the rest of the. Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear when (OK, if you're old enough to know how the rest goes and yearn for it, you'll be disappointed)...

When blawggers talked to each other on their blawgs.Over at Simple Justice this morning, Scott Greenfield wrote about honor.You told the truth because telling the truth was the right thing to do. You kept your promises because it was the honorable thing to do.We were honorable people.Now, not so much. There is no country for the honorable anymore. From the top down, and the bottom up, lies, deceit manipulation, distortion are all acceptable means of achieving goals, and goals are more important than how you attain them.

We can fight over whether a. Lexington, Kentucky. An apartment complex. Salahuddin Jitmoud delivering a pizza. Well, not exactly. Exactly, Jitmoud was delivering his life (so the cops and courts said) to 3 men who were looking to rob pizza delivery guys. He was 22-years old.I don't know who actually killed Jitmoud. Apparently the actual killer hasn't been indicted.

But Alexander Relford, according to the prosecutor (via Marwa Ettagouri at the Washington Post), 'set up the robbery, he provided the knife, he tampered with evidence.' And there's the fuck-you factor.[H]e is the one who ate the pizza afterward.Relford got 31 years. Complicity in murder.Complicity in robbery.Attempted tampering with evidence.He'll be. Danny Brown did not kill Bobbie Russell.

That's settled in the minds of just about everyone except her son, whose memory of his mother's murder is false, and the Lucas County Prosecutor who agreed to cut Danny loose after he spent 19 years in prison and dismiss the case against him but who still believes him guilty and would love to charge him and convict him again.Despite the DNA that pretty conclusively indicates that Bobbie Russell was killed (and, not incidentally, raped) by Sherman Preston. Alone.Cameron Todd Willingham didn't set the fire that killed his kids. Which Rick Perry basically knew when he signed off of Willingham's execution. Joe D'Ambrosio did not kill Anthony Klann, though he did. Hello, and welcome back to Off The Menu, where we explore the craziest stories about food from my email inbox. This week, we’ve got more bonkers tales from fast food joints. As always, these are real stories from real readers.

Allie Bregman: I worked at a McDonald’s for about three years, and one thing I tried to do when I worked there was make sure I had a stockpile of each of the happy meal toys ready under my register in case some kid wanted a specific one. Basically, I figured “if I can keep the kids happy, they’ll be less obnoxious.” Anyway, one day I’m not working register, but I’m running for front counter, and I hear this little girl say “Look mommy!

I want a Barbie!” So I rummage. Hello, and welcome back to Off The Menu, where we explore the craziest stories about food from my email inbox. This week, we’ve got more horror stories of terrible restaurant customers. As always, these are real stories from real readers. Cate Gonzalez: I was working at a pretty decent, relatively upscale place when The Table walked in. They sat down at a booth against the wall, proceeded to get a drink from the bar, and once the drinks arrived, told me to leave them be so they could enjoy their drinks — they’d get back to me in their own time. I allowed them ten minutes to drink three sips and I walked by to let them know I was still there when needed. A few more minutes passed, then. Hello, and welcome back to Off The Menu, where we explore the craziest stories about food from my email inbox. This week, we’ve got more tales of terror from restaurant customers who should not in any way have eaten that. As always, these are real stories from real readers.

Sam Dayton I worked at a chain BBQ joint in Jacksonville, FL during my senior year and the following summer before heading off to college. I started as cashier but found it boring, so I pushed to be a cook, which finally happened when one of them quit without notice. It was pretty basic stuff — one pit for cooking and one pit for heating and serving.

One all you can eat rib night, I noticed a couple slabs of ribs on the top shelf of. While most celebrities spend their days on the red carpets, dining in fancy restaurants or getting their new business ventures off the ground, all of them still find the time to concentrate on their much-loved hobbies. Some celebs like gardening whereas many others like working out.

One thing’s for certain though, many of the biggest celebs in the world are huge baseball fans, and some of those are probably ones you didn’t think was into the sport. Eminem – Detroit Tigers The much-loved American rapper, Eminem, continues to share his love for the famous Detroit Tigers.

Eminem grew up on the streets of Detroit and, although his youth days weren’t especially fancy, they were still the days. Hello, and welcome back to Off The Menu, where we explore the craziest stories about food from my email inbox. This week, we’ve got stories about the worst restaurant bosses ever. As always, these are real stories from real readers. Amy Carter Several eons ago, I waited in Beverly Hills at a restaurant that ripped off Wolfgang Puck’s pizza concepts, but not to any actionable extent (I never understood why). It was a good thing I was young, because the clientele was challenging.

An understood policy was that, if a table was openly hostile, or working the server’s last nerve, the table could be turned over to another server without fanfare and usually to good result. This worked fine until one.

Earlier this month, United States Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Lindsey Graham introduced bipartisan legislation that would prohibit employers from requiring workers who suffer sexual harassment to arbitrate their claims. 2203, titled “The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2017,” would amend Title 9 of the United States Code to void arbitration clauses that prohibit victims of workplace sexual harassment from seeking a judicial remedy. The proposed bill was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on the day it was introduced.

Although a bill summary is not yet available, the proposed text may be viewed on the Congress.gov website. As much of the nation eagerly anticipates a pending United States Supreme Court ruling regarding whether a collective action ban included in an employer’s arbitration agreement is lawful under the National Labor Relations Act, a Wisconsin federal court has decided to uphold a class arbitration award in a wage and hour case. In Herrington v. Waterstone Mortgage Corp., No. 11-cv-779-bbc (W.D. Wisconsin, December 4, 2017), a loan officer, Herrington, filed a proposed collective action lawsuit against her employer, Waterstone Mortgage, seeking overtime pay. The dispute was sent to arbitration and an arbitrator determined the mortgage company “was liable under the Fair Labor Standards Act for unpaid.

Stempel, Doris S. And Theodore B. Lee Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S.

Boyd School of Law, has published “Notes from a Quiet Corner: User Concerns About Reinsurance Arbitration – And Attendant Lessons for Selection of Dispute Resolution Forums and Methods,” 9 Arbitration Law Review 93 (2017). In his article, Professor Stempel discusses perceived shortcomings and possible solutions related to the reinsurance arbitration process.

The abstract states: Arbitration between insurers and reinsurers – those who insure insurance companies – should logically run as smoothly as any arbitration process. Like the traditional commercial arbitration that. The Texas A&M University School of Law has beefed up its ADR curriculum after welcoming Professor Nancy Welsh as Director of the Aggie Dispute Resolution Program this fall. According to a Texas A&M news release, all first-year law students will now be required to enroll in a one-credit survey course addressing ADR mechanisms. The law school has also begun offering an upper-level mediation workshop twice per year.

The news release states: With Welsh at the helm, Texas A&M is launching a number of new program initiatives. Chief among them is the expansion of dispute resolution courses available to Texas A&M students earning a J.D. And the Masters of Jurisprudence.

The article adds: “By the time the. A hospital has asked the Supreme Court of Texas to consider whether an arbitrator exceeded his authority in a workplace discrimination dispute. In Methodist Healthcare System, Ltd., LLP v.

Friesenhahn, No. 17-0955, a woman, Friesenhahn, was terminated by her employer, Methodist Healthcare Systems, for purportedly violating a workplace policy. After she was fired, Friesenhahn accused her former employer of both age and gender discrimination. Following arbitration proceedings regarding the alleged discrimination, Friesenhahn was awarded nearly $384,000 in damages and legal fees. Next, Friesenhahn sought to confirm the arbitral award. In response, Methodist Healthcare Systems filed a motion to vacate.

One of the main issues with federal marijuana policy is that it is completely inconsistent and unpredictable. In my last post I opined that Obama might tackle this issue prior to leaving office. Unfortunately, his failure to act has made the situation worse with our new AG, Jeff Sessions. Sessions has spouted a number of unsubstantiated claims regarding marijuana and has indicated that he could act to repeal the Cole Memo and to influence Congress to halt the extension of the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer (f/k/a Rohrabacher–Farr) amendment which was passed in 2014 and has been renewed annually ever since.

This amendment protects medical marijuana patients complying with state law from prosecution by federal. Despite the enormous growth in social media, scant legal advice is available to help the many people who are posting online. Easy-to-understand, comprehensive, and current, Legal Guide to Social Media provides the latest information on case law and statutes. It covers everything from privacy laws to copyright issues to how to respond to employers’ requests for your social media passwords. This plain English legal companion offers examples of and solutions to the kinds of situations you can expect to encounter when posting online content, whether for personal enjoyment or on behalf of an employer. You’ll learn how to avoid liability for defamation and third-party posts, the legalities of copying and.

I have to admire a Judge who treats everyone the same. This Judge in Michigan has a strict no cell phone policy in his courtroom. When his cell phone rang during a trial (because he failed to turn it off), he fined himself $25 which he promptly paid. I admire integrity and am especially proud when I hear of someone in the legal profession demonstrating it. The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in the case of Missouri v.

McNeeley, No. At issue was whether or not the police must obtain a warrant prior to drawing blood from a person suspected of driving while under the influence of alcohol. McNeeley was pulled over for speeding and failed the field sobriety test. After refusing the breathalyzer, McNeeley was taken to the hospital where after refusing to allow his blood to be drawn, had the blood forcibly taken from his body. The trial court threw out the evidence from the blood test as being an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The state appealed to the US Supreme Court asking that it declare that there is no need to. A few months ago, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton stated that the SEC had been hard at work on developing its rule-making agenda for the upcoming year.

In the coming weeks and months, I expect the SEC’s near-term rulemaking objectives to be fully reflected in our upcoming Regulatory Flexibility Act Agenda. As a general matter, I believe it is important that these publicly available agendas provide the necessary transparency and accountability for agency matters. If these plans are to meet their intended purpose, they must be streamlined to inform Congress, investors, issuers and other interested parties about what the SEC actually intends – and realistically expects – to. One thing that is clear about bribery and corruption is that the payments are not always envelopes full of cash. The FCPA opinions have long pointed out that directing charitable donations to the decision-makers “pet” charity could be a bribe. As former Director of the the Division of Enforcement at the SEC, Andrew Ceresney pointed out, “bribes come in many shapes and sizes.” That shape could include coffee.

It was not just a cup of coffee, but hundreds of pounds of coffee that lead to this story. Former Massachusetts state senator Brian A. Joyce is facing a series of charges for racketeering, mail fraud, wire fraud, honest services fraud and extortion. Among the most Massachusetts of charges is the. With the release of Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, I’m joining Tom Fox in tying compliance and the Star Wars franchise together in some posts this week. (I saw the movie last night, but I will refrain from revealing anything other than it was terrific.) One of the central themes of the Star Wars franchise is man versus machine.

Luke turns off his targeting computer and relies on the Force during his photon torpedo run on the Death Star. Obi Wan Kenobi describes Darth Vader as more man than machine. It’s primitive Ewoks that crush the technology driven imperial forces at the Battle of Endor. It is when Vader once again finds his humanity that he lives up to the prophecy as the one that will bring. With the pending release of Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, I’m joining Tom Fox in tying compliance and the Star Wars franchise together in some posts this week.

Star Wars is about the rise of the evil galactic empire and the rebels who fight against it. I think some Bitcoin advocates are trying to be the rebels who portray the the Federal Reserve as the evil Galactic Empire. The battle is for freedom of money. “This is a fantastic fundamental hedge and store of value against autocratic regimes and banking infrastructure that we know is corrosive to how the world needs to work properly,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of Social Capital and an early Bitcoin investor. “You cannot have central.

With the pending release of Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, I’m joining Tom Fox in tying compliance and the Star Wars franchise together in posts this week. I’ve always been trouble by the lie from Obi Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker: “Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father.” It’s the little lies that lead to bigger lies and bigger problems. Some of the ponzi schemes I see start with a sponsor telling a little lie about performance results. Then the sponsor is trapped chasing those untrue returns.

That leads to bigger lies and bigger problems as the deficit between actual results and fictional results grow. We saw the little lie growing with Bernie Madoff. Decades ago he missed his returns and. According to Section 33.001 of the Texas Estates Code, a will should be admitted to probate in the Texas county where the decedent was domiciled or had a fixed place of residence.

If the decedent was not domiciled in Texas and had no fixed place of residence in this state, the proper venue depends on where he or she died: For those who die in Texas, the will should be probated either in the county where his principal estate was at the time of his death or in the county where he died. For those who die outside of Texas, the will should be probated in a Texas county where the decedent’s nearest relatives reside, or if no relatives reside in Texas, then in the county where the decedent’s principal estate was. Section 201.054 of the Texas Estates Code provides that an adopted child “inherits from and through the child’s natural parent or parents.” This section of the Estates Code should be read in conjunction with Section 161.206 of the Family Code, which provides, that in case involving the termination of the parent child relationship, the child retains the right to inherit from and through the parent unless the court otherwise provides.

Therefore, in Texas, adopted children can inherit from and through their biological parents unless there is a decree terminating the parent-child relationship that specifically removes the child’s right to inherit from and through the biological parents. “My mom has a power of attorney that was witnessed by someone under 18,” she said. “Is it valid?” The Texas statutes specify that a medical power of attorney must be signed by the principal in the presence of two witnesses who qualify under Section 166.003, who must also sign the document.

Section 166.003 provides that each witness much be a competent adult, and at least one of the witnesses must be a person who is not: a person designated by the declarant to make a health care or treatment decision; a person related to the declarant by blood or marriage; a person entitled to any part of the declarant’s estate after the declarant’s death under a will or codicil executed by the declarant. A couple of weeks ago, I received a phone call from a woman whose ex-boyfriend had died, naming her as the sole beneficiary and executor of his multimillion dollar estate. Despite her ex-boyfriend’s substantial wealth, he had forgone the advice of a lawyer and prepared a Will using DIY software. He told her verbally that he wanted her to use the funds for the benefit of his minor children, but his Will was completely silent on that point. The ex-boyfriend’s goal was apparently to use his substantial wealth to provide for his children. If he had consulted an attorney, the attorney would have advised him to create a testamentary trust for their benefit. Creating a trust would have allowed him to appoint.

E&ffective September 1, 2017, a person to whom a durable power of attorney is presented must accept a durable power of attorney except unless: The person is not otherwise required to engage in a transaction with the principal under the same circumstances. For example, when an agent tries to open a bank account and the principal is not a customer, or when the agent seeks a product or service that the person does not offer. Engaging in a transaction with the agent or principal would be inconsistent with state or federal statutes, rules, or regulations, a request from a law enforcement agency, or a policy adopted in good faith to comply with state or federal statutes, rules, or regulations. The person would. Priyanka Chopra English Album Video Song Download. Some people are talking about a new “Best Law Twitter” list from a site called NAME OMITTED. Donald Trump is on the list.

Senator Warren. Also a number of legaltech people, and of course, yours truly. I had never heard of NAME OMITTED before so I took a quick glance and then spider-ed their site. You’ll notice that there is a distinct lack of hyperlinks in this post thus far.

Can’t confirm it, but if I had to guess they’re a list-bait site (LBS). LBS picks a generic “news-ish” sounding name, then create top 25 lists of varying industries. LBS then email people on these lists to tell them they’ve made the list. If the recipient doesn’t look too closely, they’ll likely post the. This is Part VIII of the ongoing coverage of Assault With A Deadly Twitter.

Previous entries: Can You Sue Someone For A Tweet That Induces Epilepsy? (Part I) Can Kurt Eichenwald Get Pre-suit Discovery From Twitter? (Part II) Can You Assault With A Tweet? (Part III) Motion To Quash Assault By Long-Distance Tweet (Part IV) Assault With A Deadly Twitter (Part V) Assault By Gif (Part VI) Emotional Distress Tweet (Part VII) Also see conversations I’ve had with Vocativ & the BBC. Things have been quiet of late on this case as the wheels of justice grind ever so slowly. Hearing dates have been set, then pushed back, etc. Not much has been happening other than, “hurry up and wait.” Then someone sent. I initially wrote about attempting to subpoena social media services way back in 2011. Then I updated my guide in 2015. That one got lots of attention and has been used by everyone under the sun.

I’ve been fiddling around with updating it again for the past year but have been delayed for one reason or another. But I’m finally “done” with it. Or as done as one can be with an area of law that is constantly evolving. The first half is an intro/primer on social media, how people use it, and some of the common services. The latter half gets into the legal aspects of trying to get at all this stuff.

The 2015 guide was around 1200 words. This one tops out at around 10,000.

That is to say, it has been expanded. Recently over at Big Law Investor, there was a post about the bloat in Big Law: More partner profits (which can never, ever be compromised) = more associate billable hours. More associate billable hours = paying higher associate salaries.

Paying higher associate salaries = associates scrambling for client work to justify the salaries (as clients push back and keep more matters in house), even if it means re-researching, re-doing, revising, and re-working — all paid by the client. Higher associate salaries = clients paying higher hourly rates. Clients paying higher hourly rates = disgruntled clients who push back and take work away from Biglaw. Taking work away from Biglaw = Biglaw charge clients. A brief conversation I recently had with an IP lawyer. She moved in-house to one of her best clients a couple of years ago.

For a time she said that things were going well. She recounted how she largely continued to function as she did when she was outside counsel. “Matters would come up and I’d shut them down,” she said. “I was constantly managing and analyzing for risk.

The CEO or another executive would have new business ideas or proposals and when they got to me I would start explaining how it was in violation of some statute or regulation. ” I asked why and how that went over. “It’s how law school teaches us to think right?

We look for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in things. I thought I was doing my. In this episode we’re joined by Alan Sugarman to talk about the landmark case that opened up access to law and ultimately resulted in more options for online legal research today. Alan Sugarman Alan Sugarman founded HyperLaw in 1991 to publish electronic law treatises linked to case law. A graduate electrical engineer from Tufts University with a law degree from the University of Chicago, Sugarman has been a litigator and corporate lawyer at law firms, corporate law departments and governmental agencies. In the 1990s, HyperLaw was a disrupter of the legal publishing industry.

HyperLaw successfully challenged Westlaw’s copyright claims to the text and citations of court opinions. You can follow Alan on. AbacusLaw has a wide range of features which ensures that you can do the vital work of running your firm within just one program. AbacusLaw is practice management software that lets you run your entire practice from the cloud.

Details Often, practice management systems excel at just a few things, such as timekeeping or matter management. AbacusLaw has a wide range of features which ensures that you can do the vital work of running your firm within just one program. And AbacusLaw goes far beyond mere matter management.

Generating and filling out forms can tedious. Worse still, it creates the possibility of mistakes during data entry. AbacusLaw frees you from tedium and the chance of error by auto-filling. Legal Toolkit: “Flirting with Revenue: How to Make Money as a Lawyer” This week on Legal Toolkit, host Jared Correia talked with Dorie Clark. Clark is an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out. They discuss what lawyers can do to bring in more revenue in a saturated and chaotic marketplace. You’ll learn about things like how to build your brand, using the gig economy to your advantage, and how to market yourself. ABA Legal Rebels: “Trailblazer with a Nonlawyer Past Brings the Present and Future to Law Firms” Host Jason Tashea talks to Adriana Linares about what it’s like to work in the legal.

In this week’s edition of How Lawyers Work, we hear from Shreya Biswas Ley. Shreya is the founder of LayRoots, LLC, located in Seattle Washington, and practices in the areas of asset protection, estate planning, business law, and intellectual property. You can follow Shreya on Twitter and LinkedIn. What’s your elevator pitch?

Lawyer-Humans® treat clients like people, not case files. We are dedicated to helping families and business owners create solid foundations for an awesome life.

What apps or tools are essential to your daily workflow? Slack, Google Suite, Clio, Acuity, and Zoom. Between these tools and apps, I can stay connected, delegate, work from anywhere, serve clients all over the world, and. Last night, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that alters New York’s auto insurance law, and it’s a win-win deal for everybody. While the law sounds uber-wonky, it’s quite important due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how auto insurance works by the general public. Most folks think that the insurance coverage they choose — let’s say a 250K limit — will protect them if they’re involved in a collision.

But it doesn’t. That insurance only covers other people. You, the injured driver, must pursue the guy that plowed into you at the intersection because he was checking his texts, through the limits of his insurance policy. And if his insurance policy is only, let’s say, the bare minimum 25K. New York’s largest medical malpractice insurance company is owned by its doctors. But pretty soon, it will be sold to Warren Buffet’s profit-hungry Berkshire Hathaway. And that’s gonna be a problem.

That company is Medical Liability Mutual Insurance Company, which insures over 14,000 New York doctors and is one of the largest such companies in the nation. And when its doctors are sued for negligence they hire some of the most competent trial lawyers in the city. Doctors, after all, are not shy about demanding the best. Many of the current gaggle of defense firms were created from the mid-90s dissolution of Bower and Gardner, one of the largest — if not literally the largest — medical malpractice defense. Sometimes a divorce is amicable. The divorce of Cellino and Barnes, however, is not one of those times. Back in May I wrote how this large personal injury firm — based in upstate New York but expanded not only to downstate but out to California as well — had collapsed.

Some told me privately that I was jumping the gun, and that collapse was too strong a word for this fight. I speculated back then that the two main reasons for a firm of this size to collapse were money and ego.

It appeared to me at the time, based on press accounts and court filings, that Stephen Barnes had already crossed the Rubicon and that there was no going back in his relationship with Ross Cellino, Jr. And now we see this from the. This is a repost from last year — the message hasn’t changed, but I did run two more turkey trots this year in the costume ———————— People in mixed families — some of whom voted for Clinton and some of whom voted for Trump — may be dreading Thanksgiving and seeing certain relatives. But it isn’t up to me to tell you how to grow up and handle awkward and painful situations.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, you are unlikely to learn how to do so here. This doesn’t mean you can’t be thankful. As you likely should be, if you are reading this post. The first time I did a Thanksgiving Day message, it was in the form of a Blawg Review, recounting the time Arlo Guthrie came to dinner at my.

Talley The news, if you care about the courts and the constitution, was pretty awful last week. The lede in this LA Times story was the the Senate Judiciary Committee rubber-stamping a grossly unqualified and incompetent judicial nominee. How do I know he was grossly unqualified and incompetent? Because he has just three years of actual practice and has never tried a case: Brett J. Talley, President Trump’s nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama, has never tried a case, was unanimously rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Assn.’s judicial rating committee, has practiced law for only three years and, as a blogger last year, displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial.

With hackers, malware, and identity theft (not to mention all the hot political takes on social media) the internet can be a scary place. And it can be scarier for some than for others. WIRED released its Guide to Digital Security last week, a list of ways to improve your online security depending on your levels of risk. Using your smartphone to shop? You'll need good password protection and be careful about giving too much information to too many retailers. A public figure with a public social media presence?

You might need some two-step verification systems. And for the rest of us that fall somewhere in between, here are five great tips for online security. 2M Stolen Passwords: How to Protect. In the wake of more and more mass shootings, the House of Representatives passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, a bill that would require each state to recognize concealed carry permits issued in other states. Proponents of the new law claim it would reduce confusion caused by conflicting state laws on gun ownership and ease travel for gun owners. Opponents say that states with strict gun control laws would be forced to follow much looser firearm restrictions passed by other states. So how would concealed carry reciprocity actually work?

Gun Control A concealed carry permit allows a gun owner to carry a firearm on or close to the body, but not in plain view (as opposed to open carry. Selling a house isn't just difficult emotionally. It can also be legally complicated, with putting the property on the market and negotiating and finalizing the sale. And in any complicated process, certain things can fall through the cracks. So here's a legal checklist for selling your home, so nothing gets left behind.

Clear Title This should've been done when you purchased the property, but you'll need to confirm to any potential buyers that you own clear title to the home, or disclose any liens on the property. This can involve hiring a title insurance company, especially if you've owned the property for a long time, or if you've taken out any mortgages on the property. As you've probably heard by now, the FCC this week voted to overturn Obama-era regulations, referred to as net neutrality, that prohibited internet service providers from either throttling content to certain customers or creating fast lanes for certain companies. There's little doubt that the repeal of net neutrality will alter the internet as we know it, but is it a done deal? If you're still seeing people on social media telling you to contact your congressperson, there might be a good reason for that. And there may be some lawsuits in the works as well.

Congressional Non-Consent One of the federal statutes that enabled Donald Trump to dismantle so many rules from the Barack Obama's. Litigation can be time-consuming and expensive. And when it comes to divorce, those are two things you probably want to avoid. So how can divorcing couples avoid the lengthy court calendar and extensive filing fees?

One option is divorce mediation, where both parties sit down with an independent mediator in a less formal setting, as opposed to appearing before a judge in a courtroom. But even if you determine that mediation is right for you (and your spouse agrees), how do you figure out which mediator is right for your divorce? Here are a few tips: Find Someone Who Knows Divorce Finding the right mediator will have a lot to do with how mediation works. First off, mediators generally specialize in a. Contrary to many reports in the media some Hollywood producer, director and Harvey Weinstein accusers may actually still have a case in civil court for sexual harassment or assault.

Yes, there is a two year statute of limitations on these cases here in California. If the accuser entered into a settlement agreement they must abide by the terms of that agreement or face the penalties contained within that contract. However, our law firm has won dismissals of statute of limitations claims at trial in civil cases like these. Our clients were told by the perpetrator and their attorneys they had no case and the statute of limitations had expired. Once their motion to dismiss was denied by the judge in. What is an experienced and proven Mission Viejo injury Attorney and why do you need us if you are injured in a car, truck, motorcycle or pedestrian accident in Mission Viejo, Irvine or anywhere in Orange County? The central issue here is insurance coverage – this is what will ultimately pay for your medical bills as well as lost income from missed work, other expenses as well as compensation for having to endure your injuries and the process of recovery.

Insurance adjusters are highly personable people who are quite friendly and seem very relaxed. They are anything but. I worked for major insurance carriers for the first 20 years of my career. I can tell you from first hand experience these. What should you do about recovering for motorcycle injuries in Mission Viejo or Orange County California? Have you been injured while riding a motorcycle or as a passenger?

Motorcyclists and their passengers are at a significant disadvantage when a car pulls out in front of them or changes lanes unexpectedly. The force of a moving vehicle compared to the human body (even a rider wearing kevlar and a helmet) will often result in serious and in some cases life threatening injuries for a biker and his or her passenger. Common injuries include severe fractures of limbs, shoulders and hips. Fractured ribs can puncture internal organs resulting in damage to the lungs or spleen. When the vertebrae in the. We are deeply saddened by the loss of a marine veteran in a fatal hit and run pedestrian accident in Orange recently.

There have simply been too many of these accidents and we should all work to increase our awareness and help to identify those responsible. The young man who lost his life leaves a daughter less than 2 years old.

The family has established a GO FUND ME page to help raise money for her care and support. This family has suffered what is known as a “wrongful death” in California. My name is Rivers Morrell and after more than 40 years of experience in these cases I can tell you it still shocks me when hit and run drivers leave injured victims and drive away.

The family will have two. It may surprise some of the stars who have come forward to accuse Hollywood’s directors, producers and other actors that the statute of limitations may not apply in some current sexual assault cases. While some attorneys may believe the statute is hard and fixed at two years, the Law Firm of Rivers J. Morrell has successfully defeated motions to dismiss based upon the statute.

We have gone on to obtain successful outcomes for our clients in these cases. If there has been a settlement agreement the case is concluded. However, if there was no settlement and something of value was given to make up for a sexual assault there may be a way to successfully pursue the case. For example, in one case the.

A major concern for senior citizens in our society is outliving their financial resources. Many seniors worry that they will become a financial burden to loved ones in their later years. This concern has caused spawned the life settlement industry. What Is A Life Settlement A life settlement is the sale of an unwanted life insurance policy. The seller of the policy will receive a lump sum amount of money and the buyer will become owner and beneficiary of the policy.

As the owner of the policy, the buyer becomes responsible for the payment of all future premiums. This arrangement provides seniors with a financial boost that is considerably more than the cash surrender value of the policy while also. Dog attacks can result in some very serious injuries.

In most cases, an animal attack requires legal action, just to recover the costs of medical treatment for one’s injuries. Keeping that in mind, there are a number of responses one should follow in the event that he or she has been bitten by a dog. Seek Medical Attention This should be your primary concern, following a dog attack, even if injuries aren’t readily apparent. According to Brauns Law, approximately 20 percent of the 4.5 million dog bites per year require medical treatment. A few of these injuries required reconstructive surgery and some of them even resulted in death, so it’s important to treat your injuries immediately. You should also find. Just like other business owners, you want to make sure that you are maximizing the profit of your rental property without having to deal with any damage to your property.

Because of your business deals with other people and their actions, it is important that you have a contract with your tenants. As a landlord, hiring a lawyer for advice on contracts is essential in ensuring that you achieve these goals.

Ensures Complete Contracts Lawyers have expertise in drafting complete contracts that contain a clear explanation of each party’s responsibilities. When reviewing contracts written by others, lawyers pay special attention to certain missing key terms and make suggestions about additional clauses. The short answer to this question is yes. The task of a personal injury attorney is to represent clients who have been harmed through another’s negligence or recklessness, and this is done according to civil laws. Where the laws are just, they reflect the divine law, albeit imperfectly, and are thus worthy of being upheld and put into practice. What Is Justice? Perhaps the real question here is whether it’s just for an injury victim to pursue a claim against another.

Because if it were not, then the attorney, by backing the victim’s claim, would be complicit in an act of injustice, which would be a sin. The Law of Moses defines justice as giving to another what is due to him: “You shall not be partial to.

A divorce can be a particularly stressful situation, regardless of whether it is agreed upon or not. It is an emotional rollercoaster full of ups, downs, twists, and loops.

You can plan for a general course of action, but you must always prepare for potential hiccups. It is not a quick or easy process. Here are five things to expect that apply to almost every type of divorce. An Attorney Many people make the mistake of trying to handle a divorce on their own.

Television is partly to blame. Reality, sitcom, and court shows often falsely portray divorces as simplistic. The truth is that different aspects and steps must be explicitly followed. These elements include a legal proceeding that will take place in a. Legal Help for Veterans is a law firm helping veterans get the benefits they deserve. Northville, MI (Law Firm Newswire) December 21, 2017 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released a list of hospital rankings for 2017.

The majority of the country’s worst-rated facilities from last year showed no improvement in the latest internal rankings. The agency said overall 64 percent of hospitals improved from their 2016 baseline scores. Fourteen medical facilities that scored one out of five stars in this year’s report earned the same low quality ratings in 2016. The Phoenix VA hospital was listed among the worst-ranked. The hospital was at the center of a 2014 nationwide wait times scandal in which.

Lipsky Lowe LLPAn Employment Law Firm New York, NY (Law Firm Newswire) December 20, 2017 - Doug Lipsky and Chris Lowe are proud to announce their new law firm specializing in employment law: Lipsky Lowe LLP, representing clients in New York and New Jersey. Doug and Chris were old friends before they co-founded this new firm, having worked together at the New York office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP, one of the nation’s top-rated labor and employment practices. They are excited about working together again and plan to leverage their combined knowledge, experience working at a major law firm, and skills to successfully represent individuals, classes, and businesses in all types of employment matters. San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) December 19, 2017 - McCormack & Erlich, LLP obtained a $1.95 million settlement in a worker misclassification lawsuit filed against Moet Hennessey USA, Strategic Experiential Group (SEG) and other related entities.

A California judge recently granted preliminary approval to the settlement, with only minor modifications. Plaintiffs Krystle Harrison, Napoleon Aparicio and Shyron McDougall sued their former employers in March 2016, alleging they misclassified workers as independent contractors and failed to pay them their rightful wages. The plaintiffs represented a class of models, logistics personnel and brand ambassadors who worked for the companies. Brooks Schuelke, Esq.Schuelke Law PLLC Austin, TX (Law Firm Newswire) December 19, 2017 – A man from Lubbock, Texas died, while maintaining equipment at his employer's company facility at the Lubbock Preston Smith Airport. The man, an employee of FedEx, was crushed inside of the airplane in which he was working. His two daughters filed a wrongful death lawsuit. FedEx was named as the sole defendant and court documents filed with the claim allege the company failed to provide a safe place to work, failed to follow safety procedures and failed to adequately train its workers regarding proper safety procedures.

The plaintiffs are asking the court of exemplary damages. According to the attorney for the. Civil Rights & Tech Attorney Omar W.

Rosales Austin, TX (Law Firm Newswire) December 18, 2017 - Austin-based civil rights and tech attorney Omar W. Rosales scored a second Appellate victory in an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Civil Rights case where U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel's decision to deny attorney's fees was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on December 14, 2017 in 17-50109, Deutsch v.

Becerra, Inc. Yeakel first denied ADA attorney’s fees and was reversed by the Fifth Circuit on August 29, 2016 in 16-50164, Deutsch v. Becerra, Inc. Yeakel then reduced the fees requested and said that any appellate costs were not legitimate expenses.

The Fifth Circuit. Two recent suits against McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr. Are challenging franchise provisions that limit or prohibit the ability of one franchisee to hire away employees from another franchisee. These provisions are fairly common, although after the suit McDonald’s decided to repeal its version. One issue that may be decided is whether these restraints are horizontal or vertical.

From an antitrust perspective, it seems more plausible that they are vertical. If vertical, then there is likely going to be a balance of anti-competitive effects and pro-competitive efficiencies. As to the latter, as the linked New York Times article notes, “[t]urnover rates are high in the industry, and maintaining a talented. The famous red eye of HAL 9000 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Philip K.

Dick’s post-apocalyptic novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (the basis for the movie Blade Runner) asked whether robots can think and feel. One of the hot topics du jour in antitrust is whether (software) robots can conspire and collude for purposes of the Sherman Act.

We’re in the very early days, so we must caveat every statement and preliminary conclusion, but just as robots can’t dream, there are reasons to believe that, at least in the short- to intermediate-term, they also cannot collude to violate the antitrust laws. (A couple years ago I did a related post on this issue: Can Computers Conspire to Fix. With fewer people in the office over the holidays, it can be hard to keep work moving efficiently. Today, there’s a host of mobility tools to alleviate the pressure when you need to get the same amount of work done with half the staff. Workflow apps for billing, expense tracking and dictation let busy lawyers remain productive while on the move — and they give firms the power to optimize all available support to meet tight deadlines, no matter where people are working.

Don’t Stress: Work Anywhere, Anytime Efficiency is especially key at this time of year. Keep your smartphone or tablet handy and keep your work on track. Here are tips. Make the most of downtime to get work done.

You can work on the bus. With fewer people in the office over the holidays, it can be hard to keep work moving efficiently. Today, there’s a host of mobility tools to alleviate the pressure when you need to get the same amount of work done with half the staff. Workflow apps for billing, expense tracking and dictation let busy lawyers remain productive while on the move — and they give firms the power to optimize all available support to meet tight deadlines, no matter where people are working. Don’t Stress: Work Anywhere, Anytime Efficiency is especially key at this time of year. Keep your smartphone or tablet handy and keep your work on track. Here are tips.

Make the most of downtime to get work done. You can work on the bus. After years of working with lawyers, I have concluded that the No. 1 most-despised marketing activity is attending a networking event. The list of things I’ve been told that lawyers would rather do than work a room is long and painful — have a root canal, get shot in the foot, spend 100 hours teaching you get the picture. However, most lawyers have to attend events.

Clients have parties, law firms host functions, organizations hold galas and associations offer networking meetings. If you’re someone who detests going to these, particularly when you don’t know anyone, I am here to tell you they will be a lot less painful if you are prepared. Even if you never come to enjoy networking functions. After years of working with lawyers, I have concluded that the No. 1 most-despised marketing activity is attending a networking event. The list of things I’ve been told that lawyers would rather do than work a room is long and painful — have a root canal, get shot in the foot, spend 100 hours teaching you get the picture. However, most lawyers have to attend events.

Clients have parties, law firms host functions, organizations hold galas and associations offer networking meetings. If you’re someone who detests going to these, particularly when you don’t know anyone, I am here to tell you they will be a lot less painful if you are prepared.

Even if you never come to enjoy networking functions.

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