You’re driving down the street when you’re pulled over by a cop. You didn’t do anything wrong, so what could he want? Do you answer his questions and do as he says? You may be surprised, but Jay-Z is the one to ask. He “ain’t pass the bar but [he] knows a little bit.” About the Fourth Amendment, that is. Let’s cue up Jay-Z’s 2004 hit, 99 Problems. You’ll see what we’re talking about....
As if Johnson & Johnson did not have enough problems stemming from the recall of its products manufactured by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, they are now facing a lawsuit over the refunds they have offered to placate consumers. The refunds offered are not adequate, according to a suit filed last month in federal court in Philadelphia by three plaintiffs. The suit is seeking class action status to include anyone who purchased J&J children’s medicines from at least December 2008, to the present....
Rapper and producer Jermaine Dupri’s Lamborghini is causing the star a whole lot of trouble. Premier Financial Services, the company that loaned him the money to purchase the exotic ride, has sued Dupri. The car was worth around $330,000 when it was purchased new in 2006. Dupri originally used a finance plan but stopped making payments in 2009. Dupri has been in the public spotlight for both his personal and private life....
For the first time in open court, a federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s phone metadata program, which collects information on almost all calls in the nation, is likely unconstitutional. In a suit filed by legal activist Larry Klayman, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon granted a motion by Klayman to put the phone surveillance program on hold while the court determines whether or not it violates Klayman’s (and other Americans’) constitutional rights, reports Politico....
Welcome to FindLaw’s DUI Law series. If you have been charged with a DUI, know someone who has, or just want to know about the law and how to protect your rights during a DUI stop, please come back each week for more information. Hopefully you’ll never get that call from jail, with a friend or family member on the other end saying they’ve been arrested for DUI and asking you for help getting them out....
A serial prankster was arrested after allegedly rushing Brad Pitt at his partner’s “Maleficent” premiere in Hollywood on Wednesday. Vitalii Sediuk, a veteran annoyance to celebrities, was booked by the Los Angeles Police Department on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for apparently making “contact” with Pitt on the runway, reports the Los Angeles Times. What’s the deal with this prankster? At the most basic level, criminal battery does not require that the victim be hurt, only that the suspect used willful and unlawful force or violence on another person....
A new study has ranked the vulnerability of 25 major U.S. companies – including banks, retailers, and phone companies – to customer identity theft incidents, based on complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology paper “Measuring Identity Theft at Top Banks (Version 1.0)”, which author Chris Hoofnagle calls a “first attempt to meaningfully compare institutions on their performance in avoiding identity theft,” measured incidents reported by to the FTC by consumers over three randomly-chosen months in 2006 (a total of 88,560 complaints)....
Ever since a little payphone case from 1967, the Supreme Court has been limiting the kind of information law enforcement can get from phones without a warrant. Ever since, courts have struggled to keep up with the changing technology, both in the form of information available from phones, who gathers and shares that information, and the way we use our phones. Today, the Supreme Court extended the privacy protections for cell phone users, ruling that police must obtain a warrant to get a phone’s location information from cell towers....
A Massachusetts judge found 18-year-old Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of her friend, Conrad Roy III. Roy committed suicide in July 14, in part, as the court ruled, because of Carter’s text messages encouraging him to kill himself. The verdict stunned some legal experts and the case raised some thorny issues regarding criminal liability for suicide, free speech, and technology. Text Exchange Carter was not physically present when Roy attached a water pump to his truck that would emit carbon monoxide into the cab....
Summer is in full swing and extreme heat warnings are happening around the country. Hot weather means it’s time to hang outside. But being out all day in the sun can be trouble if you’re not careful. Heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and heat cramps are all common during hot weather and they can be dangerous. Being outside without a plan on how to cool off can be a recipe for disaster....
There’s your classic DUI, where someone is pulled over for swerving or at a checkpoint, smells like alcohol, slurs his speech, fails some roadside tests, and gets arrested. These are, sadly, almost too common to count. But then there are your more adventurous drunk driving affairs, involving pet squirrels and attempts to fake black ice on the road. Here are five of our favorite strange DUI stories, from the FindLaw archives....
Only one letter removed from the innocuous “texting” everyone is familiar with, the word “sexting” has been popping up in various news stories lately. In its various forms, sexting is the transmission of suggestive material via text messages. Of course, there are wide degrees of suggestive material, but today six Pennsylvania teens were charged with child pornography after three girls sent nude or semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves to three male classmates....
There may come a point in your life during which you’re walking down the street only to witness a crime. You may or may not consider stepping in and conducting a citizen’s arrest. It’s okay if you choose not to–it is, after all, a risky move. But what if you want to initiate a citizen’s arrest? In which situations is it allowed? The important thing to remember about a citizen’s arrest is that, though you are not law enforcement nor are you bound by strict Constitutional limitations, you may not step in whenever you so desire....
It’s not fair to punish someone for breaking a rule that they don’t understand. It’s just plain wacko to kill a dog for chewing on a bible. But that didn’t stop Miriam Smith, 65, a Spartanburg, South Carolina woman from allegedly hanging her nephew’s pit bull with an electrical cord and then burning its body. Miriam Smith told police that the dog, named Diamond, was possessed by the devil and the “Devil Dog” would have harmed neighborhood children, said the incident report from the county’s Environmental Enforcement Department, CBS News reports....
A sixth infant death has been linked to the recalled “Nap Nanny” baby recliners, leading to renewed calls for parents to stop using the product. ABC News reports that an 8-month old girl from New Jersey suffocated while belted in to the Nap Nanny reclining seat. The infant became trapped between the recliner and a crib bumper. Suffocation, Injury Risks The Nap Nanny, made by a now-defunct company called Baby Matters, were recalled in 2010 after one infant died from suffocation, similar to the most recent case, and 22 others were injured....
This week’s episode of the “The Good Wife” picked up where last week’s shocker of Will Gardner’s death left off. With the departure of a main character to deal with, “The Last Call” wasn’t as chock-full of legal issues as other episodes this season. But here are a few legal notes we jotted down: Guilt, grief, and off-the-books investigative work filled this episode. Alicia, who received a voicemail from Will minutes before the shooting, spends the entire episode trying to figure out if he was calling because he was mad at her (he wasn’t)....
Casey Anthony had appealed the four misdemeanor charges she was convicted of back in 2011 for lying to law enforcement. Today, she was able to get two of the four convictions set aside. Anthony was at the center of a nationwide media frenzy in 2011 when she was tried for the murder of her daughter Caylee. While her lawyer was subject to great criticism, he was able get Anthony acquitted of the most serious charges including murder....
Perhaps all that talk about winning jinxed him. The Charlie Sheen show continued last night, after Sheen’s twin sons were removed by the court from his home Tuesday night. Soon to be ex-wife Brooke Mueller filed a temporary restraining order, making a number of colorful allegations against in the Charlie Sheen restraining order, among them: The story feels more like a television show than reality, but there are important legal issues at play here....
The trial of Colorado theater shooter James Holmes begins today and is expected to focus more on punishment than on guilt. Holmes killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater over three years ago, but he has pleaded not guilty, contending he was legally insane at the time of the shooting. This case bears some similar elements to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial for the Boston Marathon bombing: little question of guilt, but large arguments about the proper punishment....
Daryl Hannah, arrested in front of the White House, added another notch to her environmental belt on Tuesday afternoon. Along with a group of 100 others, the Splash and Wall Street actress was participating in a sit-in protesting the Keystone oil pipeline. If approved, the pipeline will run from Alberta, Canada through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to refineries located in Texas. The protesters want to end the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, and urged the president to instead use the funds for clean energy....
