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Did you get Target’s email about free credit reports? If so, what should you do next? In a push to regain the trust of its customers after a massive data breach, Target is offering impacted customers daily credit monitoring, identity theft insurance and access to a Fraud Resolution Agent. Millions of Americans received Target’s free credit monitoring offer email recently, but considering all the risks associated with scam emails, they may be unsure about how to react, Credit....

As an artist or inventor, it’s important to be able to protect your work. And if you feel that someone has stolen your work, you want the credit and your share of the profits. That’s why songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler filed a lawsuit against Taylor Swift. They claimed that some lyrics in her song “Shake It Off” were the result of copyright infringement. But, a California federal judge didn’t agree with them and dismissed their copyright lawsuit against Swift....

A Massachusetts teenager has been convicted of motor-vehicle homicide in the state’s first-ever trial for texting while driving. Aaron Deveau, 18, of Haverhill, Mass., denied he was sending or receiving text messages in the moments before a fatal crash in 2011, CNN reports. But prosecutors argued Deveau was indeed texting when his car veered across the center line and hit an oncoming car. That car’s driver was placed on life support and later died; a passenger was seriously hurt....

On Friday, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Lincoln Fabrics Ltd., a Canadian weaver of ballistic fabrics and its American subsidiary. The companies have agreed to pay the United States $4 million to settle charges brought by the DOJ under the False Claims act for their role in supplying defective material to makers of bullet proof vests, bought by the federal government and by state, local and/or tribal law enforcement....

A federal court judge ruled on Friday that comedian Tracy Morgan can move forward with a lawsuit against retailer Walmart for injuries Morgan suffered in a fatal crash earlier this year. The ruling came after Kevin Roper – the driver of the Walmart truck that slammed into Morgan’s tour bus on the New Jersey turnpike – had filed a motion asking the court to delay Morgan’s lawsuit, reports the Associated Press....

A New York wife accused of killing her husband with her SUV is now in custody on murder charges. The Queens woman allegedly sped around two boroughs of New York City with her husband clinging to the hood of the SUV before she crashed into another SUV and killed the man Sunday morning. Police sources told the New York Post that the husband, 34-year-old Soria Espinosa, was screaming, “Stop the car!...

A gunman opened fire at Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad, California today, October 8. Fortunately, no one was killed when a man started shooting into a crowd of children outside the school. Witnesses say the gunman was tackled by bystanders and was taken into custody by police. The shooter has been described as an older man with gray hair, dressed in black. At time of writing, he has not yet been identified....

Rapper 50 Cent has been sued over an alleged assault at his Connecticut mansion in 2009. No, the rapper isn’t being sued because he assaulted anybody. He is named in the suit because he employed a known criminal, Dwayne McKenzie. The rapper was not present at the time of the assault, according to TMZ. The woman who filed the suit, Vasti Ortiz, says she was invited to the rapper’s home one evening in August....

Pierce Marshall and Anna Nicole Smith. Although both individuals have been deceased for at least a couple of years, their legal battle is alive and well. The 14-month marriage between elderly Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II and the former topless dancer ended with Marshall’s death at the age of eighty nine. His will left all of his money to his now deceased son Pierce Marshall. Since J. Howard Marshall’s death, Smith has been seeking her promised share of his estate....

The kind of websites a person visits can tell you a lot about them. For instance, if someone is visiting ISIL message boards or googling bomb recipes, that might indicate future criminal behavior. And of course federal law enforcement would like as much access as possible to information that might help them prevent or solve crimes. So does that mean they can access your internet browsing history? Currently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation needs a warrant to view your web activity, but the agency is pushing for an amendment that would allow it to access your internet browsing history without a warrant in terrorism and spy cases....

If a tree fell in a forest and no one heard it, did it happen? If you drove while intoxicated, but no one saw you, did you break the law? It was a long day at work. You stopped by a bar, had a few drinks, and got buzzed. During your drive home, you decide you’re a little too tipsy, and pulled over and sleep it off in your car. Next thing you know, an officer is knocking on your door, and you’re getting arrested for driving under the influence....

A federal judge dismissed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil insider trading charges against billionaire Mark Cuban today. Chief Judge Sidney A Fitzwater of the U.S. District Court in Dallas wrote that the S.E.C. failed to plead that Cuban had “a duty to refrain from trading on information about the impending…offering” in search engine operator Mamma.com. Since the securites law at issue did not impose a restriction upon Cuban prohibiting his “trad[ing] on or otherwise us[ing] the information for personal benefit” Judge Fitzwater concluded that Cuban “cannot be held liable under the misappropriation theory of insider trading liability....

Sometimes our dreams develop based on strange or unexpected encounters – a college student attends jury duty and is inspired to go to law school, say, or a teen is arrested and swears to join the police force someday. But will that youthful conviction bar you from making good on the dream of becoming a police officer? The unfortunately unsatisfying answer is maybe. It depends. Let’s take a look at what crimes disqualify a convicted criminal from becoming a cop....

Electronic Arts used the images of several ex-NCAA athletes without their permission in its video games, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. EA’s use of the likenesses of former college players in its video games did not deserve First Amendment protection, the court held in a 2-1 ruling (attached below). Ex-UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon and former Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller were among the group of ex-players who filled suit over the use of their likenesses in the NCAA football and basketball games....

Celebrity chef Mindy Segal is joining the canna-biz club. The award-winning pastry chef is looking for a new challenge to master and a new frontier to blaze a trail on, and she believes she has found these in marijuana baked goods, according to the Associated Press. Banking and getting baked seem like a good combination to other foodies, too. The Huffington Post got a big scoop earlier this year when it wrote about ice cream giants Ben and Jerry contemplating creating cannabis ice creams....

A Flavor Flav lawsuit has put the former Public Enemy rapper back under the heat lamp. Flavor Flav’s Fried Chicken restaurant closed after three months amid allegations employees’ paychecks were bouncing, reports Allhiphop.com. Now Flavor Flav and partner Nicolo Cimino might have to play a game of chicken over the check, reports The Wall Street Journal. The check from Hawkeye Foodservice Distribution, Inc., for all the raw chicken, that is....

Criminal defense lawyers vary widely in quality and price. You can pay a lot for an attorney’s fancy office but that is no indication of skill in court. Or – if you are indigent – you could end up with a truly top notch attorney with lots of experience, appointed by the state, whose fees you do not pay. Apart from how much a lawyer charges, there are many other factors that influence what you’ll pay for a criminal defense attorney....

Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis was sentenced to 301 days already served and a year of probation for filing false income tax returns. The Los Angeles Times reports that a judge accepted a plea deal between the soft porn mogul and prosecutors, who struck the agreement after learning on the eve of trial that a key witness had withheld information from them. Francis is also required Francis to pay $250,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service under the plea deal....

In a decision issued Wednesday, a federal judge upheld Louisiana’s ban on gay marriage. This ruling in Robicheaux v. Caldwell was based on U.S. District Court Judge Martin L. C. Feldman’s evaluation that Louisiana’s law was supported by rational basis. The decision is the first in more than a year to disrupt a long chain of federal courts which have ruled against state gay marriage bans. According to The Associated Press, more than 20 courts have ruled in favor of gay marriage since the U....

It’s not easy to be a lady, especially when your pelvic organs are shifting or when sudden movement makes you pee unexpectedly. But these things happen after childbirth, hysterectomies, and menopause, and are quite common. This week the attorneys general in California and Washington sued Johnson and Johnson for misrepresenting the dangers of these pelvic mesh devices. While the company dismissed the lawsuits as unjustified and expressed concern that women would stop seeking treatment based on the claims made by the states, the dangers do seem very real by all other accounts....