John Oliver’s ability to bring a lighter touch to serious topics has made his take-downs must see TV. The Last Week Tonight host can provide both laughter and awareness on important social and political issues. And apparently he can also provide the basis for legal judgments, after the Ninth Circuit cited a recent rant in a class action lawsuit. So is the weekly show host on his way to becoming Judge John Oliver?...
It’s only a few days before the legendary Academy Awards and one major Oscar player is finding themselves in the midst of a lawsuit from a soldier who claims the film amounts to a theft of his life story. The movie “Hurt Locker” is a major contender for Best Picture. But some are now alleging that the movie, which claims to be based on fictional characters, is actually based on a real life man....
A new deal has set members of the “West Memphis Three” free. The three men featured in Paradise Lost film Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. were infamously convicted of the 1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys. The deal, brokered by their attorneys, set them free on Friday, Reuters reports. All day, news outlets have been feverishly reporting the West Memphis Three" release. The murder gained the attention of the media and of the public when it was publicized that the murders were part of a satanic ritual....
Way back in September in 2015, John Oliver dedicated a segment of his “Last Week Tonight” show to the nation’s underfunded and understaffed public defender system. And like so many of Oliver’s past topics, this one has also resulted in litigation. The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at St. Louis, and law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Missouri over its public defender system....
The internet is abuzz with talk of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger–and with good reason. AT&T has agreed to purchase the German carrier’s U.S. operations for $39 billion. If approved, AT&T would control 42% of the U.S. cellular market, followed by Verizon at 31%. The remaining portions of the market are controlled by dozens of small carriers. What exactly does this impending AT&T-Verizon duopoly mean for consumers? To start, the AT&T/T-Mobile merger is not going to remain as is, without any government oversight....
If your boss tells you that you can take a 10-minute break, but you have to be ready to jump back into action the whole time, that hardly feels like a break, right? That’s what some residential and commercial security guards argued when they sued their employers over “on-call” and “on-duty” rest periods. After winning $90 million judgment, the award was overturned on appeal, and the guards took their case to the California Supreme Court....
DUI stops are stressful, whether or not you’ve been drinking. Adding to the stress involved, you may be called upon to take a test… You may be wondering: Can I decline a field sobriety test? What happens if I do? Can I get arrested anyway? What if I want to challenge the tests in court? We would never encourage anyone to drive after they’ve been drinking, and we can’t give you specific legal advice, but what we can do is answer your most common questions about DUIs and field sobriety tests....
New data on the risks of anemia drugs is being reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the studies show that patients with certain types of cancer face greater danger of tumor growth and death when taking the anemia drugs – called erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (or ESAs) and marketed under the brand names Aranesp, Epogen, and Procrit. An FDA Press Release states that “taken together, all eight studies show more rapid tumor growth or shortened survival when patients with breast, non-small cell lung, head and neck, lymphoid or cervical cancers received ESAs compared to patients who did not receive this treatment....
Do criminal defendants really have the presumption of innocence in the United States? Defense attorney Peter Quijano, thinks so. His client, former Gitmo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was found not guilty Wednesday on 224 murder charges relating to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya, Tanzania.. He was convicted of one count of conspiracy. Quijano called the verdict “a reaffirmation that this nation’s judicial system is the greatest ever devised … It is truly a system of laws and not men,” he said....
Johnson & Johnson allegedly used undercover shoppers in a “phantom recall” of Motrin tablets. After last April’s recall of children’s Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl, facts are emerging that show that Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare attempted to mislead federal regulators in 2008. According to documents obtained by Bloomberg, Johnson & Johnson sent “secret shoppers” to stores as part of an unpublicized recall of Motrin tablets. McNeil told the FDA that it had hired secret shoppers to buy samples from thousands of stores....
Philadelphia Catholic Priest, Monsignor William Lynn, was sentenced to three to six years in jail for covering up sex abuse claims at the Philadelphia Archdiocese. Lynn is the first priest to be imprisoned for the cover-up of sex abuse, as opposed to the sex abuse itself. For 12 years, from 1992 to 2004, Lynn oversaw priest assignments and handled child sex abuse complaints at the Philadelphia Archdiocese. He did an awful job and allowed individuals like defrocked priest Edward Avery to sexually assault an altar boy in 1999, reports The Associated Press....
Finding that a San Diego teacher had no right to hang 7-foot-long religious banners in his classroom, the 9th Circuit has reiterated that a public teacher’s free speech rights essentially cease to exist while on school property and in the presence of students. Emphasizing the words “God” and “creator” as found in quotes throughout American history, high school math instructor Bradley Johnson was ordered to remove the large banners, which were deemed to promote a particular viewpoint and potentially make students feel uncomfortable....
A Netflix law just hit the books. As of July 1 in Tennessee, Netflix password sharing can net you a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a $2,500 fine and/or a year behind bars. And for repeat offenders? Well, they can look forward to felony charges and harsher punishments. Tennessee residents, you have none other than the recording industry to thank for these changes. Tennessee’s new law doesn’t just apply to Netflix password sharing, but instead makes it a crime to share passwords for subscription-based streaming sites, such as a Netflix, Hulu and Rhapsody, reports the Los Angeles Times....
In the wake of a natural disaster, or large protest or assembly gone wrong, looters and other opportunistic thieves can make matters much worse. Looting is stealing, which is never legal (though in matters of life or death, it might be excusable). Generally, the penalties for looting in any given state will be the same or similar to the penalties for stealing. The various details of how the theft or looting occurs will matter....
Technology has not quite conquered death yet. But we can resurrect great artists who are gone using holographic projections. In other words, the dead can put on a show. In 2012, when Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg performed at the Coachella music festival with the deceased Tupac Shakur, the notion of touring ghosts was a shocking novelty. This year, plans were announced for the deceased singer Selena to tour using technology, raising a slew of legal questions about these illusions....
Man, kids will get high on anything. Take the new “bath salts” drug. MDVP, the bath salts drug, can currently be found from a number of online retainers, as well as at malls, gas stations, head shops and bodegas. But perhaps not for long. Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General, issued an emergency rule that now makes the sale, distribution or possession of methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDVP), found in the bath salts drug, a felony offense....
Five years after being featured on Dateline’s To Catch a Predator, Joseph Roisman of Watsonville, California is finally free. Charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor, the former member of the military was part of an online sting operation conducted by the television show and its watchdog partner, Perverted Justice. In tossing the charges mid-trial on Tuesday, the judge implied that both Dateline and Perverted Justice lack credibility and entrapped Roisman....
Tiger Woods has unfortunately found himself in the spotlight again due to poor choices behind the wheel. Tiger was arrested for allegedly being under the influence of prescription drugs while sleeping behind the wheel. When the officer woke Tiger up, who was behind the wheel of his Mercedes, he was stopped in the right lane, with his car running, and had flat tires and other damages. The officer alleges that Tiger did not know where he was, and then failed to perform a series of field sobriety tests....
Bags of frozen chicken nuggets are being recalled by Tyson after Sam’s Club customers found small plastic shards mixed in with the nuggets. The 5-pound bags of Tyson frozen chicken nuggets were sold at Sam’s Club stores nationwide, but the affected nuggets were only produced on two days at one of Tyson’s 40 chicken-production facilities, reports CNN Money. As 75,320 pounds of nuggets are being recalled, what can Tyson’s consumers do to avoid chomping down on plastic?...
The Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me, has certainly garnered quite a bit of media attention since its release in June 2017. However, in addition to the criticism on social media that the film misrepresents Tupac’s life, a lawsuit has been filed claiming the film violates copyright law. The copyright infringement case was filed by Kevin Powell, a former writer for VIBE magazine, who wrote three of the most widely read biographical articles on Tupac in 1994, 1995, and 1996....
