Lawsuit advance are an attractive option for those plaintiffs who can’t wait for a settlement or jury award. Money can be used to pay medical bills, lawyer fees, and generally keep the household afloat. Unfortunately, such loans are often too good to be true. Ask Joseph Gill, who currently owes $116,000 on a $4,000 lawsuit advance. One loan cost him 58% in annual interest, while the other came in at 70%....
An upstate New York family will receive $1 million in damages for a school district’s deliberate indifference to the bullying and racial harassment of their son. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury award, reduced from $1.25 million, on Monday. Anthony Zeno began attending high school in Pine Plains, New York, midway through the 2004-05 school year. Almost immediately, his parents say the multi-racial child was subjected to “relentless” racial epithets and harassment, reports the Daily Freeman....
Legalizing it is no simple task. Just ask Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and other states that have legalized recreational marijuana: from licensing to labeling and from distribution to DUI tests, the regulation of legalized marijuana is a massive task. Still, those states – and more every year – have decided that the financial benefits from taxation and decriminalization are worth the regulatory headache during transition. California was one of those states, voting to legalize marijuana last year....
There was almost a mistrial over mints in the Michael Crawford trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Crawford is the estranged brother of Linda Thompson, mayor of Harrisburg. He is standing on trial for fraud. Danny Fiber, a police witness and lead investigator in the case, had been called to testify. When the judge and the two attorneys were in a private sidebar going over some evidentiary issues, Fiber pulled out a can of Altoids, reports the Sentinel Reporter....
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has released its 2007 Performance and Accountability Report: Saving Lives and Keeping Families Safe, summarizing the agency’s steps to improve consumer product safety in 2007. CPSC reports that in recent years, an average of about 28,200 deaths and 33.6 million injuries have been related to (not necessarily caused by) products under CPSC jurisdiction. These injuries, deaths and related property damage cost the American public over $800 billion annually....
If you judged by television shows or movies, you might get the idea that crime is the major preoccupation of American life. But just how often do crimes occur and which ones occur most commonly? It is actually a bit difficult to determine because this is a big country with many jurisdictions and compiling the data is not easy. Still, the Federal Bureau of Investigations does just this every year, issuing a report about the previous year’s criminal activity around the country based on reports from law enforcement authorities....
According to investigative journalists at ABC 11 in Durham, North Carolina, a popular powder makeup marketed to teens may contain asbestos and other harmful ingredients. The team sent “Just Shine Shimmer Powder,” sold at Justice Stores, to the Scientific Analytical Institute in Greensboro, where samples of the makeup tested positive for four heavy metals, including asbestos. “I would treat it like a deadly poison, because it is,” Sean Fitzgerald, the Director of Research and Analytical Services told the station....
Despite being acquitted of rape, ex-NYPD officer Kenneth Moreno was sentenced to a year in jail on an official misconduct charge. Moreno was acquitted of the East Village rape in May. Moreno and another officer, Franklin Mata, were accused of rape by a fashion executive who said the police officers helped her to her apartment when she was intoxicated then raped her while she was semi-conscious, Reuters reports. The two officers were fired from their positions on the force as a result of their convictions....
An ongoing tobacco industry case that had fallen out of the headlines has been making news recently. The Robbins v. RJ Reynolds case may finally get the retrial Reynolds was asking for back in 2014, when the jury awarded over $23 billion to the widow of a deceased smoker and cancer victim. The Florida court of appeals found that the plaintiff’s attorney, in the 2014 trial, crossed the line when he attacked Reynolds in the courtroom by attacking the tobacco industry’s character....
News broke Tuesday morning that J&J’s Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump has security vulnerabilities that a hacker could exploit. There are currently no reported cases where a hacker has maliciously taken control over a person’s insulin pump, however the manufacturer wanted users to be aware of the risk. Granted, the likelihood that a hacker would want to take control over a person’s insulin pump is extraordinarily low, but it is still not beyond belief that some malicious person would attempt to do so....
Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer convicted for the shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland, has been sentenced to two years in state prison by Judge Robert Perry. Mehserle was convicted for involuntary manslaughter by a jury in Los Angeles. Reaction in the city of Oakland is expected to be quick and strong. Mehserle, who is white, went on trial last June for the shooting death of Oscar Grant, an African American, on a Oakland BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) platform on Jan....
Mattel Inc. and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) have announced a recall of more than 9 million toys and play sets in the U.S., because of injury and health risks posed by small magnets and lead paint. Consumers should immediately take any recalled toys away from children and contact Mattel to receive a voucher for a replacement toy. The recall is the second initiated by Mattel in the last two weeks, and both recalls involve toys that were manufactured in China (information on August 2 recall)....
It sounds pretty logical, right? With so many people using ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, fewer folks would be driving drunk. Only that doesn’t seem to be the case. A new study shows that Uber’s arrival has had no impact on drunk driving fatalities, undercutting the app’s claims to the contrary. So why has the uber-popular ride-sharing app failed to make a dent in drunk driving? Uber has championed its role as an alternative to drunk driving and its impact on DUIs....
The case of a tattletale parrot may give police and prosecutors some real leads in a real story of alleged elder abuse in South Carolina. Anne Copeland, 98, died on December 7. She was the alleged victim of the abuse of her daughter, 60-year-old Gloria Park Clark. One clue was the unsettling call of the parrot. Policed where called to Copeland’s home by EMT workers, reports the Post and Courier. The bed police found Copeland in was soiled and there were animal droppings throughout the house....
Okay, sorry Patrick Schwarzenegger, er, Shriver. It takes more than just a Twitter post to change your name. Patrick Schwarzenegger, 17, son of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, has advised the Twitter world he wants henceforth to be known as Patrick Shriver, reports MSNBC. Seventeen-year-old Patrick Schwarzenegger tweeted Tuesday, “some days you feel like s***, some days you want to quit and just be normal for a bit, yet i love my family till death do us apart,” reports Entertainment Weekly....
President Bush has vetoed a federal bill that would have lessened federal funding restrictions for embryonic stem cell research. According to the New York Times, Bush also “issued an executive order intended to encourage scientific advances in regenerative medicine, a move that he said would respect ’the high aims of science’ without encouraging the deliberate destruction of human life.” Two-thirds majority votes are required in both the Senate and the House in order for Congress to override the President’s veto, and supporters of the bill concede that those votes would fall short....
If you haven’t heard about the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding same-sex marriage in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, you’ve probably been living under a rock or have never used Facebook before. FYI: The Supreme Court ruled that marriage is a fundamental right and same-sex couples must be allowed to marry. While you may have heard all about the decision by now, here is a more in-depth look into the case, the ruling, and the dissents....
The zigs and the zags, the pleats, and the stripes have all been cleared for copyright protection when it comes to cheerleading uniforms. The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands that the separable features of a cheerleading uniform could confer copyright protection to the specific design of a cheerleader uniform. However, significantly, the court ruled that the features only need to satisfy a deceptively simple two part test....
The federal government is continuing its crackdown against the so-called “cramming” of unauthorized charges on consumers’ cellphone bills with a lawsuit against wireless carrier Sprint. The lawsuit was filed Friday by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reports CNET. In the complaint, the Bureau alleges that Sprint allowed third parties to make unauthorized charges on Sprint customers’ cellphone bills then failed to properly respond to customer disputes or warnings about the practice from consumer groups and government agencies....
For people who cannot have their own children or are having difficulties doing so, surrogacy is an option. Many celebrities, including Nicole Kidman, Jimmy Fallon, and Robert DeNiro have employed surrogate mothers to carry and bear their children and surrogacy is increasingly gaining acceptance as a method of addressing infertility and obstacles to conception. But finding, choosing, and using a surrogate mother can be complicated. Given the very emotional nature of this kind of deal, it’s important that the contract be drafted by an expert who understands what is at stake and can protect the parties’ interests....
