Legal Current Events

Legal Researchers Rejoice! Google Scholar Provides Access to U.S. Case Law

by Sean McGilvray November 17, 2009 Legal

It’s official: All you budding legal scholars out there have a powerful new research tool, and it comes from Google. In a move that probably takes it off the Christmas card mailing list of Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw, Google has given its research portal Google Scholar the capability to search through American case law. The official [...]

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Glenn Beck, Parody, and Trademark

by Sean McGilvray September 16, 2009 Legal

When did you stop beating your wife? When will conservative media pundit Glenn Beck deny that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? There is no right answer to either question, but a satirical website dedicated to taking the Fox News commentator down a peg or two now finds itself on the wrong [...]

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Michael Jackson and the Impending Legal Mess!

by Louis Grube July 2, 2009 Legal Current Events

While the world reacts to the death of arguably the most well known, loved, and in some cases hated artist of our time, each person I speak with is dealing differently. The night club across from my office jammed Jackson’s tunes outside all day after the story broke.

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City of Bozeman, MT Stops Requiring Applicants’ to Hand Over Social Media Names and Passwords

by Laura Bergus June 21, 2009 Legal

The City of Bozeman, Montana, took some well-deserved heat mid-June for asking that applicants to some city positions disclose usernames and passwords of their social media accounts. At noon on Friday, June 19, the City of Bozeman stopped asking for usernames and passwords [pdf] while the city manager and commission look into that policy and [...]

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Unconsitutional Checkpoints? — DC’s Neighborhood Safety Zone Program

by Mr. X May 13, 2009 Legal Current Events

The Neighborhood Safety Zone checkpoint program the DC Police set up twice last summer is challenged on appeal.

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PA Votes Tomorrow to Eliminate All Funding for Civil Legal Services

by Joshua Auriemma May 5, 2009 Legal

A brief, but very important update because I’m smack in the middle of finals. LG contributor Kim received the following email from the PA Bar Association a few minutes ago, which I thought would be of interest to LG readers: The Pennsylvania Senate introduced SB 850 as their proposed 2009-2010 state budget on Friday, May [...]

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Family Guy Wins Court Battle Citing Fair Use

by Joshua Auriemma March 16, 2009 Legal

In another victory for fair use, Judge Deborah Batts ruled today that the adaptation of the song “When You Wish Upon A Star” was protected by Section 107 of The Copyright Act, otherwise known as the fair use exception. I’m always interested to see these parody cases play out because parody is so ingrained in [...]

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Researchers Spam You to Learn About Spam

by Joshua Auriemma November 10, 2008 Legal Current Events

TechRadar reports on some questionable research regarding the spam filling up our inboxes.  It appears that the researchers thought that the best way to study spam was to take over a bot network and spam our inboxes. From the article: Using ‘proxy bots’ the team of researchers managed to control 75,869 hijacked machines to conduct [...]

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Asbestos Award? Sure, But Let Us Dissect You

by Joshua Auriemma November 7, 2008 Legal

Law.com reports that a man diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer almost always caused by exposure to asbestos, was ordered to consent to an autopsy as a condition of receiving a settlement. From what I can gather, the man argues that the Washington Superior Court exception to the “autopsy requisite rule” for “religious or [...]

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