Late Thursday night, the Patriot Act was minutes away from expiring. Although disagreements in Congress led to some members attempting to hold up legislative efforts to prepare a bill extending the Act, a bill was finally ready for President Barack Obama’s signature in the waning hours Thursday night. However, there was a logistical issue: Obama [...]

The introduction of a "loser pays" system in any U.S. jurisdiction sounds like the type of pie-in-the-sky proposal that creates lots of headlines but never ends up happening. But Texas Lawyer’s Tex Parte Blog reports that a "loser pays" bill in Texas was passed by the Texas House Wednesday night in a 130-13 vote and [...]

Many websites require users to verify their age before they can use the site or to register. In order to have a Facebook account, for example, users must be thirteen years of age or older. However, as the parents of many Facebook-using children can attest, it is no real challenge for underage people to sign [...]

To the ever-growing list of individuals tripped up by their blogs (Belly Dancing Blogs Doom Ex-Wife’s Bid for Maintenance), tweets (U.S. Secret Service Becomes Latest Victim of a ‘Wrong Pipe’ Tweet) and other electronic communications, we can now add bank robbery suspects, in not one, but two, cases. In the first such instance, two bank [...]

Ars Techinca has been following an interesting issue being raised by several members of Congress: Should companies such as Apple, Google and Research In Motion stop selling or otherwise making available smartphone apps that help drunk drivers avoid DUI checkpoints? An open letter from U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer and Tom Udall [...]

As I noted last month, law firms getting more active on Twitter need to avoid three main types of "self-destructive" tweets. First on the list was the increasingly common "wrong pipe" tweet, which occurs when the person responsible for tweeting for a company or law firm accidentally tweets from the company’s account rather than from [...]

"Seinfeld," Season 3, episode 12 ("The Red Dot"): Mr. Lippman: It’s come to my attention that you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office. Is that correct? George Costanza: Who said that? Mr. Lippman: She did. George Costanza: [pause] Was that wrong? Should I not have done [...]

Barring a stunning grant of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court, or perhaps a sequel to "The Social Network," we may have finally seen the last of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant the Winklevoss twins a rehearing, Hollywood, Esq. reports. Last month, a panel [...]

Here are today’s three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere. 1) Question: I just opened a condolence card from my husband’s employer expressing sorrow for the death of his wife. But I’m his wife and I am alive. Can you help clarify this situation? Answer: Sometimes husbands pretend that their [...]

Last year, I wrote here about an ongoing campaign by the "American Family Association" to get Sears to stop selling what it characterized as "graphic" and "pornographic" posters on the Sears website. As the AFA agenda also included condemning homosexuals and seeking a complete ban on the construction of mosques, I was skeptical and conducted [...]

There’s not anything funny or "hot" about people who sexually assault others or who commit indecent acts with children. I thought we were all in agreement about that, right? Until this week, that is, when the Houston Press decided to publish its "10 Hottest Women on the Texas Sex Offenders List." Ugggghhh. The article states [...]

Last week, Kevin LaCroix offered A Blogger’s Reflections on the fifth anniversary of his stellar blog, The D&O Diary. Kevin is an attorney and an executive with OakBridge Insurance Services, and his blog focuses on directors’ and officers’ liability insurance issues. Regardless of whether you follow D&O insurance law, anyone who writes a law blog [...]

Rapper and business mogul Shawn Carter ("I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!"), aka Jay-Z, had a smash hit in 2000 with his single "Big Pimpin." The song features a catchy loop of an Egyptian song from the 1960s called "Khosara, Khosara," which Jay-Z licensed from one of the children of the song’s creator, [...]

Companies that ask you to allow them to collect information about your use of their product may have good intentions, but sometimes purchasers of that information may have other plans. For example,when you sign up for the TomTom GPS device service, the company asks you if it is OK if they collect "travel time information," [...]

Back in my day (five months ago), when the federal government seized your website’s domain name for alleged counterfeiting or piracy, they just made it so that visitors to the site saw the assorted "scary eagles" in the graphics below: Ah, but that was a simpler time, and today’s website seizures now come not only [...]

Via Legal Juice I learned of this excellent Order issued by a federal court regarding a plaintiff’s Petition for Attorneys’ Fees. The Order is from 2004, but I still want to highlight it here because (a) I’m pretty sure the Internet didn’t exist in 2004 (did it?) so I doubt many of you have seen [...]