Recent Articles

Overview: This week's Law Review features clever writing of contestants of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, complicated and awkward first paragraphs of make believe novels; always worth a few laughs, and a break from our normal boring legaleze. The Bulwer-Lytton contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. It takes its name from [...]

Overview:  This weeks Law Review injects a bit of humor into an otherwise humorless profession, providing a list of questions you may not ask a job applicant, including the clever “Why are you so old?” which technically does not ask how old the applicant is, and ‘Are you a member of the Communist Party and [...]

Overview:  Where there is a will, there is a way, so when Irving Duke hand wrote his holographic will and did not provide for his younger wife dying before he did, it set off a lawsuit that went all the way to the California Supreme Court.  Read this weeks Law Review to learn why you [...]

Overview:  The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled Gilbert Arizona's sign ordinance unconstitutional writing that temporary signs and political signs and ideological signs, whatever that is, must be treated the same, same standards, otherwise they violate free speech, a stretch of an Opinion seems to me, but I am outvoted 9-1 and I don't have a [...]

Overview:  In Puskar v City and County of San Francisco the Court of Appeal, Fifth District, found that while San Francisco may have been negligent in removing a fire extinguisher from one of its cabins in Yosemite National Park, thus contributing to the tenant’s injuries from a kitchen grease fire, the Fire Fighter’s Immunity, Government [...]

Overview:  Neutrogena was sued for labeling their sunscreen products, ‘sunblock,’ ‘waterproof,’ and ‘sweatproof’, when in fact those claims are not true.  In fact the FDA prohibited using those labels in 2011, with a regulation effective date of Dec 17 2012.   Neutrogena was sued for using those labels before Dec 17, 2012, and predictably the plaintiffs [...]

Overview:  Navarete v Meyer is a fascinating new Court of Appeal case where liability was found against a shot gun seat passenger for shouting ‘go faster’ to the driver when she knew he was approaching dips on a residential street, so he foolishly punched it and killed someone.  The case in itself almost makes sense [...]

Overview: Family Law 101 A: earnings and wages earned by a spouse while ‘living separate and apart’ from their spouse are the separate property of the earning spouse. Query:   if the spouses are on the verge of a dissolution and living in separate rooms (and have separate bank accounts), but in the same family home, [...]

Overview:  ‘Shark finning’ is the practice of removing the fins from a living shark, almost always used to make shark fin soup, a traditional Chinese dish. In 2011 after finding that ‘tens of millions of sharks die each year’ due to shark finning, California passed a strong law which was just unsuccessfully challenged in court; [...]