Legal Solutions  Blog

In our “Today in Legal History” series, we cover a wide variety of historical legal events. Some, such as last week’s Nix v. Hedden Supreme Court case ruling that tomatoes are vegetables, not fruits, are somewhat amusing. Others, such as  March’s Minor v. Happersett Supreme Court case ruling that women have no constitutional right to vote (before the ratification of the [...]

If you own an iPhone 4, and it’s older than 18 months in age, chances are that your phone’s power button has stopped working, at least according to a new class action lawsuit. The suit , filed last Friday, claims that the iPhone 4 suffers (and has always suffered) from a latent defect in a flex cable that [...]

Last week , I described two different categories of methods for getting your information out to potential clients: referral and non-referral. “Non-referral” is when a client finds your information on his or her own through some publicly accessible medium (Internet, phonebook, advertisement, etc). “Referral” is just that: someone with whom you’ve had previous dealings gives your name [...]

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on the “first sale” doctrine. “First sale” is a principle of copyright law that allows the end user to sell or otherwise dispose of a legally purchased copyrighted work without permission from the copyright owner. The case,  Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons , involved a consumer (Supap Kirtsaeng) [...]

The Supreme Court has the final say on the laws of the land. As the ultimate arbiter on interpreting federal laws – including the U.S. Constitution – the Court has a significant amount of power to determine the course that the rest of the country will follow. It does this by answering momentous questions that often bitterly [...]

Being fired from your job is never a pleasant experience. Aside from facing the prospect of being unemployed and having to find new work, one has to face the humiliation of being forced to leave his or her job. The ordeal undergone by Kirby Martensen, however, is a bit beyond your typical firing. Martensen was employed [...]

Last week’s post discussed the importance of maintaining consistent telephone and email communication channels.   This consistency is important because, once your contact information enters the worldwide information network, it’s very difficult to update, should your information change. However, a related, perhaps more important, issue that attorneys are concerned with is getting your information out there to begin [...]

Last week, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback received a letter from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The letter was written over Kansas’ recently enacted law entitled the “ Second Amendment Protection Act. ”  The law has three purposes, according to the Kansas legislature . First, the law excludes from federal regulation any personal firearm or ammunition manufactured and owned exclusively within [...]

On Wednesday, three men were charged with obstruction of justice in relation to the federal investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings. The three men, Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev, and Robel Phillipos, are all 19 year old schoolmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the attack’s prime suspects (and the only one still alive). Who are these men and what [...]

Two weeks ago marked the 19 year anniversary of J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T. B. , a Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the state from striking jurors solely based on their sex. The 1994 ruling was an extension of a 1986 decision,  Batson v. Kentucky , with a similar holding: that the state may not strike jurors based solely [...]

As an attorney, there are plenty of ethical pitfalls to beware, some of them with potentially disastrous consequences. A new ruling out of California provides an example of such a trap. In Mendoza v. Hamzeh , decided on April 22, 2013, the California Court of Appeals ruled that an attorney’s demand letter containing threats to report the recipient’s [...]

Last month , we discussed going to court and what to expect.  In March , we discussed various technological issues related to the law, with a few topics relating specifically to the practice of law. Although practical legal knowledge is very important to your practice of law, your practical knowledge isn’t going to see much use without clients. And, perhaps more importantly, [...]

Two weeks ago marked the 77 th anniversary of  NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation . Jones marked the beginning of a new era in Supreme Court Commerce Clause jurisprudence, one that saw the high court sanctioning Congress’ invocation of the clause for the authority that had seemingly little to do with regulating “interstate commerce,” to which the powers [...]

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Moncrieffe v. Holder , in which the Court held that the defendant alien’s state law drug conviction did not require a “mandatory deportation.” The defendant, Adrian Moncrieffe, came to the U.S. legally in 1984 when he was three years old.  During a 2007 traffic stop, police found 1.3 grams [...]

All month, we’ve been dealing with preparing to go to court: what to do beforehand and how to deal with those you’ll interact with while you’re there. However, “going to court” is not a universally defined experience; it can vary based on the appearance’s type, the attitudes of the parties involved, or even on the preferences of [...]

Last week, Boston underwent quite an ordeal that started with the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon and was followed by the dangerous manhunt for the individuals responsible. The entire chain of events dominated the media. Now that the dust has finally settled, the questions remaining are primarily legal in nature. First, was it constitutional for [...]

Over the past few months, we’ve seen quite a few gender equality topics in our Today in Legal History weekly series. For example, on January 25, 2013, we had a post on the forty-second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s first Title VII sex discrimination ruling. On February 15, 2013, we marked the one-hundred thirty-fourth anniversary of female attorneys being [...]

On December 28, 2010, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a new rule relating to requirements on cribs. Among these new requirements were prohibitions against the manufacture or sale (including resale) of drop-side rail cribs, effective June 28, 2011. According to the CPSC , there were 32 infant and toddler fatalities related to drop-side cribs from 2001 [...]

Last week, we covered the different types of attorneys that you’re likely to encounter in court. The opposing attorney (or attorneys) really only make up part of the “human interaction” equation of going to court.  The other, perhaps more significant component is the judge. Like attorneys, there are several types of judges, and hopefully, understanding them will [...]

It’s always interesting when the Supreme Court takes intellectual property cases, partly because the ideological divide isn’t so clearly defined on these issues. In addition, since the Court rarely hears such cases, it’s also interesting because the bulk of this body of law has been developed by other courts and government agencies.  In spite of this, [...]