The decedent, Duane Francis Horton II, committed suicide in December 2015, at the age of 21. Before he committed suicide, decedent left an undated, handwritten, journal entry. There is no dispute that the journal entry was in decedent's handwriting. The journal entry stated: I am truly sorry about this . . . My final note, my farewell is on my phone. The app should be open. If not look on evernote, "Last Note"...

The Michigan Court of Appeals recently ruled that a lawsuit over a transgender woman in a woman’s locker room at a Midland, Michigan health club can proceed. The suit, brought by Plaintiff Yvette Cormier, asserts that her membership at the Midland Planet Fitness health club was wrongly terminated in 2015 after she warned other women at the club of the transgender woman in the woman’s locker room. Planet Fitness...

On Friday, July 27, 2018, the Michigan Supreme Court issued its Opinion in a suit involving gun rights groups versus the Ann Arbor Public Schools and Clio Area School District that challenged the schools’ policies banning guns on school grounds. Four of the seven justices were in agreement on upholding the previous Michigan Court of Appeals decisions affirming both school districts' right to enforce their weapons...

In a suit wherein the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland was recently determined to have standing to sue United States President Donald J. Trump, President Trump’s motion to dismiss the action was denied. The suit alleges that President Trump’s ownership of both the Trump Organization LLC and The Trump Organization, Inc. violate both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the United States...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. (ELC) reached a settlement with respect to a male employee’s claim that following the birth of his child, he was provided inferior benefits to biological mothers under the parental leave policies that had been adopted in July 2013. ELC’s policies included four types of paid parental leave benefits as well as a transition...

Plaintiffs James and Theresa Arnold leased their house in a rural area of Butler County, near Potwin, Kansas on May 1, 2011. Within a week of moving in, according to their Amended Complaint, they were visited by sheriff's deputies looking for a stolen truck. This visit was the first in a series of repeated visits and calls by law enforcement officers--at all hours of the day and night--looking for runaway children...

George Ian Boxill is a sound engineer who worked with the late recording artist Prince Rogers Nelson between 2004 and 2008. When Boxill was engaged in early 2004 as a consultant to assist in selecting and testing recording equipment for the recording studios at Prince's residence in Chanhassen, Minnesota, known as Paisley Park, Boxill executed a Confidentiality Agreement with Paisley Park Enterprises, Inc. Paisley...

Gaetan H. Bourgoin worked as a paper machine laborer when he sustained a work-related back injury that resulted in his total disability. As a result of the injury, Bourgoin suffered from severe chronic pain syndrome and consulted with a number of pain management specialists in an attempt to treat the pain. Due to various side effects of his continued use of opioids, and on the recommendation of his primary care physician...

Oscar Willhelm Nilsson, a San Francisco motorcyclist, asserted that he was involved in a collision on Dec. 7, 2017 with a self-driving 2016 Chevrolet Bolt that was in self-driving mode. Nilsson claimed that after the Bolt switched lanes on the driver’s command, he attempted to pass it but the Bolt suddenly swerved back to its original lane. This is believed to be the first-known suit involving a collision with a...

Ora Cohen, her then-husband Shalom, and their five children were travelling home in Jerusalem when a Hamas operative boarded their bus and detonated a bomb strapped to his chest, killing 23 people and injuring many more, including every member of the Cohen family. The Cohens, along with several members of Ora's family in the United States, brought suit against the Islamic Republic of Iran and two of its instrumentalities...

Next time you go to the movies, you will find more Jujyfruits and other Ferrara candies in the opaque boxes that you purchase there! Thomas Iglesias alleged that he purchased a five-ounce box of Jujyfruits in a movie theater in San Francisco, CA in 2016, but that he did not get the amount of candy he expected. Rather, Iglesias asserted that there was a considerable amount of slack-fill in the opaque box of candy. He filed...

Robert Alexander Kaseberg has been a freelance writer and comedy writer for over twenty years. Although he has never been staffed or credited as a writer on any television show, he has written articles and jokes that have appeared in publications such as The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, and Sports Illustrated, among others. Additionally, he has worked...

In a copyright infringement case involving a crested macaque known as Naruto, who allegedly took several photographs of himself (“monkey selfies”) with a wildlife photographer’s camera, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on April 23, 2018, affirmed a federal district court’s judgment dismissing the case. The majority opinion, which was written by Judge Carlos Bea, concluded...

A California woman who dated a man in Philadelphia found herself to be the victim of revenge porn when their relationship ended in the Spring of 2013. The woman, identified in court documents only under the pseudonym Jane Doe, claimed that David K. Elam, II called her in May of 2013 and threatened to ruin her life. Apparently, Elam impersonated her online and invited men to send her sexual images of themselves and to...

The dismissal of a complaint against Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), brought by Philadelphia taxi drivers asserting attempted monopolization under the Sherman Act , 15 U.S.C.S. § 2 , was affirmed for failure to state a cause of action. The city taxi drivers claimed that Uber, a social media-based vehicle-for-hire service, violated the antitrust laws because its entry into the Philadelphia taxicab market was illegal...

On March 26, 2018 software engineers who worked for Uber Technologies, Inc. reached a $10 million settlement of their claims alleging gender, racial, and national origin discrimination, as well as unequal pay. Roxana Del Toro Lopez and Ana Medina worked as software engineers for Uber. They claimed that Uber used a “stack ranking” system for evaluating employee performance that was an invalid performance...

Actress Lindsay Lohan lost in her invasion of privacy suit against a gaming company in the Court of Appeals of New York. Lohan had sued the developers and marketers of a commercially successful videogame called "Grand Theft Auto V" (GTAV) claiming that two scenes in the game were her character "look-a-like" and misappropriated her "portrait and voice." Though the Court set important precedent...

The Court of Appeals of Ohio, Eighth Appellate District, Cuyahoga County recently upheld a trial court decision denying the petitions of political activists (PAs) for release of selected portions of transcripts and exhibits from a grand jury proceeding related to the investigation of the November 22, 2014, shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, in Cleveland, Ohio. The Court of Appeals held that the trial court did...

Actress Olivia de Havilland sued the FX Networks, LLC, and Pacific Pacific 2.1 Entertainment Group, Inc. (collectively FX), the creators and producers of the television docudrama Feud : Bette and Joan, alleging causes of action for violation of California's statutory right of publicity, the common law privacy tort of misappropriation, false light invasion of privacy, and unjust enrichment. De Havilland asserted that...

Bobby Ross's release on parole was subjected to numerous conditions. Because he was a sex offender, Ross's parole officer imposed on Ross a special condition of parole prohibiting him from possessing or having contact with any computer, electronic device, communication device or any device which was enabled with internet access. Furthermore, under West Virginia's Sex Offender Registration Act , W. Va. Code...

Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts wrote for the Court on March 16, 2018 that a generic drug user’s negligence claim against Merck had been properly dismissed by the Judge Kenneth J. Fishman of the Middlesex County Superior Court. Brian Rafferty had been prescribed the generic version of Merck’s brand-name drug Proscar, which was a finasteride for treatment of his...

On March 12, 2018 Richard Simmons was ordered to pay almost $130,000 in attorneys’ fees to media outlets that he unsuccessfully sued on May 8, 2017, alleging defamation and invasion of his privacy. The media outlets, including National Enquirer and its online sister Radaronline, had published multiple articles describing that Simmons had been out of the public eye because he was in the process of transitioning...

Defendant Terry Lee Morris was tried and convicted on one count of soliciting the sexual performance of a child (his former girlfriend’s 15-year old daughter). After the jury found enhancing factors true, Morris was sentenced to 60 years in prison. The Court of Appeals of Texas, Eighth District, El Paso recently reversed Morris’ conviction and ordered him retried upon determining that the trial transcript...

A former judge was disbarred as a result of engaging in criminal activity by stealing cocaine from evidence in the cases he was presiding over and using the cocaine for his own recreational purposes--all while continuing to preside over criminal prosecutions and imposing sentences on defendants for committing crimes which he himself was contemporaneously engaging in. Paul Michael Pozonsky was a commissioned judge of...

On Feb. 16, 2018 Judge Leonard P. Stark granted a renewed motion by Gilead Sciences Inc. for judgment as a matter of law upon finding that a patent held by Idenix Pharmaceuticals LLC for treating hepatitis C virus (HCV) was invalid due to lack of enablement. On Feb. 24, 2017, a jury had awarded Idenix, which is affiliated with Merck & Co., $2.54 billion for lost sales due to Gilead’s patent infringement....