Gift cards can be a big money maker for some businesses. They rely on some the gift cards going unused until they expire, in which case the company gets to keep the money spent on the gift card without having to cough up the product or service it was meant…
Employees who notice something illegal or immoral going on at work are often made to choose between their conscience and their jobs. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act prohibits employers from retaliating against whistleblowers (those who bring illegal practices to the attention of a regulatory authority), but in practice, these…
When a group of plaintiffs file a class action lawsuit, the class needs to be defined. If the judge is not comfortable with the parameters of the class as laid out by the plaintiffs, the judge can deny class certification until the plaintiffs come back with parameters the judge agrees…
If you’ve committed a crime for which you were never charged and you’re considering doing a documentary about said crime, you might want to think again. Thirty-four years ago, Robert A. Durst’s wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, disappeared from her home in Westchester County. Since then, Mr. Durst has spent his…
Erin Brockovich wasn’t the only one to take on a big company that had harmed thousands of people with poisoned water. Rob Bilott took on DuPont for dumping PFOAs into a local creek, when it knew the chemical had adverse health effects, but Bilott’s background was very different from Brockovich’s.…
For most of us, once we’ve sold our property, it’s gone and we never have to think about it again. Unfortunately for Mark Oberholzer, a plumber in Galveston County, Texas, the used truck he sold to AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway in Houston continues to haunt him. The name of his…
With steroids running rampant in the world of professional athletes, many people just assume that most, if not all, prominent athletes are using some sort of drug (or drugs) to artificially enhance their performance. At the same time, many people who idolize certain athletes and look up to them as…
When a plaintiff files a class action lawsuit (usually against a large corporation), she does not have to include a list of every single potential class member along with her complaint. In many class action lawsuits, the plaintiffs are easily identifiable, but not always and it’s the cases in which…
Although the courts are intended to be accessible to all citizens with grievances, the sad fact is they come with an increasingly large entry fee. Citizens can choose to represent themselves when filing or defending a lawsuit, but most citizens don’t have the knowledge or training to effectively represent their…
An injunction against speech harms not just the speakers but also the listeners (in this case the viewers and readers). “[T]he First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the pub-lic may…