Articles by Michael Wechsler
Washington State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, announced recently that the state would sue iYogi, one of the world's largest computer technical support services companies. The AG charged iYogi with selling unsuspecting computer owners unnecessary technical support services.
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A federal court judge in Chicago ruled that Yahoo must face a class action lawsuit alleging that the company sent unsolicited text messages to over a half million Sprint cellphone users in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. U.S. District Judge Manish Shah certified the class of...
During oral argument yesterday in Fisher v. University of Texas, comments made by U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, ignited controversy and debate about whether they contained racist overtones. The case, originally filed in 2008, involves allegations of racial discrimination resulting...
Waterways, Maritime
Pleasure Craft Boat Ownership, Registration, Insurance & Law
A pleasure craft or pleasure boat is typically a motorized vessel used for personal, family and other recreational activities. They are most commonly used in rivers, lakes and other waterways and stored at a local dock or marina. Pleasure crafts are small to moderate sized boats, typically no...
A woman who received 153 robocalls from Time Warner Cable regarding the outstanding bill of another customer was awarded $229,500 in New York District Court. In King v Time Warner Cable, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-02018, the court awarded triple damages of $1,500...
Jason Pierre-Paul, star defensive end for the New York Giants, suffered serious burn damage to his hands as a result of a fireworks accident occurring during an Independence Day celebration. While Pierre-Paul refused visitors and Giants representatives at Jackson Memorial Hospital in South...
Google announced in its Public Policy Blog that it will soon provide a revenge porn removal request form to eliminate humiliating entries from appearing in search results. ( UPDATE July 7, 2015 - Google now has a revenge porn removal request form.) This new initiative was not intended to deal...
A former Dewey & LeBoeuf partner revealed the details of a tense meeting of the firm's rainmakers in early 2012, just a few months before it declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ralph Ferrara, who also served as general counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (now at Proskauer Rose...
This past week the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling which upheld the termination of a quadriplegic employee who used medical marijuana, in his own home while he was off duty. In Coats v. Dish Network, LLC., 2015 CO 44. No. 13SC394, the Colorado Supreme Court held that state's...
For the past few months I battled a previously unknown spammer who uses a domain name proxy or “privacy” service to conceal his identity as a website operator. The website hosting company and the domain name privacy service both refused to help or take action. Should domain name proxies be held...
StubHub filed what may be a precedent setting "ticket scalping" lawsuit against Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and the Golden State Warriors. The complaint, filed yesterday in federal court (StubHub v. Ticketmaster, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Case No...
A 25 year old man was arrested for indecent exposure during May 2014 as a result of his playing violin completely naked in front of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon. He was allegedly told several times that the exposure of genitals in public would be a violation of a...
Editorial
TheLaw.com Remembers Mayor Ed Koch
I remember meeting esteemed attorney and New York City Mayor Ed Koch in 1998 on the set of the popular Law TV show, "The People's Court." He was quite receptive and I recall being quite surprised at how much taller he was in person than he appeared to be on live television. It was unexpected to...
Every attorney should be familiar with the legal principle “ignorance of the law is no excuse” or ignorantia juris non excusat. For the most part, the same can be said for the rules surrounding search engine optimization (“SEO”). Given the excessive amount of SEO snake oil peddled online, it is...
Did an eyewitness describe Michael Brown running towards an armed police officer in the background audio of a YouTube video purportedly at the scene? After artificially enhancing the speaker, that seems to be his account of the facts surrounding the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson...
If marijuana possession is legalized in your state, can you receive a DUI for driving after you've had a few hits? Criminal prosecutors in Seattle are under the impression that a sizable number of people are confused about the law and believe that driving under the influence of marijuana is...
If you haven't noticed, ICANN has recently approved dozens of new generic top level domains for registration with hundreds more on the way. These new extensions range from the legal (.ESQ for lawyers), to the identifiable (.XXX), to the geographic (.NYC and .VEGAS) and the utterly useless...
Many sole practitioners and boutique firms internally manage their law firm's or company's website. This week a Russian hacking group reported stealing over 1.2 billion email accounts and passwords and a dangerous Wordpress XMLRPC vulnerability was also announced. Perhaps not coincidentally, the...
Can a monkey own a copyright interest in the pictures they may take? Wikipedia has refused a request to remove from its website a photograph taken by a macaque, which used British photographer David Slater’s equipment. Despite repeated takedown notices by Slater and the Caters News Agency...
A Yankees fan caught napping at Yankee Stadium has reportedly filed a $10 million lawsuit against Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees, ESPN and its announcers. The complaint, filed on July 3, alleges that the plaintiff was disparaged and humiliated during the televised broadcast of the...