By Ben Buchwalter “You make us think instead of just memorize facts,” said a fourth year Haitian law student on our last night in Jérémie, a rural coastal town in western Haiti. For the week before, the Hastings to Haiti Partnership (“HHP”), a group comprised of professors and law students from UC Hastings College of [...]
GJEL Blog » Legal News
Report: Hastings to Haiti Partnership’s Spring 2013 Delegation
Posted Wednesday, April 24th, 2013And the unhappiest job in America is…
Posted Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013After compiling over 65,000 company reviews during 2012 and evaluating multiple factors that influence an employee’s job satisfaction, CareerBliss released their list of the happiest and unhappiest jobs in America. Topping this year’s list as the unhappiest job in the country is the thankless role of associate attorney. The survey data was complied by looking [...]
Cyclist faces felony vehicular manslaughter charge after killing 71-year-old pedestrian
Posted Tuesday, March 12th, 2013Although the widely reported accident took place almost a year ago, the San Francisco cyclist who collided with 71-year-old Sutchi Hui on March 29, 2012 has recently been order to stand trial on a felony vehicular manslaughter charge. The accident occurred at the intersection of Castro and Market streets when cyclist Chris Bucchere collided with [...]
National Law Journal releases annual list of “go-to law schools”
Posted Wednesday, February 27th, 2013The National Law Journal released its annual list of the Top 50 Go-To Law Schools, with the University of Pennsylvania topping the list for the second consecutive year. Using a criteria centered specifically around graduates hired by the nation’s 250 largest law firms, the top 10 go-to law schools of 2012 were as follows: University [...]
…And that’s why you don’t mouth off in court
Posted Thursday, February 7th, 2013Earlier this week, Florida teen Penelope Soto got international attention when a video of her mouthing off to Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat started making the rounds online. In the video you see the 18-year-old Soto giggling through her bond hearing, getting chastised for not taking the hearing seriously, and having her bond increased from [...]
Mother of five gets harsher sentence for involving children in multiple staged car crashes
Posted Friday, January 18th, 2013Committing insurance fraud is already bad enough, but when you endanger your children in the process it reaches a whole new level of scuminess. For mother of five, Ana Ovando, the exceptionally poor decision to stage three different collisions in one year was compounded by her even worse decision to bring her kids along for [...]
Encroachments on high-pressure jet fuel pipeline along Iron Horse Trail create major safety concern
Posted Friday, January 11th, 2013This past Tuesday, Representatives from the Contra Costa County Public Works Department and Kinder Morgan held a meeting to discuss potential safety issues stemming from a jet fuel pipeline along Iron Horse Trail. Contra Costa’s manager for the Iron Horse Corridor, Carrie Ricci, says, “The county’s main concern is working with property owners that are [...]
Indiana Tech rolls dice, opens new law school amid massive law school crisis
Posted Wednesday, December 5th, 2012It’s no secret that law school attendance is in serious decline. That’s what makes the decision to open a new law school in “the middle of history’s worst law school crisis” so mind boggling. Last week, Business Insider couldn’t help but poke fun at Indiana Tech whose plans to open their law school next year [...]
Is there an impending crisis for major law firms?
Posted Friday, October 12th, 2012In a recent segment from Bloomberg Law, law firm consultant Bruce MacEwen has charged that the legal industry is currently facing an “excess capacity.” As a result, MacEwen contends many firms are facing enormous pricing pressure and are engaging in “suicide pricing” in order to cover fixed costs and get revenue in the door. MacEwen [...]
New Jersey judge rules text message sender not responsible for recipient’s crash
Posted Friday, June 8th, 2012In a case that garnered national attention, a New Jersey judge recently ruled that the sender of a text message cannot be held responsible for accidents caused as a result of the driver reading the message. The case, resulting from a 2009 accident in which Kyle Best collided with David and Linda Kubert while distracted [...]
Senate Transportation & Housing Committee unanimously approves 3-foot passing bill
Posted Monday, May 7th, 2012Senate Bill 1464, which would require drivers to give bicyclists at least 3 feet of space when passing from behind, was approved by the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee following a hearing on April 17th. During the hearing a number of witnesses spoke on behalf of the legislation, including Heath Maddox, a Berkley resident whose [...]
San Francisco scooter share program may hit roadblock with the DMV
Posted Monday, March 26th, 2012A new San Francisco startup offering a subscription based scooter sharing service is running into difficulties with California’s licensing laws. The company, Scoot Networks, was introduced earlier this month, and would allow users to sign up for the service and check out scooters on an as needed basis from a variety of locations throughout the [...]
San Rafael police determine 90-year-old driver not at fault for pedestrian fatality
Posted Friday, March 23rd, 2012After striking a pedestrian earlier this year, San Rafael police determined that 90-year-old Monsie Wagner was not at fault in the incident. According to toxicology tests, the victim, 49-year-old Jose Enrique Gonzalez Lopez had a blood alcohol level of .28 percent and was crossing the street against a red light. At the time Gonzalez was [...]
Cyclist who killed a tourist avoids jail time but will help an organization promote bike safety
Posted Thursday, March 22nd, 2012On July 15, a a San Francisco cyclist ran a red light at Mission Street and The Embarcadero and struck a 68-year old tourist from Washington, D.C. named Dionette Cherney. The collision killed Cherney and the cyclist at fault, 23-year old Randolph Ang, was charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. He recently pleaded guilty but will [...]
California’s handheld cell phone ban appears to be working, traffic deaths down 22 percent
Posted Monday, March 5th, 2012A recent study from UC Berkley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) found that in examining data from the two years prior to, and two years following California’s ban on handheld cell phones while driving, traffic deaths had decreased by 22 percent. The study also found that fatalities in which handheld cell phone use [...]
91-year-old San Jose motorist will not face criminal charges for accident that killed two nursing home residents
Posted Friday, March 2nd, 2012Last week, after a lengthy investigation, prosecutors determined that 91-year-old Leona Morante Fernandez would not face criminal charges for a June 25th accident in which she drove her car through the wall of a nursing home, killing two and injuring four. The accident occurred when Fernandez inadvertently accelerated into the rec room of the Amberwood [...]
Guest Post: Medical malpractice and Michael Jackson’s death
Posted Tuesday, November 8th, 2011Propofol is typically used as a surgical anesthetic for a patient who is receiving mechanical ventilation. Because of well known side effects, doctors and nurses in a hospital operating room or a comparably equipped medical facility must continuously monitor the patient’s heart rate and breathing. For any ethical doctor, it would be unthinkable to use [...]
Update: Link Between Autism and SSRI Antidepressants Requires Further Research
Posted Monday, October 24th, 2011Lawsuits against manufacturers of anti-depressants have been filed in all 50 states following a study that found children whose mothers took selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Paxil and Zoloft during pregnancy were twice as likely to have a diagnosis of autism or a related disorder. However, the jury is still out on whether the [...]
Contra Costa: Dirty DUI investigation uncovers crooked cops
Posted Wednesday, October 19th, 2011At least 20 DUI and vice cases have been dismissed in Contra Costa county as a sordid and shocking tale of corruption involving three local police departments unravels. Christopher Butler, a former police officer and private detective was at the center of an elaborate entrapment scam that discredited men going through divorce trials. Butler would [...]
East Bay family awarded $11.7 million in Marsh Creek Road wrongful death accident
Posted Monday, September 12th, 2011Late last week, a jury ordered Contra Costa County to pay $11.7 million to the family of William Tindall, who was killed in a crash on Marsh Creek Road in August 2008. The jury found that the County had created, and had notice of, a dangerous condition of public property at the accident location while the road was being resurfaced. Luke Ellis of this firm represented the Tindalls in their lawsuit against the County and the California Highway Patrol.
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