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Clifford Harris, more famously known as the rapper T.I., appeared in federal court today for sentencing on weapons-related charges. According to CNN, he was sentenced to one year and one day in prison and ordered to pay a $100,300 fine on weapons charges, as was expected. Other terms of the plea agreement apparently included community service (1000 hours), which by numerous accounts being provided by defense attorneys to the sentencing judge, T....

Christmas shoppers in a hurry to check everyone off of their gift lists may wish to take a moment to pause. Almost a quarter of online shoppers unknowingly purchased a counterfeit brand online, according to a study published by Trademarks and Brands Online. The vast majority of those consumers said they would not have bought the counterfeit product if they were aware it was a fake. But the chances of making a mistake go up during Christmas when people tend to buy a lot on a short deadline....

Winter is fast approaching, and with it comes icy and dangerous sidewalks. Slip and fall accidents injure millions of people every year, and many of them occur on poorly maintained or hazardous sidewalks. So who’s responsible for keeping sidewalks safe? And what can you do if you’re injured on a sidewalk? Under the legal theory of “premises liability,” property owners are responsible for maintaining a reasonably safe environment and can be held liable for accidents and injuries that occur on their property....

Doing business online means you can reach your customers anywhere. But it also means that your customers can come from anywhere, and some of those “wheres” have different laws that apply to doing business online. One of those “wheres” is Delaware, and one of those laws is DOPPA: the Delaware Online Privacy Protection Act. DOPPA goes into effect on January 1, 2016, but your small business might need to start gearing up now....

More than 200 people were trapped in Sugarloaf Ski Resort in Carrabassatt, Maine on a ski chairlift Monday morning. The injuries were a result of a ski lift derailment, causing injury to several Sugarloaf skiers. The lift derailment caused five lift chairs to fall some 30 feet to the slope below, the Associated Press reports. Sugarloaf Mountain is in Carrabassett Valley, about 120 miles north of Portland, Maine. According to the resort, six people were injured when the chairlifts fell....

A lawsuit claims teachers in suburban Chicago forced a 6-year-old boy to crawl back to class with a broken leg and a concussion, and never even called an ambulance. The suit, filed by the boy’s parents, seeks more than $200,000 in damages from Skokie School District 68, just north of Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Kindergartener Rahul Chandani slipped on a snow- and ice-covered playground in January 2011, the lawsuit alleges....

Custody fights are never pretty. But, they can turn particularly ugly when parents resort to kidnapping their own children. Over 200,000 parental kidnappings occur each year. Parental kidnapping can be as drastic as taking the child to another country, or as innocuous as preventing visitation. The laws regarding parental kidnapping do vary from state to state. Below, we discuss whether three common situations that can fit the definition of parental kidnapping:...

In the alphabet soup of small business categories and certifications, you may not have heard of the Small Business Administration 8(a) Business Development Program aimed to bolster minority and other disadvantaged businesses through federal contract and other preferences. Here are some quick facts about the 8(a) certification program: Eligible firms can be awarded federal government contracts on a sole-source basis (up to $3 million for goods and services and $5 million for manufacturing) There are 3 main requirements: 1) be a small business (according to the SBA); 2) be unconditionally owned and controlled by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged individuals (who are of good character and U....

If you’ve got a great idea, you want to make sure no one else has already come up with it, and that no one will steal it later. There are a series of statutes, rules, and regulations that can protect your intellectual property rights, and they can work in different ways. For instance, your invention may not be eligible for patent protection if someone else, unbeknownst to you, already filed a similar patent....

In personal injury law, the acronym TBI used to refer exclusively to a traumatic brain injury. However, after Caroline Malatesta’s case, this may need to change. News broke last month of the $16 million jury verdict awarded to Ms. Malatesta as a result of a traumatic birth injury caused by her nurses’s negligence while she was giving birth. A traumatic birth injury occurs when the mother is severely injured as a result of the birthing process....

Student loan debts topped a record $1 trillion in 2011, and even filing for bankruptcy generally won’t get a student loan debt discharged. That is, unless a student can prove “undue hardship” in repaying the loan – a standard that’s “almost impossible to meet,” USA Today reports. In the past month, however, cases involving two former college students have successfully used the “undue hardship” argument, resulting in the discharge of student loans totaling nearly $400,000....

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, recognized by the United Nations as a day to celebrate the “fundamental principles of press freedom” – a freedom that many Americans often take for granted. What exactly does “freedom of the press” mean in the United States? To help answer that question, here are five things every American should know: The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press....

Big businesses, like Walmart and Apple, seem to just roll along on the momentum of their success and power. However, small businesses don’t have that luxury. You fight for every little success and every advantage to get ahead of the competition. Some small businesses are so small, most people have never heard of them before. For example, have you heard of a pet mediator? Debra Hamilton, Pet Mediator Pet mediator. What will we come up with next?...

That’s Colorado State Senator David Balmer, describing how the state was ill-prepared for a booming recreational marijuana industry. For all the talk about a tax windfall from legalized and regulated pot sales, one not-so-minor detail had been left out: How will marijuana businesses bank their money? The large cash deposits smell like marijuana, so some of the businesses are spraying the cash with room freshener or perfume to hide the marijuana smell....

There have been countless changes in the economy, health care, and cost of living over the past half-century. So it may not make sense to use a government equation formulated in 1955 to determine the country’s rate of elder poverty. Outdated formula The National Academy of Science (NAS) has raised an eyebrow to the existing formula used to calculate poverty of Americans 65 and older. In fact it devised its own, with startling results....

From concussions to severe head trauma that can result in permanent disability or death, brain injuries affect millions of Americans every year. And the prevention of brain injuries has received particular attention in recent months, beginning with the March death of actress Natasha Richardson, who suffered an epidural hematoma (or bleeding of the brain) and fell into an irreversible coma after hitting her head during a seemingly minor ski accident....

We trust our doctors with our lives. And while part of that trust is in their medical expertise, all the technical skill in the world doesn’t mean much if we don’t think our doctors are telling us the truth. You’ve probably heard of medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors who make mistakes, but what about malpractice claims against doctors who lie to patients? Here’s what you need to know: A central element to any medical treatment is informed consent, which refers to a patient’s consent to medical treatment after receiving information on the treatment....

Are you co-signing a lease or rental agreement, or thinking about it? If so, there are many legal considerations that you should think about first. When you co-sign a lease, you are essentially signing the lease as if it were your own. This means that you are exposing yourself to full liability on the lease. You won’t be the back-up person, but the main person. Co-signing a lease for someone is definitely not a decision to make lightly, even though you won’t be a tenant....

A deaf man in California has filed a lawsuit against Hawthorne police after they allegedly used a Taser on him twice and beat him unconscious as a result of his inability to hear their orders. Jonathan Meister claims officers misunderstood his attempts to communicate via sign language as aggressive hand signals, reports the Daily Breeze. The lawsuit revolves around the police department’s alleged lack of training and protocol to handle situations involving people who are deaf or hard of hearing....

The daughter of a victim of distracted driving is suing the cellphone provider and the maker of the phone used by the driver who killed her mother. According to the New York Times, Jennifer Smith has sued both Sprint, Nextel and Samsung for the unfortunate death of her mother, Linda Doyle. This not the lawsuit placing blame on a cellphone service provider for someone else driving while talking, but the plaintiff hopes her case will fare better than its predecessors due to increased knowledge of the danger of mixing cell phones and driving....