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Is it legal to use the Olympic rings in ads? The answer to this question will depend primarily on why you’re using the trademarked symbol and whether you got the proper permission to use it. The International Olympic Committee is notoriously aggressive about protecting its trademarks, as explained in a Wired story from the 2012 Summer Olympics. Same goes for the Sochi Olympics that officially kick off Friday. Here’s what small business owners need to know:...

A New Mexico driver’s license verification program implemented by Governor Susana Martinez has come under fire in a lawsuit filed by four Democratic legislators and a resident with legal status. Believing that New Mexico’s licensing program, which allows illegal immigrants who live in-state to obtain a driver’s license, is ridden with fraud, the Governor’s office sent 10,000 letters to registered foreign citizens to determine whether or not they live within the state....

Model Denise Underhill has filed suit against Playboy for an injury she sustained while jumping on a trampoline during a photo shoot. The Playboy trampoline lawsuit is about a 2009 incident, but was only recently filed. Underhill was required to jump on a trampoline for a photo shoot. During her jumping session, she tore the meniscus in her right knee. Instead of calling for doctors, however, photo shoot staff simply gave her crutches and sent her on her way....

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that Philadelphia tourist attraction Ride the Ducks undergo a safety review. This comes after tug pilot Matt Devlin pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter after his tug boat steered a barge into the duck boat last summer, killing two tourists, reports the Claims Journal. Ride the Ducks is a tourist attraction that has been operating since 2003. The ride lets tourists and patrons take an hour-long drive in the World War II-style amphibious duck boat around Philadelphia that ends in a 10-minute soak in the Delaware River....

This week, Texas Governor Rick Perry abruptly replaced three members of a commission investigating the forensics behind the conviction of now executed Cameron Todd Willingham. The move came days before the commission was scheduled to hear an expert’s report harshly discrediting the arson investigation in Willingham’s case. Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted in 1992 for murdering his three small daughters by setting the family’s house on fire. His story was recently featured on Nightline....

The Travis Barker plane crash lawsuit was recently settled. While the settlement amount is unknown, Travis Barker and the mother of his bodyguard (who died in the crash) have settled with the companies named in the lawsuit. According to ABC News, the terms of the settlement are confidential. The lawsuit centered around a plane crash that occurred on Sept. 19, 2008. Travis Barker was on a private plane along with DJ AM (who was also known as Adam Goldstein) after playing a free concert in Columbia, South Carolina....

Losing a job ain’t fun. Even losing a bunch of hours can be stressful. After all, you still have bills to pay, and last I checked your landlord, phone, and cable company don’t adjust their rates based on your income. That’s why we have unemployment insurance. But what about underemployment or partial employment insurance? Can you get benefits if you have a job, but it’s not allowing you to work or paying you enough?...

Whether it’s legal to shoot or kill trespassers is one of our most common property law questions. Short answer: generally only in self-defense and in fear of bodily harm or death. And while we normally don’t think of animal trespassers in this light, perhaps we should. An unidentified Texas man was recently hospitalized and had his jaw wired shot after a bullet he fired at an armadillo in his yard at 3 a....

Every parent prays for a healthy child. And while few of us go through life perfectly healthy, it is particularly painful for parents when a child is born with defects or medical issues due to prescription medication a mother has taken before the child’s birth. This is an unfortunately common occurrence for mothers who used Zofran to alleviate morning sickness. The drug was designed for cancer patients, and does alleviate morning sickness....

A Punkin Chunkin injury lawsuit is “chunking” a wrench into the annual World Champion Punkin Chunkin contest in Delaware. That’s the event in which competitors use massive machines – including air cannons, centrifuges and colossal catapults – to toss pumpkins. Daniel Fair, who volunteered as a spotter at the 2011 festival, allegedly suffered spinal fractures after he was thrown from an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) that hit a depression in the ground and landed on top of him....

Emotional distress may be one of the most difficult injuries to prove. Unlike a broken arm or leg, there are no X-rays someone can point to, or even a scar you can display to prove your injuries. Instead, emotional distress is largely psychological. And while the suffering can be as great, if not greater, than physical injuries, plaintiffs can have a hard time proving to a court they are entitled to damages given the difficulty of proof....

Divorce can be excruciating for parents, and deciding who pays what for college can be a major battle. But don’t let college tuition become your divorce Waterloo. Keep these three tips in mind when deciding who pays for college after a divorce: There are a number of things to negotiate in a divorce settlement agreement, and making sure that college tuition will be there for your kid(s) is one of them....

There are lots of customer review websites but most of them rate businesses rather than allow businesses to give reviews of bad customers. Consumer protection is great but sometimes businesses need a way to protect themselves from bad customers too. Allowing business owners to share information about people who don’t pay their bills or argue over already agreed-upon prices is an important service, especially for small businesses. Peter Robideau created a service to fill that need, www....

Ah, Spring: the return of sunshine, flowers, and the office March Madness pool. By now, those carefully inked brackets and employees surreptitiously streaming games are as ubiquitous as conference calls and Reply Alls. Like the inexorable passage of time, you may be powerless to eradicate March Madness pools from your office, but that doesn’t mean they need to derail your company’s productivity for an entire month. Here are the best ways for your office to handle March Madness this year....

It’s possible that schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland will soon own copyrights to all student works created at school. Same could go for teachers’ works too. That means everything from a first grader’s butterfly to a high school senior’s term paper could be deemed the school’s intellectual property. Not to mention teacher lesson plans and curricula. You’d be correct in thinking this move is unusual. If the proposal is adopted by the county board of education, it would be the first in the area to have this policy....

There are all kinds of child custody issues that could arise during the school year. What if one parent is moving out of state? Maybe a previous custody agreement is being modified, going from one parent having full custody to sharing custody. And if each parent lives in a different school district, how do you determine which school the child goes to? Maybe the child needs to transfer to a school out of either parent’s district....

Cyberbullying is becoming more and more prevalent. From kids getting together on Facebook to “kick a ginger,” to bullies posting videos of their attacks, we have a whole new world of brutality for kids to worry about. While that may be the state of the internet, what exactly are states doing to protect our children? More states are cracking down with cyberbullying laws. Here is a sampling of the current cyberbullying laws in the country according to Cyberbully Alert:...

A recent cyberbullying suicide illustrated just how mean kids can be on the internet and if cyberbullying laws may be the answer. ABC News reports that Irish immigrant Ms. Phoebe Prince was taunted on her Facebook page even after her suicide broke on the news. Facebook administrators had to remove the offensive content. The 15 year old girl committed suicide on Jan. 14 in Massachusetts. We wrote about how Megan Meier killed herself after the her former friend’s mother posed as a boy on MySpace, wooed her, and then dumped her....

When you have youth and health on your side, you tend to think that you’re invincible. Unfortunately, none of us are. Which means in some cases, even young people need wills. Have you ever meditated on the question, “Do I need a will?” Whether you have or not, you should probably get one. If you die without a will, that means your estate will pass down through the laws of intestacy....

Unlocking a cell phone can be a big deal when switching between wireless carriers, and many mobile users may be wondering if unlocking is even legal. There have been various changes in “unlocking” laws in the last five years, but it’s still technically illegal to unlock your phone in many cases. Here’s why: Modern cell phones are indeed smartphones. They have at least as much computing power and storage space as the PCs of the last decade, and are priced accordingly....