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A class action against a New York City dentist, sued over a contract she required patients to sign, could change the way medical professionals try to protect their online reputations. A former patient filed the suit against Stacy Makhnevich, a dentist and opera singer who touts herself as “the classical singer dentist of New York,” the New York Post reports. Makhnevich required her patients to sign an agreement promising not to post negative reviews about her online, the NYC dentist lawsuit states....

Parents can record their kid without consent when it’s in the child’s best interests, the New York Court of Appeals ruled this week. The decision stems from a father recording his 5-year-old son being threatened by the mother’s boyfriend. The recording was admitted over objection in a criminal case as contradicting wiretap laws. But there was a dissent, joined by several justices, pointing out that changes to the law should be made by the legislature, and that there was little guidance as to age and maturity of the child required to record without the consent of at least one other person....

The cannabiz is set to boom … although it is difficult to say when that will happen with states taking very different approaches to marijuana cultivation and consumption. This week, California’s San Francisco Bay Area residents will encounter “the nation’s first multichannel marketing campaign for [artisanal] pot,” reports Mother Jones. Meanwhile medical marijuana was just approved for very limited use in Philadelphia. All businesses involve risk, and often the greater the risk, the greater the potential reward....

For businesses both large and small, the H-1B Visa allows skilled non-citizen employees to work in the U.S. for three to six years. And whether you’re adding international talent to an existing and established company or just getting started, the H-1B can be essential. But availability is limited – H-1B’s are capped at 85,000 annually and they sell out fast. Like six days fast. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has already reached the mandated H1-B cap for this year, leading to many small business owners wondering what that means for sponsoring skilled foreign workers....

President (and Nobel Laureate) Barack Obama pledged to end “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) gala. The policy adopted by the U.S. military in 1993 doesn’t allow openly homosexual individuals to serve in the armed forces. The event was organized by the HRC which is the country’s largest gay rights group. President Obama did not say when the policy would be repealed....

Automaker Toyota has been sued over an advertising stunt gone awry. California woman Amber Duick is suing Toyota for its cyberstalking ad campaign which she claims caused her great distress. Toyota launched its “Your Other You” advertising campaign in 2009. The campaign was created by advertising firm, Saatchi & Saatchi LA, according to Wired. The advertising campaign allows individuals to dupe a friend into thinking that fictional stranger has access to their personal and private information and is coming over to pay them a visit, according to Wired....

Five months after she was nominated by President Barack Obama and eight weeks after she was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Loretta Lynch was finally approved by the Senate as the next U.S. Attorney General. Lynch is the first African-American woman to serve as Attorney General. So what exactly does the Attorney General do? Chief Law Enforcement Officer There are district attorneys representing every county that take criminal cases to trial....

What is malicious prosecution? It’s an action for damages brought by someone who has been the subject of an unfair prosecution. For that prosecution to be unfair, it has to have been commenced without probable cause and for a purpose other than bringing the alleged offender to justice. In other words, the charges or allegations must have been baseless. While this may sound simple enough, malicious prosecution can actually be quite difficult to prove in court....

Bullying at school has taken an ugly twist via the Internet and cyberbullying, but an article yesterday pointed out the potentially disastrous dangers of a specific type of schoolplace harassment called “sexual bullying”. For anyone who hasn’t heard about it before, one good definition used frequently for the term is “bullying, physical or non-physical, that is based on a person’s sexuality or gender.” The consequences of sexual bullying can be very serious, and even deadly....

Serving the other side with notice of a lawsuit is typically done in person or through the mail. In some cases, however, a person may be served by publication in a newspaper. Following the filing of a complaint – the document which describes the lawsuit and identifies the parties involved – the party filing the lawsuit must complete what is known as “service of process.” There are typically very specific rules for how service must be completed, depending on the type of case and the jurisdiction in which it is being filed....

Tire blowouts on the road are scary. Whether it’s your own tire, or the tire of an adjacent vehicle, tire blowouts frequently lead to damaged vehicles, car accidents, and injuries. Determining liability in a tire blowout crash is often more complex than in other auto accidents. Apart from regular old driver negligence that may have occurred, there are potential product liability claims. The driver of a car that has a tire blowout might actually have a claim against the tire, or wheel, manufacturer, or installer, if it can be shown that the tire was improperly installed or defective....

Any business owner wants to encourage employees to do their best to prevent shoplifting and take action when they see it happening. But the manager of a Family Dollar store in Saginaw, Michigan, may have taken things a little too far when he attacked suspected shoplifters with a can of Febreze they’d allegedly stolen, Detroit’s WWJ-TV reports. The manager has since been fired, according to TMZ. But what should business owners or employees do if they catch shoplifters in the act?...

When hackers compromise your business’ systems, you may want to bring every cyber-facet of your company on full lockdown. That’s certainly what the U.S. State Department recently did after it learned that cyberintruders had infiltrated an unclassified email network used by President Obama’s close circle of aides. Your company may not have the resources that the federal government commands, but there are some hard lines you can draw to re-establish security after a cyberattack....

Airbus, the manufacturer of the Air France aircraft that crashed into the Atlantic last Sunday, has issued a warning to airlines and pilots on the protocol that crew members should follow if the aircraft’s airspeed indicators appear to be malfunctioning during flight. The warning to other operators of the Airbus 330-200 aircraft comes as investigators take a closer look at the possible failure of Air France Flight 447’s flight control system shortly before the crash....

What happens when a plane overshoots a runway, causing a passenger on board severe mental and emotions problems? According to Jewel Thomas, you should get compensation. Thomas is suing American Airlines over an incident in Chicago where an American Airlines plane ran off the runway at O’Hare International Airport. The Boeing 757 was flying cross-country from Seattle to New York and made an emergency landing at O’Hare. She says that she is so traumatized that, despite previously being a frequently flier, she is now afraid to travel by airplane....

The rights of unwed parents have always been a little tricky to define by law. However, it is even trickier for courts to decide on the parental rights of unwed fathers versus unwed mothers. According to Hofstra Law Professor Joanna Grossman, “unwed fathers in most states do not have the same rights as unwed mothers vis-à-vis their children.” However, that does not mean that the rights of unwed fathers do not exist....

A California clinic has been slapped with a civil suit following charges of sexual assault by one of its nurses. The Avenal Community Health Center, located in Avenal, California, has been accused of negligent supervision of nurse practitioner Jeff Sabino, who was arrested in 2013 and is facing 36 criminal counts including forcible penetration and sexual battery. The Hartford Sentinel reports that one of his alleged victims filed the civil suit to recover for her injury and emotional distress....

California’s new law designed to bring much-needed transparency into the process of disclosing information about child deaths falls short of legislators’ intent. Why? The problem is that counties interpret the law’s requirements differently. Also, their views vary on what constitutes child abuse or child neglect and on what information is subject to disclosure. And in Los Angeles county, deaths appear to have been mistakenly overlooked. According to public records, 58 counties reported a total of 109 child deaths in 2008 caused by abuse or neglect....

Heatstroke is one of the more common causes for injuries over the summer. It occurs when a person’s body temperature rises above 104 degrees due to sun/heat exposure. A person suffering from heatstroke requires immediate medical care. If left untreated, it can damage a person’s brain, heart, kidneys, and muscles. Fortunately, individuals can usually prevent heatstroke by finding ways to cool down before it’s too late, such as finding some shade, hydrating, even jumping in a pool, or just taking a shower....

Eleven current and former employees of Comcast Corp. filed a federal lawsuit this week in Chicago. Their complaint accuses the company of race discrimination against both the African-American employees and their predominately African-American customer base. The workers were mostly employed in Comcast Corp.’s South Side facility in Chicago. Employees say that the work environment was hostile, and that they were often called names including “ghetto techs” and “lazy techs,” reports the Chicago Tribune....