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It’s hard to say how much a person’s privacy is worth, but Hearst says it will pay $50 million to settle a data-privacy lawsuit that alleged the magazine publisher sold subscribers’ information. In the class-action, plaintiffs say they were bombarded with junk mail, advertisements and phone calls after the company sold their personal information. Lead plaintiff Josephine Edwards had subscribed to Good Housekeeping, one of many Hearst publications. It is the largest settlement payment under a Michigan law that prohibits businesses from selling personal information about their customers....

For most lawyers, terminating sanctions are something you’ll never need to worry about. However, for the unlucky some, no matter how strongly you advise a client, they’re just not going to get it. In the recent child molestation case against the organization that runs the Jehovah’s Witness church nationwide, the entire case hinged upon terminating sanctions stemming from a refusal to comply with a discovery order. Below, you can get a few tips on how to avoid the same fate and the severe consequences that follow....

If you work in-house, then you already know the drill. At one point or another, you’re going to have to give a presentation. Whether it’s a few slides to the legal department, or a major show at the annual international sales meeting, you need to know how to give a great presentation. We’re not talking cologne here (although that applies as well), we mean words. Keep the words in your deck to a minimum....

With two months to go in the federal government’s fiscal year, we are entering the “Red Zone” of EEOC enforcement. Typically, the EEOC files the majority of its discrimination lawsuits for the year during the Red Zone. Last year, the agency filed 175 of its 261 lawsuits in the months of August and September, reports Corporate Counsel. This year, experts expect a similar trend. As getting sued by the EEOC should be the very last resort for organizations, it is a good time to review the proper steps for resolving an EEOC discrimination charge....

Whether you’re a Boomer or a Gen Xer, a Millennial or a Korean War vet, if you’re running a legal practice today, you’re probably working with people from across three or four generations. That’s because there are currently four distinct generations in the American workplace, with the youngest generation, Millennials born between the early 1980s and 2000s, now making up the largest chunk of the workforce. Each generation brings with it unique characteristics and perspectives that can add value to your practice – or catch you completely off guard....

Many attorneys in technology-based practices know a big hurdle in winning cases lies in people clueless about tech. Judges can be particularly hard to win over because of this barrier. But not the judge presiding over the Oracle v. Google copyright infringement case. He learned computer code. Judge William Alsup has an undergraduate degree in mathematics. And as he revealed in previous trials, his knowledge extends beyond the law. He’s also quite an adept computer programmer and he even learned Java for the Oracle-Google battle....

The state secrets privilege dates back to common law and, in recent history, has acted as a “get out of litigation free” card for governmental misconduct. The much-needed yet much-abused privilege allows the government to use the need for secrecy in matters of national security and military operations to quash litigation, either entirely, or by exclusion of evidence necessary to prove a plaintiff’s prima facie case. Unfortunately, the privilege has been abused in the past by the government....

A Clearwater police officer who pulled a woman from her car, resulting in significant injury, after she refused to allow him to search wasn’t acting outside clearly established law, the Eleventh Circuit has ruled. The decision overturns a district court ruling that the officer used excessive force and was not entitled to qualified immunity. The incident began when Officer Jeffery Adkisson, of Clearwater, Florida, pulled Sarita Merricks over after he suspected her car’s windows were illegally tinted....

Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, state prisoners asserting a civil rights violation have to show that they’ve exhausted all their state administrative remedies before going into federal court. The problem is that, not infrequently, these “remedies” are so difficult or impossible to pursue that they’ve functionally nonexistent. That’s what happened to Moliere Dimanche Jr., a prisoner in Florida who says his claims of retaliation by prison guards fell on deaf ears....

Free range chicken. If you’ve ever wondered what the limits of “free range” are (and really, who hasn’t), the Food and Drug Administration is about to make that question infinitely more complicated. If your chicken, vegetables, fruit, or other food is imported, they’ve got a rule or two for you too. And finally, for all you turtle lovers, the mass executions will stop. Are you a GC in the food services industry?...

If you’ve been watching your Facesnaps, Twitbooks or NSA data collection feeds lately, you’ve probably seen more than one share of writer and programmer Paul Ford’s “What is Code?” article. The immersive, experience-based feature attempts to lay out the basics of code for a lay audience, in just around 38,000 words. But what does code mean for lawyers? Before getting to what code is, why would lawyers even need to understand it?...

What do you really want? It’s a question that sometimes comes up in the crisis stage of a relationship. One partner feels inadequate or frustrated, and the other is stifled about communicating his feelings. Maybe I’m getting too personal here, but the point is that sometimes lawyers don’t seem to know what they want professionally either. Because the attorney-employer relationship shouldn’t be a guessing game, here are some perks attorneys actually want:...

In-house lawyers can’t do it all. In fact, when it comes to atypical legal matters like novel litigation or mergers, in-house attorneys’ talents are best used in directing and working with specialized outside counsel. But like any legal consumer, in-house counsel need to be savvy about the outside lawyers they choose to hire. To help you out, here are our top five tips for working with outside counsel, from the FindLaw archives....

The First Circuit, in an opinion by former Supreme Court Justice Souter, upheld a Massachusetts police officer’s excessive force conviction stemming from an assault on an arrestee. Shawn Coughlin, a cop in Plymouth, Massachusetts – yes, the Plymouth of Plymouth Rock fame – was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after beating a handcuffed arrestee in a holding cell and falsifying records to impede the federal investigation....

The economy had a dramatic effect on law firms. Shrinking wallets led many in-house legal departments to look for alternatives to hiring large law firms. On-demand legal counsel is becoming increasingly common. There are several variations to the on-demand legal counsel model. While a Google search will yield plenty of temp agencies for in-house work, there are companies out there devoted to providing their own attorneys to work onsite. Many of these companies recruit former Big-Law associates who yearn for work-life balance....

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that Apple distributes third-party developers’ applications directly from its App Store, giving purchasers standing to sue the company under anti-competition laws. Apple unsuccessfully argued that the plaintiffs did not have standing because they purchased the third party apps indirectly from Apple. “Apple is a distributor of the iPhone apps, selling them directly to purchasers through its App Store,” the appeals court said. The court then reversed a trial judge’s dismissal of the case and remanded for further proceedings....

Google ‘John Giannandrea’ and you will see how fast leaders move in the search and artificial intelligence markets. Giannandrea was Google’s chief on Monday. On Tuesday, he was Apple’s. In a move designed to push Apple to the top of the field, Giannandrea will run the company’s “machine and A.I. strategy.” Apple Catch-Up Giannandrea joined Google in 2010, and helped push A.I. throughout the company’s products, including internet search, gmail, and its digital assistant....

Sometimes, it’s all about timing. And for Apple and VirnetX, time is also relative. That’s because a federal judge has ordered Apple to pay VirnetX nearly $440 million in a patent case. Meanwhile, however, the patent office and/or appeals board says the patents are invalid. Never mind Einstein’s theory of special relativity, this case is complicated. Some Math Required VirnetX won a $302.4 million verdict against Apple last year over protocols used in FaceTime and other applications....

EAGAN, Minn., April 27, 2009 - A Black’s Law Dictionary application for the iPhone and iPod touch is now available from West, part of Thomson Reuters. The app features the most recent 8th edition of the dictionary, edited by Bryan A. Garner. “The new iPhone application for Black’s Law Dictionary is very exciting,” says Garner. “The idea that you can have a very full, elaborate, complex and richly textured book like Black’s available at your fingertips is fantastic....

Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that it had bought up the intellectual property and patents of Netbox Blue, an Australian company that provides social media risk management and compliance services. Netbox Blue’s tech will be used as part of Bloomberg Vault, the company’s enterprise compliance platform. Bloomberg Vault’s customers are primarily financial services firms and the newly-acquired technology could be used to help them catch an errant tweet, email, or instant message before it lands the company in trouble with the SEC or FINRA....