In a creative if misguided use of the law requiring many occupations to report to the state’s child protective services whenever they have reasonable cause to believe child abuse has occurred, a Pennsylvania dental clinic is notifying parents of children it has treated that it will need to report them for child neglect if they do not bring their children back to the clinic for treatment. In its letter to parents the clinic reminds them … Read more
Apr 4, 2018
Using the Duty to Report Child Abuse as a Marketing Tool
Mar 19, 2018
Bank Robbers Look Forward to Weekends Off Too
DID YOU KNOW?
Friday was the most popular day for bank robberies and the most popular time frame was between 9-11 AM according to the FBI’s 2016 Bank Crime Statistics Report. I guess bank robbers like chilling out on the weekends too, eh?
© 3/19/2018 Heather M. Carr of Hunt & Associates, P.C. All rights reserved.
Feb 28, 2018
The Whimsical Charm of Incompetent Crime
With school shootings, threats of missiles from Korea, law enforcement agencies claiming to be “above the law”, and no major sport to watch in February, it’s reassuring to know that the inept criminal, idiosyncratic in the object or method of crime or in his chosen means of escape can still offer a reprieve from the banal rhythms of daily life.
Take today’s news about a man whose meatballs were stolen, for instance. He looked up … Read more
Feb 20, 2018
Is Bullying OK?
I recently read an article that was about policymakers developing laws to safeguard and protect needy students from lunch shaming. Young children who are part of the free lunch program are stigmatized, made fun of and shamed because they cannot afford to buy school lunches. This got me to thinking: Why is it that (supposedly most) parents teach their children to be kind to others, follow the “Golden Rule” and not be bullies yet kids … Read more
Feb 2, 2018
Is It Really Escape If You Always Planned on Coming Back?
Inmates in a federal prison were recently charged with escape when they were caught running back to their prison.
You’d think that someone who’d gone to the effort to escape from prison wouldn’t return as a matter of course. Yet that’s exactly what inmates in a federal prison in Jefferson County, Texas were regularly doing as reported here.
Inmates would dash out of the prison to pick up contraband from a passing car and … Read more
Nov 15, 2017
Should Law Schools Teach Ethics if They Break the Law?
Law school deans often assume an aura of intellectual superiority and moral authority ever ready to opine about how some other person or institution should act. In fact, law schools and their captains seem in an odd sense to be above the law.
The brief abstract confirms that last thought. Specifically, two Emory University Professors note the criminal culpability of many laws schools, their deans and other administrators for wire fraud and other offenses for … Read more
Oct 11, 2017
Mass Shootings, the Second Amendment, and the Gun Control Debate
We can expect the gun control debate to grow louder in the wake of the Las Vegas mass shooting on October 1, 2017. Shooter Stephen Paddock killed at least 58 people and injured nearly 500 others in the recent massacre. Proponents of stricter gun control will likely point to this shooting to plead for stricter regulation of our Second Amendment right to bear arms. Their rationale is that someone intent on mass killing would be … Read more
Aug 16, 2017
Don’t Break the Law Just Because There’s a Solar Eclipse
Oregon will be the first state in the U.S. to experience the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Given the expected increase of traffic and tourism, the Oregon State Police would like to remind you that the eclipse is no excuse to break the law. For example, unless there is a genuine emergency or another exemption applies, you have no right to stop your car in traffic to get a better view. (See ORS … Read more
Jun 20, 2017
Scrubbing the Internet of What You Don’t Like – What Works and What Doesn’t
From time to time we get calls asking us to help remove items posted to the internet that the caller finds embarrassing, unfair or just plain wrong. Sometimes we can help but often we can’t. Recently Walter Olson at the Overlawyered web site of the Cato Institute collected a number of recent posts by law professor Eugene Volokh here, here and here as well as this story in Tech Dirt.
A few simple … Read more
May 16, 2017
Now That We’ve Taken Your Money, Prove Why We Shouldn’t Keep It; Or, The Advantages of a Presumption of Guilt
Some states apparently insist that even if your criminal conviction is overturned on appeal and the charges against you are dismissed, the state should still keep any fines you’ve paid unless and until you can prove that you were actually innocent of the crime you were charged with in the first place. In other words, they actually have a presumption of guilt that you have to overcome before the state will return the fines you … Read more
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