Cities across the country have been cracking down on Airbnb and homeowners who rent through the service but may be playing fast and loose with the rules: from enacting city laws and creating offices to enforce said regulations, to ordering the company to pay millions of dollars in hotel taxes and levying fines against those who provide accommodations through the site. The latest such case comes out of San Diego where a woman was recently ordered to pay $15,000 for renting rooms in her home in violation of city laws. [More]
lawyers
Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk Picks Apart Ads For Real-Life Ambulance Chasers
By 8.9.13 — Updated: 8.12.13
Rave all you want about Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of Walt White or how Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman is the show’s true but flawed moral compass, but I say the real star of Breaking Bad is Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman, the bus bench attorney whose got-dressed-in-the-dark outward appearance belies the sly legal fox lurking underneath. So what better way to end the week than with this Vulture video of Odenkirk dissecting crappy ads for real-life ambulance chasers? [More]
Criticize Dentist On Yelp, Get Threatened With Felony ‘Internet Business Defamation’
By 6.27.13
A Texas mother took her child to a dentist who only works on children based on the referral of the family’s regular dentist. She didn’t really like the specialist, and wrote a relatively short, clear Yelp review explaining why. That got her a letter from the dentist’s attorney ordering her to take down her review, OR ELSE. [More]
Scammers Find New Favorite Target: Lawyers
By 8.6.12
Lest you think that the only people being taken in by apparently obvious scams are naive rubes, it looks like lots of people with fancy law degrees are being scammed by letting their avarice get the better of them. [More]
Facebook Is Number One Tool For Divorce Lawyers
By 5.18.11
The days of finding lipstick on a shirt collar are over. All you need now is to look on a cheating spouse’s Facebook wall, as one man in a 20-year long marriage learned. [More]
Collection Of Ridiculous Warning Labels
By 1.7.11
Woman’s Day has rounded up some of the more silly of the fine-print warnings appearing on products. You know, those one’s like on the kid’s Batman cape where it says, “Warning: Cape does not enable wearer to fly.” I think my favorites are the “Terrestrial Digital Outdoor Antenna which warns “Do not attempt to install if drunk, pregnant, or both.” And of course there’s the iPod shuffles’, “Do not eat iPod shuffle.” Gotta love lawyers. [More]
Paying The Foreclosure Lawyer With A Second Mortgage
By 11.10.10
Ever the hotbed of innovation, a new innovation in foreclosure defense is emerging in Florida. Until now, the big question for foreclosure lawyers is “how do we get paid?” If their client can’t afford to pay the bank, how are they going to pay for legal services? One firm has figured out a way. After the original mortgage is nullified or reduced, the client takes out a new mortgage for 40% of the savings, and pays it to the lawyer. [More]
Why Are TV Ads For Lawyers So Unbelievably Sh&%!y?
By 10.13.10
There’s a reason that the commercials nominated for Consumerist’s first ever Worst Ad In America competition had to be nationally broadcast ads — Because if we’d included local TV spots, all the nominees would probably have been for personal injury law firms. [More]
NY Bar Rules It's Ethical For Lawyers To Scour Facebook For Damaging Info
By 9.27.10
The New York Bar Association has decreed that it’s okay for lawyers to troll through Facebook and other social media sites for damaging info on their opposition. There is an important caveat, though. It’s only ethical if the info is publicly available. “Friending” someone for the purpose of accessing data the person only makes available to their “friends” is not kosher, nor is it cool to ask someone else to do it for you. [More]
The New York Times Doesn't Want You Accessing Its RSS Feed Via An RSS Feed Reader
By 6.8.10
Update: Apple apparently realized that losing 30% of revenue on sales of the Pulse News Reader wasn’t worth playing along with the Times’ weirdness, and put the app back up for sale before the end of the day–with the newspaper’s feed still included as a default. [More]
These Antenna Installation Instructions Are Surprisingly Specific
By 3.29.10
I am typing this post with a digital TV antenna stuck in my ear, and all because nobody told me that this wasn’t the right way to install it. Ow! Apparently Antennas Direct of Missouri knows that there are people like me out there, because they’ve included some very specific warnings on their installation instructions (PDF). (Thanks to Billy!) [More]
Buy A Georgetown Law Degree On Craigslist
By 3.1.10
Mom and Dad always wanted you to be a lawyer but who wants to dump all that money down the tubes and read those boring books? Well, no longer! Some burnout is selling his law degree from a fancy university on Craigslist! [More]
Inexperienced Attorney Wins Epic Foreclosure Battle Against Wells Fargo
By 2.20.10
Consumerist’s Hero of the Weekend is attorney and writer Wajahat Ali, who fought an epic battle for a home loan modification against Wells Fargo and won. Eventually. It’s a well-written and terrifying look into the financial crisis, the state of America’s megabanks, and how homeowners in need seemingly stand no chance against the towering indifference, incompetence and confusion of those megabanks. [More]
Snow Thrower Wheels Still Exploding 4 Years After Recall
By 2.15.10
Recalls are imprecise and never fully successful, but how can they be improved? Jeff Gelles of the Philadelphia Inquirer took a look at the recall problem with snow throwers manufactured by a company called MTD, and sold under Yard Machines, Troy-Bilt, and Craftsman brands. The snow throwers used plastic wheel rims which sometimes exploded, so in 2006 the company cooperated with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and announced a recall. [More]
Judge Censured, Barred For Ordering Lawyer To Be Paid In Gift Certificates
By 2.5.10
A judicial commission for California judges censured and barred the recently retired judge Brett C. Klein for showing bias, abusing authority, and grandstanding to the press. At issue was his January 2009 alteration of a class action settlement, where he ordered everyone, including the attorneys, to be paid the same way: via $10 gift vouchers from a woman’s clothing store. [More]
Bank Sues Victim To Avoid Replacing $200k In Stolen Funds
By 1.28.10
What constitutes adequate security for a bank? PlainsCapital Bank in Lubbock, Texas says what it currently has is enough, and if after all that some crooks still manage to steal your money, it’s not the bank’s fault. The bank has preemptively sued a business customer, Hillary Machinery, to absolve itself from any liability on what it couldn’t get back from the more than $800,000 that was stolen by foreign hackers last November. [More]
AT&T Announces Proposed Settlement Over ETF Class Action Lawsuit
By 1.15.10
Chris wrote in to us this afternoon, “I found this gem in my AT&T wireless inbox [today]. I received no notification it was there, just happened to notice that I had a new message from AT&T online.” It’s an announcement that AT&T Mobility has arranged a proposed settlement over a class-action lawsuit concerning early termination fees. If it’s approved, there’ll be a settlement fund created from which AT&T customers “may receive monetary or other benefits.” [More]
Monster Energy Threatens Actual Movie Monster (We're Not Kidding)
By 10.16.09
We’re back to thinking Hansen Beverage Company is being taken for a ride by its legal counsel, Continental Enterprises, with this latest chapter in their trademark bullying saga. An actor named Trygve Lode has been contacted by Continental Enterprises on behalf of Hansen and told to remove all advertising and sales of Monster Energy from his site. The only reference to Monster Energy is the photo above.
