Insurance Claim1

How many out in blogland love to procrastinate?  Well, maybe you don't love to procrastinate but you do it anyway, right?   Like holiday shopping, or buying the wife an anniversary gift, or waiting until 3:00AM to do your homework, or making that dentist/doctor appointment, or updating a will/trust. It was because of that last one (updating a trust) that compelled a couple to come into my library the other day.  Seems once upon a time Dad had prepared a trust.  Spent thousands of dollars on it, he did.  Then one day, Dad died. The way the couple told it, Dad was meticulous.  Dad had planned for everything.  Every piece of property was accounted for, every penny was identified, everything was planned down to the finest detail.   Problem was, while everything was carefully examined, "someone" had failed to fund Dad's trust .  Not a single asset had been transferred to Dad's trust before he died.   Big OOPS! So, wait, what's the perkara with not f

Did you know that any case that you find at your local county law library has been appealed?  Yep.  If the case was not appealed, your local county law library would not have any more access to it than you do (via a simple superior court records search).   In fact, the only place you could find a record of a non-appealed case is in the courthouse where the matter was heard OR, if the case is particularly sexy, it might wind up as a notation in O'Brien's Evaluator .  What is O'Brien's Evaluator?  It's a crystal ball of sorts that helps litigators determine if they have a case that will result in a win (and cash). Today's entry is one such case.  In the 2015 edition of O'Brien's, I found reference to  Triplett v. The Beverly Hills Hotel .  Crystal Triplett was a one time Communications Manager of The Beverly Hills Hotel ("Hotel"). Seems at one point, Ms. Triplett worked in Chicago and was offered employment in Los Angeles (to which she mo

The other day, a young lady came into my law library. Seems she had invented a device that help people breath filtered air.  It was her hope and dream that her invention would be patented and make her lots of money.   The kasus was that her patent claim was rejected and young lady was in our library to find out why. Now, in case you were wondering about the the picture associated with this blog, this is a Hamster shirt. What is a hamster shirt?  What it looks like is a hamster cage that wraps around a person.  Weird, but what do I know?  What I do know is that it is one of millions of patent applications that have been rejected over the years.   Why, you might ask, would a patent application be rejected?  Good question.  There are a number of reasons a patent might be rejected, such as: Invention is Obvious. Basically, this means that the invention’s claimed elements can be found in a number of prior works. Lack of Novelty. This means that an invention is too closely re

WARNING:   This blog post runs a bit deep and leans towards the dark side of how law stuff works.  So, if you're looking for light and fluffy, check out some of my other blog posts . Anyway, you know what I'm grateful for?  Well, among other things, I'm grateful for the fact that while I've been in the legal business for little over two decades (that's 20 years for you millennials), I've not had to actually litigate anything. Knock on wood but no one has sued me and I haven't had to sue anyone.   That's actually pretty impressive given that I live in the litigation capital of the world (i.e. California). Despite my good luck (so far), I have pity on people who come into my law library with problems.  Take, for example the guy that come in the other day.  He was embroiled in a family law matter and only recently his soon-to-be ex's lawyer filed a complaint for Joinder . Typically, when people seek Joinder in legal matters, it means that

It's Christmas time and what better thing to do at Christmas time is sing Christmas carols.   One of my favorite is the 12 Days of Christmas .  In this case, let me reprise the 10th day with my own version, to wit: On the 10th day of Christmas my true love gave to me....10 amended pleadings! Wait, what?  Yeah, 10 amended pleadings.  That's how many I've had to deal with this last week.  Ten.  So, before we get into this, what is an amended pleading?  Well, according to Black's Law Dictionary (10th edition), AMENDED PLEADING means: A pleading that replaces an earlier pleading and that contains matter omitted from or not known at the time of the earlier pleading.  An amendment is the correction of an error or the supplying of an omission in the process of pleading. So, how might an AMENDED PLEADING play out?  There are a number of ways that people can run into trouble and have to deal with an amendment. A party might have to substitute the true name of a