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Have you ever considered the consequences of what you are doing now and how they may affect your life years from now? Enjoy chain smoking?  According to the CDC , life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers. Quitting smoking before the age of 40 reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90%.  So, for all those teenagers who smoked like stacks in high school, you might be wanting to crank out a will some time soon. How about alcohol consumption?  In a study involving 599,592 drinkers , the study found that persons who consume 100 grams to 200 grams of alcohol weekly have an estimated life expectancy at age 40 that’s about six months shorter. One more?  How about persons who are addicted to something worth being addicted to?  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse , Drug use can have a wide range of short- and long-term, direct and indirect effects. Short-term effects can range from cha...

The thing with the holiday season is that it starts tugging at the heartstrings.  People start longing to be with family, people start looking to go home, and kids look to be with mom and dad.  Well, some kids, anyway.   Some kids you kind of don't want to see again as all they want is more of everything (ungrateful little buggers).  Anyway, today's blog is a story about two diametrically opposed brothers who were in my law library a while back. Brother #1 was a nice enough guy.  Affable, dressed like Bing Crosby and spoke well of his mother.  Brother #2 was a jerk. He dressed like he lived on the Jersey Shore and spoke with a Harvard accent (even though he was from California).  Two brothers, two perspectives.  I know all about Brothers #1 and #2 because they came in on consecutive weeks seeking information about how to "best" deal with Mom's money.   See, Mom was about 88 years young and, apparently, was exhibiting earl...

Do you know what Librarians do all day?  Heck, do most Librarians know what they're going to do day by day?   Like most days, I plan to do a whole bunch of things and then actually only get to a couple things.   Like today.  I was going to write a few letters, call a few people, finish up a report, get ready for a presentation - and then the tow truck guy showed up. See, our Library owns the lot next to our law library and it is a private lot for which we sell monthly and daily parking passes.  Each parking spot can be rented for $60 per month (or $8 per day).   That sounds like a lot but in downtown Riverside (where we are located), but that's pretty competitive.   Anyway, if you happen to park in our lot and you don't have a permit hanging on your rear-view mirror (or a daily parking pass on your dash), you can, and will, be towed and I'm probably the guy that's going to have to effectuate that tow.  I really don't like doing it bu...

When was the last time you cracked open and read a "real" book?   No, not those electronic abominations.  I mean an actual book with paper and ink and everything.  The way the media plays it, you'd think no one ever reads books any more.    In fact, I was talking with a librarian who works at a  a law school the other day.  He informed me that they don't teach students how to use print resources anymore. WHAT?!  Don't teach print?  Apparently, law schools have scads of money to spend and can, apparently, afford most everything the online world has to offer. It's no wonder, then, that I regularly have new (and some seasoned) attorneys come to me and stand with awe and amazement at the wonder that are the print books on our shelves that no one had ever told them about. The masalah is that not everything is online.  Yeah, yeah - I know that's a shocker for some people.  Even if you have gobs of money to buy the mos...

When people look at me today, they see a 6'5" giant of a man.  Confident, strong, and the life of the party. When I was a kid, that wasn't so much the case.  Heck, when I was a kid, I got beaten up all the time (which was probably why I eventually got into law). I remember this one group.  They thought they were the cock of the walk and would shake kids down for their lunch money. No kid dared to tattle on them because, as we learn from television and government in general, people who tattle end up wearing cement shoes.  So, the rein of terror continued.   One day, I was playing marbles with a friend and this group of thugs came over and started pushing him around. Honestly, I don't know what came over me because I stepped my 60 pound, 4 foot nothing frame between the bully and my friend and told them to push off .   You'd have thought an atomic bomb went off because the entire playground froze.   Kids hundreds of yards away felt a disturban...

You gotta wonder the timing of some things. Take, for instance, November.   November is the month for Thanksgiving and Veterans and wouldn't you know it but just the other day, I had a young Marine come into our law library seeking assistance? Seems a few months back, he was serving overseas. When he got home and was sifting through his mail, he found that he had been served a complaint for a sizable sum of money. Because he didn't respond after 30 days, a default was entered against him. So, let's recap.  Military man is serving overseas and while he was deployed, he was served and a judgement was entered against him.  I think that the operative words here are: WHILE HE WAS DEPLOYED .  The thing is, courts really don't like it when people take advantage of persons serving in the military.  Really, REALLY. I guess because politicians don't like it they created the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) in 2003 under 50 USC 3901-4043 . ...

Today's blog is more a commentary on greed than anything else.  In and of itself, greed is good .  Notwithstanding what the left says, greed encourages innovation and development.  Of course, greed also leads to other things - like selfishness (which is pretty much what happens when people get to thinking life is more about them then it is about helping others). Take, for instance, the GMC Gremlin , but it was pretty big).  Thing was, it got good gas mileage for a car in the 70's.  The duduk kasus was that if you were ever involved in a rear-end collision, you were toast . Literally.  About 27 people were killed in similar accidents and, it turns out, Ford factored the liability into its financials by creating a trust fund in anticipation of future litigation . Ford knew the Pinto's gas tank was a defective design but sold them anyway because they figured they'd make more money selling Pintos then they'd lose in litigation .  In the end, it was ...