USLegal Newsletter - August 2009

Welcome to USLegal’s August Newsletter. This summer, we’re rolling out our exciting new Build USLegal program, and we’re reiterating that announcement in this month’s Newsletter. We’ve received many responses at our Build USLegal contact link (provided below).

We also want to highlight our latest USLegal Guide: A Survivor’s Guide to a Death in the Family. This practical guide helps survivors navigate the legal issues raised by the passing of a family member. Read on for details.

At USLegal, customer satisfaction is our greatest asset and goal. If we’ve made your legal life easier, please tell your friends and family about us. If you have a routine legal need, make us your first stop. And now, our news:

Build USLegal: Host and Manage Your Legal Content with Us

Do you want to grow your on-line income, or create income where none exists? USLegal receives millions of page views monthly. If you maintain a legal content website, you can join the USLegal network to vastly increase your traffic and make commissions from Google AdSense ads and (where applicable) our products placed on your pages.

You’ll manage your specific legal content on USLegal, which can include a complete sub-domain of USLegal you control, making money from the revenue generated. We can host your domain, or if it needs to remain on your servers we will point a sub-domain to your server for you to operate. In this case, your site would be redirected on your server to YOURNAME.uslegal.com.

We’re also searching for legal Authors, Subject Matter Specialists, Publishers, CLE Providers, and Legal Forms Databases. If you have written legal subject matter or form books, articles or seminar materials, learn how to leverage the power of USLegal to turn the works into continuing revenue. If you are a specialist in your field, manage content within your area of specialty and earn income on a continuing basis. If you have developed a form database for your firm and would like to sell the database, let us know.

Join USLegal and help us continue to make USLegal the premier destination for legal information, products and services - and make money! To contact us about Build USLegal, and for more information on the program, click here.

USLegal’s Survivor’s Guide to A Death in the Family

Our Survivor’s Guide is a practical guide to coping with the death of a spouse or family member. Topics include: funeral and burial rites, arrangements, and expenses; essential documents; Social Security information; support groups; access to safe-deposit boxes; vacant-dwelling insurance; decedent’s last will and probate proceedings; income tax liability of the decedent and the decedent’s estate; claiming a decedent’s income- tax refund; claiming benefits under a policy of life- insurance; anatomical gifts; and rollover or distribution from a decedent’s qualified retirement plan or IRA.

To review the Guide, click here.

Featured Product of the Month

* Landlord Tenant Residential Lease Forms Package *

The convenience and value of the USLF state-specific Residential Lease Forms Package is unmatched. Our professionally drafted residential lease complies with the unique landlord tenant law of your state, as does each form contained in the package. You will use these forms again and again as long as you rent property. If purchased individually, these forms would total $129.80. For just $49.95, get tremendous savings - so do your pocketbook a favor. Including state specific Lease, Lease Application, Reference Check Consent, Pre and Post Inventory Checklist, Lead Paint Disclosure, Welcome Letter, Rent Warning Letter, Rent Termination Notice, Closing Statement and more.

Click here to order a Residential Lease Forms Package for your state.

Legal News In Brief

We track breaking legal news at the USLegal Reporter. Check in regularly to stay updated on top national legal stories. These are some of the items of interest we’ve spotted in the last month:

Court Upholds $14 Million DUI Verdict Against Bar and Bartender
A Washington court has upheld a $14 million award against the bar and bartender that served a patron who later left the bar and caused a fatal accident. Under a state dram shop law, bars can be liable to victims for “negligent overservice”, by serving alcohol to visibly intoxicated patrons who later injure others. The bartender was the girlfriend of the drunk driver, Hawkeye Kinkaid, who was killed in the crash. The other car’s driver and all of its passengers were injured, included a 7-year old who was left a paraplegic. It was estimated that Kinkaid drank the equivalent of 21 12-ounce beers or 30 ounces of 80-proof alcohol and had a blood alcohol content of .32 at the time of the collision. At issue on appeal was whether the plaintiff needed to provide specific “point-in-time” evidence that Kinkaid seemed drunk when the bartender served him. However, the Washington Supreme Court disagreed, since the bartender admitted to others that Kinkaid seemed too tipsy to drive and eventually refused to serve him any more alcohol.

Second Music Download Case Goes to Trial
A Boston University student, 25 year-old Joel Tenenbaum, is on trial in a lawsuit brought against him by the recording industry. He is accused on illegally downloading and distributing music online. Although only 30 songs are at issue in the case, the plaintiffs claim Tenenbaum has downloaded and distributed thousands of songs online. Tenenbaum is represented by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson. Last month, in the first music downloading case to go to trial, a federal jury awarded $1.9 million in damages against a Minnesota woman for copyright infringement.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dies
Eunice Kennedy Shriver has died at the age of 88 at a Cape Cod hospital, after suffering a series of strokes. She was a sister of President John F. Kennedy and Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, and the fifth of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Shriver was the founder of the Special Olympics and devoted herself to helping those with mental disabilities. In a 1962 article in the Saturday Evening Post, Shriver revealed that her older sister, Rosemary Kennedy, was developmentally disabled. Rosemary had been institutionalized since the age of 23. Her father arranged for her to have a prefrontal lobotomy in 1941, an experimental operation which destroyed part of her brain, leaving her in an infant-like state. She was later kept out of sight at other institutions and secluded from her family. Shriver’s candor about her sister helped raised awareness about proper treatment for those with mental disabilities. In 1982, Shriver founded the Community of Caring, an organization devoted to at-risk teens. Their work focuses on issues such as preventing teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, and encourages teens to stay in school and develop proper values. Shriver’s political activism on behalf of those who are mentally disabled and at-risk teens helped earn her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Check out controversial legal issues of all stripes with us at the USLegal Blog. Register and voice your opinion in the comments section.

Have a Legal Question? Ask a Lawyer

If you want to find out more information about a certain area of law, consider USLegal’s Ask a Lawyer service. The service enables you to submit your question to a lawyer who will provide you with legal information.

The charge for this service is $15.95 per question.

Legal advice is not provided. If your question cannot be answered without providing legal advice, you will not be charged. In the event you desire to retain an attorney, you will be provided with sources for choosing an attorney for you to consider.

Law and Legal Definitions

Riot
(In honor of the health care reform “debates.”)

A riot occurs when a defined number of people, usually a minimum of three, intentionally or recklessly causes or creates a grave risk of public terror or alarm. A person commits the crime of inciting to riot if he commands, solicits, incites or urges another person to engage in tumultuous and violent conduct of a kind likely to cause or create a grave risk of public terror or alarm. Riots disturb public peace and safety and require police action.

A person may be often arrested for rioting after being informed by police officers that they are participating in an unlawful assembly and being ordered to disperse. If the crowd does not disperse, its members become subject to arrest for the crime of rioting, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest or other crimes. For additional information on Riots, and a Bibliography of related materials, read our full entry on Riot.

For more legal definitions, please visit USLegal’s free online legal dictionary.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Newsletters 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.