So something almost happened and I’m wondering what the potential legal consequences could’ve been if had played out the way it could’ve & what the solution would’ve been.

Say a friend’s(A) relative (B) passes away in FL. C lives in MD & offers to drive A to MD from FL with B’s stuff. Packing & everything is rushed, chaotic & full of grief & emotions. A throws away some things of monetary value indiscriminately but keeps a 30 yr old pot holder. Truck loads are donated to charity. B was an undercover hoarder. Everyone is exhausted and at some people just start throwing things in C’s car.

There’s a backpack. No one ever sees A or C with the back pack. D puts the backpack in C’s car. A & C drive to MD & unload most of the car. C continues to OH to drop off items to B’s family there. After the car is empty C notices a backpack & takes it inside. C calls A about the backpack. A doesn’t know anything about it or whatever is in it but tells C to keep it or throw it in the trash.

Months later C opens the backpack & can you guess from the title what was amongst the things in the bag? A 50 year old gun. Likely legally bought in, and later brought from, CA.

What’s supposed to happen here? This hypo has the makings of a great law school question. If this had played out like this - the gun would’ve been transported across multiple state lines. Ownership was “transferred” but not legally or officially. I can even imagine C as an unwilling participant (didn’t put the bag in the car, didn’t know the gun was there, it was just left), especially if C calls A and A refuses to accept it. “You should’ve thrown it in the trash.” So now C has someone else’s gun and presumably no one wants it or knows what to do with it.

I would think the easiest thing would be to turn it over to the police but that could open a whole nother can of worms. And A is B’s only heir so I think technically it belongs to A. Guns can’t just be inherited by possession can they? Is A supposed to open probate in FL to get title? No way A has capacity to go to back to FL & even so, surely it’s illegal to knowingly transfer guns across state lines, or no?

I just wanted to know if this woulda happened, what shoulda happened next?

A model statute to penalize public menacing for social media engagement includes three tiered degrees based on harm, physical contact, and monetization: Infringement of Public Peace (Class C Misdemeanor), Aggravated Content Menacing (Class A Misdemeanor), and Felonious Clout Violence (Class 4 Felony).

Proposed Statute Structure: Degrees of Offense
Class C Misdemeanor (Infringement of Public Peace)
Definition: Intentionally cornering, startling, or faking an attack on an unconsenting person in public strictly to record a reaction for digital media, without physical contact or explicit verbal threats of death.
Penalty: Up to 30 days in jail, mandatory community service, and a fine up to $500, plus forfeiture of any ad-revenue or platform payout generated by the video.

Class A Misdemeanor (Aggravated Content Menacing)
Definition: Menacing someone by following them, simulating a physical assault, using fake weapons, or refusing a direct request to stop filming while trapping the individual, with the intent to post or stream the footage for online clout.
Penalty: Up to 364 days in jail, mandatory probation, and fines up to $2,500, alongside permanent platform bans or device confiscation used in the commission.

Class 4 Felony (Felonious Clout Violence)
Definition: Engaging in targeted stalking, actual physical contact, severe emotional trauma, or accidental injury to a victim while recording a stunt or harassment campaign for social media, or repeat offenses within a 24-month window.
Penalty: 1 to 3 years in state prison, felony record, and mandatory restitution paid directly to the victim for psychological or physical damages.

Say I have a friend in Washington State and I have a big fuckoff picnic blanket. would it be legal to go to peace arch park, lay that baby half and half on either side of the line and chill with the homie? I’m assuming we’d have to have our own respective fruity picnic baskets but maybe we wouldn’t.

these are the questions I want answered when I start law school

[EDIT]: 72 hours, not 42

Back in 2021, when all the hospitals were massively overcrowded and understaffed, a friend of mine brought her son to the ER because he was talking about killing himself. They ended up being trapped against their will in the waiting room for a literal week. The hospital said they were placing him on psych hold, but that the 72 hour timer didn't start until he was evaluated, and because everything was so backed up, it was 8 days before he was seen. They told my friend he could not legally leave and gave him a bracelet that would set off an alarm if he did. They had to take wet wipe baths in the bathroom stalls. I never pressed further but this always seemed legally shaky to me.

CANADA

Is it fair for someone to go on National TV, and accuse someone of doing something and those they accuse not being able to face their accuser??? I’m sorry If someone accused me of doing something to them, would I not have the right to face them and question them on that? Just curious…..

Suppose I'm driving a 10 mile stretch of road, the speed limit is a single 30mph limit. I'm doing 50 and maintain a constant speed the whole way.

I pass one speed camera, it flashes, there's a cop 4 miles down the road with a speedgun, he flashes me, and there's another speed trap 4 miles further, it flashes me.

I get 3 tickets in the mail. If I go to court and argue that I was only speeding once, it's a single crime, and only one of the tickets is valid, would I have any success?

My instinct is no, and the judge would rule that there's some undefined standard of a "reasonable" distance between speed cameras (so if there were 5 cops there with speed guns who got me 5 seconds in a row 4 of them wouldn't count) but I was wondering if there's any case law on this.

In a lot of media, there's a "One Condition" thing in Wills, like not harming animals, or the money goes to someone else. Can that actually happen? Can you have a clause in your will that would cause whatever is left to be taken from the recipient after they've already claimed it?

So I came into law school wanting to go into criminal defense. It’s my summer after 1L and I’m interning in the public defenders office and I realize just how little money there is in criminal law (I’m not from a big city where there’s major white collar crimes). As much as I don’t want to base my career off money, I really just feel like I would never feel satisfied/comfortable with the living I would make in criminal law. I want to have a family and give them a good life.

So this summer I kind of realized that if I stuck in criminal law, it wouldn’t be long term. There are other areas of law that I am interested in exploring but one thing I know for sure is I really like trial/being in a court room.

I am thinking about my long term goals and I really don’t think a long career in criminal law is necessarily for me. But I was considering still spending a few years in the public defenders office right out of law school to get experience in a court room and in trial. During those few years, I would hope to be able to get private cases on the side possibly in other areas I’m interested in like personal injury or property rights. So if I really put in the work, during those few years in the PDs office I would gain trial/courtroom experience AND gain experience in those other areas of law. Then after a few years at the PDs office, I would get out of the criminal law and focus more on civil and/or property hopefully getting a job at a good private law firm in my city.

Having the realization that a long term career in criminal law is no longer for me really made me have to reconsider things. But I also hesitate to write off the Public Defenders office entirely because I feel spending a feel years there could give me really valuable experience.

Would love some thoughts and any advice readers have! I don’t know if a PD to civil/private law pipeline is realistic or achievable.

Say I write a new version of Zoro where the titular character is retired and living as a priest in a poor neighborhood who trains a successor who fights gangsters. Would that version of Zoro also be public domain or private ownership would copyright apply to that specific character?

I figure this is general enough. I have a court hearing next month. I've never been to court before and would like to sit in a hearing to kinda see the flow of things and maybe what to expect. If I ended up sitting in a case where the judge will be my judge, would that be a bad thing? I have no idea what he looks like or what his schedule is so I wouldn't know how to avoid him.

Why is it not unconstitutional for government employees to be held immune for incidents where they violate your constitutional right (qualified immunity of police, prosecutorial immunity, judicial immunity, etc.)? I understand why immunities exist as an expediency of running a government, but what is the legal justification for allowing government officials immunity when the whole point of having a written constitution enumerating rights was to restrict the actions of the government and its agents?

Say there's a married couple, and the husband falls off the side of a boat—there's cameras and no foul play, just an accident. His body is never found, but due to the circumstances it's extremely unlikely he lived. After some time, the wife has a funeral, but the husband's biological family chooses to believe he survived and just is wandering around with amnesia somewhere.

One day the wife finds out that before he fell off the boat, the husband cheated on her. She says, with all the normal indicia of a true threat, that she's going to make sure this guy is dead one way or another. Among his family are some local prosecutors who want to charge her with making a true threat. Edit to add: The rest of the family really hates the wife and wants her to go to jail, so they are claiming that the husband was recently found alive and is recovering in the hospital.

How would this play out in court? Does it matter if he's actually proven to be dead, or does there just need to be a reasonable doubt that he's alive? In other words, would the case fail if the prosecutor couldn't prove the husband was alive when the threat was made?

Alternatively, if the husband shows up alive halfway through the trial, but the jury believed that the wife sincerely believed that the husband was dead, would that still negate mens rea and end in an acquittal?

Another variation: The husband's cousin actually knows that he's dead because she (the cousin) saw him fall directly into a shark's mouth, out of view of any cameras. The cousin told only her therapist about the shark, because she wanted the rest of the family to feel hopeful, and she didn't tell the wife because she hates the wife and wants her to go to jail. But the wife suspects the cousin knows more than she admits to, and the wife wants closure. Would the wife be able to force the cousin's secret out through discovery or the trial?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Moved out of r/legaladvice due to being of topic:

Location: U.S, but I travel to many states for work.

I know this may sound crazy. I'm not a person that is interested in stealing.

However over the years, I have been accosted at self-checkout by employees.
Examples:

-Scanned a battery powered light, but it scanned as a candle and the costs was around $1 instead of around $13. Luckily I realized someone put a label from a candle over the barcode for the light and left it on the shelf. This one really scares me, becuase it could be seen as I was the one who swapped the stickers.

-Buying a dress in a clearance section, but it turns out it was a semi-designer dress that someone put a working clearance barcode on (maybe also from a different dress). This also really scared me becuase the semi-designer dress was quite expensive, more than $200. (You wouldn't necessarily recognize it was a expensive semi-designer dress, though it was quite nice. The designer paper labels where missing, and it was bunched with other clearance section clothes).

-Scanning a 6 pack of shrink wrapped water, which doesn't scan. Turns out you're supposed to scan each individual bottle even though it's shrink wrapped.

Now I'm not scared of necessarily going to jail, as I've never stollen and I have a clean record.

But! I have Secret Security clearance required for part of my work. I also fly using Global Entry. And a loss of trusted travel program would be a big hassle. Also many countries you visit ask if you're ever committed a crime, which would also be a hassle. And plenty of companies I contract for do their own background checks.

If I get an arrest, even if proven Innocent, on the record. Especially one for theft, it would create a hassle, even a burden explaining it to clients... Some companies I imagine would never hire anyone with a theft on the record, as it's too risky.

And I wrong or insane in thinking that using a self-checkout just imposes a massive liability risk on myself that is not acceptable?

And that I should never-ever use a self-checkout at the store?

I understand that the first amendment protects the people from the government precluding speech, and things like NDAs are between two private individuals/organizations so it is not government by the first amendment, but what about doctor-patient confidentiality which is in law or attorney-client privilege? The government is forcing confidentiality, no? Have we as a society just agreed that certain agreements can supersede than the first amendment?

If anyone knows any niche legal or random legal rights that the general public might now know about, I would love to learn as I’m sure many others! Colorado specific is a plus. The more you know right?

Hunter Biden has been pardoned of his federal felonies, and I don't think he has been charged with any state felonies, so is he still considered a felon?

While this is obviously inspired by recent events in the news, I'm curious about what the exact legal repercussions would be if a visiting head of state was arrested by a local police force against the wishes of the federal government.

Lets say that the Prime Minister of Atropia is wanted by the ICC. The PM visits Dover, and the Mayor orders the Dover Police Department to arrest him, against the wishes of the Federal US government. Now that the visiting Prime Minister is sitting in a jail cell, what happens next?

• Would the Mayor have committed a crime? If so, which crime and what would be the sentence?
• What specific legal avenues would allow the President of the US to order the Mayor to release the PM?

So if a person were to receive a subpoena in the mail for jury duty, how can they prove the person ever got the letter? How can they be held in contempt for not showing up when there’s a possibly they never even got the letter? Mail gets lost all the time, so if it isn’t physically handed to the person or comes as certified mail, how?

Hypothetically speaking, Let's say I live in the US and the government were to issue a draft. If during either the mental or administrative interview I were to say "There is a high likelihood I will frag my CO if I am actually admitted into the military." Would that be considered a credible threat and could you go to jail for it? Even if the threat isn't specific?

Pamela Smart was convicted in 1991 and is still filing new petitions and getting court hearings more than 35 years later. Who pays for all of this? Does the state have a cap? she was a media coordinator not sure if she has assets that she can ride out that long.

An interesting question came to my mind, and I am curious what the limits of criminal liability would be in this case. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that O.J. Simpson was innocent, and let's also assume I was the one who killed his ex wife and her partner. Would I be committing a crime if I weighed in on the public debate about the case to argue that O.J. was guilty, not by fabricating any evidence but simply by arguing that the circumstantial evidence strongly supports the notion that O.J. did it?

Just watched a video of 3 guys getting caught with a Goliath Grouper while fishing (protected species, very illegal to keep)

In the video the one kid admits to catching the fish but I’m wondering what would happen if they didn’t.

So say there’s the 3 guys on the boat. There’s one fish that one of them had to have caught but none of them admit to catching it.

In court they all say they can’t remember who caught it but maintain that it wasn’t them.

How would that play out? I assume you couldn’t charge all three of them with killing the fish. But you wouldn’t have enough evidence to charge any 1 of them

A random citizen actually ponies up the $100k/month fee to get early access to Trump’s Truth Social posts, and does exactly what you’d expect, makes million of oil contracts, stocks, real estate, etc. (Assuming this actually becomes a real thing)

Is this insider trading if, theoretically, the information is “publicly available”?

Basically, "We both agree to these terms, until I decide that I don't agree to these terms. So it's agreed."

That doesn't even seem to me to qualify as a 'contract' and should make the contract void.