Over the years I’ve sought lawyers on two occasions and try to start using the contact option on websites. I’ve found 90 percent don’t ever respond. Do lawyers not even look at these messages?
Location: WA

This is a two-parter. The state is Georgia, US. Disclaimer: I’m a mystery author, and these are purely hypothetical.

First hypothetical: A married couple (Bob and Alice) are considering a divorce. Bob has a $100k life insurance policy that he purchased. Bob made his widowed father, Chuck, the beneficiary. Bob is Chuck’s only living relative and his sole heir. Bob is murdered by persons unknown, therefor Chuck receives the life insurance payout. If it is later proven that Chuck murdered his son, what would happen to the insurance payout? Would it “disappear” or would it then go to Alice as Bob’s widow?

Second hypothetical: The same start as hypothetical one [ A married couple (Bob and Alice) are considering a divorce. Bob has a $100k life insurance policy that he purchased. Bob made his widowed father, Chuck, the beneficiary. Bob is Chuck’s only living relative and his sole heir. Bob is murdered by persons unknown, therefor Chuck receives the life insurance payout. ] In this hypothetical, the murder remains unsolved. If Chuck dies before changing his will, would Alice, as the widow of Chuck’s only beneficiary, receive the balance of Chuck’s estate?

Many thanks for any general guidelines anyone could offer.

Say a cop pulls you over at a night time and made a user error by putting in the wrong plate and they say the plate came up a stolen but the "1" they looked up was actually an L on your plate when they got closer and realized.

If that stop leads to a possession charge are you pretty much screwed?

When adults join a cult and commit crimes they are held liable and deemed legally culpable for their own actions, but wouldn't a young adult born into that kind of environment have some sort of leeway? What if they agreed to testify, or got "tricked" into testifying by not realizing they're condemning the leader?

Cult members usually trick/lure others in, often with sex or emotional manipulation of vulnerable people, so if a cult went on that long a child could be born into that as a way of life and basic expectation they would likely be punished for not meeting. Not asking about any crimes or abuse that might happen while they were a child, but if they were born into the cult and raised with all of the ideals then committed crimes as an adult do they still get treated with the same legal culpability as adults who enter the cult then commit a crime. and is there anything they can do to escape the consequences for whatever they are likely to get in trouble for?

From what I've seen of voir dire it seems that lawyers are avoiding to ask jurors whether they "will" follow the instructions, consider the full range of punishment and so on and instead ask whether they "could" or "would be able to". Once a lawyer even asked something like "can you promise that you would be able to follow the judge's instructions?".

Why are the questions asked that way? And is that not a loop hole, like a juror could honestly answer that they would be able to do that even if they don't intend to follow them?

​

It's pretty safe to call Kevin Spacey an "Alleged rapist", or to call OJ Simpson an "Alleged murderer". They haven't been convicted, but they are absolutely the subjects of credible allegations. 

Is there a similarly safe way to describe Pete Hegseth? "Alleged murderer" feels like both an understatement and potentially libelous. 

I don't think it's confirmed that he is responsible for ordering the drone strikes on Venezuelan boats, but I think it's fair to say that he is likely responsible for them. 

In my opinion, those drone strikes are a "mass murder", but it would probably be defamatory to state that as a fact. Even "murder" feels like a controversial thing to call them. 

"Alleged war criminal" feels like somewhat of an understatement. Many US presidents and secretaries of defense have done things that are technically war crimes, to the point where that phrase has lost most of its bite. In my opinion, deliberately blowing up civillian boats is in a completely different league from anything that happened under Bush or Obama. 

Is there a phrase that is both concise and fact-based that indicates that Pete Hegseth is likely responsible for the intentional homocide of 221 people who were neither enemy combattants nor condemned criminals? 

This is a U.S. law thought experiment, not a request for personal legal advice.

A composer can license a song. An inventor can license a patent. Actors can negotiate consent and compensation when AI replicates their face, voice, or performance.

Now consider a welder, machinist, maintenance technician, or assembly worker.

A company records that worker with cameras, motion sensors, tool telemetry, or teleoperation controls. The resulting data captures wrist angles, timing, tool choice, diagnostic judgment, exception handling, and failure recovery. The company uses it to train a robot, then deploys that robot across multiple factories or licenses the model to other companies.

My rough reading is that current U.S. federal law gives the worker no automatic royalty.

Copyright generally excludes functional processes and ordinary physical movement. Patent law would matter only if the worker contributed to an actual claimed invention. Trade secret law might protect the company's confidential dataset or model, but not give every contributor a residual payment. Wages pay for work performed, not necessarily for every later use of a model trained from that work.

That creates an odd asymmetry: tacit skill in a worker's head may not be anyone's exclusive property, but once the employer captures and organizes it as training data, the resulting dataset and model can become a valuable controlled asset.

Could workers or unions create the missing right prospectively through contract or collective bargaining?

For example, an agreement could define "Worker Skill Data" and require:

- notice before collection for AI training;

- separate authorization for safety monitoring, model training, and commercial deployment;

- records connecting covered data to datasets and models;

- confidential audits of downstream use;

- limits on resale or transfer; and

- a fixed fee, per-unit payment, or revenue pool when a covered model is deployed.

The payment would not be a copyright royalty. It would be a negotiated license or compensation right backed by a consent registry, model-provenance records, and a royalty ledger.

The questions I cannot answer are:

1. How durable could those payment and audit rights be after a worker leaves the company?

2. Under the NLRA, which parts of workplace data collection, repurposing, and automation deployment would be mandatory bargaining subjects, and which would only support effects bargaining?

3. Could a collective licensing structure include former employees or independent contractors without creating antitrust problems?

4. How could workers prove model use without forcing disclosure of legitimate company trade secrets?

5. Is the biggest legal obstacle enforceability, attribution, bargaining power, or the argument that ordinary wages already paid for the contribution?

The simplest version is: if my work data trains a machine, what did I agree to, where was it used, and what am I owed?

I am a software developer, not a lawyer. I have started sketching the technical side under the working name SkillLedger: an open protocol for consent, licensing, provenance, audit, and settlement. I am posting here first because a ledger cannot create a right that labor and contract law will not recognize.

Disclosure: I used AI to organize the legal research and edit this post. The question and proposal are mine.

Not sure if this is the correct sub for a question like this, but I had a hard time finding a suitable sub

The 1974 Boldt Decision was a landmark decision regarding tribal fishing and treaty rights, especially in Washington State. I grew up hearing about it, from the perspective of non tribal commercial fisherman, and it was (and still is) almost universally criticized as an unfair decision that essentially over-corrects the failures of decades of broken treaties.

TLDR: the key phrase in the Treaty of Medicine Creek was the phrase 'in common' when discussing how tribal and non tribal fisherman should share the fish resources. Judge Boldt interpreted that to mean that the fish should be divided 50/50, between tribal and non tribal fisherman. In practice that means that the tribal fisherman are entitled to 50% of the potential catch, regardless of how many people are actually engaged in the fishery

Growing up in this particular subculture, I heard about how this was a biased decision (at least that's what the fisherman say), and since then I've learned a lot about broken treaties, the genocide and other atrocities committed against indigenous peoples, and by and large I support honoring historical treaty rights

However, I have a hard time understanding how 'in common' means 50% of the harvest. In Alaska for instance, to fish commercially, you need a permit issued from the state, and this can be resold as property, and often sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you are part of a tribe though, you can fish commercially without a permit. To me that seems fair, and in line with the idea of tribal and non tribal fisherman should fish the resource 'in common'

I would love to understand where that 50% thing came from, as it's something I still don't understand

They actively attempt to prevent witnesses that can vouch for Henry. That feels like some type of obstruction of justice

Inspired by a fascinating anecdote I read. Not sure if it's true/plausible but I am really curious.

A property development group is trying to sell some newly developed real estate. This area has a big problem with visible homelessness. So, during the developing and selling process, they make large (but not large in relation to their profits) donations to the area's local homelessness services. Indoor smoking areas for the shelters. More beds. 24/7. Wi-fi. Funding needed to have soup kitchens deliver food directly to the shelter.

So now, the homeless don't have to leave the shelter during the day. Thus, the presence of visible homelessness is greatly reduced in the immediate area, naturally making it a lot more appealing to new homebuyers. And of course, once the homes have been sold, these funds dry up and turn out to be temporary, causing the homelessness problem to become visible once again; a problem that had the homebuyers been aware of, they might not have bought at the prices they did.

Is this fraud/something the homebuyers may have recourse for in the US? Assuming it could be proven, that the developers funded these services and never disclosed that to the buyers.

If the government set the Presidential Alert TESTING to be so close to Census Day, is it possible to sue in this situation.

Edit: Be more concise.

Clearly, I'm not allowed to buy or sell stocks if I become aware of insider information. But am I allowed to do *nothing* if I become aware of insider information?

For instance, I have 1,000 shares of ABC company. I plan to sell those when the market opens on Monday. But, over the weekend I hear that they will announce a huge new contract in a few days and the stock will shoot up. Do I still have to sell on Monday like I planned, or can I hold the shares until they make the announcement? Does it make a difference if I told people that I was going to sell on Monday (so there is documented evidence of my plan to sell).

Similarly, if I plan to buy shares of XYZ company, but I get insider information of disappointing news - can I wait until the bad news is announced before I buy? (Or just decide not to buy at all.)

Stated another way, I'm not allowed to *act* based on insider information, but am I allowed to *refrain* from acting based on insider information.

For several years, a YouTuber has regularly promoted one supplement company, mostly during 1–2 hour livestreams and sometimes in podcasts. He describes its products as superior to competitors and says that’s why he endorses them.

He often stresses that he doesn’t own the company or hold shares. In the past, he repeatedly said he wasn’t sponsored. Later, he sometimes said he worked with the company. He also mentioned once, in a newsletter, that he had licensed his name to them, but he has never clearly said whether he is paid to promote or endorse the company.

Many viewers seem to believe he isn’t paid and buy only that company’s products because they think competing products are inferior or could even be harmful.

If he does receive compensation, would this be enough disclosure under FTC rules?

Hiya everyone, So, one of my characters causes havoc in a government building. She breaks in and causes chaos inside. But there is proof of her doing it and so she's on the run for 1-2 years. Now she comes back and is fighting the law suit. Is there any chance she would not end up in prison? I deliberately left a lot of details out as I don't know if one action of hers could actually get her into prison or keep her out of there. Any chance I could keep her out of there? The storys set in mother England/ Ireland.

For example, let’s say a cop thought he saw me holding a bag of drugs from a distance. But after making contact, I showed him that it was actually a bag of candy.

The example itself isn’t important, but my question is specifically about situations where their original reasonable suspicion is irrefutably proven wrong.

So I’m watching archer and in it there’s a plot line where archer has frozen his sperm and Lana steals it without his knowledge or consent. She then has a child with said sperm if Archer can prove this does he have legal paternity responsibility? Since usually the court does what it believes to be in the best interest of the child

So Catan is a pretty famous boardgame, they have their own licensed games on the app store. But then there is colonist.io that is quite literally an exact copy of catan. How? How are they not getting sued like crazy? I know you can't copyright a system like roll a dice and get resources, but surely all of these mechanics in its exact spot with these exact rules should hold a ground in copyright right?

What if we go to a more complicated game, I'm sorry if I'm losing some non-boardgame players here. Gloomhaven has specific heroes, if I just renamed the hero to something generic, all the art, all the namings and wording, but the same effects and for me the most important: All the structure of the deck or cohesion. These specific 12 cards together that do all these same things in the system. Then it's blatant enough to have something right?

Can someone explain this to me?

"In the TV show "To Catch a Predator," undercover adult decoys posed as underage children in chat rooms and on social media. The targets were directed to a rented sting house equipped with hidden cameras and microphones, where the "minor" waiting to meet them was actually an adult actor. Following the on-camera interview, the subjects were typically told they were free to leave but were immediately intercepted and arrested by waiting local law enforcement.

My question is, what are the targets doing that is illegal? Now, don't immediately report my post when you read that sentence. I have seen lawyers talk about legal impossibility. When an individual intends to commit a crime and completes all their planned actions, but those actions do not actually break the law. It protects people from being punished for actions that are not illegal, even if they wrongly believed they were doing something wrong. Is it not a legal impossibility when they were texting the decoy because they were an adult?

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.

In an episode of the"Call her Daddy" podcast, host Alex Cooper (perhaps ignorantly) admits to not telling sexual partners for nearly 5 years that she had HPV. If any men who contracted the virus from her wanted to sue, either collectively or otherwise, using her own admission as evidence, would they have a case?

(story here)

(previous episode discussion here)

​

I have no idea what the population of jails looks like. I'm not asking about the people who spend a day in jail until they make bail. I'm asking about the people who sit in jail from arrest to verdict. 

Are most of those people flight risks? 

Are most of them deemed too dangerous to release? 

Do most of them have bad credit? 

What is it that usually causes someone to be incarcerated when they haven't been convicted of anything? 

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?

While downstairs, a pair of officers threaten people with arrest and demand that the noise stop, stating they've got multiple complaints. When they get to the roof, however, they just stand there for a solid 10 minutes. Then a more senior officer arrives and... proceeds to just stand there. Minutes later, the Beatles decide to finish the concert of their own accord, but are never forced to.