Moritz Legal Information Blog

From the ancient halls of Click-Wrap, are you aware that some national companies have terms of service you agree to when you "like" their products on Facebook? Let's say you want to file a lawsuit against General Mills, maker of Cheerios, because you allege the cereal is toxic. you may be out of luck in court, though you could still arbitrate your dispute. From the new terms: “Please note we also have new legal terms which require all disputes related to the purchase or use of any General Mills product or service to be resolved through binding arbitration.” Perhaps this is yet another reason to take an arbitration and/or a negotiation class before you graduate!

Nothing makes a librarian’s heart happier than helping, and the law library has recently added a service we hope will help you. Need a quick answer but can’t make it into the law library with your legal research question? Or are you in the law library but reluctant to pack up your books and laptop to come to the reference desk lest you lose your spot? Perhaps you’re a clinic student and working downtown for the afternoon in court. Great news: the Moritz Law Library now offers live chat during reference hours! You can quickly and easily type a quick question and get a response. Just go to our Ask A Librarian legal research guide and start chatting. A law librarian will be available to respond to your questions Monday-Friday from 10am-5pm and Sundays from 1pm-5pm. In the event we are unavailable to chat (for example, if the librarian has stepped away from the desk for a moment to assist someone), you’re of course still welcome to call 614-292-9463 and leave a voicemail, or you can e

Yes, you read that heading correctly: librarians do enjoy puns. It's been said that baseball is America's favorite pastime , and traditionally pastime has been narrowly defined as some sport or other. Alas for baseball, pastime has a broader definition , and I'd argue watching sports bloopers and/or public shaming on the Internet generally is something Americans love more than baseball. So here's to bringing all of these pastimes together: Phillies Fans' Reactions To Dan Uggla's Grand Slam Are Amazing . My favorite pastime, of course, is reading. Here are a few baseball books in our collection for your pastime pleasure: The Little White Book of Baseball Law The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption Legal Decisions that Shaped Modern Baseball Curt Flood in the Media: Baseball, Race, and the Demise of the Activist-Athlete One Man Out: Curt Flood Versus Baseball Legal Issues in Professional Baseball May the Best Team Win: Baseba

Meet a pair of remarkable next-gen research tools: Casetext and Ravel . Casetext provides the full text of cases for free accompanied by crowd-sourced annotations and links to secondary sources. Anyone can annotate the cases, and those annotations found most valuable can be up-voted. The site also has annotated contracts for those interested in insights from practitioners indicating which terms have fared best in court and other key pieces of information you might need as you draft agreements. Ravel Law also provides the full text of cases for free, but its primary value is a visual representation indicating which cases are significant for the points of law you are researching. Casetext is free, period. Ravel Law is free to law students; sign up with your .edu email address to get full access to all of the cases in the Ravel Law database.

Some jokes are as old as Methuselah. Actually, the oldest joke book is from the 4th century. It's a little text called Philogelos, and yes, we actually own a copy here at OSU. You can imagine, then, that joke theft is also an old practice, and where there is theft, there is litigation. Where there is litigation, there is of course a law faculty member or two interested in studying the matter. Check out the newsy version of the faculty analysis, or read the Virginia Law Review article on the subject . As a brief note on the article, the faculty authors distinguish between joke theft and copyright infringement, which should be something warranting a "hmm..." from our blog readers who are also copyright enthusiasts.

No, the title of this blog post does not refer to the poorly rated film The Internship (though I admit, I've seen worse films). Unpaid Hollywood interns  have filed a class action lawsuit seeking "back pay, damages and an order barring use of unpaid interns at Fox Searchlight Pictures and other units of Fox Entertainment Group." The interns contend Hollywood studios are violating the Fair Labor Standards Act , "which mandates that unpaid internships benefit the interns, not the employers." How many times have you toyed with the idea of volunteering (taking an unpaid internship) to develop relationships and get experience in an effort to get your foot in the door? Should the Hollywood interns expect more if it's the case that this is just the way film business is run? You might be surprised at what distinguishes interns from employees : For interns The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer,

U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been coming out en masse , it seems (though SCOTUSblog does not expect any decisions this week). According to a Washington Post reporter , "Any information that emerges from big Supreme Court hearings feels like it’s been smuggled out of the edifice on First Street." The reporter then makes a case for cartoonists, i.e., "someone in the room who specializes in interpreting personal presentation and interpersonal interactions." Curious to see a cartoonist explain the latest Supreme Court decisions via gifs and videos? See the work of Ann Telnaes here.