Legal Subject Area Guides

Published on: December 26, 2006

Chickens and the Law

By Laura Orr

“Give me a chicken over a stupid cat any day …” (from here)

What is it about chickens that makes people a little, well, funny? Today’s story on “chicken zoning,” so to speak, at KATU has some great lines in it, and then there was this a little while ago about a woman shooting her husband after he shot her pet chicken. We also get a few questions a year on “how many chickens …?” Maybe we need an Oregon Chicken Blog? No, maybe not.

I do also remember one of the funniest short stories I ever read was by H.E. Bates. A chicken played a major, if off-stage, role. It was titled, if I remember it correctly, “The World is Too Much With Us,” (yes, after the Wordsworth poem – but well before it became over-quoted ;-). (And for those of you not poetically inclined (I’m not really either), you should know H.E. Bates if only because his “Darling Buds of May,” made into a multi-part series by the BBC was the break-out movie for Catherine Zeta-Jones. Librarians are so full of it, aren’t we?

Published on: December 22, 2006

Grandparent Visitation Rights

By Laura Orr

Just when I thought I’d posted my last pre-holiday blog entry (Shalom!), I visited Shlep and found that David (agita-avoidance shield UP 🙂 had an update on grandparent visitation rights. Among others, David links in his 12/21 posting to the Fausey v. Hiller U.S. Supreme Court petition for cert.

In Oregon, O’Donnell-Lamont was the recent grandparent legal rights blockbuster case (and the first set of appellate briefs we digitized in our now-dormant digital briefs project). Also here in Oregon we have “Oregon’s Legal Guide for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children.”

Published on: December 18, 2006

More Condo Law

By Laura Orr

“From a nothin’ to a somthin'” (and one day I’ll tell you where that quote comes from – and laugh and laugh you will). I used to think we had almost nothing on Condo law in Oregon and now we have a bounty of resources. If you put the word “condo” in the search box at the top of this blog you will see links to most or even all, and any future condo postings I might make. I now have two more resources to add to this collection:

1) The Official HOA Handbook, A. Richard Vial, editor, (Northwest HOA Law Center, 2003)

2) Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Handbook (use the index to find some very useful information on HOAs)

Published on: August 8, 2006

By Laura Orr

Law Firm Forms – Who Owns the Copyright?: The law firm or the lawyer? Ed Poll talks about this at his Lawbiz blog and also links to a July 24th post, Who Owns the Copyright?, at Adams Drafting blog.

Published on: February 3, 2006

By Laura Orr

Copyright and Orphan Works: Orphan works are “copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate.” See the latest report the Copyright Office, commissioned by Senators Hatch and Leahy.

Published on: October 27, 2005

Military Status Verification (SCRA)

By Laura Orr

See March 18, 2010, OLR blog post for updated links.

If you need to verify non-military status for the purpose of complying with new SMCRA (aka SCRA – these are the amendments to the Soldier and Sailor Civil Relief Act of 1940), here is one place to go if you have a Social Security number. If you don’t have a SS#, here is a list of addresses for 5 branches of the military. Additional information about SCRA (Servicemember Civil Relief Act) can be found at the ABA web site, here. Let me know if you find other useful sources.