It’s only a matter of time before someone asks about “the burrito case, you know, the ‘ultimate fighting’ case.”
This might not be the only Oregon burrito, ultimate fighting case, but if anyone asks, start here:
Oregon Court of Appeals: State vs. Debuiser, A145479 (decided April 4, 2012)
April 24 is the deadline for voter registration for the May 15, 2012, primary.
For links to Oregon county and state voter registration and election websites, visit our previous Oregon Voter Registration Deadline blog post.
As if copyright wasn’t complicated enough, we have a new organization (since Sept 2011): Center for Copyright Information
You can read about them, their FAQ, and their Facts.
If it wasn’t such a fascinating, aggravating, and historically curious topic, I would probably just add copyright to my list of dogs-breakfast topics. But if you are brave, wise, and have the patience of Job, Siddhartha, and Nelson Mandela all rolled into one magnificent being, I highly recommend copyright as a subject to conquer, not unlike colonizing other planets and wars to end all wars.
Oregon is a common law property state, so what happens when you move here from a community property state and you want to preserve your community property rights?
If you are a community property couple and you move to Oregon, you need to be careful how you buy property, how you title it, how you finance it, how you dispose of it, etc., etc., etc.
The January 2008 issue of the OSB Estate Planning and Administration Section newsletter has an article on the subject, Preserving Community Property Rights in Oregon, by Kevin Tillson, Hunt & Associates, PC.
P.S. For non-attorneys – please don’t confuse common law property rights with common law marriage, another matter entirely. See the Oregon State Bar blurb:
The good news out of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Oregon is that overall bankruptcy filings for the district were down in 2011 compared to 2010. There were 17,151 cases filed in 2011, compared with 19,741 in 2010. If you compare the 2011 numbers with the total case filings from 2005 (32,168 total case filings), the 2011 statistics appear promising. However, we still receive many questions about filing for bankruptcy. So, we’ve created a new legal research guide on bankruptcy, available on the Washington County Law Library’s website. As usual, if you can’t find a document on our website, check out our handy, alphabetical document index.
The Washington County Bar Association (WCBA) is presenting an April 11th, 2012, CLE titled “Rainmaking,” with popular CLE presenter, attorney David Markowitz.
For location, time, and cost information, please visit the WCBA website. (Details will soon be on the homepage Upcoming Events link or look in the April 2012 Newsletter.)
Oregonian article: “Oregon Court of Appeals says consumers with unpaid credit-card debt aren’t off the hook unless six years have passed and no lawsuits are filed,” by Aimee Green, The Oregonian, March 30, 2012, and Sunday, April 01, 2012.
Oregon Court of Appeals Cases (link from OJD COA opinions website or from OJD homepage):
1) Unifund CCR Partners vs. Rigoberto Porras (Docket # A146957)
Many of us love “agony aunt” and other Q&A columns where we get to read about other people’s problems and the relationship, ethics, financial, and business advice the Agony Aunt/Uncle dishes out.
Many of them are also quite good, in a daily horoscope sort of way, where the advice is drafted to provide maximum encouragement and minimum (actionable) harm, with a strong dose of common sense.
However, if you plan to take the “advice” and act on it, please, please be a smart consumer and consult a lawyer (or other appropriate professional) when the answer seems too good (too easy, too glib) to be true, and especially if it could affect your health, finances, family, etc.
We work with a lot of public library reference librarians and library assistants and are always on the lookout for materials that could help them help their public library patrons who ask legal reference and legal research questions.
One day we’ll write that quick and dirty legal reference guide for public libraries, but in the meantime, the Drake Law Library in Iowa has linked to, and annotated, a list of many of my favorite guides at their website that explain the unauthorized practice of law, differences between legal information and advice, and legal research techniques:
I came across a couple of good articles with tips for people who use fill-in-the-blank estate planning form.
One is from a Consumer Reports story, “Write Your Own Will?”
The other was from the Oregonian’s Brent Hunsberger March 12, 2012, article: “Fill-in-the-blank wills can be a little skimpy.” He used some web-based legal services and then solicited comments and feedback from Oregon attorneys.
