Landlords Need Adequate Liability Insurance

The October 31, 2005 edition of the New Jersey Lawyer reports that a jury in New Jersey recently awarded $3.5 million to the relatives of a five year old girl who was killed in a fire at their rented home. In that case, the landlord was held to have been negligent for failing to install an adequate alarm system. Warning to all landlords (even in a simple two family home): in addition to making sure that your building is SAFE for your tenants, make sure that you have adequate liability insurance to protect you if a tragedy occurs.

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Attorneys Are Not "Debt Relief Agencies" Under New Bankruptcy Code

The Commercial Law League of America reports that Judge Lamar W. Davis, Jr., Chief Bankruptcy Judge for the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Georgia, entered an Order on October 17, 2005, holding that attorneys are not "debt relief agencies" under new Bankruptcy Code that came into effect on October 17, 2005.

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How To Better Govern And Manage Your Homeowners Association, Condominium, or Cooperative

If you already are, or are considering living in a community that is a homeowners association, condominium, or cooperative, you may be interested in this Web Resource on how to better govern and manage your community association.

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Disaster Resources

Although it is named the "Hurricane Katrina Resource Page", many of the links there can prove to be very useful to anyone planning for (or worse, finding themselves in) a "DISASTER.".

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Become a Volunteer

If you want to give back to your community, whether you are an attorney or not, you may want to consider one of these Volunteer Opportunities that will probably enrich your life.

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N.J. Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act

In order to permit a person with mental illness to execute an advance directive that specifies preferences for mental health services in the event that the declarant is subsequently determined to lack decision-making capacity, the New Jersey Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act [P.L. 2005, c.233 (S-2369)] was recently enacted into law.

The New Jersey Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act governs advance directives for persons with mental illness, who: find their civil rights and due process protections frequently compromised; often lack the resources, societal supports and self-esteem needed to make advance directives for health care work for them; and are disadvantaged by the fact that many physicians and attorneys are unaware of the specific issues that typically enter into the decisions that a person with mental illness may make for himself when in crisis.

To the extent that any of the provisions of the New Jersey Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act are inconsistent with the Revised Durable Power of Attorney Act [N.J.S.A. 46:2B-8.1 et seq.] concerning the designation of a mental health care representative, the provisions of the New Jersey Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act shall have priority over those of the Revised Durable Power of Attorney Act.

Nothing in the New Jersey Advance Directives for Mental Health Care Act shall be construed to impair the legal force and effect of an advance directive for health care executed pursuant to the New Jersey Advance Directives for Health Care Act [N.J.S.A. 26:2H-53 et seq.].

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Legal Guide for Bloggers

Blogging can be detrimental under certain circumstances (see prior post) -- to survive, see Legal Guide for Bloggers, published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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The Squid and the Whale

If you have children and are contemplating filing for, or already are in the midst of a divorce, you may want to see a movie that hopefully may make you a better parent during this difficult time in your life: The Squid and the Whale [1 hr. 21 min.; NYC Release Date: 10/05/2005]


Synopsis [prepared by MovieTickets.com]:

Park Slope, Brooklyn, 1986. When Walt Berkman, an impressionable 16-year-old, passes off the Pink Floyd song Hey You as his original work and performs it at a high school talent show, he's perfectly content with his rationale. I felt I could have written it so the fact that it was already written was kind of a technicality. At the same time, his 12-year-old brother Frank drinks beer and wonders openly about his mother's sex life. Both are simply reacting to the fall-out from the bomb dropped on their comfortable family life when their parents, Bernard--a once promising author and now middle-aged academic and Joan--a burgeoning writer with a book deal--announce that they are splitting up. The familiar, steady foundation is shaken. Walt and Frank are relegated to alternating weekends and a jumbled calendar of Mom or Dad nights. The kids are left to grapple with the confusing and conflicted feelings that arise from the sudden collapse of their parents' marriage.


Also check out The New York Times Movie Review.

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Mother And Her Child Are In A Global Nightmare

In a front page report by Bob Braun, the October 6, 2005 edition of The Star-Ledger reports that, in contrast to a similar case [Blondin v. Dubois (2nd Cir. 2001; Docket No. 00-6066)] previously decided in New York, a New Jersey federal court has caught an American citizen mother and her American citizen minor daughter in a global nightmare by ordering the child be deported to Argentina so that a local court there can decide the merits of the reported domestic violence experienced by the mother and daughter at the hands of the child's father.


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