Legal Help Live Show Notes

Legal Help Live offers free legal advice each Wednesday at 4 PM. During the show the Hosts take calls from viewers with legal situations from parking tickets to personal injury. Viewers can catch the show on LA cable channel 36 or 16 in Santa Monica. Online the show can be viewed on LA36.org.

If you'd like to ask the Hosts a question call 1(800)405-4222

SHOW TOPICS 1-8-2010

-‘Los Angeles freeways are wide open-recession, unemployment and gas prices’
Sandy Banks, LA Times.
-Los Angeles seeks to scale back pensions for new employee.
-Closure of courts because of budget-will put civil cases on hold and may make it 5 years to get to trial-injured people and all types of non-criminal disputes will be put on hold, LA Times.
-State of California Proposed new execution procedure-so what? 697 people on death row.
-Bankruptcies up, despite law to make filing harder.
*Personal bankruptcy filings rose by nearly a third last year as foreclosures and job losses took their toll on Americans.
*There were 1.41 million personal bankruptcy filings last year, up 32 percent from 2008, the National Bankruptcy Research Center reported. It’s the highest number since 2005, when more stringent bankruptcy laws took effect, according to the Wall Street Journal.
*Many filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which the 2005 law attempted to make it harder to do. Chapter 7 filings allow people to liquidate their assets to pay off some debts and not have to pay others, according to the WSJ, while Chapter 13 filings force those declaring bankruptcy to enter into repayment plans.
-AP names Tiger Woods Athlete of Decade, from Drudge Retort.
* Tiger Woods was selected Wednesday as the Athlete of the Decade by members of The Associated Press, a vote that was more about 10 years of golf in which he won 12 majors and 52 other tournaments. Lance Armstrong finished second, followed by Roger Federer.
-Honor Student Dies After Drinking Binge, from Drudge Retort .
* A 17-year-old honor student at South Pasadena High School died two days after passing out from drinking at a classmate's party. Aydin Salek, 17, was pronounced dead at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena early Sunday. South Pasadena police said alcohol may have been involved in a collapse so swift and subtle that Salek's friends did not realize at first that anything was wrong.
-Gays Rush to Marry in New Hampshire, from Drudge Retort.
* Gay and lesbian couples rushed to marry in New Hampshire on Friday after the stroke of midnight, when it became the fifth U.S. state to allow same-sex marriage. "Some day this will not even be a news story," said Linda Murphy, 50m after marrying her partner of 19 years. "It will just be a part of life."
-Report on Pilots who Overshot Airport, by Matthew L Wald NYTIMES
* WASHINGTON-The captain of the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot its destination by 150 miles in October told investigators four days later that he was “blown away” by how long he and his first officer had been distracted from their duties, according to documents released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board. The board is investigating the flight, Northwest 188, on Oct. 21, from San Diego to Minneapolis. The crew was out of radio contact with air traffic controllers for 77 minutes.The problem was that the captain, Timothy Cheney, and the first officer, Richard I. Cole, in the isolation of a hijack-proof cockpit, were glued to their laptops, puzzling over a new scheduling system. “This was only supposed to take 10 minutes,” Mr. Cheney told investigators, according to the documents, which contain summaries of interviews with the two pilots as well as other reports in the inquiry.
….After the incident, the F.A.A. revoked the licenses of both pilots. They have filed appeals, which have not yet been heard. The flight, with 144 passengers and 3 flight attendants, made a normal landing, although the police were sent to the gate to double-check that the people in the cockpit were crew, not hijackers.