UPDATE: Turns out it was Roger McDowell, former New York Mets closer and second spitter on the grassy knoll. He issued a written apology for the instance in question. McDowell is currently a pitching coach with the Atlanta Braves, and while he’s not a manager and that makes this less fun, it’s still not cool to make gay slurs. And thus we end another very special With Leather moment of tolerance.

At 4 PM Eastern and 1 PM Left Coast, famed attention-seeker with a law degree Gloria Allred will hold a press conference to out a Major League Baseball manager as a meanie pants. In what can only be described as shocking and wholly unexpected news, Allred claims that a manager referred to a trio of male fans as pejorative terms for homosexuals. That’s right – the other F-word. To make matters worse, one of the men had his twin daughters with him and this unnamed manager told them that the ballpark was no place for kids. Finally, someone says what I’m thinking. Not that F-word part, though.

According to TMZ:

Read the rest of this entry »

New Jersey lawyer and New York Jets season ticket holder Carl J. Mayer is a patriot. Of course I mean he’s a patriot in the American sense and not the New England football sense, because he took advantage of this country’s incredible justice system by taking his fight all the way to the United States Supreme Court. So what was Mayer fighting – Abortion? Immigration? War? The Westboro Baptist church? Gay marriage? Wall Street executives? Nah, none of that unimportant crap. His fight is Spygate.

That’s right, after a lower court had dismissed Mayer’s initial lawsuit against Bill Belichick and the Patriots – I like to think the judge was wanking his gavel the whole time – Mayer took his case (Mayer v. Belichick, 10-867) to the highest court in the nation because he believes that the Pats videotaping scandal from 2007 had “cheated him and other fans out of their right to see honest competition on the field”, according to Bloomberg News. And somewhere a St. Louis Rams fan looked up and said, “Oh yeah, the Jets… they should be upset.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog noted today that UFC sued a fledgling competitor for using an octagonal ring — and won.  Why?  Because UFC trademarked the octagon, bitches.  

The case centers on California-based Total Fighting Alliance, a competitor of UFC’s started two years ago by Todd Meacham, a former mixed martial arts fighter. Last year, UFC filed a suit against Meacham’s company after he refused to pay $2,500 a year for a license to use the octagonal fence and mat. Meacham, 39 years old, claimed octagonal fences and mats are generic to the sport and told the Law Blog that he fought in eight-sided rings long before the creation of the UFC in 1993…

[One intellectual property lawyer] says the decison [sic] “comes close to providing overly broad protection for such a basic geometric shape.” That said, it’s not an outlier. Rather, Clark adds, the ruling is “part of a larger evolution in which trademark protection is being extended to things beyond distincitve [sic] words or pictures,” including sounds, scents and colors. Two examples: United Parcel Service received a trademark over its use of the color brown; 3M was able to trademark the color yellow in its use of post-it notes.

Thank God our legal system preserves the integrity of trademarks for brown, yellow, and octagons.  Great work, lawyers.  I just hope the Department of Defense has a trademark for five-sided shapes.  I'd hate to see some militia make a knock-off Pentagon.  That would totally change the way I look at the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, and whatever the fifth one is.

(Thanks to flubby and Christmas Ape)