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Adoption Law
Adoption is
the legal act of permanently placing a
child with a parent or parents other
than the birth parents. Adoption results
in the severing of the parental
responsibilities and rights of the
biological parents and the placing of
those responsibilities and rights onto
the adoptive parents. After the
finalization of an adoption, there is no
legal difference between biological and
adopted children.
Different
jurisdictions have varying laws on
adoption and post-adoption. Some
practice confidential or closed
adoption, preventing further contact
between the adopted person and the
biological parents, while others have
varying degrees of open adoption,
which may allow such contact.
Definition
provided by:
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Bankruptcy Law
Bankruptcy is a legally
declared inability or impairment of ability of an
individual or organization to pay their creditors. A
declared state of bankruptcy can be requested by
creditors in an effort to recoup a portion of what they
are owed; however, in the overwhelming majority of
cases, the bankruptcy is initiated by the bankrupt
individual or organization.
The primary
purpose of the laws of bankruptcy are:
(1) to give an honest debtor a "fresh
start" in life by relieving the debtor
of most debts, and (2) to repay
creditors in an orderly manner to the
extent that the debtor has property
available for payment.
Bankruptcy
allows the debtor to resolve his debts
through the division of his assets among
his creditors. Additionally the
declaration of bankruptcy allows debtors
to be discharged of most of the
financial obligations, after their
assets are distributed, even if their
debts have not been paid in full. During
the pending bankruptcy proceeding,
the "Debtor" is protected from
extra-Bankruptcy action by creditors by
a legally imposed "stay."
National Legal Sponsorship of the
Bankruptcy Law Legal Definition by:
LAW OFFICES OF JEFFREY
A. HERZOG, P.A.
www.southwestfloridaattorney.com
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Civil Law
Civil law
has at least three meanings. It may
connote an entire legal system, or
either of two different bodies of law
within a legal system:
-
a legal
system (by contrast to the Common
law system)
-
the set
of rules governing relations between
persons (either humans or legal
personalities such as corporations);
here the contrast is public law,
especially criminal law;
-
Secular
law, as opposed to canon law or
natural law.
Unlike
criminal law, Civil law regulates
relationships amongst persons and
organizations. Civil law, in this sense,
is usually referring to redress to civil
law courts (as opposed to criminal
courts) and is often used as a means to
resolve disputes involving accidents
(torts such as negligence), libel and
other intentional torts, contract
disputes, the probate of wills, and
trusts, and any other private matters
that can be resolved between private
parties. Violations of civil law are
considered to be torts or breaches of
contract, rather than crimes. Depending
upon the regional government, this field
of law contains commercial law and some
kinds of administrative law remedies,
though sometimes administrative law
judges adjudicate penal law violations
such as parking tickets and other minor
offenses.
Definition
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Corporate & Business Law
Commercial law or business law is
the body of law which governs business
and commerce and is often considered to
be a branch of civil law and deals both
with issues of private law and public
law. Commercial law regulates corporate
contracts, hiring practices, and the
manufacture and sales of consumer goods.
Many countries have adopted civil codes
which contain comprehensive statements
of their commercial law. In the United
States, commercial law is the province
of both the Congress under its power to
regulate interstate commerce, and the
states under their police power. Efforts
have been made to create a unified body
of commercial law in the US: the most
successful of these attempts has
resulted in the general adoption of the
Uniform Commercial Code.
National Legal Sponsorship of the
Corporate & Business Law Legal Definition by:
Toledo
Attorney, Dennis P. Strong
www.dennis-strong-law.com
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Criminal Law
Criminal law
(also known as penal law) is the body of
law that punishes criminals for
committing offences against the state.
The goal of this process is that of
achieving criminal justice.
According to
criminal law, crimes are offences
against the social order. In common law
jurisdictions, there is a legal fiction
that crimes disturb the peace of the
sovereign. Government officials, as
agents of the sovereign, are responsible
for the prosecution of offenders. Hence,
the criminal law "plaintiff" is the
sovereign, which in practical terms
translates into the monarch or the
people.
 National Legal Sponsorship of the
Criminal Law Legal Definition by:
Cohen Battisti, Attorneys at Law
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Employment Law
Employment
law in the U.S. was traditionally
governed by the common law rule of
"at-will employment," meaning that an
employment relationship could be
terminated by either party at any time
for any reason or without a reason.
However, beginning in 1941, a series of
laws changed this.
In 1941,
Executive Order 8802 (or the Fair
Employment Act) became the first law to
prohibit racial discrimination, although
it only applied to the national defense
industry. Later laws include Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and
amendments), Title I of the Americans
with Disabilities Act of 1990, the
Family and Medical Leave Act 0f 1993,
and numerous state laws with additional
protections. The Fair Labor Standards
Act regulates minimum wages and overtime
pay for certain employees who work more
than 40 hours in a work week.
There is no
special employment tribunal in the U.S.
Employment law cases are heard in state
or federal courts, depending upon the
issue, the size of the employer (the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example,
applies only to employers with 15 or
more employees), and the litigation
strategy of the plaintiff.
 National Legal Sponsorship of the
Employment Law Legal Definition by:
N. James Turner, P.A.
www.orlandoemploymentlawyer,
www.orlandonon-compete.com,
www.orlandoovertime.com
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Immigration Law
Immigration is the act of
moving to or settling in another country or region,
temporarily or permanently. An immigrant is someone who
intends to reside permanently, and not a casual visitor
or traveler. Immigration means "in-migration" into a
country, and is the reverse of emigration, or
"out-migration." The long term and/or permanent movement
of human population in general, whether into, out of, or
within countries (or before the existence of recognised
countries) is regarded as migration.
The United
States Immigration Act of 1924, also
known as the National Origins Act or the
Johnson-Reed Act, limited the number of
immigrants who could be admitted from
any country to 2% of the number of
person from that country who were
already living in the United States in
1890 according to the census of 1890. It
superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act.
The law was aimed at further restricting
the Southern and Eastern Europeans who
had begun to enter the country in large
numbers beginning in the 1890s, as well
as East Asians and Asian Indians, who
were prohibited from immigrating
entirely. It set no limits on
immigration from Latin America.
It passed
with strong congressional support (only
6 dissenting votes in the Senate). Some
of its strongest supporters were
influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916
book, The Passing of the Great Race.
Grant was a eugenicist and advocate of
the racial hygiene theory. His data,
which is now considered by the vast
majority of scientists to be flawed,
purported to show the superiority of the
founding Northern European races.
As an
example of its effect, in the ten years
following 1900 about 200,000 Italians
immigrated every year. With the
imposition of the 1924 quota, only 4,000
per year were allowed. At the same time,
the annual quota for Germany was over
57,000. 86% of the 165,000 permitted
entries were from the British Isles,
France, Germany, and other Northern
European countries.
Definition
provided by:
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Insurance Law
Insurance, in law and
economics, is a form of risk management primarily used
to hedge against the risk of potential financial loss.
Ideally, insurance is defined as the equitable transfer
of the risk of a potential loss, from one entity to
another, in exchange for a reasonable fee. In practice,
however, the business of providing insurance protection
often ends up in litigation between the parties
involved, while the responsibilities of regulating
insurance markets routinely winds up as a political
football for government agencies.
Definition provided by:
Wikipedia
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Family & Marital Law
Family law
is an area of the law that deals with
family-related issues and domestic
relations including, but not limited to
marriage, civil unions, divorce, spousal
abuse, child custody and visitation,
property, alimony, and child support
awards, as well as child abuse issues,
and adoption.
This list is
by no means dispositive of the potential
issues that come through the family
court system. In many jurisdictions in
the United States, the family courts see
the most crowded dockets. Litigants
representative of all social and
economic classes are parties within the
system. Because the family courts are
notoriously underfunded and see a
relatively large proportion of
economically dependent litigants, a
common criticism levied is that the
system inherently prejudices the needs
of these disadvantaged parties.
Definition provided by:
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Medical Malpractice
Medical
malpractice is lay terminology for
negligence that occurs in respect of a
doctor's treatment of a patient.
It also
covers the public perception of adverse
events during medical care.
In common
with other forms of claims for
negligence, in order to succeed in a
claim (lawsuit) the claimant (plaintiff)
must successfully demonstrate three
things:
-
That the
doctor failed in his/her duty of
care towards the patient: they
failed to do something that a
reasonably prudent doctor in the
same field would have done under the
same or similar circumstances, or
that the doctor did something that
no reasonably prudent doctor in the
same field would have done under the
same or similar circumstances.
-
That
some harm was caused by this failure
to comply with the duty of care, and
that the harm risked by such
misconduct was reasonably
foreseeable at the time.
-
The
amount of damages that would
reasonably compensate the plaintiff
for the harm caused by the
malpractice.
Definition
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Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect
According to statistics,
nursing home abuse or neglect is on a steep rise and
might develop into a crisis. This is a serious problem
that is facing over quarter of a million elders that are
relying on nursing homes for care, food, and support.
Abuse and neglect are often hard to detect and need to
be monitored carefully especially when residents have
trouble communicating. Furthermore, the staff in a
nursing home might find ways to cover-up signs of abuse.
An article in Time Magazine exposed that 35, 000 seniors
might be dying early as a result of neglect at nursing
homes. Most patients are at risk and the government data
indicates that one out of every four nursing homes is
cited for serious injury or a death to a resident.
Assisted-living home
inspection documents show that more than a quarter of
all nursing homes in United States were cited several
times for harm violations to their patients; and in
California one in every three nursing homes had similar
offenses. What's more frightening is that over 1000
nursing homes hired people with a previous history of
physical abuse. Even with the current reports about
nursing home abuse, a lot of the accounts are not
reported and unknown even if an eyewitness was present.
The neglect is often blamed on the poor working
conditions of the staff, insufficient training, and
especially a shortage in staff present. In order to
combat this growing problem, many programs are currently
in existence and are being derived to improve the
working conditions, hiring, education and training, and
a compliance between the law enforcement, nursing homes,
and the private nursing home abuse advocacy groups.
Definition provided by:
www.nursing-homes-ratings.com
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Employment Discrimination
Employment
law in the U.S. was traditionally
governed by the common law rule of
"at-will employment," meaning that an
employment relationship could be
terminated by either party at any time
for any reason or without a reason.
However, beginning in 1941, a series of
laws changed this.
In 1941,
Executive Order 8802 (or the Fair
Employment Act) became the first law to
prohibit racial discrimination, although
it only applied to the national defense
industry. Later laws include Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and
amendments), Title I of the Americans
with Disabilities Act of 1990, the
Family and Medical Leave Act 0f 1993,
and numerous state laws with additional
protections. The Fair Labor Standards
Act regulates minimum wages and overtime
pay for certain employees who work more
than 40 hours in a work week.
There is no
special employment tribunal in the U.S.
Employment law cases are heard in state
or federal courts, depending upon the
issue, the size of the employer (the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example,
applies only to employers with 15 or
more employees), and the litigation
strategy of the plaintiff.
 National Legal Sponsorship of the
Overtime Pay Legal Definition by:
Sigman & Sigman, Attorneys at law
www.sigmanlaw.com ,
www.orlandoemploymentlaw.com
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Personal Injury
"Personal injury" is the
general title given to civil wrongs (torts) that cause
bodily injury or harm. A tort assigns responsibility to
an individual, group or corporation (defendant) for
causing injury to another person (plaintiff). The
primary goals of personal injury law are to provide
relief (damages) to the plaintiff and to deter the
defendant from inflicting further harm to others.
Personal injury litigation encompasses a wide variety of
claims including:
Wrongful death, birth
defects caused by toxic chemicals, cancer caused by
toxic chemicals, accidents: slip and fall, aviation,
motor vehicle, railroad, ATV, motorcycle accidents,
boating and watercraft accidents, animal bites, medical
malpractice, premises § product liability (e.g., defect
in either manufacturing or design of product, failure to
warn), wrongful death: survivor recovers economic value
of remainder of decedent's life, nursing home and elder
abuse, toxic torts - including chemicals & cosmetics,
class actions, hazardous waste, pesticides, radiation
and electromagnetic energy, class action (several
related lawsuits are combined into one to avoid swamping
the judicial system with hundreds or thousands of
individual cases), medical devices, pharmaceutical
products.
 National Legal Sponsorship
of the Personal Injury Legal Definition by:
Simpson & Delgado, P.A.,
www.communitylawfirm.com
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Premises Liability
The owners of property have
specific legal obligations to those who enter upon their
premises. Business owners must provide a safe
environment for customers and guests
Thousands of people are injured each year because
property owners fail to keep their premises in a safe
condition. As a result, customers and guests are
unnecessarily injured. Property owners are legally
required to pay damages due to their negligence and
fault.
Definition provided by:
www.bestandanderson.com/slip-and-fall.html
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Products Liability
Product liability
encompasses a number of legal claims that allow an
injured party to recover financial compensation from the
manufacturer or seller of a product. In the United
States, the claims most commonly associated with product
liability are negligence, strict liability, breach of
warranty, and various consumer protection claims. The
majority of product liability laws are determined at the
state level and vary widely from state to state. Each
type of product liability claim requires different
elements to be proven to present a successful claim.
Definition provided by:
Wikipedia
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Social Security & Disability Law
Anyone who has been or will
be out of work for twelve continuous months may be
entitled to Social Security Disability Benefits, if they
have worked and paid into the Social Security System.
There are Social Security
Benefits available for people who have never worked.
These benefits are available for people who are disabled
and who have no other income. Disability Benefits are
also available for children and widows even if they have
not worked.
If your claim has been
denied, it does not mean that you are not entitled to
Disability Benefits. Your initial claim may have been
missing vital evidence, or you may not have presented
your claim in the light most favorable to you. Under the
Social Security Law, you have the right to appeal the
denial of your claim. If you feel that you are disabled
and entitled to benefits, you should never drop your
claim just because you were denied initially.
Definition provided by:
www.hillandponton.com/socialsecurity.asp
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Workers Compensation
Workers' compensation
programs and laws exist to protect employees who are
injured while on the job. These laws are usually a
feature of highly developed industrial societies.
Workers' compensation laws are often only implemented
after long and hard fought struggles by labor unions.
There are often benefits available to dependents of
workers killed on the job.
Workers'
compensation laws were enacted to
mitigate litigation expenses for both
sides and to eliminate the need for
injured workers to prove their injuries
were the employer's "fault." The first
US law was passed in Maryland in 1902.
In the next twenty years, many states
followed. This system was formerly known
as workman's compensation.
In the
United States most employees who are
injured on the job have an absolute
right to medical care for that injury,
and in many cases monetary payments to
compensate for resulting temporary or
permanent disabilities
Definition provided by:
Wikipedia
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Wrongful Death
A "wrongful death" occurs
when a person is killed due to the negligence or
misconduct of another individual, company or entity.
Every state has a civil
"wrongful death statute," or set of statutes, which
establish the procedures for bringing wrongful death
actions. An action for wrongful death belongs to certain
persons identified by statute. In most states, such
persons will include the decedent's immediate family
members, such as surviving spouses and children, and
sometimes parents or siblings. An attorney experienced
in wrongful death law can explain all of the intricacies
of these lawsuits and help achieve the best possible
outcome for survivors.
Definition provided by:
www.hansonandhanson.com
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