When Does a Lawyer’s Demand Letter Become Extortion in Washington? The recent news involving the arrest and criminal charges against celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti, for what federal prosecutors say are for attempted extortion of retail giant Nike, bring to light a very serious and practical issue facing attorneys in settlement negotiations.  Attorneys are expected to be zealous advocates of their client’s cases, but there are serious pitfalls for attorneys that take zealous advocacy too far – either for their clients...

In a decision issued today (05-22-2014), the Washington Supreme Court expanded the coverage of Washington’s Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) Chapter 49.60 RCW to require reasonable accommodation of an employee’s religious practices. Kumar v. Gate Gourmet, Inc. No. 88062-0  In a decision written by Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, the Court articulated an expanded duty for employers to accommodate the religious practices of their employees. In this particular case the employer’s policy of requiring employees to eat food provided by the employer violated the religious dietary requirements of several employees. The trial court’s previous dismissal of the Plaintiffs’ claims...

No matter how this data security breach story develops, if you are a Comcast customer, you should probably change your passwords now. In what may be the latest in a series of high-profile computer security breaches, Comcast had at least 34 of its servers hacked on February 6, 2014 by NullCrew FTS. After publishing a list of Comcast’s mail servers and a link to the root file with the vulnerability it used to penetrate Comcast’s system on Pastebin (Read Here),...