r/legaladviceofftopic

How about other business owners who do minimal work on the daily operations of the businesses?

Let us say a man has a decent university degree, a steady job, a good group of friends, and zero history of mental health issues. He does not take drugs, he does not drink heavily, he does not hear voices, and he is not suicidal. He simply has an intense curiosity to know what human meat tastes like.

He knows he cannot buy it anywhere, and attacking another person is a violent crime. So, he makes a deliberate decision to use his own body. He cuts off his own lower leg in a clean environment, bandages the wound properly so he does not bleed to death, cooks the meat, and eats it.

The authorities find out (maybe the neighbour peeked through the window or something and notified the authorities), stop him, and drag him into a psychiatric facility. A panel of doctors and a judge sit down to determine if he should be committed to an institution for the next decade.

During the evaluation, this man is completely calm. He does not rant, cry, or claim a higher power commanded him. He lays out his steps clearly. He explains that he owns his own body, harmed nobody else, managed the physical risk, and simply conducted an experiment to answer a philosophical question.

My intuition tells me that the legal and medical worlds do not care about how educated or polite you are. Society builds its entire baseline of sanity on self-preservation. Your brain is supposed to keep your body alive and intact. The second you take a blade and hack off a healthy limb to eat your own flesh, the state decides that your survival instinct is completely dead.

No matter how logically you lay out your case, every doctor in the room will categorise that calm explanation as severe madness. Damaging your own body is treated as immediate, indisputable proof that you cannot be trusted with your own life.

Is that legal and medical standard absolute, or is there any possible way a sober person could argue their way out of being locked away after doing this?

Legality of a law passed by Congress that said C corporations in the United States must give 50% of their profits as dividends to their workers?

So I saw this YouTube reel of a guy who wraps cars, and he mentioned that he purposely hires people with no experience because it’s easier to teach them how to do it right than it is to unlearn bad habits. My first thought was “well now anyone wanting to be hired by you and checking your socials will lie to say they have no experience” then I wondered if there’s legal ramifications for that. I know you can get in trouble for lying about having certain types of experience when you actually don’t, but what if it’s the other way around?

Two years ago, my friend was on an anonymous chat app and matched with someone who claimed to be 18. They had one brief flirty and sexual chat, no images, no meeting, no continued contact, then he unmatched. Later he found her TikTok and realized she was 16 and from Texas.

He’s been spiraling ever since. Constant anxiety, guilt, barely eating, terrified of future legal consequences, and convinced his life is ruined. He spends hours researching laws and subreddits to make sure he’s safe. He won’t see a therapist because he’s afraid of being reported. He was lied to and this isn’t predatory, but he says I don’t understand. Nothing has happened in 2 years.

Is there any realistic legal threat from a one-time anonymous chat with no images and no meeting, where she lies about her age? Or does this sound like severe anxiety/OCD/intrusive thoughts? He needs help and I don’t know how to support him.

So not sure how I googled my way here but I found out that apparently if a women rapes a man and gets pregnant she can then have that man pay her child support because apparently “the child is innocent in this” which honestly is fever dream territory for me but anyways I also know you can sue your rapist for damages which begs the question? Can you sue the rapist for the amount you’d pay in child support and make her solely responsible for the child support?

I’m 22 I’m and live in Texas, and I’m honestly feeling really overwhelmed and could use some guidance.
My boyfriend’s mom recently had her CPS case closed. She and her oldest daughter (16) have been estranged and don’t have a good relationship. When I got my own place, the daughter came to stay with me for a weekend. I’ve known her for about four years and have always tried to be a positive female role model for her. She’s also my 3-year-old son’s aunt, so I’ve always cared about her and wanted the best for her.
She ended up staying and hasn’t gone back home. Her mom is now talking about giving me power of attorney, but I honestly don’t know what that would mean for me legally or financially, and I’m worried about taking on more than I can handle.
Her 17-year-old boyfriend is staying here too because apparently they had been staying together before this. Everything happened very quickly, and I don’t know all of the details of their situation. Right now, we’re trying to help them get IDs, GEDs/finish school, jobs, and generally get them on a better path.
The problem is that I’m barely making it financially as it is. I’ve been paying for everything out of pocket. I applied for food stamps three months ago and still haven’t gotten them. I haven’t added the 16-year-old to my benefits because I don’t want to accidentally break any rules or claim something I’m not legally entitled to.
I feel really obligated to help because I’ve watched this girl grow up, and I genuinely believe that living here has been good for her. She seems much more peaceful here, they both do their chores, listen to me, and seem to be doing better than they were before. But I also have a 3-year-old son, and I’m starting to worry that I’m going to financially and emotionally overwhelm myself trying to save everyone.
I guess I’m looking for advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation, especially in Texas.
Are there programs or financial assistance available for someone informally caring for a 16-year-old? What should I know before accepting power of attorney? Is there a way to get help with food, housing, school, medical care, or anything else without putting myself at risk financially or legally?
I want to help these kids, but I also need to make sure I’m not drowning myself or putting my own child at risk in the process.

If an organization asks somebody about how much their lifetime earnings is, will they get litigated for ageism, or, are they allowed to do that to try to hire disadvantaged persons? I.e. somebody who has less lifetime earnings than others?

Don't know if this is appropriate for r/legal, so I thought I'd ask here: can someone's wife argue that because the husband didn't sign a prenup before they got married, the wife (or in this case, future ex wife) can just ask for a certain amount in the divorce?

Inspired by a recently-posted article, I have a question. Since "corporations are people", and the laws on the books about using GPS trackers are focused on preventing stalking/harassment, does a corporation have the ability to successfully argue that the use of that tracker was criminal? Or would they have standing to file a civil suit?

My underlying assumption is that first-amendment protections and the public interest would outweigh any arguments in the other direction, but I'm legitimately curious if there's something here.

Hypothetical:

My plane just landed and I don’t want police going through my phone. Can I preemptively wipe my phone before going through the gate and customs?

Some of the discourse around certain cases brought this to my mind. Suppose a prominent "influencer" spreads what's later proven to be false/highly misleading information that makes a recently deceased person seem much less sympathetic. Like suggesting a murder victim was involved in gangs/drugs/provoking their own death. Or that someone who died in a tragic accident was actually at fault in some way (like wrongly saying they were drinking if they died in a car crash). Or just attacking their general character by spreading lies about what they did in their life.

Their content is spread far and wide and as a result, the deceased's public image is negatively affected. In the US, is it possible their family could sue the influencer for possibly causing them to receive lower fundraiser donations/other financial support? (Assuming the influencer never attacked the character of their living relatives, so they do not personally have a defamation claim.)

If I had a name like Björnstjerna or Andrzejczak, do I have to make it easy for them to look up who I am?

I understand if be making it unnecessarily difficult on myself, but is there a precedent that says identifying myself includes spelling my name for them?

Why might a scheduled court case get rescheduled the day of the hearing? Both parties were present but were informed the case was being moved to a different department / date and time.

I (Plaintiff) repeatedly asked why this was happening and if there was anything wrong with the case or documents. The clerk repeatedly apologized and said they don’t have any information why and dismissed me and the Defendant for the day/ gave us a new date two months later.

My main question here is: is this done to help or influence either party in any way?

Assuming that each trial could take a year or more to reach a verdict, what prevents them from doing this?

I'm not looking for legal advice, more so legal insight. Based on these documents, does it look like the DOJ has overwhelming evidence that UCLA did show race preferences? Does this mean UCLA will have to revise their rubric for the 2026-2027 application cycle? I read that reform during a lawsuit cannot be used as evidence to show change under Federal Rule of Evidence 407, so UCLA can minimize the damage moving forward; they can't erase the past harm. Am I understanding this situation correctly?

Edit: I don't mean a court order is needed; I mean would UCLA switch gears BTS to minimize the damage per Evidence 407.

https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1439581/dl

https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Do-No-Harm_2026.07.14_INTERVENORS-AMENDED-COMPLAINT.pdf

https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Do-No-Harm_2026.07.31_DEFENDANTS-MOTION-TO-DISMISS.pdf

https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Do-No-Harm_2026.08.14_INTERVENORS-RESPONSE-TO-MOTION-TO-DISMISS.pdf

So I've been thinking about this hypothetical for a while. If you're familiar with the legality surrounding police collecting data from phones, Cellbrite, and USB killers, then what do you think would happen if somebody had a phone that was actually a disguised USB killer and the police plugged it into their computer?

If you need further context:

Cellbrite is a company that makes products for law enforcement and other government agencies. The most notorious one seems to be able to gain access to the data on smartphones without them being unlocked by exploiting a certain feature of the software that isn't important for this discussion.

A USB killer is a device that claims to exist for testing the resiliency of computer hardware. It looks like any normal USB flash drive, but when it is plugged into a USB port it will charge a capacitor and discharge it over the data lines. The data lines were never designed to handle that much electricity, so best case it fries the USB port and worst case it can fry the whole motherboard. As far as I know this device is like lockpicks, as it is completely legal for anybody to buy, own, and carry around with them, but you will get in trouble for it if you use it in the commission of a crime (there was a case where a student used one to intentionally cause damage to several computers at their college campus).

Now I suppose a similar situation could happen where police simply find a USB killer on your person and plug it in to their computer. However, I'm curious how it might play out in court if somebody had a cell phone that they felt law enforcement might confiscate and attempt to search, so they broke it open and rigged a USB killer up to the charge port, and when the police plugged it into their computer in an attempt to search it, it caused damage to the computer.

Police would almost certainly attempt to add additional charges, but theoretically you could argue that the device was completely legal for you to possess and it's on the police officers for not doing their due diligence to make sure the device wouldn't cause damage to their computer. That said, a reasonable person probably wouldn't suspect that the phone had this modification done to it, even if it was completely legal to do.

So, how do you think this scenario would play out in court?