Legal English

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates…. An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy? When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend’s thirteen year old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis. But as Jenny pieces together the dead man’s last days, she’s drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.

On the evening before Thanksgiving, Hal Chase, a guard in the San Francisco County Jail, drives to the airport to pick up his step-brother for the weekend. When they return, Hal’s wife, Katie, has disappeared without a clue. By the time Dismas Hardy hears about this, Katie has been missing for five days. The case strikes close to home because Katie had been seeing Hardy’s wife, a marriage counselor. By this time, the original Missing Persons case has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime suspect.

Thaddeus Murfee is 25, single, a lawyer of 18 months, and completely unprepared for the murder case that walks in. While Ermeline was passed out, her date carved his name in her breasts. Heavy, thick letters: V-I-C-T-O-R. The guilty party is found murdered. Or was he guilty? Ermeline is arrested because she had motive and opportunity. She hires Thaddeus, who makes his debut defending his first murder case in this courtroom drama.

Fate throws a curveball at the San Francisco ex-husband-and-wife legal team of Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez, when Mike picks up the phone and hears the voice of Leon Walker. This is not good news - Walker was the one who ruined their marriage. Years ago, he and his brother participated in a stickup that left a man dead. Through a series of (some said) questionable maneuvers, Mike got the charges dropped, but he and Rosie fought about it all the time, and it finally drove a wedge between them.

Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake Lassiter begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. Add a sexy widow, a deadly drug, and a grave robbery to the stew, and you have Miami's trial of the century.

Mike Daley doesn't go to confession much since he left the priesthood twenty years ago and became a lawyer, but that doesn't stop his old friend, Father Ramon Aguirre, from trying to get him there. "It wouldn't kill you to go to church once in a while," he tells Mike. But it does kill someone. For several months, a ruinous sexual harassment suit has been building against the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese, and when the plaintiff's lawyer is found dead, an almost audible sigh of relief is heard.

Major Sean Drummond never says die. Especially when an old flame begs him to defend her brigadier general husband in the biggest treason case in US history. And even when Drummond is up against the fiercest prosecutor in the Army and fighting two murder charges. With an unconventional and beautiful co-counsel, Drummond plunges into an investigation that will unearth a damning array of secrets and cover-ups - and reveal a master manipulator who doesn't care who or what goes up in flames.

Bennie Rosato, Mary DiNunzio, Judy Carrier, and Anne Murphy are back with all cylinders firing in Accused. Mary Dinuzio has just been promoted to partner and is about to take on her most unusual case yet, brought to the firm by a thirteen-year-old genius with a penchant for beekeeping. Allegra Gardner's sister Fiona was murdered six years ago, and it seemed like an open-and-shut case: the accused, Lonnie Stall, was seen fleeing the scene; his blood was on Fiona and her blood was on him; most damningly, Lonnie Stall pleaded guilty.

Dismas Hardy is looking forward to cutting back his work hours and easing into retirement after recovering from two gunshot wounds. He is determined to spend more time with his family and even reconnect with his distant son, Vincent. But Dismas just can't stay away from the courtroom for long, and soon he is pulled into an intense family drama with fatal consequences. Grant Carver, the vigorous patriarch of the Carver family and its four-generations-owned family business, has been murdered.

When a building collapses on several firemen, one is unaccounted for - was he really buried, or did he take the opportunity to flee from the problems in his life?

A spanking-new tin can, secretly placed among the rows of Mrs. Florence Gentrie's preserves, contains not a speck of food - but it does carry one very damning clue to a murder that took place right next door. Such an unsavory discovery in such an unlikely place can't help but pique the curiosity of a dedicated mystery hunter like Perry Mason.

It’s the most sensational case of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a 25-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. The subsequent trial taps straight into America’s most pressing preoccupations: race, class, sex, law enforcement, and the lurid sins of the rich and famous.

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused—he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp—but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows. As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions.

In Florida, defense attorney Daniel Pike is stunned when his legal files are ransacked and his lover, Maria Morales, disappears. In Oklahoma, semi-retired attorney Ben Kincaid is horrified when his connection to this apparent abduction endangers the people he loves most. Desperate for help, Pike seizes Kincaid and hauls him on a cross-country road trip to discover what happened to Maria…and why a killer is so interested in a California murder case.

Deal Coin is dead. So is Tyson Gore—the crypto company's rockstar CEO. Homeless addict Reggie Jones stands accused of his murder during a botched robbery in the heart of Salesforce Park. San Francisco Public Defenders Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez race against time to uncover the truth for Reggie.

Readability, aesthetics, and argumentation are intertwined. Ryan McCarl shows how litigation documents that are easier and more pleasant to read are more likely to persuade judges and other busy readers. The book also discusses parts of legal writing that many guides overlook, including sentence mechanics, writing technology, and typography.

A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey—conservative, white fundamentalist Christians—are charged with her murder.

A dense, bitterly cold fog has settled over the Wye Valley when Bristol coroner Jenny Cooper is called to the scene of a dreadful tragedy: in the village of Blackstone Ley, a house has burned to the ground, with three members of a family inside. Though evidence of foul play is quickly uncovered, it isn't long before the police investigation is drawn to a close. It seems certain that the fire was started by one of the victims, Ed Morgan, in a fit of jealous rage. But their infant son is still missing, and Ed had left a message for his surviving wife....

He has one chance to find the facts he’s searched for his entire life. All he has to do is prove his number one enemy is not a killer...Daniel Pike has devoted his legal career to ensuring that no wrongly convicted person dies in prison like his father did. But he’s still no closer to uncovering his painful family secrets. And after a terrible twist of fate, he’s hired to defend his arch-nemesis who’s been charged with a gruesome murder.

Defense lawyer Daniel Pike believes he’s closer than ever to proving his late father was no murderer. But with key witnesses snuffed out and his archnemesis pulling all the strings to ensure no one talks, his frustration is about to boil over. His only remaining option is a high-stakes gamble to force the arrogant powerbroker onto the witness stand.