Once upon a time, a firm known as McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen was a litigation powerhouse in its local San Francisco market, and had been for over 100 years. It was a proud place, where people loved to work. It had been, for over 100 years.
Then some little piggies got greedy. These Greedy Little Piggies merged the proud, old McCutchen firm with a really greedy bastard named "Jay," sometimes mistakenly called "Bingham."
All the good people left. Nothing remained but disinformation, fear, worry, and the pressure to "bill bill bill."
Details here.
Today the California Court of Appeals gave us a doosey. Superagent Adam Venit (who works for the Endeavor Talent Agency [home of Ari Emanuel, who is the real-life model for the obnoxious superagent Ari Gold on HBO's Entourage]), tried to get his child support payments to his ex-wife reduced. Instead, the court actually increased them. Here's some of the record as recited by the Court:
Even with the increase in child support since the November 8, 2002 order, there remained a huge disparity between the lifestyle the children had with their mother and the one they had with their father. According to Jami, the children commented on the disparity. Michael, one of the twins, stated the mother only drives an Escalade while their father drives a Rolls Royce. Michael also stated that Adam’s backyard is as big as a football field. Michael explained that it is so much bigger than Jami’s backyard. Sarah wanted her soccer friends to go to her father’s home to see how “cool” it was. Both twins stated that they wanted gates around Jami’s property because they live in a gated community with their father. They said they would feel much safer with a gate. In 2003, Adam sold his 5,500 square foot home in Encino and purchased an 11,000 square foot Beverly Hills estate. Adam also acquired the lots across the street and below the main house. The twins each have their own bedroom and own bathroom at their father’s home.
Can you imagine the humiliation of being driven around in an Escalade instead of a Rolls Royce? Or having a backyard in Beverly Hills smaller than a football field? Oh, the shame. It burns! It burns! In re Marriage of JAMI and ADAM VENIT, No. B185306, Jul. 16, 2007, 2nd App. Dist., Div. 5.
LONDON (AFP) - A female Muslim juror has been arrested in Britain after allegedly listening to an MP3 player under her hijab headscarf during a murder trial, police said Monday.
The woman in her early 20s was spotted by a fellow juror listening to music as she was meant to be helping try the case of a pensioner accused of bludgeoning his wife to death after 50 years of marriage.
She could now be charged with contempt of court and, if convicted, may be punished with an indefinite jail sentence and an unlimited fine.
BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) -- A Cape Cod man who claimed he was homophobic, racist and a habitual liar to avoid jury duty earned an angry rebuke from a judge on Monday, who referred the case to prosecutors for possible charges.
''In 32 years of service in courtrooms, as a prosecutor, as a defense attorney and now as a judge, I have quite frankly never confronted such a brazen situation of an individual attempting to avoid juror service,'' Barnstable Superior Court Judge Gary Nickerson told Daniel Ellis, according to a preliminary court transcript of the exchange.
Ellis, of Falmouth, had been called to court with about 60 other potential jurors for possible service on a 23-member grand jury.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia's top court said Monday it will move up by three months a hearing for a man serving a 10-year sentence on a child molestation charge for having consensual oral sex with a fellow teenager.
The state Supreme Court had set an October hearing on the state attorney general's appeal of a judge's order that Genarlow Wilson should be freed from what the judge called ''a grave miscarriage of justice.''
Instead, the justices set a hearing for next week on that matter and Wilson's appeal of his detention pending the outcome of the case.
The court gave no reason for the decision to move the case ahead on the docket.
Details here from AP via the New York Times. Thank god. If you are unfamiliar with the tragic case of Mr. Wilson, the details are here.
DETROIT (AP) -- The NAACP is needed now more than ever because the Bush administration has done little to support blacks, the civil rights organization's national chairman said Sunday as its 98th annual convention opened.
From the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina to the war in Iraq and immigration issues, Bush has seen his presidency questioned, Julian Bond, board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told an audience of about 3,000.
The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by more than 5 million, to 37 million, during the Bush administration, Bond said.
''And the gap has grown between the haves and the have-nots,'' he said. ''Almost a quarter of black Americans nationwide live below the poverty line, as compared with only 8.6 percent of whites.''
Bond called present-day inequality and racial disparities cumulative and the result of racial advantages compounded over time.
''Many Americans maintain ... that racial discrimination has become an ancient artifact,'' he said. ''At the NAACP, we know none of this is true, and that's why we are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination.''
He noted that the Supreme Court, which includes two justices nominated by Bush, upheld rulings saying school systems could not voluntarily use race in assigning students to schools.
''The Bush court removed black children from the law's protection,'' Bond said.
And the possibility that New Orleans' heavily black Lower Ninth Ward, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will never be rebuilt is comparable to a ''lynching'' because the work of generations was wiped out in a single day and black landholders are being dispossessed, Bond said.
''Katrina served to underscore how the war in Iraq has weakened, rather than strengthened, our defenses, including our levees,'' Bond said. ''The problem isn't that we can't prosecute a war in the Persian Gulf and protect our citizens on the Gulf Coast at home. The problem is that we cannot do either one.''
Amen! I'm not black, and I'm not poor. But Mr. Bond's comments could not possibly resonate more forcefully with me.
I can't wait to have a new president to replace the corrupt, neocon thugs who've been mishandling the presidency for the past seven years. Perhaps she'll even be black.
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Peter Kreindler, the top lawyer at Honeywell International Inc., likes to buy his briefs in bulk.
Kreindler said he hopes to trim work from hundreds of law firms in Europe this year to gain volume discounts. In the U.S., he has already cut the number of firms he uses for litigation, employment and intellectual property issues to about 20 from 60.
``The fewer firms you use, the more volume you can give them and consequently the bigger discounts you get,'' Kreindler, 62, the general counsel at Morris Township, New Jersey-based Honeywell, said in a telephone interview. ``That's what it's all about.''
As companies spend millions to comply with the Sarbanes- Oxley law and firms raise lawyer salaries by about 10 percent this year, corporate counsel are looking to slash legal budgets. Companies such as General Electric Co., Schering-Plough Corp. and Shell Oil Co. have rolled out similar programs to trim their roster of lawyers.
FALLSVILLE, Ark. – A longtime member of the Rainbow Family has sued the U.S. Forest Service, saying the counterculture group shouldn’t have to obtain a permit for its annual gatherings.
The U.S. District Court lawsuit filed by Tony Nenninger, 49, a University of Missouri at Columbia law student, challenges a rule that a group of 75 or more who gather on Forest Service land must get a special-use permit.
The Rainbow Family is meeting in the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas this year. Officials expect up to 10,000 people.
Nenninger is “a practitioner of a sincerely held religious belief that autonomous intuition of what Good Samaritan deeds do enhances miraculous karmic archangel protection for practitioners of peaceful voluntary cooperation within this life, and for perpetual evolution of religious freedom from institutional and governmental control beyond our individual lifetimes,” the lawsuit said.
I know that London's subways and buses were effectively attacked by "serious" terrorists in July 2005. I know Madrid's subway was horrifically attacked in March 2004. I'm not going to argue that there is no legitimate terrorist threat or that we don't need to worry or take preemptive action.
But these latest "attacks" in London and Glasgow were incredibly amateurish and posed little real threat of significant harm or destruction. Hell, the morons who tried to attack the Glasgow airport couldn't even get their vehicle through the doors, couldn't get it to explode, and couldn't even kill themselves after dousing themselves with gasoline and setting themselves on fire. Granted, we should try to prevent people from driving flaming vehicles into airport terminal doors, but these people were barely able to harm themselves, let alone anyone else. We need some perspective.
The "car bombs" in London: Two Mercedes, at least one of which allegedly contained about 50 sixteen gallons [60 liters] of gasoline, a few "patio tanks" of propane, and some nails. These morons were unable to even ignite them. But if they had? A few fireballs, a lot of black smoke, and maybe some "bangs." The cars contained no high explosives, and no source of oxygen. There would have been no significant blast wave, little or no shrapnel, and little destruction (other than to the cars themselves).
If you want to load up another "test" Mercedes with the identical contents and actually successfully set it on fire, I will volunteer to sit fifty feet away from it in a lawn chair, wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt, and safely watch you destroy your car by fire. That's about all that would have happened. Watch this:
Again, I won't argue that we don't face a real terrorist threat. But these people were not it. If this is the best that al-Qaeda can lob at us, I would feel relieved. Unfortunately, it probably isn't. The perpetrators of these "attacks" are apparently a bunch of would-be weekend terrorists, neither willing nor even able to die for their own cause. Let's keep these "attacks" in the perspective they deserve, and not start freaking out at the further expense of our civil liberties.
Wichita, KA: Officials celebrate judge’s 100th birthday
U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown was honored Friday as not just an old judge but a great one. A week after turning 100, Brown stoically sat on the bench for a courtroom ceremony as hundreds of colleagues, friends and family members marked his birthday.
Brown, the oldest federal judge in the nation still hearing cases, was appointed by President John F. Kennedy on April 12, 1962. He presided over one of the most expensive cases in Kansas history — a multimillion-dollar dispute over who owned the helium in natural gas.
New York law may not outlaw driving while "huffing" (see below), but New Jersey law apparently covers driving with "drug hangovers":
(AP) - NEWARK, N.J.-Motorists who drive while suffering a hangover from drug use can be considered impaired even if the drug's immediate effects have passed, a state appeals court ruled.
The 3-0 ruling by the Appellate Division of state Superior Court considered a case involving cocaine use, and a prosecutor expressed doubt it would apply to alcohol hangovers.
"This case presents a novel issue as to whether a 'rebound effect' or a 'hangover effect' from a previous ingestion of cocaine constitutes being 'under the influence' of a narcotic drug," the court wrote. "We hold that it does."
The decision announced Thursday involved David L. Franchetta Jr., who was arrested two years ago after police observed him speeding and driving erratically. A blood test found evidence his body was metabolizing cocaine, and police said he was lethargic and incoherent because of the after-effects of cocaine use.
Franchetta was found guilty of driving under the influence of cocaine, his license was suspended for two years and he was ordered to serve 30 days of community service.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- A motorist accused of "huffing" stimulants from an aerosol can before getting into a deadly wreck cannot be charged with driving while intoxicated, New York's highest court ruled Wednesday.
The Legislature never included inhalants with alcohol and certain other drugs in the definition of intoxicated driving, the Court of Appeals ruled.
Several counts, including manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, remain against Vincent Litto, who is charged in a 2004 crash in Brooklyn that killed a 17-year-old girl and injured others, including himself. Prosecutors allege he was driving when he sprayed a can of "Dust Off" into his mouth, and crashed into an oncoming car less than a minute later.
"If defendant did what the prosecution charges, then his conduct was reprehensible," wrote Chief Judge Judith Kaye in the unanimous decision. "Perhaps gaps exist in the law. ... However, a determination by this court that intoxication in Vehicle and Traffic Law includes the use of any substance would improperly override the legislative policy judgment."
Neither could the driver have been charged under a 1966 law against driving while high on drugs because that law covers only "explicitly enumerated drugs," the decision stated.
She was, she asserts, the first chef in New York who took lobster rolls, fried clams and other sturdy utility players of New England seafood cookery and lifted them to all-star status on her menu. Since opening Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village 10 years ago, she has ruefully watched the arrival of a string of restaurants she considers “knockoffs” of her own.
Yesterday she filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan against the latest and, she said, the most brazen of her imitators: Ed McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo and her sous-chef at Pearl for six years.
The suit, which seeks unspecified financial damages from Mr. McFarland and the restaurant itself, charges that Ed’s Lobster Bar copies “each and every element” of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.
Former Denver City Attorney Larry Manzanares, who was facing criminal charges in a stolen laptop case, shot himself to death under a walking bridge in the Highline Canal area on Friday evening, police said Saturday.
Manzanares, 50, was found by police just before 5 p.m. near East Dartmouth Avenue and South Colorado Boulevard in Eisenhower Park.
His family described him as a beloved husband, father, son, brother and son-in-law and lashed out at the press for what they said was unfair coverage of the case against him. . . .
[T]he former judge was charged June 13 with theft of a Denver District Court laptop.
Jefferson County prosecutors filed three felony charges of theft, embezzlement, tampering with evidence and two misdemeanor counts of misconduct and computer crime.
The laptop was also used to download pornographic images and movies, according to an arrest affidavit.
As I understand it (and the following may or may not be correct), it appears that former judge and city attorney Manzanares had been viewing porn at work on his computer. When it seemed he might get caught, he took the computer home and tried to clean it up. When he was charged with stealing it, he killed himself. He was a Harvard Law graduate, and a very well-respected member of the Colorado bar. What a waste and what a shame. My condolences to his family and friends.
Details here from the Denver Post. I posted about this story earlier here.
My apologies, but technical difficulties have prevented me from posting almost entirely for the last week or so. The problems appear to be fixed now (fingers crossed), so regular posting should resume.
One of the consequences of these problems it that I have not been able to encourage any of you to go and vote for The Legal Reader at the Funniest Law Blog Poll being conducted at Legal Antics. The Legal Reader is currently in last place: tenth out of ten. Please go and vote for The Legal Reader so at least I can finish with more than four votes. :-(
There's a new legal blog on the block: Nota Bene. It promises to focus on "criminal and appellate law." It's proprietor is Jeff Lewis, who used to run The SoCalLawBlog (now defunct). Jeff says: "You will probably find less posts about OJ Simpson and Greg Haidl and more posts about legal decisions and criminal law."
Jeff and I have been blogging friends for a long time. I encourage you to go check out Nota Bene, and I wish Jeff the best of luck with his new endeavor.
Duke University has reached an undisclosed financial settlement with three former lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, while a judge said late Monday he would order the disbarred prosecutor [Mike Nifong] to leave office immediately. . . .
[E]arlier Monday, Nifong said he planned to leave office next month in a resignation letter to Gov. Mike Easley and to Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson, who is overseeing a pending request to remove Nifong from office.
"It is my fervent hope that this action will spare this community the further anguish a removal hearing would entail and will allow the healing process to move forward," Nifong wrote.
But Nifong's July 13 departure date wasn't soon enough for Hudson, who decided late Monday to suspend Nifong from office.
As part of the suspension, Hudson said he would order the sheriff on Tuesday to prevent Nifong from carrying out any duties of the district attorney.
"I have thought about the situation, and this is the way I wish to proceed," said Hudson, who initially agreed to allow Nifong work until next month.
A disciplinary committee of the North Carolina State Bar concluded Saturday that Nifong had lied to the court, made inflammatory statements about the three indicted players and their teammates, and withheld critical DNA evidence from defense attorneys. After some administrative steps, Nifong will have 30 days to turn in his law license.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Federal investigators overstepped constitutional bounds by searching stored e-mails without a warrant in a fraud investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
In a case closely watched by civil-liberties advocates in the still-emerging field of Internet privacy, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
"It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in past," the appeals court said.
Although surveillance of in-transit e-mails is restricted under wiretapping laws, the government had contended that e-mails stored with service providers could be seized without warrants. Monday's ruling counters that position and comes at a time service providers are offering ever-increasing storage space.
"This landmark decision answered a question that had been dangerously open," said Kevin Bankston, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group based in San Francisco.
The appeals court's unanimous ruling upholds a lower court ruling temporarily blocking investigators from additional e-mail searches without warrants. The panel said the government would have to either provide an account holder a chance to contest such a seizure or to prove that the holder had no expectation of privacy.
A lawsuit initiated by former personal injury attorney Morris J. Eisen against a law firm that allegedly failed to pay him for work he performed on cases he referred to it when he was disbarred will go forward following a Manhattan judge's denial of the firm's motion to dismiss.
Eisen was disbarred in 1992 by the Appellate Division, 1st Department, based on his conviction the preceding year for racketeering.
At his criminal trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Eisen and six co-defendants won multi-million dollar verdicts by fabricating evidence and bribing witnesses. They smashed a car with a sledgehammer to increase the apparent damage, enlarged a pot hole with a pick ax to exaggerate its danger and used shrunken images of rulers to make potholes appear deeper, prosecutors claimed. A co-conspirator allegedly paid a witness to proffer the same testimony regarding two different car accidents, one of which occurred while the witness was in jail for possession of stolen property.
Eisen was sentenced to 57 months in prison and was released after serving three years. He was disbarred in January 1992. . . .
[I]n denying the [defendant] firm's motion [to dismiss], New York Supreme Court Justice Marylin G. Diamond cited as precedent a prior action for unpaid fees waged by Eisen against a different set of defendants, Eisen v. Feder, 307 AD2d 817.
In Eisen, the 1st Department held that Eisen may recover on a quantum meruit basis for lawsuits completed by other attorneys following his disbarment and that the six-year statute of limitations commenced at the time of the disposition of each individual case.
Eisen may therefore pursue claims for any cases disposed of by Shapiro Uchman within six years of the commencement of the present case on Feb. 16, 2007, Diamond ruled.
A state appeals court has voided a man's burglary conviction because one of the jurors misled lawyers and wrote a blog about deliberations during the trial. An unpublished opinion released Thursday by a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeals found that the defendant, Donald McNeely, must be allowed a hearing to determine whether the jury was biased before the conviction can stand.
According to court documents, a juror who served as foreman bragged in his blog about hiding the fact that he was a licensed attorney during jury selection, instead telling the court that he worked as a project manager for a technology company. "More neutral than lawyer, don't ya think," the man wrote.
He also posted detailed accounts of jury deliberations, writing, "Nowhere do I recall the jury instructions mandating I can't post comments in my blog about the trial. (Ha. Sorry, will do.)"
The trial judge in the case threatened to report the juror to the state bar but accepted the verdict.
Former Denver City Attorney Larry Manzanares, who was facing criminal charges in a stolen laptop case, shot himself to death under a walking bridge in the Highline Canal area on Friday evening, police said Saturday.
Manzanares, 50, was found by police just before 5 p.m. near East Dartmouth Avenue and South Colorado Boulevard in Eisenhower Park.
His family described him as a beloved husband, father, son, brother and son-in-law and lashed out at the press for what they said was unfair coverage of the case against him. . . .
[T]he former judge was charged June 13 with theft of a Denver District Court laptop.
Jefferson County prosecutors filed three felony charges of theft, embezzlement, tampering with evidence and two misdemeanor counts of misconduct and computer crime.
The laptop was also used to download pornographic images and movies, according to an arrest affidavit.
