baseball

If there is one universal banality about the perjury trial of Roger Clemens available on the sports pages and talk radio stations today, it’s the following, which is a composite of actual quotes and for which I am providing no link, because the sentiment is ubiquitous:

Did Clemens lie?  A trial will never really answer that question.  Everyone has already formed his opinion on whether Clemens is telling the truth.

Either way, we all know a huge chunk of players took PEDs in the 1990s. That era of the game is forever stained regardless of the outcome of this trial. What is this trial going to accomplish?  Is this really the best use of taxpayer money?

I just hope this trial is a short one, because I’d rather focus on the games being played now.

This being Overlawyered, one might suppose the appropriate point of view here would be along those lines.  Certainly, from a libertarian point of view (when in Rome…), it’s hard to be sympathetic to any investigation or prosecution whose roots are in substance abuse.  If taking steroids was or is a violation of a contractual obligation running from players to Major League Baseball, that would be an entirely private matter.  Evidently it wasn’t, or to the extent that it was, MLB would rather not pick at that scab.  Major League Baseball keeps lawyers busy with other things.

But we all acknowledge that prosecutors do and should, to some extent anyway, concern themselves with the laws that are “on the books,” which brings us back to that Sports Guy trope:  ”What difference does it make?  Who cares?  Why are you distracting me with those shiny objects?”

Dumb, dumb, dumb, Sports Guy!

Point One:  It isn’t overlawyering to prosecute people who mislead law enforcement officials or lie under oath.  Yes, people mislead police and prosecutors every day and aren’t prosecuted for it — but famous people often are, because civil disobedience by them can make for a very bad example.  What better example of an example-setter is Bill Clinton, a one-man Chief Executive as sexual revolutionary, who had to turn in his law license to avoid a perjury conviction?

Clemens’s main problem was that he was put, rather unavoidably as Scott Greenfield explained at the time, in a perjury trap: [click to continue…]

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Like Marc Randazza, I’m a little too close to the Righthaven litigation in Nevada — being co-counsel with him on a couple of Righthaven cases — to say much beyond what I have said about that issue here.  (Overlawyered in general suffers from no such limitation, of course.)  But as “Marco” notes, the following quote from a website called Righthaven Victims says plenty:

First it was a “clerical error” that caused Righthaven to sue an Ars Technica journalist for using an image that was part of a court filing, now Righthaven is blaming an undisclosed “Former In-House Counsel” for not disclosing Stephens Media as an interested party in hundreds of cases they have filed over copyright infringement.Righthaven submitted their answer to Judge Roger Hunt’s order to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for the omission. Their only answer was this unnamed rogue in-house counsel screwed up.

For the foregoing reasons, Righthaven respectfully requests that the Court find its failure to comply with Local Rule 7.1-1 through its former in house counsel does not rise to the level of sanctionable conduct given the circumstances described herein. Moreover, Righthaven has taken corrective action in response to the Court’s June 14th Order by filing amended disclosure statements in almost 120 pending cases in within this District and within the District of Colorado. Dated this 28th day of June, 2011.

See: Shawn Mangano’s response

Since so many lawyers have left Righthaven it is difficult to determine exactly who Righthaven is blaming which cannot go over well for any lawyer that has ever worked for Righthaven.

As Marc points out, Steve Green at Vegas Inc. has one possible answer to that question, which suggests one very big little problem with this throw-’em-under-the-bus strategy:

Ninety-eight. That’s the number of Righthaven LLC copyright infringement lawsuits in which Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson was one of the attorneys of record for his own company.

I’ve actually always said, in my professional life, that clients pay, in part, for the privilege of blaming you for no damned good reason.  It’s like being a baseball manager:  Can’t find a third starter or a decent third baseman?  Fire the manager.  Occupational hazard.

But this is a new one.  Can you actually throw yourself under the bus?  Now that would sure flatten you good.  And — again — it would be Mr. Gibson who would be doing the throwing:

In fact, Righthaven is half owned by Gibson and half owned by investors who are part of the family of Arkansas investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens. He and his family also own Stephens Media.

If that’s all true, and I don’t recall anyone denying it, it could be a long, flat summer in Nevada for Righthaven and its, uh, counsel.

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