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ARCHIVE -- OCT. 2001
(II)
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October 19-21 --
Lawyer-vetted war? According to Sy Hersh, American
gunners had Taliban chief Mullah Omar in their sights, but declined to
finish him off per the advice of an army lawyer that there was too much
risk of collateral damage to civilians: "'My JAG' -- Judge Advocate General,
a legal officer --'doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire,'" said
the commandant. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is said to have been "kicking
a lot of glass and breaking doors" in fury over the decision, and the editorialists
at the New York Post aren't happy about it either (Seymour Hersh,
The New Yorker, Oct.
22; "Lawyers for Bin Laden" (editorial), New York Post, Oct.
17). But Inigo Thomas of Slate thinks the system of civilian
control of the military probably worked as intended: "Spinning Seymour
Hersh", Oct. 17;
also see Clarence Page, "The U.S. frowns on assassinations, except ...",
Chicago Tribune, Oct.
17. [See letter to the editor, Oct.
22]
October 19-21 --
U.K. may ban anti-religious speech. A bill proposed by
the Home Secretary would outlaw "incitement to religious hatred".
Comedian Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) warns that literary and satirical writing
is likely to be chilled as a result
-- watch out, Monty Python's Life of Brian, criticized as anti-Christian.
Also in potential danger: a sketch on Not The Nine O'Clock News
depicting Muslim worshippers simultaneously bowing to the ground with the
voiceover: "And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomeini's contact
lens." (The Times, Oct.
17) (& see Bjoern Staerk, Oct.
17). Update Dec. 21-23:
provision dropped before passage of bill.
October 19-21 --
It's the clients' money. A panel of the Fifth Circuit
strikes down one of those schemes so popular among organized lawyerdom
which grabs the interest earned on clients' trust accounts to subsidize
poverty law. (Janet Elliott, "Panel strikes down legal services fund
", Houston Chronicle, Oct.
17; "U.S. Court Voids Texas Approach to Legal Aid", AP/New York Times,
Oct. 18
(reg)).
October 19-21 --
Our own terrorist-funding problem. P.J. O'Rourke,
in an interview with Clive James excerpted in the Daily Telegraph:
"There is a person in America who is known as a three-drink Republican
-- I don't mean my Republican party: the Irish Republican Army -- and the
Noraid can comes along and in goes a fiver and 'that's for the boys back
in wherever'. Yes, America has a lot to answer for.
"We turned a blind eye to the funding coming out of the USA. We
did it because the Boston Catholics were a very important part of the Democratic
coalition and they were also a very important part of the Reagan Republicans
and neither wished to offend them. They had a lot of clout in Congress
and we let them go and it was shameful, absolutely shameful." ("'I believe
the terrorists wanted a nuclear attack on Baghdad'", Oct.
7).
MORE: Jonathan Duffy, "Rich friends in New York", BBC,
Sept.
26; "America pressed over UK terrorism", BBC, Oct.
10; "'Sinn Fein support wanes in US'", BBC, Aug.
17; "How the Real IRA was born", Guardian, March
5; "Omagh relatives consider picket", BBC, Aug.
8, 2000; "'Split' on thwarting Real IRA", BBC, Oct.
20, 2000 (Americans helped fund 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29);
Sean Boyne, "The Real IRA: after Omagh, what now?", Jane's, Aug.
24, 1998).
October 17-18 --
NYC trial lawyers' post-9/11 complaints. It seems
Gotham's personal injury practitioners have all sorts of gripes concerning
their conditions of practice these days. To begin with, juries don't
sympathize as much with their clients' woes with the image of much vaster
hardships still fresh in their minds. Courts are handing out lots
of delays and adjournments to defendants, especially to those whose legal
offices were destroyed (like the Port Authority's) or evacuated (like the
city's). Some weaker insurance companies may be going broke.
"Another plaintiffs' lawyer suggested that given the current 'high public
esteem' for police officers and firefighters, 'cases against them are going
to be particularly difficult." Attorney Martin Edelman of Edelman
& Edelman exhorts his colleagues, however, to "be brave". (Daniel
Wise and Tom Perrotta, "Plaintiffs' Lawyers Feel Post-Attack Pinch", New
York Law Journal, Oct.
16).
Edelman is especially dismissive of opponents' excuses for delay: "Defense
lawyers are milking this to a fare-thee-well -- one attorney said that
his staff could not work because the air smells bad." As it happens,
this week's New York Observer quotes well-known downtown plaintiff's
attorney Harvey Weitz as describing conditions in his Woolworth Building
office as "intolerable", explaining that the place "just plain stinks",
even with the windows closed. (Petra Bartosiewicz and James Verini,
with Blair Golson, "Reeling and Dealing", New York Observer, Oct.
15). The New York Law Journal authors, who quote Weitz
on a different point, perhaps should introduce him to Edelman so they can
compare notes on whether the acrid smells that waft from the attack site
do or do not render nearby offices intolerable. (DURABLE
LINK)
MORE: Also quoted in the NYLJ piece is extremely
successful NYC plaintiff's lawyer Robert Conason of Gair, Gair, Conason,
Steigman & Mackauf. Could anyone clear up for us once and for all whether
he's related to left-wing columnist Joe
Conason?
October 17-18 --
"Hate speech" law invoked against anti-American diatribe.
Hey, it wasn't supposed to work this way! Section 319(1) of Canada's
Criminal Code makes it unlawful to
incite public hatred of an "identifiable group", such as a nationality,
in a way that "is likely to lead to a breach of the peace." Now University
of British Columbia prof Sunera Thobani is facing possible investigation
under the law over a vicious tirade she delivered against the United States
at a conference which (ironically or not) was subsidized by the Canadian
government and presided over by Hedy Fry, a well-known Ottawa official.
Columnist Wendy McElroy of FoxNews.com sorts it all out ("Free Speech Protects
All Speech", Oct.
16).
October 17-18 --
Court's chutzpah-award nominee. Not only did San
Francisco attorney Sherman Kassof not succeed in defending the $215,000
in fees he thought he had coming from the settlement of a class
action against Wells Fargo, but a California appeals court, in a 32-page
opinion, said his fee request might deserve a "chutzpah award." "'To
award an attorney a premium for duplicative work that was neither difficult
nor particularly productive, involved little or no risk, may well have
delayed settlement, and seems to have been primarily designed to line counsel's
pockets would reward behavior which it is in the public interest (and as
well the special interest of the legal profession) to strongly discourage,'
Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline wrote." (Mike McKee, "Fee Appeal Backfires
on Class Lawyer", The Recorder, Oct.
5).
October 16 -- Counterterrorism
bill footnote. During consideration of the bill,
reports Declan McCullagh at Wired News, civil libertarians raised
concerns about possible leeway for forum selection by prosecutors seeking
wiretap orders. "Since the Patriot Act gives courts the power to
order wiretapping anywhere in the U.S., Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California)
said she was worried that 'it would encourage the government to engage
in forum searching. If the court that issues the warrant is far from
the defendant, it becomes difficult for the person to contest it.'"
Plausible enough, right? And by the same logic, civil defendants
deserve protection against the filing of, say, class
actions in forums selected by lawyers for their inconvenience to the
defense -- right again? That thud you hear is Rep. Waters
keeling over rather than admit any such thing. Just as Trix
are for kids, everyone knows due process protections are for criminal,
not civil defendants ("Patriot Bill Moves Along", Oct.
4).
October 16 -- Status
of judicial nominations. The Office of Legal Policy
of the U.S. Department of Justice has put up an informative page
on the status of judicial nominations. As Glenn Reynolds points
out at his fledgling but already indispensable InstaPundit
weblog, "The ready availability of this information on the Web represents
a net loss of power for the Senate."
October 16 -- Latest
lose-on-substance, win-on-retaliation case. A federal
court in San Antonio threw out Raymond Morantes's original claim of discrimination
against his employer, the Federal Aviation Administration, but a jury decided
that agency managers had wrongly passed over Morantes for
promotion because they were annoyed at his having sued them, so he's
getting half a mil. ("Man Gets $500,000 for Retaliation by FAA",
AP/FoxNews.com, Oct.
6).
October 15 -- "Company
Tried to Capitalize on Sept. 11". A Cincinnati company
named Providence Inc. has been sending out portfolios to Sept. 11 victim
families with "$50 to $200 in cash, prepaid calling cards and the names
of four law firms with 'extensive experience in major airline and other
similar mass disasters.'" The company advances money to plaintiffs
in anticipation of lawsuit settlements; because it employs no lawyers,
it can skirt a 1996 federal law "that forbids lawyers from approaching
the families of air crash victims for 45 days after an accident."
The outfit, which routinely drops mail to victims after other disasters
as well, "says none of the law firms named on its list knew that their
names were being distributed ... three law firms threatened to sue to block
Providence from using their names". (Jonathan D. Glater and Diana
B. Henriques, New York Times, Oct.
13 (reg)). And despite the go-slow approach to litigation proposed
by the leadership of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, some
plaintiff's lawyers are raring to go with Sept. 11 suits, among them New
York City's Aaron Broder, who has bought the fine-print ad space at the
bottom of the New York Times's front page to solicit clients.
"'They're all going to be socked real hard,'" [Broder] said yesterday of
the airlines and other American businesses and government agencies, adding
that he disapproved of other lawyers discouraging suits. 'Right now,
everybody's so patriotic they've forgotten about the fact that there are
defendants and wrongdoers here,'" he said." None of that excessive
patriotism for him! (William Glaberson, "Legal Community Is Divided by
the Prospect of Lawsuits for Attack Victims", New York Times, Oct.
10 (reg)).
October 15 -- "Mother
of all copyright battles". Now they're really in
trouble: Osama bin Laden's Mideast followers have gotten American intellectual
property lawyers steamed at them following their unwitting use of an
image of "Bert" from PBS's Sesame Street: "you don't get much more 'interconnected'
with Western culture than getting your a-- sued off." (Mark Steyn, "Culture
Shock", Daily Telegraph, Oct.
13; Don Kaplan, "Osama's 'Muppet' State", New York Post, Oct.
11). On the other hand, maybe Binny could beat a criminal rap
before a court here given the sort of American legal talent his ample fortune
could buy (James S. Robbins, "Bring on the Dream Team!", National Review
Online, Oct.
9).
October 15 -- Disclaimer
rage? "Lawyers are destroying the usability of American
products. ... Work comes to a standstill while we look for the button to
vanish the tiny box with the even tinier type." It was bad enough
in PC software, but now automotive and aeronautic GPS (global positioning
satellite) map programs require operators of moving vehicles to click past
screens of fine print before they can read maps, adding crucial seconds
of distraction: "in their fanatic pursuit of zero liability, they've set
up the ideal conditions to actually kill people." However, not all
disclaimers have to be a
drag, as one maker of household products has shown: "The Good Grips people
obviously put a lot of work, not only into constructing a fun-to-read page,
but in talking conservative corporate attorneys into allowing such a page."
(Nielsen Norman Group, "Good Lawyers, Bad Products", Asktog, August).
October 12-14 --
"Suits Still Pending from 1993 Trade Center Blast".
So sad: eight years after the incident, "[t]he legal fallout from the 1993
truck bomb that rocked the World Trade Center hasn't even gone to trial.
Plaintiffs' lawyers claim that the Port Authority knew the towers were
an attractive terrorist target and that a truck bomb was the most likely
weapon." Included in the claims against the Port Authority: a business-interruption
claim from Cantor Fitzgerald over having to shut down its WTC offices back
then. (Bob Van Voris, National Law Journal, Oct.
3).
October 12-14 --
"Philadelphia judicial elections still linked to cash".
"Despite a scathing state grand jury report this spring on Philadelphia's
system of electing judges, little
has changed, a review of campaign reports for the 2001 primary suggests.
"Candidates for the legal system's most sensitive offices still shelled
out millions of dollars in 'street money' to ward leaders, consultants,
and freelance vote-producers for primary-day help in hopes of landing a
seat on the bench.
"About $500,000 was spent in ways that required no accounting to the
public." (Clea Benson, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct.
7).
October 12-14 --
Watch what you say about lawyers, cont'd. As we
reported on Sept. 7-9, Pennsylvania trial
lawyer Arthur Alan Wolk, sharply criticized by several posters on AVweb
after he won a $480 million verdict against Cessna,
proceeded to sue the website, its editors and various posters for defamation.
AVweb's editors have been advised by their lawyers to refrain from commenting
on the litigation, but they have now posted
on their site a copy of the full text of Wolk's complaint, and have established
a legal defense fund to pay legal bills which they say could exceed $100,000,
win or lose. AVweb, a leading aviation website, says it has 130,000
regular readers. "Wolk has also written our attorneys and threatened
to continue filing additional lawsuits until he has silenced what he considers
to be damaging and unfounded criticism." (donor
form) Update Sept. 16-17, 2002:
in July 2002 AVweb capitulated and published on its website an extensive
apology to Wolk, along with an apology from one of the individually sued
posters.
