Welcome readers of the Mary Ann Akers blog in the Washington Post (via M&N). It’s not clear why anyone is still covering the press releases of Mr. Sibley, who has been suspended from practice in the District of Columbia, and thus has no basis to be filing anything in court. While Sibley has appealed his suspension to the U.S. Supreme Court, I will happily wager that the application for a stay is denied, followed by the denial of the writ of certiorari. This is, after all, Mr. Sibley’s twelfth petition for certiorari on his own behalf, and the first eleven (along with five on behalf of clients who were not Mr. Sibley) have all been denied.

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• “I did not know what kind of monster we were dealing with”: dramatic testimony from Judge Lackey on Scruggs corruption [Folo; and repercussions too]
• New at Point of Law: Pork-barreling Albany lawmakers shell out for just what NY needs, three more law schools; Sarbanes-Oxley unconstitutional? Ted goes after JAMA on Vioxx; sadly, appeals court overturns Santa Clara opinion that nailed ethical problems with govt.-paid contingency fee; legal aid lawyers, to subprime borrowers’ rescue? and much more;
• Cadbury claim: we own the color purple as it relates to chocolate [Coleman]
• A world gone mad: Innocence Project directors include… Janet Reno? [Bernstein @ Volokh]
• Not unrelatedly: Can a California prosecutor be held liable for wrongful murder conviction of man freed after 24 years? [Van de Kamp versus Goldstein, L.A. Times via Greenfield]
• With all his lawyer chums from Milberg-witness days, you’d think Ben Stein could have saved the makers of his creationist movie from stumbling into textbook IP infringements [Myers, again, WSJ law blog]
• Groggy from dental anesthesia, plus a half a glass to drink: then came the three felony DUI counts [Phoenix New Times, Balko via Reynolds]
• Shell says boaters had years of notice that mandated ethanol in fuel was incompatible with fiberglass marine gas tanks, which hasn’t stopped the filing of a class action [L.A. Times via ABA Journal]
• Terrorism asymmetry: “They say ‘Allahu Akbar!’ we say ‘Imagine the liability!’” [McCarthy/Lopez, NRO]
• Deborah Jeane Palfrey convicted [WaPo; earlier]
• David Neiwert truly born yesterday if he thinks Kevin Phillips is noteworthy for his record of being right [Firedoglake; some correctives]

• Speaking of prostitutes and politicians, Deborah Jeane Palfrey has come to recognize that Montgomery Blair Sibley (Oct. 29; May 4; etc.) may not be the best lawyer for her. [WTOP via BLT]
• Update: Nearly two years later, trial court gets around to upholding $2 million verdict in lawn-mower death we covered Jun. 16 and Aug. 18, 2006. [Roanoke Times (quoting me); opinion at On Point]
• In other lawn mower news, check out Jim Beck’s perceptive comment on a Third Circuit lawn-mower liability decision.
• Update: Willie Gary wins his child-support dispute. [Gary v. Gowins (Ga.); Atl. Journal-Const.; via ABA Journal; earlier: Nov. 2]
• Tobacco-lawyer Mike Ciresi drops out of Minnesota senate race. [WCCO]
• Belfast court quashes libel ruling against restaurant critic. [AFP/Breitbart]
• Trial-lawyer-blogger happy: jury returned $1.25 million med-mal verdict for death of totally disabled person suffering from end-stage renal disease, pulmonary hypertension, oxygen dependent lung disease, and obesity, after rejecting businessperson from jury “for cause” because he was head of local Chamber of Commerce. [Day]
• Car-keying anti-military attorney Jay Grodner faced the law in January; here’s the transcript. [Blackfive]
• Anonymous blog post not reliable evidence of factual allegations. [In re Pfizer, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2008 WL 540120 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 28, 2008) via Roberts, who also reports on fee reduction in same post]
• Clinton’s nutty mortgage plan. [B&MI (quoting me)]
• A supposed DC cabbie’s take on DC v. Heller. [DC Cabbie blog]

A Deputy Secretary of State resigned after ABC News tracked down his cell-phone number from the alleged D.C. madam’s records in anticipation of a 20/20 story they’ll be running on Deborah Jeane Palfrey (Mar. 20). (The Blotter via Franke-Ruta) The Washington Post story does more to play the blackmail angle that ABC ignores.

Update: and still more on the front page of the Sunday WaPo.

Today’s WaPo has more on the temporary restraining order against Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s sale of her phone records, which we discussed Mar. 17. Available for your viewing pleasure is the redacted government’s TRO application, which was just unsealed, and has some entertaining anecdotes of attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley’s litigation history. Palfrey now has her own (easily googlable, we won’t link to it) website, which includes her civil complaint against one of her alleged escorts (which the government alleges is an attempt to harass a witness in the criminal case), and a page of phone records, which Josh Marshall’s commenters have already begun tracking down.

…which may not necessarily mean that some people can’t even give it away:

A federal judge ruled Friday that a former escort service owner cannot sell phone records and other documents that could be used to publicly identify thousands of her clients…. [Deborah Jeane] Palfrey’s civil attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said Friday he does not believe the judge’s order bars him from distributing copies of the phone records for free. In any event, Sibley said it’s a moot point because he has already given copies of the records to an undisclosed news organization.

(”Judge Blocks Former D.C. Madame From Selling Client List”, AP/FoxNews.com, Mar. 16; SF Chronicle; WTOP). Background: Mar. 13.

Washington, D.C. has been on edge lately over the news that Deborah Jeane Palfrey, facing charges of running a pricey call girl operation in the capital, wants to sell her list of 10,000 clients and 46 pounds of phone records to the highest bidder to raise money for her legal defense. (Scott McCabe, “Accused D.C. madame’s client list remains in limbo”, Washington Examiner, Mar. 10; Fox News, Mar. 9; Anne Schroeder, Politico, Mar. 1; TPM Muckraker, Dec. 7, Mar. 1, Mar. 7, Mar. 9). Palfrey’s attorney and adviser, Montgomery Blair Sibley, says numerous overtures for purchase have already come in, that efforts are underway aimed at “mining the data to identify individuals,” and that his client will do her part in cooperating with the buyer of the data to identify clients. Attorney Sibley is quoted in the Examiner as teasing journalists about the newsworthy nature of the client names: “You won’t be disappointed.”

Something about the name of Palfrey’s attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, rang a bell from the past. Was it the historical resonance of his having been named after a member of Lincoln’s cabinet? Or his having once headed an organization called Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, which I’ve had occasion to cite favorably for its work against police and prosecutorial abuses? No, that wasn’t it. Oh, wait, here it is: an Overlawyered entry from March 7 of last year about how Arthur Vanmoor, a South Florida man accused of running one of the largest prostitution rings in the Southeast, had taken the step of suing his own former clients for getting him in trouble (seems they had signed credit card slips which read “Cardholder states that this transaction is not for illegal activity”). As I noted then, “One wonders whether the possibility of [publicity for the "johns" being sued] might be one factor influencing the prospective settlement value, if any, of the new round of suits.” Vanmoor’s attorney appeared on Tucker Carlson’s “The Situation” to discuss the strategem, with entertaining results. His name? Montgomery Sibley.

Maybe Mr. Sibley can adopt as a new promotional slogan for his law practice, “Turning your client lists into gold.”