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Fifth Circuit

January 26 roundup

by Walter Olson on January 26, 2012

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People are talking about the Fifth Circuit’s opinion (written by Judge Jerry Smith) in the “disgruntled cheerleader mom” case:

Reduced to its essentials, this is nothing more than a dispute, fueled by a disgruntled cheerleader mom, over whether her daughter should have made the squad. It is a petty squabble, masquerading as a civil rights matter, that has no place in federal court or any other court. We find no error and affirm.

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Hello? Guantanamo? It’s not as if you’d expect any sort of consistent policy on these matters from the imaginatively named Alliance for Justice. But it’s still strange that they’d open the door to future attacks on their own favored judicial nominees based on clients they represented long before reaching the bench. [Joel Cohen and Katherine Helm/Law.com, NLJ] More: John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum takes a different view, and I comment.

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I can’t say I’ve made a study of Judge Graves’ overall career as a jurist in the Mississippi state courts, but if his record presiding over the notorious O’Keefe v. Loewen trial is at all typical, his wouldn’t exactly be a name high on my list. [AP/Law.com]

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June 1 roundup

by Walter Olson on June 1, 2010

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USA Today on the Fifth Circuit’s recent ruling on a Katrina case, Comer v. Murphy Oil. More on the case at Point of Law here, here, and here.

Protect “a letter to [a] girlfriend [stating] that a prison officer had sex with a cat” but do not protect mailing a prosecutor “a note written on toilet paper” saying “Dear Susan, Please use this to wipe your ass, that argument was a bunch of shit! You[rs] Truly, George Morgan.” (Morgan v. Quarterman (5th Cir. 2009)). W.C., sending us the case, comments, perhaps only semi-facetiously:

(i) He said “very truly yours.” Maybe he was trying to help her. He was at least sincere.

(ii) I wouldn’t mind doing a similar stunt to opposing in a case I have currently. I too would do so from a helpful perspective. Is that so wrong?

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And Larry Ribstein reasonably asks: What about Jeff Skilling?

And a Fifth Circuit panel eats him alive.