Philip Greenspun (via Newmark):
With so many of America’s best and brightest making the personal choice to go into fields that, at best, transfer money from one pocket to another, I thought “Thank God we have immigrants, since if we had to rely on these folks for economic growth, we’d be toast.”
(See also the comments to that blog post.)
The Legal Reader points us to Court T.V.’s video of Attorney Joseph Caramango’s stunning display in the courtroom as he tries to explain why he was an hour late for a jury trial in which his client was facing life imprisonment. It wasn’t the five shots of tequila he had at 4 am the night before. It wasn’t the beer he admitted having at lunch the day before during jury selection.
Video is long and painful — a classic Schadenfreud.
Judge Pendleton Gaines of he Superior Court of Maricopa County, Arizona must be a popular jurist indeed. Here, he grants plaintiff counsel’s Motion to Compel Acceptance of Lunch Date, ruling:
“The Court has rarely seen a motion with more merit. The motion will be granted.
The Court has searched in vain in the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure and cases, as well
as the leading treatises on federal and Arizona procedure, to find specific support for Plaintiff’s
motion. Finding none, the Court concludes that motions of this type are so clearly within the
inherent powers of the Court and have been so routinely granted that they are non-controversial
and require no precedential support.
The writers support the concept. Conversation has been called “the socializing
instrument par excellence” (Jose Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate Spain) and “one of the greatest
pleasures in life” (Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence). John Dryden referred to
“Sweet discourse, the banquet of the mind” (The Flower and the Leaf)….”
More light-heartedness follows. (The Legal Reader, Aug. 8)
When two sisters engage in a battle over control of their mother’s estate, it can only get uglier when one trustee sisterattempts to have her husband’s law firm appointed as successor trustee. But it helps with the Court if said firm isn’t brazenly overbilling the estate in the process:
“Greenberg Traurig billed the estate almost $130,000, which is now at issue in a pending contempt motion. Sankel claims the amount should be repaid to the trust since Greenberg Traurig’s services were retained for the personal benefit of Linda Spector and Jacobs, whom she eventually married.
In the contempt motion, Sankel also noted the disparity between the fees paid to Greenberg Traurig and his own firm in the course of the dispute. He noted that his firm had billed the trust $22,000 in the same time period. He is requesting invoices from Greenberg Traurig to back up charges, some of which he claims were “wholly frivolous.”
(Law.com, August 8)
It’s all in a day for notorious white supremacist and convicted felon Matthew Hale, who, once convicted of attempting to arrange for the murder of a federal judge, then did what any ordinary American convict would do — sued his lawyer for malpractice.
These guys are nothing like Joe Jamail, but honestly, does this scene make you want to be a jurist?
“[Joe] Francis spends a lot of money on lawyers” as both a defendant and plaintiff, and generates a lot of Overlawyered posts in the process (Sept. 28-30, 2001; Mar. 6-7, 2002; May 1, 2006; July 4) as well as extensive comment threads. Sunday’s LA Times article, which will no doubt presage other litigation, is grounds to reopen the topic.
Peter Lattman reports about the band Fall Out Boy:
“Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued” was originally called, “My Name is David Ruffin and These Are the Temptations,” Wentz says. After Ruffin broke with the famed Motown group, he kept attending shows and would steal the microphones away from his former bandmembers, unable to wean himself from the limelight. Wentz says his original song title, “was a play on Ruffin’s egomania and general narcissism.” Here are the song’s lyrics.
Wentz’s father advised his son against using the song title, for fear that the group would be sued. Did the younger Wentz listen? “No, because he was my dad. He advised me against a lot of things that I do,” he said with a playful hint of mischief in his voice. According to Wentz the Younger, the band’s lawyers also told them they’d be slapped with a hefty lawsuit, and offered up a few options — they could sign a waiver; include a reference to Ruffin in the song (which somehow would shield against a lawsuit); or change the name of the song.
Lattman wonders why including Ruffin’s name in the song would shield against a lawsuit, and the answer comes from the Sixth Circuit’s deplorable decision in the Rosa Parks case, which we covered Apr. 15, 2005:
The Sixth Circuit held that the rappers did not have a first amendment right to name their song “Rosa Parks” because they could have called it “Back of the Bus” rather than use an allusive title. One looks forward to more federal court diktats over song titles. (Parks v. LaFace Records (6th Cir. 2003)).
Lattman reports that Wentz says the band is hit with a lawsuit a day and has to retain an attorney half-time.
Scanning through million-dollar verdicts looking for Overlawyered stories, I found this $1.1 million verdict against a California law firm for failure to accommodate an attorney who asked to be able to bill 140 hours a month while undergoing treatment for liver disease.
Not especially notable, but I was highly entertained that the law firm’s defense was that it really fired Warren Snider because he took time off to go to his father-in-law’s memorial service. (Tina Bay, “Jury Awards Lawyer $1.1 Million in Wrongful Termination Suit”, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, Aug. 7).
Update: Crime & Federalism has more.
“If American criminal law applies to servers in Costa Rica, might authorities in other countries not try to impose their law on servers based in Texas? You might almost bet that will happen, were it legal to bet.” Walter has a good piece in the London Times on the David Carruthers arrest (Jul. 27, Jul. 20).