Are they OK when lawyers do them? Such at least is the view attributed to one law school ethics expert [Daniel Fisher/Forbes]
Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
August 19 roundup
- Judge bans $1.35 billion sugar beet crop for lack of environmental impact statement [NY Times]
- Brennan Center, Justice at Stake attracting attention with new report on money in state court judicial races [report in PDF, Kang/ConcurOp]
- Obama signs “libel tourism” bill into law [Levy, CL&P]
- “Zach Scruggs claims new evidence clears him” [Patsy Brumfield, NE Mississippi Daily Journal via YallPolitics]
- Second Circuit panel blasts 1980s abuse-accusation panic in ruling on Friedman case [opinion via NYT and Bernstein/Volokh]
- Famed Cincinnati lawyer Stanley Chesley may face disciplinary action before Kentucky bar over role in fen-phen scandal [Courier-Journal via Dan Fisher and PoL]
- Sexual harassment verdict against California casino “amounts to 2/3 of the company’s net worth” [Fox, Jottings]
- Every White House needs to hire some partisan brawlers. But with “ethics czar” duties? [Matt Welch, Reason]
June 16 roundup
- Shameless: House leadership exempts NRA lest it sink bill to regulate political speech [John Samples, Cato]
- Employment law: “Arbitration Showdown Looms Between Congress, Supreme Court” [Coyle, NLJ]
- “Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise” [Tamanaha, Balkinization]
- Move to allow international war crimes trials over “aggression,” a notoriously slippery term [Anderson, Brett Schaefer/NRO “Corner” via Ku]
- Litigation slush funds: “Cy pres bill in Ohio House” [Ted Frank, CCAF]
- “Recent Michigan Prosecutions for ‘Seducing an Unmarried Woman’” [Volokh]
- Scalia: “…least analytically rigorous and hence most subjective of law-school subjects, legal ethics” [LEF]
- Silicosis settlement scandal update: “As 2 Insurance Execs Admit Bribes, PI Lawyer Says He Can’t Be Retried” [Houston Chronicle via ABA Journal, earlier]
May 18 roundup
- Upside-down logic of Supreme Court’s Comstock, Graham cases: imprison youthful offenders for life only if they haven’t had protections of formal trial [Popehat, Pilon, Shapiro, Volokh, Pattis] Kennedy returns to use of international “consensus” as guide in constitutional interpretation [Shapiro, Bader]
- Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, noted scourge of misleading ad promotion (as in the Sony ghost blurber case), falsely claimed Vietnam service [Raymond Hernandez, NY Times] Cf. the curious “Harvard swim captain” claims investigated by Chris Fountain. More: AllahPundit.
- Louisiana politico Theriot: my suit against online critics is meant not to shut anyone up but to pick up useful tips on governance [Times-Picayune, Jefferson Report, Volokh, NY Times]
- South Carolina juries not allowed to hear evidence about seat belt use in car crashes [Pero]
- More links on “Lady KaGa” Supreme Court nomination [Cato at Liberty, Ted at PoL]
- Risk of “minor” injuries may result in end to Naval Academy tradition of stunt climb [John J. Miller, NRO]
- “Art of the Steal,” documentary on epic battle over donor intent in case of suburban Philadelphia Barnes collection [Kauffmann/TNR, L.A. Times, CultureGrrl/ArtsJournal]
- “Why Good Intentions are Often Not Enough: The Potential for Ethical Blindness in Legal Decision-Making” [Kath Hall (Australian National University), SSRN via Andrew Perlman, Legal Ethics Forum]
Lawyer conceals client’s death from opponent
Only after the settlement was in hand did a Minnesota lawyer let slip the rather material fact that his client had some time back departed this earthly frame. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune “The Whistleblower” via ABA Journal] Ironically, the lawyer was suing over a credit report that had mistakenly reported his client as dead (back when he was alive). The lawyer, who had been disciplined seven other times, has now been barred from working for a year.
More: Discussion in comments at Legal Ethics Forum, including Prof. Monroe Freedman: “I disagree with [this kind of] result.”
Lawyer ads that look like VA hospital sites
The sleaziest asbestos-suit-marketing practice yet? You decide. In what is unfortunately not an April Fool’s joke, Roger Parloff at Fortune exposes a network of client recruitment sites that would fool many casual visitors into thinking they are sponsored by the federal government’s Veteran’s Administration, under headings like “VA Medical Center Palo Alto” and corresponding domain names. A founding partner of well-known New York plaintiff’s firm Seeger Weiss expressed regret about his firm’s listing as a sponsor of the site. The full story is here (& welcome Legal Blog Watch readers).
March 29 roundup
- “Teen beauty queen portrayed as spoiled brat on ‘Wife Swap’ files $100M lawsuit” [NY Daily News]
- “Viva el cupcake!” NYC parents and kids protest the Bloomberg administration’s anti-bake-sale rules [Philissa Cramer, GothamSchools] Bill in Congress would thrust federal government much more deeply into school food issues [Al Tompkins, Poynter]
- For improved disabled access to online resources, look to technical advance, not regulation [Szoka, City Journal]
- “Ministry of Justice Rolls Out New Measures to Reform U.K. Libel Law” [Legal Week/Law.com] “Success Fees in U.K. Libel Cases to Be Slashed by 90 Percent” [same]
- “They’re overlawyered. They’re poisoned by lawyers.” (Markopolos critique of SEC, cont’d) [Gordon Smith, Conglomerate]
- A sentiment open to doubt: Prof. Freedman contends that lawyers’ ethics are higher than doctors’ [Legal Ethics Forum]
- Quotas for women executives in boardroom and top corporate posts spread in Europe. Maybe someday here too? [NYT “Room for Debate”]
- Yes to better indigent criminal defense, no to a court order taking over the subject [Greenfield]
December 18 roundup
- Class action to follow? Longtime Overlawyered favorite Gloria Allred now representing one of the Tiger Tootsies [The Observer]
- Alabama lawyer moves to postpone trial so he can see Crimson Tide take on Texas [Yahoo “Rivals”]
- “Thomas the Tank Engine attacked for ‘conservative political ideology'” [Telegraph; Canadian academic calls for tighter controls on children’s broadcasting]
- Government manages to lose money at bookie racket: “NYC’s Off-Track-Betting Seeks Bankruptcy Protection” [Bloomberg]
- “Rapist ex-lawmaker claims copyright on his name, threatens legal action” [Boing Boing, Volokh, Randazza/Citizen Media Law]
- Graubard Miller $42 million contingency fee “now in referee’s hands” [NYLJ; earlier Oct. 5, etc.]
- It’ll destroy our image of him: opponents say “alleged Ponzi schemer and disbarred attorney Scott Rothstein filed frivolous lawsuits” [DBR]
- New Hampshire disciplinary panel finds prominent injury attorney broke ethics rules in handling client who talked of firing him from multi-million-dollar case [Keene Sentinel]
U.K.: “Beresfords lawyers who profited from sick miners lose appeal”
“Two former lawyers whose firm earned £136 million by handling compensation claims for sick miners lost their appeal yesterday against being struck off for dishonesty.” [“struck off” = disbarred] The firm secretly kicked back more than $1 million to a union official to get the work, and made improper deductions from the sums owed to clients. “Mr Beresford banked more than £30 million — which bought him a jet, Aston Martins and a Ferrari — from fees paid to his firm by the Government for its work on coal health claims.” [Times Online]
Lawyers who sleep with clients
You’d think they wouldn’t need specific rules to know not to do that. [Scott Greenfield]