Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for December, 2008

Microblog 2008-12-26

Wounded feelings, hostage rescues by lawyers, and Philadelphia politics:

In the next edition of Microblog, we’ll answer the question, “How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

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Erwin Chemerinsky’s Gift to Southern California

Sixty new lawyers, at taxpayer the expense of funds that would otherwise go to his public law school’s endowment.

A new law school [University of California, Irvine] opening next fall in Southern California is offering a big incentive to top students who might be thinking twice about the cost of a legal education during the recession: free tuition for three years. …

Scholarship winners will be chosen for their potential to emerge three years later as legal stars on the ascendance. Only the best and brightest need apply, but the school hopes to offer full scholarships to all 60 members of its inaugural class in 2009. Subsequent classes will be on a normal tuition basis.

Chemerinsky, who knows something about the difficulty of landing a job at the top of the legal world, is certainly taking a bold stab at leapfrogging the competition with this offer.  And while in Southern California one has to be careful not to trip over unemployed lawyers while strolling on the sidewalk, we’d certainly encourage Overlawyered readers who’ve always wanted to live the dream to apply.

Via Talkleft, which is also encouraging its readers to fill these spots.  Two can play that game!

Edit: Thanks to reader Jwill for a valuable correction.

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Oklahoma AG Receives Lesson on the First Amendment

The problem is that he refuses to learn from it. Drew Edmondson (D), Oklahoma’s Attorney General who seeks to become Governor in the 2010 election, disagrees with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals that circulating petitions for a ballot initiative limiting government spending is “core political speech,” protected for “outside agitators” (or whatever Edmondson calls them) as well as Oklahoma residents.  Edmondson has announced that his quest to imprison Citizens In Charge head Paul Jacob and two others for hiring non-resident signature gatherers will end in the Supreme Court.  That one’s rights to free speech and to petition government for redress of grievances don’t end at a state line is elementary constitutional law, the sort of thing 2Ls should know.  But then there are many things that Oklahoma’s aspiring Governor seems not to know.

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Something that THE BAR of the GREAT STATE OF MISSISSIPPI Might Find to Be of Interest

Let’s say you’re a lawyer, drafting a complaint over some institutional squabble at a public university.  You’re bound by the codes of professional conduct and general ethics, which among other things require that a lawyer avoid demeaning or humiliating language in describing witnesses or adverse parties.  Do you insert this paragraph?

Instead of defending the integrity of excellence of scientific work at UM, all individual Defendants, as administrators, participated in jeopardizing the reputation of the institution.

Or this one?

Instead of defending the integrity of excellence of scientific work at UM, all individual Defendants, as corrupt administrators, participated in jeoparding [sic] the reputation of the institution for personal gain and aggrandizement: something that the ALUMNI and the MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE may find of interest.

Apparently, if you’re the attorney for Dr. Robert Speth, formerly of the University of Mississippi school of pharmacy, you choose the second paragraph.  Legal ethics codes also bar extortion and threats (outside the context of the litigation, which is always threatening) and while this isn’t extortion, the language dances rather close to the edge of a threat, doesn’t it?

In any event it is, as folo from which I found this, points out, some of the most unprofessional and abusive language you’ll find in any complaint.  And while the Bar of the Great State of Mississippi likely won’t take action (Mississippi has bigger issues), this may come back to haunt its drafter, Christian Goeldner, in the event that the case is dismissed.

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Microblog 2008-12-25

You really shouldn’t be reading this.  You haven’t even played with the nice new toys Santa brought you.

Now go play with your toys.

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Christmas In Jail

While there are unpleasant stereotypes about Philadelphia lawyers, H. Beatty Chadwick, an attorney from the Philadelphia main line, has a lesson for all with his Gollum-like stubbornness.  Today he’s spending his 14th consecutive Christmas in jail on a contempt citation for allegedly hiding assets from his ex-wife.

After a hearing yesterday, Delaware County Court President Judge Joseph P. Cronin Jr. turned down Chadwick’s latest request for Christmas furlough, declaring him “a significant risk of flight.”

Had the court let him out for Christmas, Chadwick could have cut off his electronic-monitoring bracelet and used his money and contacts to fly off in a helicopter, his ex-wife’s attorney, Albert Momjian, said.

By now Chadwick has spent more time locked up for his contempt than any American in history.  While I don’t sympathize with Chadwick (who now suffers cancer) if he’s really hiding the money from the court and his ex, surely at some point his indefinite detention becomes a due process violation.  Unlike most who serve life sentences, Chadwick has never been adjudicated a criminal, and debtors’ prisons were abolished centuries ago.

Via WSJ Law Blog, but first spotted at A Public Defender.

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Memo to the Bourbon Family

The French revolution is over.  You lost!

A French heir of Louis XIV has taken the current management of his ancestor’s palace to court to ban an exhibition by modern US artist Jeff Koons that he feels dishonours his family’s illustrious past. …

On Wednesday, judges at Versailles’ administrative court were examining [a demand by Prince Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme] for an emergency injunction to halt the show, which his suit brands “a desecration and an attack on the respect due to the dead.”

His complaint cites what he terms “right immemorial” of all mankind to see its forefathers respected and to have a “right of access to their heritage without pornographic restraint.”

Republican France of course does not recognize titles of nobility, or royalty for that matter.  Prince Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme is, under French law, just some guy.  It would seem that, unless French law really does recognize some right immemorial to access one’s heritage without pornographic restraint, the Prince would need to file an action to clear title to Versailles.

The very little knowledge I have of continental law comes from representing a French building products company in a class action over allegedly defective siding, but I’m sure France has some analogue to the doctrine of adverse possession under American or British common law.  The Prince, it would appear, has a hard road ahead if he wishes to recover some small part of his patrimony.

As for Jeff Koons, and his allegedly pornographic art, you may view it here.  I have a four year old niece of whom I’m quite fond, and I’ll bet she’d love a Jeff Koons reproduction.  Evidently standards for what constitutes pornography among French ex-royalty are pretty loose.

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Microblog 2008-12-24

Desiderata from the web, mostly off-topic:

  • How the mighty have fallen:  A German solar power company offered to buy out GM’s Opel subsidiary, which survived the worst of the Great Depression, two World Wars, Nazi expropriation, allied bombing, and Soviet takeover, for a billion Euros, but GM  had to front the Euros on credit.  Fortunately the American government intervened, offering billions of Euros with no preconditions.  The linked article, translated from French, is recommended to those who find “Engrish” funny, as well as those who want to know what Europeans think of stupid Americans, safe in the knowledge that their articles won’t be translated into Engrish;
  • That was pretty long for a microblog, wasn’t it?  This is shorter: The Mos Eisley Spaceport of the Blogosphere;
  • A very funny web comic (a la xkcd) explaining the mortgage crisis – strong language (Via Nancy Friedman);
  • Out of the mouths of babes, a Christmas parable, complete with dinosaurs;
  • Disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer observes that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” (Via Above the Law);
  • Money for nothing. Focus groups where participants get cash for attendance may come with a catch;
  • Buy a lemon of a used car, go directly to jail, and get a tax lien from the IRS – an automotive horror story from TaxProf Blog;
  • What Barack Obama isn’t telling about contacts with Rod Blagojevich.

We’ll have something of substance up later today.

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Microblog 2008-12-23

A few odds and ends:

While I’ll be blogging tomorrow, I suspect that many of you won’t be reading.  Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Ecstatic Eid, Joyous Kwanzaa, a very late Merry Diwali for Hindu readers, and for the secular among us, Happy Holidays.

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