More petard-hoisting: “A champion of Berkeley rent control was ordered last week to pay his former tenants more than $100,000 in restitution by the very rent board he campaigned to create. By a unanimous vote, the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board found that Michael Berkowitz, a paid aide to Councilmember Maudelle Shirek, had willfully misrepresented his residency status at his 2820 Derby St. property to skirt rent control. Berkowitz also works in a second position as chief of information services and neighborhood planning for the City of San Francisco.” (Matthew Artz, “Rent Board Orders Council Aide To Repay Overcharged Tenants”, Berkeley Daily Planet, Feb. 27)(via Myria who had it from Classical Values). And this just in: Republican Joe Thompson, the minority whip of the New Mexico House of Representatives, “was charged with drunken driving, hours after attending a bill-signing ceremony to highlight the state’s newest effort to crack down on DWI offenders.” (“Lawmaker arrested for drunken driving after attending anti-DWI ceremony”, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 4)
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Varieties of legal practice
Sherry Fowler (Stay of Execution) has two posts looking at the good and bad points of practicing transactional law, and how it differs from a litigation practice (via Bainbridge).
“Lucky gambler sues Las Vegas casino”
“A Los Angeles lawyer who claims he was thrown out of Las Vegas last year because he was too lucky has sued MGM Mirage in a bid to force the casino to warn prospective gamblers that they can be barred for winning too much.” Ernest Franseschi, Jr., “who plays blackjack as a hobby, said casino officials did not accuse him of cheating, but of counting cards to determine which had been played — a practice that is not illegal.” “We, like any other business, reserve the right to refuse service,” said a spokesman for MGM Mirage. (Reuters/Yahoo, Mar. 3). On the longstanding war between casinos and card-counters, which occasionally spills over into litigation, see I. Nelson Rose (professor at Whittier Law School), “Dealing with Card-Counters”, 2002, at Rose’s site Gambling and the Law.
Probe of Connecticut tobacco deal
Picking up where our Feb. 24 posting left off: “The House committee that will decide whether to recommend the impeachment of Gov. John G. Rowland is examining a Waterbury law firm, one of four firms that brought Connecticut’s 1996 class-action suit against the tobacco industry and shared $65 million in fees.” The state’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said: “I can tell you unequivocally that politics had nothing to do with this decision [to hire the Carmody firm]”. Such a card, that AG Blumenthal! (Stacey Stowe, “Impeachment Panel Examining Law Firm”, New York Times, Mar. 3)
“Liability Concerns for Condos”
Here’s hoping you don’t own a condominium in New York. A Manhattan Supreme Court ruling has decreased the real estate value of every condo in the state by holding that individual condominium unit owners can be held personally liable for all or part of the damages awarded to people injured as a result of defects in common areas of a building. Lawyers for Michael Taratura, injured by a fence that fell from a roof of a condo, sued each owner in the 11-unit building individually in the hopes of getting damages above and beyond the $2 million insurance coverage; the court allowed the case to proceed. Justice Heitler’s ruling is being appealed. (Jay Romano, NY Times, Feb. 29).
Karma ran into her dogma
“Wisconsin’s state Attorney General [Peg Lautenschlager], who pushed hard for a .08 BAC limit in the state, was arrested for drunken driving Monday night. We don’t know what her BAC was, because she refused to take a breath test (by the nature of the accident, I’d guess it was far higher than .10). Wisconsin is one of 37 states to adopt a measure championed by MADD that’s truly one of the most hysterical drunk driving laws on the books — the state actually imposes a harsher sentence for refusing to take a roadside breath test than it does for taking one and failing it.” (Radley Balko, Feb. 25) See Phil Brinkman, “Lautenschlager gives emotional apology, takes no questions”, Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 27; Steven Elbow, “AG cited in drunk driving”, Capitol Times (Madison), Feb. 24 (in 1981, state’s then-AG was picked up driving with BAC above legal limit; was easily re-elected the next year); Elbow, “AG’s alcohol level was 0.12”, Feb. 25.
NYC bar association event tonight
This evening at 6 p.m. I’ll be speaking at a panel discussion sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, on the impact of possible federal tort reform on New York. (more)
Bush’s FMA mistake
“And if down the road the voters of some state opt for a legal regime [on marriage law] different than that favored by Mr. Bush, why should the Constitution impede their democratic choice? The federal Defense of Marriage Act already guarantees that no state has to recognize a same-sex union performed in another state.” (“Debasing the Constitution” (editorial), Feb. 25). Josh Marshall (Feb. 24) writes: “It’s his dad and the flag burning amendment all over again. Is there really anything that tells you more about a man’s character than this?” For more on this very bad amendment, see Feb. 20.
Plot premise…
…of the forthcoming movie The Incredibles, from the fabulous animators at Pixar: “Mr. Incredible is a superhero; or he used to be, until a surge of lawsuits against superheroes submitted by the people they’ve saved forced the government to hide them in witness protection programs so they could lead normal, anonymous lives.” (plot summary at IMDB) (teasers and peeks) (via George M. Wallace’s “A Fool in the Forest” blog, Feb. 20; unrelatedly, Wallace also has a Feb. 23 post on bedbug litigation). More on “The Incredibles”: Oct. 25.
Connecticut scandal: the tobacco-fee angle
Four years ago (Feb. 16, 2000) we noted that the state of Connecticut had chosen three politically connected law firms to handle the state’s role in the multistate tobacco litigation, a bit of business that yielded a very handsome $65 million in fees. (Other firms that wanted to be considered for the work were cut out.) The three firms included two linked to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and one, Carmody & Torrance of Waterbury, whose managing partner, James Robertson, was personal counsel to Republican Gov. John Rowland.
Now the firm of Carmody & Torrance has turned up amid the ethical storm swirling around Gov. Rowland, who may face impeachment over various personal financial irregularities. After Rowland nominated Robertson for a Superior Court judgeship, it developed that the Carmody firm had not only performed extensive free services for Rowland but had also agreed to defer payment of some $100,000 worth of paid services. In recent weeks the Connecticut press has had a lot to say about the (relatively small) amounts of conventional legal work that the state government has awarded to Carmody & Torrance in recent years, but (unless we’ve missed something) has expressed little curiosity about the selection of the firm for tobacco work, perhaps having swallowed the fiction by which the $65 million fee supposedly did not come at the state’s expense. (“Rowland lawyer says governor owes firm $100,000”, AP/Stamford Advocate, Feb. 13; Tobin A. Coleman, “Judges asked about gifts for Rowland”, Stamford Advocate, Feb. 14; Gregory B. Hladky, “Rowland?s ethics scandal snowballing”, New Haven Register, Feb. 16; “State ethics law loophole doesn?t exist, Plofsky says”, AP/New Haven Register, Feb. 22).