- Melissa Kite, columnist with Britain’s Spectator, writes about her low-speed car crash and its aftermath [first, second, third, fourth]
- NYT’s Nocera lauds Keystone pipeline, gets called “global warming denier” [NYTimes] More about foundations’ campaign to throttle Alberta tar sands [Coyote] Regulations mandating insurance “disclosures” provide another way for climate change activists to stir the pot [Insurance and Technology]
- “Cop spends weeks to trick an 18-year-old into possession and sale of a gram of pot” [Frauenfelder, BB]
- Federal Circuit model order, pilot program could show way to rein in patent e-discovery [Inside Counsel, Corporate Counsel] December Congressional hearing on discovery costs [Lawyers for Civil Justice]
- Trial lawyer group working with Senate campaigns in North Dakota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Hawaii [Rob Port via LNL] President of Houston Trial Lawyers Association makes U.S. Senate bid [Chron]
- Panel selection: “Jury strikes matter” [Ron Miller, Maryland Injury]
- Law-world summaries/Seventeen syllables long/@legal_haiku (& for a similar treatment of high court cases, check out @SupremeHaiku)
Posts Tagged ‘discovery’
“Sanctioned: P2P lawyer fined $10,000 for ‘staggering chutzpah'”
To quote the court: Texas lawyer Evan Stone, mass-suing file-sharers and seeking to uncover their identities, “asked the Court to authorize sending subpoenas to the ISPs. The Court said ‘not yet.’ Stone sent the subpoenas anyway.” [ArsTechnica, Volokh]
July 10 roundup
- Jury rejects Jamie Leigh Jones rape claim against Halliburton/KBR. Next, a round of apologies from naive commentators and some who used the case to advance anti-arbitration talking points? [WSJ; Ted Frank/PoL and more; WSJ Law Blog (plaintiff’s lawyers sought shoot-the-moon damages)]
- Time magazine vs. James Madison on constitutional law (spoiler: Madison wins) [Foster Friess via Ira Stoll]
- Andrew Trask reviews new Curtis Wilkie book on the Dickie Scruggs scandal;
- “Right to family life” evolution in human rights law deters UK authorities from deporting various bad actors [Telegraph]
- Paging Benjamin Barton: How discovery rules enrich the legal profession at the expense of the social good [PoL]
- USDA heeds politics, not science, on genetic crops [Henry Miller/Gregory Conko, PDF, Cato Institute Regulation]
- “Legal Questions Raised by Success of Monkey Photographer” [Lowering the Bar]
April 26 roundup
- Study of how class action lawyers interact with their named clients [Stephen Meili via Trask]
- California releases numbers on how bounty-hunting lawyers did in 2010 under Prop 65 environmental-warning law [Cal Biz Lit]
- According to the tale, lender errors in foreclosure gave Florida borrower home free and clear. Actual story may be more complicated than that [Funnell]
- The very long discovery arm of the Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania, courts [Drug & Device Law, more]
- UK law firm “could face big bill” after sending thousands of file-sharing demand letters [ABA Journal]
- Goodbye to men’s track at U. of Delaware, and the women’s team is suffering too, as often happens with Title IX [Saving Sports]
- OSHA’s proposed “illness and injury prevention program” (I2P2) termed a “Super Rule” with potentially widespread economic impact [Kirsanow, NRO]
April 25 roundup
- 10th Circuit: deposition not a “take-home examination” [Ronald Miller]
- Class-action suit over salt in Campbell’s soup [NJ.com] Boom predicted in suits over claims of healthy food [Ken Odza]
- Roommate indicted in Tyler Clementi suicide [Scott Greenfield, Beldar]
- “Ban fraternities” screed in WSJ: were editors trying to make Caitlin Flanagan look ridiculous on purpose? [Ann Althouse, Instapundit]
- Emotional value of family dog: “Seattle should not set bad precedent in pet case” [John W. Schedler, Seattle Times, background]
- Investigating gas-price speculation and “price gouging”: “Obama tries to cap oil leak with lawyers” [Neil Munro, Daily Caller]
- Federal law protects peanuts on planes [CNN Travel]
What is a photocopier?
The question comes up during a deposition, and nearly ten pages of court transcript follow. [Cleveland Plain Dealer] And: Lowering the Bar has some significant background on the case.
Federalist Society videos online
The Federalist Society has posted numerous videos from its recent National Lawyers’ Convention, including sessions on the aggressive regulatory stance of today’s Environmental Protection Agency, the constitutionality of Obamacare, anonymity and the First Amendment in media and campaign-regulation law, NYU’s Richard Epstein debating Yale’s Bill Eskridge on the court battle over California’s Prop 8, recusal and campaign rules for judges, Dodd-Frank, and the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez case on accreditation of student groups, among other topics. And civil procedure/Iqbal-Twombly buffs may be interested in a luncheon panel held just yesterday in D.C. (I was in the audience) in which four law professors (Don Elliott of Yale, Martin Redish and Ronald Allen of Northwestern, and Rick Esenberg of Marquette) outlined ideas for reforming the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to reduce discovery costs and improve screening of cases in the earliest stages of filing.
The video above is of the Society’s 10th annual Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture, in which Second Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs provocatively criticizes legal academia and other precincts of influential legal thinking for misunderstanding the role of the military and its relation to the law.
“Deposition Tricks: The Dirty Dozen”
Twelve ways lawyers try to gain (often unfair) advantage when interrogating captive opponents. [Maryland Bar Journal/SSRN via Legal Ethics Forum]
Judge: lawyers’ acts of misbehavior “make me feel like a school marm scolding little boys”
After reading deposition exchanges “related in excruciating, repetitive detail,” Nevada U. S. Magistrate Peggy A. Leen felt called on to admonish lawyers on both sides:
If I was an elementary school teacher instead of a judge I would require both counsel to write the following clearly established legal rules on a blackboard 500 times:
I will not make speaking, coaching, suggestive objections which violate Rule 30(c)(2). I am an experienced lawyer and know that objections must be concise, non-argumentative and non-suggestive. I understand that the purpose of a deposition is to find out what the witness thinks, saw, heard or did. I know that lawyers are not supposed to coach or change the witness’s own words to form a legally convenient record. I know I am prohibited from frustrating or impeding the fair examination of a deponent during the deposition. I know that constant objections and unnecessary remarks are unwarranted and frustrate opposing counsel’s right to fair examination. I know that speaking objections such as “if you remember,” “if you know,” “don’t guess,” “you’ve answered the question,” and “do you understand the question” are designed to coach the witness and are improper. I also know that counsel’s interjection that he or she does not understand the question is not a proper objection, and that if a witness needs clarification of a question, the witness may ask for the clarification.
[Order in Mazzeo v. Gibbons et al., Trial Ad Notes via Day on Torts]
Allegation: “Deposition toe-tapping”
Plaintiffs in a Florida case say they caught the defense at it red-footed. [Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch]