Had the jokes been funnier, maybe the judge would have granted the motion for a mistrial. (Anne Reed, Deliberations, Oct. 29).
Posts Tagged ‘lawyers’
Microblog 2008-10-27
- “Energy independence is no more desirable than coffee independence, banana independence, or car independence.” [David Henderson, EconLog] #
- L.I.R.R.: a disability certification outfit disguised as a railroad [Bogdanich, N.Y. Times] #
- Even post-scandal, private attorneys for towns can still collar lucrative NY state pensions [Peddie, Newsday] #
- Lining up for bailout bucks: automakers and even mass transit [Carney] #
- Poll of worst law firm names (“Low, Ball & Lynch”) [Greatest American Lawyer; h/t @SCartierLiebel] #
- List of legal newsfeeds on Twitter, now updated [JD Scoop] #
Lawyers and White House nominations
It seems from the numbers that in recent decades the Democrats have tended to nominate lawyers for President and Vice President, and that the Republicans have tended not to. (Volokh, Sept. 18).
Fla. lawyer: I’ve got every right to call judge an “evil, unfair witch”
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., criminal defense attorney Sean Conway claims he was within his First Amendment rights and should not face disciplinary action over his blog comments calling one of the judges he practices before an “evil, unfair witch” who is “seemingly mentally ill”. (Jordana Mishory, “Attorney Argues His ‘Witch’ Comments About Judge Are Protected Speech”, Daily Business Review, Jul. 16; earlier). To me, this seems rather to miss the point: sure, almost everyone but a member of the local bar enjoys or should enjoy a First Amendment right to call a judge an evil, unfair witch. Lawyers admitted to practice, however, enlist as “officers of the court” with special obligations, among which may be (to name only one) to avoid the sorts of displays of enmity that might complicate future cases before that judge, as by provoking recusal. For an extreme instance, see the Geoffrey Fieger episode recounted here, here, here, and here. More on what lawyers can say about judges from Bruce Campbell (Campbell & Chadwick) at Texas Lawyer.
Great moments in Continuing Legal Education
They instruct the people who are supposed to instruct the rest of us how to comply with the law, but they can’t figure it out themselves:
New Jersey’s biggest purveyor of legal education has notified 15,000 customers that they may owe years of back taxes.
The Institute of Continuing Legal Education recently learned it should have been charging sales tax on the books, CDs, videotapes and audiotapes it sells and is working with the state to try to collect the money. …
[ICLE Executive Director Lawrence] Maron says ICLE was operating on the basis of a legal opinion, which turned out to be wrong, that, as a nonprofit entity, it did not have to collect sales tax. …
[New Brunswick, N.J. solo attorney Ann] Kiernan says she particularly resents that ICLE plans to turn over a list of who bought what to the state but has not offered to give lawyers information about their own past purchases.
(Mary Pat Gallagher, “CLE Customers Told They Have to Pay Back Taxes on Products”, New Jersey Law Journal, Jul. 11).
Divorce law in the Northeast
Prompted by our post of yesterday about Virginia lawyer-legislators, commenter Hans Bader at his own blog nominates New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey as examples of how bad matrimonial law can get: “the more lawyers are in a state legislature, the more unfair a state’s divorce laws tend to be”. (OpenMarket.org., Jan. 2). Plus: our family law archives are here.
Chew out your lawyers, get sued for defamation
Firing your lawyers? Be careful what you say about them in doing so. William and Elizabeth Margrabe had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the legal work done on their behalf by the firm of Sexter and Warmflash in a Westchester County, N.Y. lawsuit over the sale of a stake in a family business. In a letter firing the firm, Mr. Margrabe charged that its work was “fraught with missteps, poor legal judgments, failure to protect your client’s rights on repeated occasions, and poor, adversarial, or misleading communications with your clients.” He further accused the attorneys of pursuing their own interests over those of clients in seeking a hasty resolution of some issues, and also of charging a usurious interest rate on its fee. He copied the letter to the new lawyers he had hired to take over the matter.
How did Sexter & Warmflash respond? It sued the Margrabes for $1 million for defamation. Trial court judge Shirley Werner Kornreich ruled that its suit could proceed, and ruled outright in Sexter’s favor on the Margrabes’ liability for the “usurious fee” allegation, but an appeals court reversed, ruling that the Margrabes were protected by a privilege extended to statements made as part of a legal proceeding. (Anthony Lin, “Law Firm’s Defamation Suit Against Former Client Dismissed”, New York Law Journal, Jan. 10).
A libel lawyer, R.I.P.
Once they’re dead, they can’t sue dept.: U.K.’s Guardian runs a rather rough obituary notice of Peter Carter-Ruck, an attorney who specialized in suing publications under Britain’s famously pro-plaintiff libel laws. The fun starts in the very first paragraph: Carter-Ruck “did for freedom of speech what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen,” says a former colleague. According to this not exactly fraternal source, the late attorney’s “technique involved writing menacing letters to encourage socialites to sue for ‘imagined slights'” and he was once heard saying, of his lucrative practice, “I like to bill the clients as the tears are flowing.” (David Hooper, “The Carter-Ruck chill”, The Guardian, Dec. 23; Mark Oliver, “Carter-Ruck: a ‘chancer out for money'”, Dec. 23). The Telegraph printed a less hostile, and outstandingly colorful, account of Carter-Ruck’s life (Dec. 22) as well as a piece conveying reactions to the Guardian obit (Joshua Rozenberg, “Carter-Ruck’s partner puts case for the defence”, Dec. 24)
Radio tomorrow a.m.: WWBA Tampa
I’m scheduled to be a guest tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. EST on Tampa’s News Talk 1040 station, WWBA. It’s the Morning Magazine with Mark Larsen show. We’ll talk about the nation’s count of lawyers having risen to top 1 million, as referenced here (see Dec. 31).
Back from travel & award
I’m finally on web duty again following my trip to give a talk before the American Tort Reform Association gathering in Las Vegas. ATRA has two current projects that especially merit readers’ attention. One is its recent update of its “Judicial Hellholes” reports on local jurisdictions famed for unfairness to outsider defendants, such as Madison County, Ill., Jefferson County, Miss., St. Louis, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles. Recent news coverage can be found here.
The other project is ATRA’s recent launch of what it calls the Legal Reform Champions List. The list is intended to address a widespread (and sometimes infuriating) phenomenon: many lawyers who make a career specialty of litigation defense quietly undermine their clients’ interests by working covertly or openly to block reforms that would curb the volume or cost of litigation, often mindful of their own self-interest in ensuring there are plenty of future lawsuits requiring their services to defend. ATRA’s new list takes a relatively positive approach to this problem: rather than denounce by name defense lawyers who operate as effective allies of the litigation lobby, it singles out for praise those who (often at a real cost to their strict monetary interest) work in the public policy process to combat excessive litigation. We wrote about this problem in The Rule of Lawyers (in a passage not online through conventional means, but available with registration through Amazon’s book-peek feature).
I am happy to report something I wasn’t expecting when I set off for the trip: at my Monday appearance ATRA was kind enough to give me its “Civil Justice Achievement Award” 2003. This seems to be the year for me to receive handsomely engraved awards (see Sept. 24). Thanks! (& welcome Ernie the Attorney readers)