May 16 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Montgomery Blair Sibley update is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 30 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Those interested in goggling at car-wrecks can view Sibley’s self-refuting 133-page brief against suspension, which was mysteriously filed in the Larry Sinclair case, where a number of Sibley’s meritless motions were denied on June 16 for technical failure to comply with the local rules.  With Sinclair under felony indictment in Delaware, he presumably has bigger fish to fry than a lawsuit seeking to unmask anonymous blog commenters.

And needless to say that Sibley’s attempt to jump back before the cameras by intervening in the Palfrey case has not been countenanced by the judge in charge of the case.  It turns out that Sibley had lied even about being Blanche Palfrey’s attorney: she successfully moved the court to replace Sibley as her counsel, over Sibley’s objection.  (US v. 803 Capitol Street, No. 1:06-cv-01710-JR.)

Montgomery Blair Sibley suspended in D.D.C. is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Federal judge: asking employee to get coffee not an intrinsically sexist act [Legal Intelligencer]
• Kilt-clad Montgomery Blair Sibley, at press conference, adds certain je ne sais quoi to tawdry Larry Sinclair sideshow [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Remind us why Florida Gov. Crist is supposed to be an acceptable veep pick? [PoL]. Also at Point of Law: Hill’s FISA compromise may end pending telecom-privacy suits; interesting Second Circuit reverse-preference case on New Haven firefighters.
• Virginia bar authorities shaken by charges that Woodbridge attorney Stephen T. Conrad pocketed $3.4 million in injury settlements at clients’ expense [Va. Lawyers Weekly; case of Christiansburg, Va. lawyer Gerard Marks ties in with first links here]
• U.K.: Local government instructs staff that term “brainstorming” might be insensitive to persons with epilepsy, use “thought showers” instead [Telegraph; Tunbridge Wells, Kent]
• Big personal injury law firm in Australia, Keddies Lawyers, denies accusations of client overcharging and document falsification [SMH]
• Will this be on the bar exam? Massachusetts law school dean eyes war crime trials culminating in hanging for high officials of Bush Administration [Ambrogi and more, Michael Krauss and I at PoL]
• “Just another cash grab”? New Kabateck Brown Kellner “click-fraud” class actions against Google AdWords, CitySearch [Kincaid, TechCrunch/WaPo]
• Former Rep. Bob Barr, this year’s Libertarian presidential candidate, is no stranger to the role of plaintiff in politically fraught litigation [six years ago on Overlawyered, and represented by Larry Klayman to boot]

June 20 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Sibley’s latest stunt is to claim that he will call 800 witnesses who were alleged clients of Palfrey’s call-girl service at the civil forfeiture proceedings over Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s estate. It’s not going to happen: as a suspended attorney, Sibley is ineligible to appear in federal court, which is why the government filed a notice of suspension on May 21. (The victims of Sibley in Larry Sinclair’s lawsuit against bloggers have yet to file such a notice. Not clear what they’re waiting for, though, technically, under the local rules, it is Sibley’s obligation to notify the federal court he has been suspended and is ineligible to practice.) Moreover, the US government has opposed his proposed substitution on behalf of the late Palfrey in Case No. 06-1710, United States v. 803 Capitol Street–Sibley was fired by Palfrey, has no one to represent since there is no executor to the Palfrey estate as of yet, and has a conflict of interest with the Palfrey estate because he filed a claim on his own behalf to the property in question: even if he weren’t suspended, the district court would be exceedingly unlikely to let him intervene in the forfeiture case, much less turn it into a circus, and, indeed, it ordered that the government need not file a formal brief. (Note that Sibley’s motion to substitute acknowledges that he hasn’t sought permission from his alleged client, Blanche Palfrey.) The question is why reporters are permitting themselves to be marionettes to broadcast whatever Sibley blasts as an e-mail, when he has repeatedly demonstrated that he shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Suspended Montgomery Blair Sibley still getting press coverage is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Montgomery Blair Sibley suspended in DC is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• His meritless suit against the DC Circuit (followed by a self-defeating appeal to the Supreme Court, where there was no quorum because he had sued seven of the justices)
• his follies in the Palfrey case and in an earlier 2006 Florida prostitution case; and
• his vexatious pro se work in family court.

And we didn’t even mention his work representing Larry Sinclair (the fellow who unsuccessfully sued Barack Obama for denying Sinclair’s implausible claim that he had engaged in a homosexual tryst with him) in a lawsuit against three anonymous bloggers. (DBKP blog, Mar. 14.)

After years of over-the-top abusive litigation, the state bar finally took action, and he has been suspended by the Florida bar for three years. No doubt, this will result in a new round of frivolous pro se collateral litigation. It took a contempt-of-court citation for failure to pay child support before the Florida bar took action, so this can hardly be considered a rousing success of the bar in policing its own, even for someone as over-the-top as Sibley. (Florida Bar v. Sibley; ABA Journal, Apr. 25; MPGS blog, May 14; h/t S.G.).

Update: Two commenters (who never appeared on Overlawyered before) implausibly defend Sibley, both posting from BellSouth accounts in Atlanta, GA. Nothing about a divorce requires one to sue seven Supreme Court justices for “judicial treason” for denying a (frivolous) certiorari petition from a frivolous lawsuit. He should have been disbarred a long time ago; that he is only being suspended, and then only because of failure to obey court orders, is appalling. He’s been a hazard to his clients and to taxpayers; so, no, I don’t think he’s a “damn good lawyer.”

Update, May 16, 2:45 AM: We originally repeated a second-hand report sent to us that Sibley had also been suspended in DC as part of reciprocal discipline. It is possible that our correspondent confused a Rule 8.1 report, made by the DC Bar counsel recommending reciprocal suspension, with an actual suspension. If a Rule 8.1 report was filed, Sibley is entitled to file a response; no oral argument is scheduled at this time (though none is required to be scheduled) and no DC Board on Professional Responsibility report is listed as having issued with respect to Sibley. Rule 8.4 of the DC Board on Professional Responsibility Rules of Procedure is titled “Conclusive Effect of Adjudication in Other Jurisdiction,” which would appear to give Sibley nothing to argue in DC, and would likely make discipline inevitable, but the District of Columbia, in its typical competence, has posted the wrong text for 8.4 on its website, so I cannot say that for certain. Montgomery Sibley is, as of May 16, still listed on the DC Bar’s website as a member in good standing. If the error is ours, rather than that of the DC Bar website, we regret the error. Without written confirmation of the suspension, we retract the original statement that the DC Bar has suspended Sibley in response to the Florida bar’s three-year suspension of Sibley.

Update, May 20: We were right the first time.

Montgomery Blair Sibley suspended is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Roundup, March 15 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“The Weirdest Legal Pleading Ever” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system