“The Delaware Chancery Court is scheduled to hear arguments….over a $428 million fee request by plaintiffs lawyers for their work winning a record $1.26 billion ruling in the Grupo Mexico shareholder derivative suit. Grupo Mexico’s lawyers claim such an award is an ‘impermissible windfall.’ ” The article said that was about $35,000 an hour.  The American Lawyer

[Sounds like a pleasant way to start the new year – or any year.]

________________________________________________

Mug Shots…..As Art ?

[From ABALJournal.com, Aug 29, 2011, an article by Debra Cassens]

“Two enterprising Cincinnati women are using police mug shots taken in 1955 to make prints, posters and notebooks.

“The women, Tara Finke and Megan Scherer, digitally retouched the photos to highlight certain physical features, the New York Times reports. Though the photos were taken and then discarded by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department in California, one new version reads ‘Cincinnati Police Department.’ The subjects’ names are not included.

“Finke bought the photos about two years ago at a Nevada antiques store, the story says. So far, the women have sold about 100 items using the photos, and they’re planning to add the mug shots to tote bags. Their company is Larken Design. (Some of the mug shots can be seen on the store’s Flickr page.) ‘But as the business grows,’ the Times says, ‘it raises questions with no clear answers about the legality and propriety of distributing government property like mug shots.’

“The Times spoke with Ohio State law professor Peter Swire, who said the women could argue they are protected from claims of privacy violations because the First Amendment protects their publication of truthful old photos.

“But Jason Schultz of the University of California at Berkeley law school cited ‘ongoing questions about the privacy of people listed in court records.’

“ ‘We think, ‘Wow it’s in the public record,’ but in reality if it’s in a file somewhere that you can’t Google, it remains private until we need it,’ said Schultz, a director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the law school. ‘Now that records are becoming more public, I think courts are trying to think about how to be sensitive to those interests given that they can be indexed by search engines, copied and reposted.’ ”

_______________________________________________________

“Thurman Arnold

A MEMORANDUM*

              Memorandum:            Partners, Associates, and

                                                Staff of Arnold, Fortas and Porter

                                                and their Heirs and Assigns forever.

              From:                        Thurman Arnold

“The Department of Health and Sanitation of the District of Columbia is about to indict the firm of Arnold, Fortas and Porter for conditions of chaos, disorder, and general litter in their offices which the Department alleges are a menace to health and safety and an affront to the aesthetic sensibilities of the entire population of the District, which the last census shows to be nearly a million people.

“The Committee on Un-American Activities has informed me that the office

looks like the kind of an office in which Communists congregate and multiply.”

                                                _________________________         

* The author of this piece, Thurman Arnold, was not only the founder of one of Washington, D.C’s largest law firms, but also one of American law‘s funniest practitioners. This memorandum is reprinted from Thurman Arnold, Selections from the Letters and Legal Papers,Arnold, Fortas & Porter, 1961, by permission of Victor H. Kramer and Arnold & Porter.  [From The Green Bag]

_____________________________________________________________________

Christmas $^&*!@#$

12 Days of Christmas Correspondence

Dearest John:

I went to the door today and the postman delivered a partridge in a pear tree. What a delightful gift. I couldn’t have been more surprised. With dearest love and affection, Agnes

December 15th

Dearest John:

Today the postman brought your very sweet gift. Just imagine, two turtle doves…. I’m just delighted at your very thoughtful gift. They are just adorable.

All my love, Agnes

***

December 16th

Dear John:

Oh, aren’t you the extravagant one! Now I must protest. I don’t deserve such generosity. Three french hens. They are just darling but I must insist…. you’re just too kind.

Love Agnes

***

December 17th

Today the postman delivered four calling birds. Now really! They are beautiful, but don’t you think enough is enough? You’re being too romantic.

Affectionately, Agnes

***

December 18th

Dearest John:

What a surprise! Today the postman delivered five golden rings. One for each finger. You’re just impossible, but I love it. Frankly, John, all those squawking birds were beginning to get on my nerves.

All my love, Agnes

***

December 19th

Dear John:

When I opened the door there were actually six geese-a-laying on my front steps. So you’re back to the birds again, huh? Those geese are huge. Where will I ever keep them? The neighbors are complaining and I can’t sleep through the racket. PLEASE STOP!

Cordially, Agnes

***

December 20th

John:

What’s with you and those birds???? Seven swans-a-swimming. What kind of joke is this? There’s bird do-do all over the house and they never stop the racket. I’m a nervous wreck and I can’t sleep all night. IT’S NOT FUNNY…….So stop with those birds.

Sincerely, Agnes

***

December 21st

OK Buster:

I think I prefer the birds. What am I going to do with eight maids-a-milking? It’s not enough with all those birds and eight maids-a-milking, but they had to bring their own cows. There is poop all over the lawn and I can’t move into my own house. Just lay off me. .

Ag

***

December 22nd

Hey:

What are you? Some kind of sadist? Now there’s nine pipers playing. And do they play! They never stopped chasing those maids since they got here yesterday morning. The cows are upset and are stepping all over those screeching birds. No wonder they screech. What am I going to do? The neighbors have started a petition to evict me. You’ll get yours.

From Ag

***

December 23rd

You Creep!

Now there’s ten ladies dancing – I don’t know why I call them ladies. Now the cows can’t sleep and they’ve got diarrhea. My living room is a river of poop. The commissioner of buildings has subpoenaed me to give cause why the building shouldn’t be condemned. I’m sicking the police on you.

One who means it, Ag

***

December 24th

Listen Idiot:

What’s with the eleven lords a-leaping? All 234 of the birds are dead. I hope you’re satisfied, you rotten swine.

Your sworn enemy, Miss Agnes McCallister

***

December 25th (From the law offices Taeker, Spedar, and Baegar)

Dear Sir:

This is to acknowledge your latest gift of twelve fiddlers fiddling, which you have seen fit to inflict on our client, Miss Agnes McCallister. The destruction, of course, was total. All correspondence should come to our attention. If you should attempt to reach Miss McCallister at Happy Dale Sanitarium, the attendants have instructions to shoot you on sight. With this letter, please find attached a warrant for your arrest.

************************************************

Interesting things about lawyers, courts, and cases

December 2011

_______________________________________________________________________

How about setting aside that serious legal stuff for a while and take in a little light legal humor?…….Okay. Here goes:

Rules of Deportment for Division 218 of the Superior Court

      Perhaps a few words are in order about rules. First, let me say that I agree with Wordsworth – “A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules.” Now, some specifics:

                        As he (Einstein) was a late talker, his parents were worried. At last, at the supper table one night, he broke his silence to say,” The soup is too hot.” Greatly relieved, his parents asked why he had never said a word before.

                       Albert replied, “Because up to now everything was in order.”

So, it seems to me that if everything is in order by the time you get to court (and it probably will be) you don’t have to say much.

RULE 1.
     Say only what is necessary. Often, the Court will be able to grasp your argument the first time you state it. So in most cases it isn’t necessary to repeat it. Also keep in mind that the Court’s vocabulary is rather limited. It knows and can use some words, but not many.
So try to use familiar words that everyone will understand. Churchill must have had the same problem because he said: “Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.”

Along the same lines -

RULE 2.
     Don’t feel obligated to take all the time the minute entry gives you. If the minute entry gives you 15 minutes and you need only 5, hooray, don’t take any more. Everyone will appreciate it.
And boy I sure do like arguments that come alive with graphics – charts, handouts, photos, slides, movies, whatever. I hear it a lot better when I can see it. Whenever I see Clark Gable about to carry Vivien Leigh up that majestic stairway in Tara I hear him saying: “You’ve turned me out while you chased Ashley Wilkes, while you dreamed of Ashley Wilkes. This is one night you’re not turning me out.”

RULE 3.
     The time for oral argument will be limited and stated in the minute entry setting the hearing (except for opening and closing arguments at trial – but even then I will probably set some limits occasionally).
Each side in a case will have 15 minutes to argue a motion for summary judgment. If there are two parties on a side they will split the 15 minutes – and that includes rebuttal.
If you “need” more time (you should realize even in the U.S. Supreme Court you get 30 minutes) ask for it by motion. My inclination is to not give more, but it could happen.

RULE 4.
     Please stick to the Rules of Civil Procedure and all the other rules in the Arizona Revised Statutes. I am aware that Leo Durocher said “I believe in rules? Sure I do. If there weren’t any rules, how could you break them?” But he played games (baseball). We don’t. It sure will make things easier if we all follow the rules.

RULE 5.
     Rarely will I ask you to go beyond the page limits in the Rules. If I want you to I will say so in a minute entry. If you feel a larger calling requires you to go beyond the limit please let me know beforehand, by motion, what that “calling” is and why he or she wants you to puff it up.

RULE 6.
     Dress is not optional; everyone must be dressed to get in the courtroom, but garment variations are tolerated – to a degree. I think all males should wear ties, pants, and non-sneakers. I don’t think jackets are a necessity, but I like them – and they look good. If you forget to bring a tie I can loan you one – but I want it back (for the next guy).

Consider the story about Mark Twain. He was careless about his dress. One day he called on Harriet Beecher Stowe without his necktie. On his return Mrs. Clemens noticed the omission and scolded him. A little later a messenger turned up on Ms.Stowe’s doorstep and handed her a small package. Inside was a black necktie, and a note: “Here is a necktie. Take it out and look at it. I think I stayed half an hour this morning without this necktie. At the end of that time, will you kindly return it, as it is the only one I have. Mark Twain.”

I can’t supply you with any other apparel so you may want to have a court “suit” handy at the office, just in case you forgot to make a note of your courtroom appearance.

An interesting anecdote in this regard is told about Guines (Adrien-Louis de Bonnieres, Duke of Guines), French diplomat and ambassador to London in the late 1770′s. He was enormously fat, but nonetheless a great dandy. His wardrobe contained two pairs of breeches for each outfit – one for days when he would have to sit down and the other, much tighter, for days when he would only have to stand. In the morning his valet’s first question would be: “Will monsieur be sitting down today?”

     Like the Duke, you must have your attire at ready because you just may be sitting down today.
Women should wear something “appropriate.” Having never dressed as a woman does, I take that to mean something like you would wear to a meeting at which you want to impress someone.

Both sexes should keep this in mind: “There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

RULE 7.
     Court starts on time, 8:30 in the morning, 1:30 in the afternoon. We end at noon and 4:45 and take two 15 minute breaks, one in the morning,one in the afternoon. It’s possible that if you’re not there at starting time court will begin anyway.

Another cogent anecdote: Edward Marsh was waiting at a railroad station with Mrs. Churchill for Churchill to join them to catch a train. It was getting late and Mrs. Churchill began to worry that her husband would miss the train. Marsh soothed her by observing, “Winston is such a sportsman that he always gives the train a chance to get away.”

Don’t give my bailiff the opportunity; we just may get away without you.

RULE 8.

Formality in the courtroom will be kept to a minimum. I do realize I am the judge, I wear a robe, and I sit higher than everybody else, but “M’lord” is unnecessary.

     Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany, was a stickler for formality, but even he bowed to necessity. He was once seated at dinner next to a young, ebullient American lady. At first she addressed him correctly as “Your Highness.” With the next course he became “Mr. Chancellor” and with the third course, “My dear Mr. Bismarck.” As the plates were changed once more, he smiled and said amiably, “My first name is Otto.”

     “Bill” is really too informal, but “Judge” or “Your Honor” will do.

RULE 9.
     I eat lunch, almost always, in my office. But I lock the door. I’ve found that if I don’t all sorts of people want access to me. Also I am in my chambers between 7:30 and 8 in the morning, but I try not to see people (lawyers, citizens, whoever) until 8:15. If you have something you think I just gotta see during those “interlude” times, slip it under the door.
I also have a nifty ruse for cutting short an all-too-long conference. I got it from Bismarck.  He had been conversing for rather a long time with the English ambassador when the latter posed the question “How do you handle insistent visitors who take up so much of our valuable time?” Bismarck answered, “Oh, I have an infallible method. My servant appears and informs me that my wife has something urgent to tell me.” At that moment there was a knock at the door and the servant entered with a message from his wife.

     Not bad – sort of like “I’ll have to hang up now; I’ve got a call I’ve been waiting for.”

RULE 10.
     By the time you get to court I will have read what you filed. That means, if you see your way clear, you only have to talk about those things you didn’t put in your pleadings. I don’t see much use in telling me what I’ve already read.

RULE 11.
     Not all “oral argument requested” will get argument. Some just don’t seem to need it. If the purpose of argument is to help me make a decision, I don’t need it in some cases – I don’t need anything more than the pleadings in some cases.

RULE 12.
      I don’t have re-cross examination; you’ll get all the time you want on cross, but then its over – the fat lady will have sung. What that means is that you’d better get all your good stuff in the first time around. And it won’t help that the other guy brought up something “new” on redirect – you should have objected to that.

RULE 13.
     I hold court on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sorry.

RULE 14.
     I hold cases on the inactive calendar for 90 days, no more. I do that so I don’t lose track of them. I have trouble remembering things that are older than 90 days – after all, the Spanish-American war didn’t last that long and I hardly remember that at all.

* * * * * * *

“Proceed. You have my biased attention.”

(Learned Hand to a lawyer asking for reconsideration of a ruling)

* * * * * * *
The italicized anecdotes, Einstein and those in Rules 6, 7, 8, and 9, are taken from “The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes”, edited by Clifton Fadiman;

Clark Gable’s quote is taken from The Dictionary of Film Quotations by Melinda Corey and George Ochoa;

Churchill’s quote can be found in Familiar Quotations  by John Bartlett;

Emerson’s quote is from http://www.goodreads.com;

“In a speech on October 6 in Rochester N.Y., Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had some rather interesting things to say about lawyers. He ridiculed lawyers who do pro bono work. He said that some pro bono work is an ‘anti-social’ and self-serving activity that law firms use to recruit and ‘give solace’ to associates and that nonprofits use to further a political agenda. …
“Implicit in Jacobs’ remarks is the assumption that pro bono work is inherently liberal. That is just wrong. …
“Jacobs also lambasted lawyers who do ‘impact litigation’ – lawsuits oriented toward helping remedy a problem affecting a large number of people. He said that judges rarely criticize impact litigation because judges enjoy exerting power and influence”

[I know that some say that, but……..]
_______________________________________

Locking –up “Material Witnesses”

[An abstract from the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, 1 (2005)]

“With the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in al-Kidd v. Ashcroft holding that material witness detentions may not be used as a pretext to hold suspects, it is worth noting that as a practical matter the power has never been used any other way. The practice dates to the 1840s as professional police departments were being created. In the mid-nineteenth century policing was becoming a career. For the first time, there were incentives to investigate crime; law enforcement provided opportunities for long-term retention and promotion. Officers employed by newly-established police departments began to aggressively investigate crime using powers unimaginable to their constable and night-watch predecessors. Among these new powers was the ability to detain material witnesses. Officers began to detain suspects, whom they lacked adequate suspicion to charge, as witnesses. As the public became aware of the incarceration of those identified only as ‘witnesses,’ officers found the public very unwilling to cooperate in investigations for fear of being held for the crime of possessing helpful information. In New York, the Police Department asked the legislature in the late nineteenth century to allow only the detention of witnesses suspected of being accomplices. The legislature’s acquiescence to the law enforcement request demonstrates not only the rising influence of law enforcement interests in the late-nineteenth century, it also demonstrates that the public was comfortable with material witness detentions only when they were used as a pretext to hold suspects.”
__________________________________

Digital Tricks For You – Now

“ [P]anelists Andy Adkins, Michael Morse and Nerino Petro at the popular ABA Techshow session on Tuesday titled 60 Tips in 60 Minutes.
“The full list of 60 tips will be posted online at the ABA Techshow site by the end of April, but here are a few of our favorite apps and suggestions included in the program:
Penultimate: An electronic legal pad app for iPad.
WebmasterCoffee: This free program analyzes your website and gives feedback on ways to improve it.
PasswordSafe: Trouble remembering the hundreds of passwords you own? This app allows users to create and save a secured and encrptyed user name/password list.
SignMyPad: Clients and others can sign documents and fill out .pdfs right on an iPad, Eliminates paper copies and allows docs to be emailed and electronically stored immediately.
eFax: Send and receive emails as faxes. This app saves on paper and toner, plus no busy signals or extra phone lines needed. ….”
__________________________________________________

“TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE”
[by Parke Cummings, American humorist]

Juror Five appears a little
Set in favor of acquittal.
Number One, in contradiction,
Leans to swift and sure conviction.
Three (a shipping clerk) is rather
Bored with all the fuss and bother.
Number Ten, a dapper fellow,
Notes the plaintiff’s shoes are yellow.
Six (Augustus Miller, tanner)
Doesn’t like the judge’s manner.
Seven, weary-eyed, unfeeling,
Counts the fissures in the ceiling.
Twelve, who’s quite unused to collars,
Wonders how he’ll spend four dollars.
Number Eight, old hand at trying,
Thinks the witnesses are lying,
And Eleven, dozing, nodding,
Is a mark for constant prodding.
Number Two (bricklayer, married)
Thinks the County’s point is carried.
Nine, who’s bound for Queens for dinner,
Hopes his horse came in a winner.
Juror Four (three sons, one daughter)
Only wants a glass of water.
__________________________________________

Trial By Ordeal

“The court records of Trials by Ordeal never state what the result was, perhaps because it was so obvious that if the accused failed the ordeal, he would automatically suffer the penalty for the crime. They simply say: ‘Let him have the water,’ which sounds as uneventful as offering him a cup of cocoa.
“These were the most common kinds of Trial by Ordeal but there were others. There was the Corsnaed, or ‘sacred mouthful’, where a man had to eat a piece of bread containing a feather or some other foreign body. The only recorded instance of it is where Godwin, the father of King Harold of England, was accused at dinner of murdering his brother Alfred (not the same person as King Alfred). ‘May this bread choke me if I am guilty!’ cried Godwin. It did.
“There was also the Bier Rite, which is better remembered as the superstition that if a murderer passed the body of his victim, its wounds would start to bleed again. There are no records of it in English legal history but, in 1634, four hundred years after Trial by Ordeal had been abolished, there was a case at Durham when a man was accused of strangling his kinsman. A bloodstained length of cord was found in his pocket which matched the marks on the dead man’s neck and he was the last man to be seen with the deceased whilst he was still alive, so that there was already a strong case against him. Nevertheless, they asked him to touch the body and, when he did, blood ran out of its mouth, ears and nose. The jury must have been very impressed by that evidence, since the old superstitions still survived.”
______________________________________________

Twitter-A-Brief

[From Tex Parte Blog, the Texas Lawyer blog, August 12, 2011]
“That’s the challenge this year for lawyers attending the Sept. 8-9 annual meeting of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section. The Twitter Brief Competition may be enough to make an appellate judge’s heart flutter. ‘We hear from judges all the time: They think our briefs should be shorter, more concise,’ says Anne Johnson, co-chair of the section’s annual meeting committee. Johnson, a partner in Haynes and Boone in Dallas, says the appellate section hosts a fun competition each year challenging lawyers to write appeals using things such as limericks, Haiku poems and song lyrics. Searching for something different this year, the group turned to Twitter. The section will accept contest entries emailed to Johnson through Sept. 5.”

[Dm, sory I mist tht meetg.]

_____________________________________________________

What Do You Carry To Work?
[From the May 10, 2011 The Careerist (an ALM web site) an article by Vivia Chen]
“Recently The Wall Street Journal posed this urgent question: What should a man carry to work? If you carry a briefcase or bag that looks ‘old and worn out,’ said Greg Unis, a vice president at Coach, to the WSJ, ‘that sends a message that you’re not so put together and that you don’t pay attention to detail.’
Among the lawyer set, any suggestion of a lack of attention to detail is a career killer.
“So how can men convey that look of order and control by what they carry? Unis offered some practical tips: Men should sport something that’s ‘large, deep, and sturdy enough to carry a laptop and files.’ What you must avoid, he told the WSJ, is ‘walking into a meeting and rifling through your bag to pull out stuff, only to find that your pen has exploded in the bottom of the bag and important documents are crumpled at the edges.’
“But what Unis recommended to the WSJ for the male professional made me almost cry out loud: ‘Stop, don’t do it!’ Unis proposed carrying either a nice leather tote (which essentially looks like a trim, vertical shopping bag) or a messenger-style bag. ….
“Frankly, some of the big rainmakers I’ve met sport some unattractive carriers. Arguably, the real power look for a male lawyer is the banged-up, schlumpy briefcase where the leather on the edges is wearing as thin as the hair on the partner’s head. It conveys the idea that he’s so focused on the client that he really doesn’t give a hoot what he looks like. Some clients find that reassuring.
“But the trend might be to carry nothing at all. If you’re tech-savvy and truly confident, you shouldn’t need a crutch like a briefcase, tote, backpack, or whatever. ‘I think flash drives and remote work setups have somewhat obliterated the need for the typical everyday briefcase,’ says Corporette founder Kat Griffin.
“Readers, what are the men carrying at your firm? Would you carry a tote or backpack to a meeting?
____________________________________________

“Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2010

[From a report written by Jason Eiseman and Roger V. Shalberck, each a Law School Librarian, Yale and Georgetown, and found in the Green Bag Almanac and Reader 2010]
(Actually there are 14 listed because there were ties for 3rd, 6th, and 10th.)
1. University of Illinois College of Law
2. Wayne State University Law School
3. Michigan State University College of Law (tied for 3rd)
4. University of Nebraska College of Law (tied for 3rd)
5. University of Chicago Law School (tied for 3rd)
6. Florida Coastal School of Law (tied for 6th)
7. University of Maine School of Law (tied for 6th)
8. University of Southern California Gould School of Law (tied for 6th)
9. George Washington University School of Law (tied for 6th)
10. Pepperdine University School of Law (tied for 10th)
11. University of New Mexico School of Law (tied for 10th)
12. University of Tennessee: Knoxville College of Law (tied for 10th)
13. Roger Williams University School of Law (tied for 10th)
14. Washington and Lee University School of Law (tied for 10th)”

[Oh, ties, how gauche, at least they could have had a publish-off, or write-off, or however they make weighty decisions in that rarified atmosphere. I don’t think I’d like to be from W & L; they look like they came in 14th, even if you count alphabetically. I don’t think I’d take this home to my mother]
___________________________________________

Discovery Searches

I read an interesting case the other day, U.S. v. O’Keefe, 537 F.Supp.2d 14, 24 (D.D.C.,2008), involving a discovery dispute . It pointed out something I had not thought about until I ran into the problem when I was checking in to a hospital and was asked to fill out the usual forms for the fourth time. I told the clerk that this information was already in her computer. She asked for my name. I said it and she searched. A few seconds later she said we have no one by that name. I asked her to check again. She did and still, she found nothing. Then she asked me how to spell my last name. When I did, she found it in her records. Most word processing programs I’m familiar with (and that’s only two) give you various spellings when you search for a term, but apparently others do not. Searching by terms, keywords, or phrases must be even worse. John M. Facciola, the United States Magistrate Judge, in the O’Keefe case I cited above (a very interesting discussion of discovery mechanics, by the way) pointed that out a few years ago:

“Whether search terms or ‘keywords’ will yield the information sought is a complicated question involving the interplay, at least, of the sciences of computer technology, statistics and linguistics. …Given this complexity, for lawyers and judges to dare opine that a certain search term or terms would be more likely to produce information than the terms that were used is truly to go where angels fear to tread. This topic is clearly beyond the ken of a layman….”

Then, just a few months ago another U.S. District Judge ordered a discovery respondent to supply misspellings to his search:

“With respect to electronic media, defense counsel should not limit the key search terms to the three terms previously used by defendant, but must also include misspellings of plaintiff’s first name as well as other key terms reasonably related to each of the topics set forth in Request for Production V. “ ….

[Northington v. H&M International, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, February 14, 2011, Judge Blanche M. Manning]

[So how good are you at misspelling?]
________________________________________________

Female Lawyers

[From the Catalyst web site, which, it claims, is the” leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business.”

• “According to a 2009 survey of the nation’s 200 largest law firms, women represent 34% of of-counsel, 27% of non-equity partners, and almost 16% of equity partners.
• “There is a drastic difference between women at the lowest and highest levels in law firms. According to a recent survey,
o women make up nearly 1 out of every 2 law firm associates, but only 1 out of every 6 equity partners.
o 99% of law firms reported that their highest paid lawyer was a man.
• in the 2008-2009 class, women made up 44% of law school students.
• 1993 was the year of the highest percent of women as J.D. students - 50.4%.
• In the 2008-2009 class, people of color made up 21.9% of law school students.
• “In 2009, women made up 32.4% of all lawyers. Women were 45.3% of associates in 2008.
• “Given the same rate of change, Catalyst estimates that it will take more than a woman lawyer’s (born in 2010) lifetime to achieve equality.”
•___________________________________________________________

Violent Felonies

JUSTICE SCALIA, dissenting in Sykes v. United States, (No. 09–11311. Decided June 9, 2011), which he refers to as a “tutti-frutti case”.
“As the Court's opinion acknowledges, this case is ‘another in a series,’ ante, at 1. More specifically, it is an attempt to clarify, for the fourth time since 2007, what distinguishes ‘violent felonies’ under the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U. S. C.§924(e)(2)(B)(ii),…. We try to include an ACCA residual-clause case in about every second or third volume of the United States Reports.
“As was perhaps predictable, instead of producing a clarification of the Delphic residual clause, today’s opinion produces a fourth ad hoc judgment that will sow further confusion. Insanity, it has been said, is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Four times is enough. We should admit that ACCA’s residual provision is a drafting failure and declare it void for vagueness.”…..
“Fuzzy, leave-the-details-to-be-sorted-out-by-the-courts legislation is attractive to the Congressman who wants credit for addressing a national problem but does not have the time (or perhaps the votes) to grapple with the nitty-gritty. In the field of criminal law, at least, it is time to call a halt. I do not think it would be a radical step—indeed, I think it would be highly responsible—to limit ACCA to the named violent crimes. Congress can quickly add what it wishes. Because the majority prefers to let vagueness reign, I respectfully dissent. "
______________________________________________

Do you know what an Alternative Business Structure is?
“ABSs are intended to give consumers a wider choice of legal services by allowing law firms to take external investment and be owned by nonlawyers for the first time, meaning companies can run their own legal arms.” [Law.com, an ALM web site, October 7, 2011]
_____________________________________

Interesting Juror Appreciation Event

[From Jur-E Bulletin, October 7, 2011]

“The Third Branch reported in their September, 2011 edition that the Triple-A Iowa Cubs hosted federal and state jurors, as well as their families, to a night of baseball on August 31st. Jurors who were present were invited onto the field for a pre-game ceremony. A federal and a state judge were given the privilege of throwing the first pitch. Chief Judge Robert W. Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa said, “Before we start a deliberation, I tell jurors they’re participating as the conscience of their community, but they still have to follow the law. I’m always impressed at how seriously they take that job, carefully going through the evidence. We underestimate the job jurors do.” The scoreboard at the field also displayed some fun facts and a jury quiz which readers can take online.”
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Bloggers Are Not Journalists
“A blogger sued for defamation over comments posted on an Internet message board is not entitled to the same protections as a journalist, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (June 7, 2011).”
[Taken from Reuters. The case is Too Much Media LLC et al v. Hale, New Jersey Supreme Court, No. A-7-10]
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“It is a matter of common knowledge and general remark that a buzz saw is a dangerous thing to deal with.”
[From Board of Education of High School Dist. No. 502 v. Industrial Commission, 301 Ill. 611, 134 N.E. 70 Ill. 1922

[Perspicacious bunch]
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Name-Calling

“A great tradition of the American bar is under increasing attack. The tradition I refer to is name-calling. From the earliest inception of our profession, lawyers have been masters in the art of invective. We are frequently retained because our inarticulate clients need our voices to hurl epithets at their enemies. The greatest lawyers of the age were noted for their skill, dexterity and wit in insulting their opponents, as well as the judges who ruled against them.
Consider the argument of Cicero, the Roman orator who tried murder cases before the birth of Christ. In one of his trials, he turned to the prosecutor and said:

‘Now Erucius, please do not take offence about what I am going to say next. I assure you I shall not be saying it just to be unpleasant, but because you need the reminder. Even if fortune has not given you the advantage of knowing for certain who your father was, which would have given you a better idea of how a father feels towards his children, at any rate nature has endowed you with your fair share of human feelings.’ ”

[From Americus Humoriae by Robert Jarvis, Thomas Baker and Andrew McClurg, an article entitled “Id.” by Gerald F. Uelmen]
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An interesting and useful article in 4 Ohio N.L.Rev. 38: Name Calling: Defendant Nomenclature in Criminal Trials.”
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Don’t Like Working for Female Partners

According to a Chicago-Kent law professor who asked 142 legal secretaries at large firms, not one expressed a preference for working with a female partner.
“Asked whether they preferred to work for male or female partners or associates, 35 percent preferred working for male partners, 15 percent preferred working for male associates, 3 percent preferred working for female associates, none preferred working for female partners, and 47 percent had no opinion.”
[From the ABA Journal blog, Oct. 24, 2011]

Beyond here be dragons

interesting things about judges, lawyers, courts and cases

compiled by boppananny

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October, 2011

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It’s Taxing To Be a Decider

[From the News York Times, August 17, an article by John Tierney]

“Three men doing time in Israeli prisons recently appeared before a parole board consisting of a judge, a criminologist and a social worker. The three prisoners had completed at least two-thirds of their sentences, but the parole board granted freedom to only one of them. Guess which one:

Case 1 (heard at 8:50 a.m.): An Arab Israeli serving a 30-month sentence for fraud.

Case 2 (heard at 3:10 p.m.): A Jewish Israeli serving a 16-month sentence for assault.

Case 3 (heard at 4:25 p.m.): An Arab Israeli serving a 30-month sentence for fraud.

There was a pattern to the parole board’s decisions, but it wasn’t related to the men’s ethnic backgrounds, crimes or sentences. It was all about timing, as researchers discovered by analyzing more than 1,100 decisions over the course of a year. Judges, who would hear the prisoners’ appeals and then get advice from the other members of the board, approved parole in about a third of the cases, but the probability of being paroled fluctuated wildly throughout the day. Prisoners who appeared early in the morning received parole about 70 percent of the time, while those who appeared late in the day were paroled less than 10 percent of the time.

The odds favored the prisoner who appeared at 8:50 a.m. — and he did in fact receive parole. But even though the other Arab Israeli prisoner was serving the same sentence for the same crime — fraud — the odds were against him when he appeared (on a different day) at 4:25 in the afternoon. He was denied parole, as was the Jewish Israeli prisoner at 3:10 p.m, whose sentence was shorter than that of the man who was released. They were just asking for parole at the wrong time of day.

Trial by Jury

[From the Sept. 9, 2011 Jur-E Bulletin]

“On the September 5th edition of Past and Present, Harmony Hunter interviewed Paula Hannaford for a podcast titled, “Constitution Day:  Right to Trial by Jury.”  Ms. Hannaford described the historical context that motivated the Founding Fathers to view jury trials as an essential ingredient to sustaining a democratic republic.  She noted that juries not only decide cases, but also legitimize the law, create a barrier against judicial tyranny and become the conscience of the community.  Historically, all trials were tried by jury.  There is also a discussion of the ramifications to our modern communities of having the vast majority of cases decided without a jury.   This podcast is worth taking the time to listen to, it is short and very well done.”

[I ditto]

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It May Be Blowin’ in the Wind 

            In the August 2011 issue of the California Bar Journal there is an article entitled Budget cuts hit home by Nancy McCarthy and it’s quite annoying – and perhaps prescient.

“Los Angeles County Presiding Judge Lee Edmon probably spoke for many judges around the state when she said that ‘all options are on the table at this point.’ That includes, Edmon said in a statement, ‘a fundamental restructuring of the courts,’ such as fewer jury trials, simplifying civil or criminal procedure, turning infractions over to local governments and easing up on court deadlines. Edmon has said her court has already laid off 500 people and wants to avoid, if possible, more furloughs and court closures.”

[It might help if the trains ran on time: if 15 minute breaks were 15 minutes, if juries were picked by noon, if direct, cross, closing arguments, and motion arguments were limited to so many minutes, if and trials started at 8:30.]

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 A Broward County, Florida, ex-judge, Ana I. Gardiner, and a prosecutor, Howard Scheinberg, have some ethics problems. It seems that during a first degree murder trial (155 days long) Ms. Gardiner was trying with Mr. Scheinberg as the prosecutor they exchanged 949 telephone calls and 471 texts messages (an average of 9.35 a day) behind the back of the defense attorney and everybody else. The Bar has taken action against both. Ms. Gardiner resigned but Mr. Scheinberg is still there. He says all the calls and texts were personal and had nothing to with the case. The defendant was convicted, but once this was known he got a new trial.

[9.35 a day! No wonder the trial took 155 days]

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 They’re Sealing Too Much – Stop It

[From the September 13, 2011 blog of The Legal Times]

On September 13 the Judicial Conference of the US told the federal courts that they were sealing too many cases from public view and that in the future they should limit sealing to only extraordinary circumstances. “The court’s business is the people’s business,” the diktat said. But it didn’t define “extraordinary.”

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About Justice Stevens’ Speech

                                  [to the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project]

“Stevens, who in 1976 voted to reinstate capital punishment, announced in a 2008 decision that he had come to view the death penalty as unconstitutional, in part because of the risk of executing innocent people. He retired in June, 2010.”

[Read in BLT, the blog of the Legal Times, September 15, 2011]

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                                                                            No More Juror Pay 

Noting that  Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb had proposed cutting juror pay ($10 a day, nickel a mile) statewide to cut court costs, the Opelika-Auburn News recommended it in an editorial on September 7.  It said it would save around $2 million each year and after all, it is a citizen’s duty.

[I just did a straw poll – me, my wife, and the guy across the street – and we thought it was okay IF IF we’d get guaranteed parking near the courthouse.]

                                  _________________________________________

Oops! Univ. of Illinois Law School Cheated a Bit

         [From the September 19, 2011 National Law Journal, an article by Karen Sloan]

“The University of Illinois confirmed on Sept. 19 that its College of Law inflated the credentials of its incoming class on the school’s Web site.

“The law school had reported a median score on the Law School Admission Test of 168, when in fact the correct median score was 163, the university said. Similarly, the school reported a median grade point average of 3.81, when the correct figure was 3.70. ….

“Earlier this year, an investigation revealed that Villanova University School of Law had falsified LSAT and GPAs since at least 2002. The school was censured by the ABA.

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Hello, Warren Buffett and Others (You know who you are) 

• Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. [Learned Hand in Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934).]

]]> http://inchambers.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/in-chambers-16/feed/ 0 inchambers OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA http://inchambers.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/september-2011/ http://inchambers.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/september-2011/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:41:38 +0000 inchambers http://inchambers.wordpress.com/?p=178 ]]> The Old Bailey Courthouse in London was built in the early 1900′s on the site of the old Newgate Prison. A diary was found in the prison dating back to 1881. A verse inside read,

“Good-bye, Lucy dear, I am parted from you for seven
long years. Alf Jones.”

Below that a cynic added another verse. “If Lucy is like most gals, she’ll give a few sighs and moans, but soon will find among your pals, another Alfred Jones.”

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Boredom

[From Boredom: A Lively History by Peter Toohey]

An inscription on a gravestone in Benevento, Italy, from the 3^rd century:

For Tanonius Marcellinus, a most

distinguished man of the consular

rank at Campania and a most

worthy patron as well, because of

the good deeds by which he
rescued the population from
endless boredom, the entire people

judges that this inscription should

be recorded.

Public Executions

Courthouse Dogs

A few weeks ago Victor Tohom was convicted in a Duchess County New York court of raping his 15-year old daughter (and impregnating her). When the daughter testified, she was accompanied on the stand by a dog, Rosie, a golden retriever therapy dog who was there to comfort her. At stressful times she would rise and push the girl gently with her nose. The defense objected saying that jurors might well conclude that the dog was
helping her to tell the truth –“Every time she stroked the dog it sent an  unconscious message to the jury that she was under stress because she was  telling the truth” when actually Rosie’s response to stress might result from  confronting a guilty defendant or from lying. They also complained that they  couldn’t cross examine a dog and because she was lovely and “by all standards a good dog” they ran the risk of appearing to be anti-dog. ’ Rosie was apparently well trained for her work – her handlers said she could “take off a person’s socks without biting any toes’ and had a ‘special talent with traumatized children.’ ”

A few other states have allowed dogs to take the witness stand – Washington and Arizona, for instance. The King County prosecutor’s office in Seattle has set up a web site concerning such dogs – “Courthouse Dogs.”

[From the New York Times, August 9, 2011]

Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?

                    [From The Birmingham News, an article by Kent Faulk, June 28, 2011]

“BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Jefferson County’s presiding circuit court judge has asked a lawyers group to chip in money to help pay jurors in the wake of state budget cutbacks.“Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Scott Vowell said that on Friday he made a presentation to the board of the Birmingham Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the Birmingham Bar Association. He said he made the presentation after getting an opinion from the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission that it is OK to raise money from private sources through that foundation to pay jurors.
” ‘It’s a terrible, terrible, way to have to run the courts, but it’s  better than the alternative,’ Vowell said during a luncheon speech to the Kiwanis Club of Birmingham. ‘Part of that will be that the givers to the fund will have to remain anonymous (sic) to the judges.’ “…

[Yeah, right.]

                                           Court Hand

“Not all Latin was translated into English. Even more than today, medieval lawyers used Latin for all kinds of documents. The scribes developed a system of abbreviating legal Latin known as ‘court hand.’ The system was ingenious, rather too ingenious, in fact, since the meaning behind some of the abbreviations was forgotten entirely. This is true of the
abbreviation ss. These two little letters appear at the beginning of virtually every affidavit filed in the United States despite the fact that nobody knows for certain what they stand for. Seriously: ‘ss’ is sometimes said to be short for scilicet (‘one may know’); other suggestions include subscripsi, sans, sacertotes, sanctissimus, Spiritus Scnctus, and sunt. Black’s Law Dictionary will only go so far as to say that it is ‘supposed to be a contraction of scilicet.’ And yet, no self-respecting lawyer will draft an affidavit without it.”

[From The Party of the First Part by Adam Freedman.]

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                                                                                  Old Bailey

There is a wonderful web site for those who love English legal lore called “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913.” As it says, it’s a “A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court. If you are new to this site, you may find the Getting Started and Guide to Searching videos and tutorials helpful.”

I thought you might enjoy just a smidgen from the Proceedings, the trial of John Stanley in 1723 for murdering his lover, Hannah Maycock. His “defence” was that she had “struck him, gave him ill language, etc. which rais’d his passion to give her the wound not knowing what he did…she gave me great provocation…and offered to throw a pot in my face… from which I endeavoured to defend myself.”…He “called several persons, who would have perswaded the court to look upon him as a person lunatick”.

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                                                                By-passing Juries

New South Wales, Australia has had a statute for some time allowing a criminal defendant to skirt a jury trial by saying that he wants to be tried by a judge. But it won’t happen unless the Crown agrees. Well a new amendment to that law takes the Crown out of the picture. All it takes now to avoid a jury is a request from the defendant. The August 1, 2011 the New South Wales Daily Telegraph said that it is creating a brouhaha. Those who don’t want trials to judges say it is increasing the judges’s workloads and resulting in too many acquittals.  Defense lawyers don’t like it either; they say fact questions are more fit for juries than a judge. Many say judge trials are a lot cheaper than jury trials. But Howard Brown, a victims advocate, said that’s not true. “Some judges, he said, “are adjourning for five weeks trying to write a judgment that can’t be appealed” and trial judges fear reversals by appellate courts because they distort their record. In a close case, he added, a judge will always side with the defendant to avoid a reversal.

The Attorney General said he was aware of the problem but wouldn’t comment on it. The New Director of Public Prosecutions heard of it too but he won’t comment either.

Law School Inflation 

“Two of the country’s biggest law schools were hit with class actions on Aug. 10 alleging that they fraudulently inflated post-employment graduation and salary statistics to lure prospective students. “Thomas M. Cooley Law School and New York Law School were named in separate but nearly identical complaints filed on behalf of students and graduates demanding tuition refunds and other remedies.

“ ‘The moment for law schools to be held accountable is now,’ David Anziska, of counsel at New York’s Kurzon Strauss, who represents the plaintiffs, said during a conference call with reporters.

“We picked Cooley and New York Law School because they seemed to be J.D. factories, but this problem is not just confined to those two schools.” …

“According to the suit against Cooley, which was filed in Michigan federal court, the school claims that between 75% and 80% of its graduates find employment within nine months.

“However, the reality of the situation is that these seemingly robust numbers include any type of employment, including jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with the legal industry, do not require a JD degree or are temporary or part-time in nature,” the complaint alleged.

“The number of graduates actually working full-time as lawyers in permanent jobs nine months after graduation ‘could be well be below 30%, if not even lower,’ according to the complaint, filed on behalf of four graduates who had difficulty finding jobs. The complaint said the plaintiffs arrived at that figure through ‘interviews with former students and other investigatory work.’
”….

[From an article by Jenna Greene in The National Law Journal, August 10, 2011]

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                                                                New Statutes on Juries 

[These come from Jur-E- Bulletin, August 12, 2011]

“Oklahoma SB 865 Requires the Oklahoma Uniform Jury Instructions in a civil case to include an instruction that no part of an award for damages for personal injury or wrongful death is subject to federal or  consider income taxes when determining a proper compensation award.”

“Texas HB 2702 Authorizes the district judges in a county with a population of more than 1.5 million (currently 900,000), by a majority vote, to authorize the drawing of two general jury panels for the week, with one to be used in the courts that have a criminal docket and the other to be used in the courts that have a civil docket.”

“Utah HB 349 Allows for pilot project of expedited jury trials. Requires that all parties to an action agree to participate. Requires the Judicial Council to create rules. Allows parties to set limits on damages. Limits post-trial motions. Requires a report to the Judiciary Interim Committee in 2016. Repeals pilot project authorization as of January 1, 2017.”

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What Justice Ginsburg Reads To Prepare For Argument 

“On the court, Ginsburg said the toughest part of her job always has been death penalty cases. To prepare for oral arguments in all cases, Ginsburg said she reads all the prior opinions and part of the record before opening the lawyers’ briefs. She follows that order so she may spot inaccuracies in the briefs. ‘Lawyers should know, if they try to distort the record, they will be found out,’ she said. Writers of amicus briefs face other concerns: ‘I have to confess, I don’t read all of those. In fact, I don’t read most of them,’ Ginsburg said. For the law school students in the audience, she expressed empathy for desires they might have to get high-paying jobs. She also noted that they should seek to change the world for the better during their careers. Otherwise, she said, ‘you are not much more than a plumber.’ ” [I added the italics.]

[From a speech by Justice Ginsburg at Southern Methodist University, August 30, 2011]

[I’m surprised, not that she doesn’t read all the briefs, but that she
would admit it to the public. And when does she read the rest of the record?]

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____________________________________________________

“That a question is important does not mean that it is constitutional. The Founding Fathers did not establish the United States as a democratic republic so that elected officials would decide trivia, while all  great questions would be decided by the judiciary.”  

[Compassion in Dying v. State of Wash., 79 F.3d 790, 858 (9^th Cir.) (J. Kleinfeld dissenting)]

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Bob Rains,  a law professor at Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of  Law felt so moved by the opinion in Smith v. Smith, 938 N.E.2d 857 (Ind.  App. 2010) that he wrote this doggerel, which I found in 14 Green Bag 2d at 351.

Consider the saga of Morgan and Bruce,

Who were wed twenty years before he cut her loose.

Although they had children, there wasn’t a fight

Over who’d be the parent to get them at night.

No, the issue, of course, which made their teeth gnash

Was: how would the court distribute their cash?

Before he could figure how much to allot

To each, the judge tallied the marital pot.

After two decades of conjugal life,

There was only six thousand ‘twixt husband and wife.

The judge did his best to be generous and

Awarded to Morgan eleven-plus grand.

Thus, sadly for Bruce, all he got to survive

Was the remaining negative five.

Bruce didn’t think this was a very fair deal

And directed his lawyer to file an appeal.

He wanted a higher court to declare

That Morgan could not get more than was there.

The Indiana State Court of Appeals

Agreed Bruce had gotten the rawest of deals.

It ruled a divorce court, no matter how kind,

Cannot grant one spouse more than it can find.

So, husbands and wives, before you’ve recourse,

To benevolent judges in courts of divorce,

Remember they’re bound by the principle that

They can’t conjure money out of a hat.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Discovery Searches

I read an interesting case the other day, U.S. v. O’Keefe, 537 F.Supp.2d 14, 24 (D.D.C., 2008), involving a discovery dispute. It pointed out something I had not thought about until I ran into the problem when I was checking in to a hospital and was asked to fill out the usual forms for the fourth time. I told the clerk that this information was already in her computer. She asked for my name. I said it and she searched. A few  seconds later she said we have no one by that name. I asked her to check again.  She did and still, she found nothing. Then she asked me how to spell my last  name. When I did, she found it in her records. Most word processing programs I’m  familiar with (and that’s only two) give you various spellings when you search  for a term, but apparently others do not.  Searching for terms, keywords, or phrases must be even worse.  John M. Facciola, the United States Magistrate Judge, in the O’Keefe case I cited above (a very interesting discussion of discovery mechanics)  pointed that out a few years ago:

“Whether search terms or ‘keywords’ will yield the information sought is a complicated question involving the interplay, at least, of the sciences of computer technology, statistics and linguistics. …Given this complexity, for lawyers and judges to dare opine that a certain search term or terms would be more likely to produce
information than the terms that were used is truly to go where angels fear to  tread. This topic is clearly beyond the ken of a layman….”

Then, just a few months ago another U.S. District Judge ordered a discovery respondent to include misspellings in the search:

“With respect to electronic media, defense counsel should not limit the key search terms to the three terms previously used by defendant, but must also include misspellings of plaintiff’s first name as well as other key terms reasonably related to each of the topics set forth in Request for Production V.”…

[Northington v. H&M International, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, February 14, 2011, Judge Blanche M. Manning]

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                                                    Death for Taking Bribes

The New York Times reported that on July 22, 2011 Zhang Chunjiang, vice chairman of China Mobile, a large telecommunications company in China, was sentenced to death with a “two year “reprieve.” I assume that means it may be lowered if he’s good during that two years. Maybe, because during that same week two vice mayors were executed for taking bribes.

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Goldie

“Goldie was often wrong, but is still remembered and loved. It is easy to understand why. There is something of Goldie in all of us – seldom perhaps enough; he is, so to speak, the patron saint of those who put their foot in it, as we all do at times. One can take an affectionate farewell of his genial shade as precisely that:

“ ‘My Lord, I have considered the whole of the proofs of the witnesses for the defence in this case, and though I have, with the greatest possible respect to your Lordship, a large number of most important bus drivers and conductors from the Manchester Corporation whom I have the honour to represent, there is  only one witness whom I have decided to call, as his statement, which I have so to speak tooth-combed, will
decide the whole case in my favour. His evidence is so important that I have decided to rely upon him entirely:

-‘Battersby!’[A silence.]

-‘ BATTERSBY !’ [A profound silence. Goldie looks at his brief. ]

-‘Davenport!’ [The witness enters the box.]”

[From Lawyers & Lawbreakers: Unusual Cases of English Justice Since Alfred the Great by Dick Hamilton]

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                   “That v. Which, and Other Supreme Court Writing Tips

“In late 2006 and early 2007, legal writing guru Bryan Garner stealthily interviewed eight of the nine then-sitting Supreme Court justices to glean their thoughts about writing and advocacy. He had done the same in dozens of taped interviews with lower court judges, academics and writers over the years as raw material for his popular legal writing seminars.

“Realizing that he had something close to a national treasure on his hands, Garner posted the Supreme Court videos online for free at his LawProse site. They caused a sensation in 2008 when word spread that they were available.

“Now, in a free download that’s definitely worth a look, Garner has just published full transcripts of the interviews. They appear in The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, a publication Garner founded with Scribes, an association of legal writers. You’ll learn that Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. really doesn’t like reading ‘which’ in a brief, when ‘that’ will do. ‘I don’t know why,’ Roberts confessed to Garner. ‘But when I see sentences with ‘which’ in them, it slows you down … It starts to sound like one of those old 19th-century contracts — which and wherefore. ‘That’ just seems to have a
better pace to it. I actually find you can usually get rid of both of them and
go with the gerund.

“Justice Antonin Scalia offers his test for deciding whether legal lingo should be excised from a brief: ‘If you used the word at a cocktail party, would people look at you funny? You talk about ‘the instant case’ or ‘the instant problem.’ That’s ridiculous. It’s legalese. ‘This case’ would do very well.’ Garner and Scalia, by the way, are collaborating on a second book, this one about legal interpretation, due out later this year.

“And if you are trying to win over Justice Anthony Kennedy in a brief or argument — who isn’t these days? — then don’t use trendy words. ‘I do not like nouns that are turned into verbs,’ he told Garner. ‘I ‘task’ you or I was ‘tasked’ with this assignment or I was ‘tasked’ with this opinion. A ‘task’ is a noun; it’s not a verb. ‘Impact.’ This
‘impacts’ our decision; ‘impact’ is a noun, and it seems to me trendy.’

“Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. like it when lawyers summarize their arguments at the beginning of a brief, while Scalia skips right over that part. ‘Why would I read the summary if I’m going to read the brief?’ Scalia exclaimed to Garner.

“All the justices, in one way or another, urged lawyers to write succinctly and resist the urge to write to the maximum allowed length. Justice Stephen Breyer put it this way: ‘Don’t try to put in everything. Use a little editing, I would say. If I see something 50 pages, it can be 50 pages, but I’m already going to groan. And I’m going to
wonder, did he really have to write that 50 pages? I would have preferred 30. And if I see 30, I think, well, he thinks he’s really got the law on his side because he only took up 30.’

‘For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a top priority in writing is honesty. ‘If a brief-writer is going to slant something or miscite an authority, if the judge spots that one time, the brief will be distrusted — the rest of it,’ she said in her interview. ‘And lawyers should remember that most of us do not turn to their briefs as the first thing we
read. The first thing we read is the decision we’re reviewing. If you read a decision and then find that the lawyer is characterizing it in an unfair way, we will tend to be impatient with that advocate.’

“The only justice at the time who declined to be interviewed by Garner, not surprisingly, was David Souter. Notoriously shy about being interviewed, Souter seemed particularly reticent about offering writing tips. ‘I’ve never been satisfied with my own prose,’ he told Garner in a note. ‘Since I don’t think my own work is worth writing home about, I’d feel presumptuous telling other people what they ought to do.’

“Asked if he plans to update his series by interviewing new justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Garner said, ‘I have hopes.’ ”

[From BLT: The Blog of Legal Times, an ALM publication from an article by Tony Mauro quoting from Bryan Garner’s just published full transcripts of the interviews (of US Supreme Court Justices). They (the interviews) appear in The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, a publication Garner founded with Scribes, an association of legal writers.]

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Headquarters
Is Where theHeart Is

Hertz Corp. was sued in California state court by employees there seeking unpaid overtime and vacation wages. But the company, which keeps its headquarters in New Jersey, wanted the trial moved to federal court since the plaintiff and defendant would be from two different states.

A federal judge sent the case back to state court, saying that because most of Hertz’s business was done in California, that was the company’s principal place of business, and the class action lawsuit should be heard there. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed.

The Supreme Court overturned that decision, sending the case back to federal court.

“We conclude that the phrase ‘principal place of business’ refers to the place where the corporation’s high level officers direct, control and coordinate the corporation’s
activities,” “Justice Stephen Breyer wrote. ‘Lower federal courts have often metaphorically called that place the corporation’s nerve center. We believe that the nerve center will typicallybe found at a corporation’s headquarters.’ “

The case is Hertz v. Friend, 08-1107.

[The Associated Press, February 23, 2010]

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                                                          Jack Kelly’s Will

“Another man who struck a blow for plain English wills was Jack Kelly, the father of Grace Kelly and a successful businessman in his own right. Although he had more than enough money to pay lawyers to write his will, he did it himself. Kelly’s will (reproduced in Robert Menchin’s 1966 book, The Last Caprice), begins:

‘I will attempt to write my own will in the hope that it will be understandable and legal. Kids will be called ‘kids’ and not ‘issue’ and it will not be  clutteredup with ‘parties of the first part,’ ‘per stirpes,’ ‘perpetuities,’ ‘quasi-judicial,’ ‘to wit,’ and a lot of other terms that I am sure are only used to confuse those for whose benefit it is written….’ ”

From Party of the First Part by Adam Freedman.]

__________________________________________

 [From the ABA Journal Law News Now web site, May 10, 2011]

“Judge Philip Kirk of Waupaca (Wisconsin)commented before sentencing former
New London school bus driver Delton Gorges to seven years in prison, according
to Fox11WLUK-TV and Fox6Now.com. ‘I think you were born gayer than a sweet
smelling jock strap.’

“Gorges, who drove a school bus for 33 years, pleaded no contest to four  counts of fourth-degree sexual assault, the Appleton Post-Crescent reports. Fox11WLUK-TV posted a video of the judge’s remarks.

” ‘I think that if anyone believes that in the last 10 years or 15  years all of a sudden you developed an interest in homosexuality and young  boys, then I must have looked ravishing in my prom dress this year,’ Kirk said.

“Kirk said he believes the 71-year-old defendant was the victim of a homophobic
society in the 1940s and 1950s. ‘No one knew there was a closet to come out of  in those days,’ he said. ‘You know you had to be very careful, because you  could have found your penis floating in the Wolf as walleye bait. It was a  terrible life to have to live.’ “

__________________________________________________

Should, Can Judges Google 

[From Law.com, May 3, 2010, an article by Joel Cohen and Katherine A. Helm]

It is a small wonder that, in the quotidian workings of the courts and in the thousands of rulings that any one judge makes every year, a judge down the hall or in a different court may come at the real stuff of the judicial process from a completely different perspective, and with a potentially starkly different result. Can we, either as members of the court or as everyday citizens who come before the court, require that the judge
undress herself from her robes to tell us what she viscerally thinks because of her life experiences that so inevitably and critically impact her rulings? Certainly, and for some perhaps sadly, not!

“The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was recently faced with an unusual appeal in which a criminal defendant raised an intriguing question about the limits on what perspectives a judge can properly bring to bear on the bench. In United States v Bari, No. 09 1074-cr, 2010 WL 1006555 (2d Cir. Mar. 22, 2010), the 2nd Circuit considered whether then-District Judge Denny Chin (now on the 2nd Circuit bench) erred in a supervised release revocation hearing in considering information confirmed by the court’s own Internet searching. In other words, can a judge confirm his own hunches by Googling?

“Let’s look at the facts. Judge Chin had been confronted with a defendant who had allegedly violated his term of supervised release (essentially probation) following a 36 month jail term for bank robbery. The revocation hearing was based on a new bank robbery. While there were questions raised about the identification of Bari, Judge Chin made a number of factual findings based on the evidence present to him. Most relevant to the appeal, though, was Judge Chin’s finding that the strongest piece of
evidence was that the robber (whom he concluded was Bari) wore a yellow rain
hat.

“The bank’s surveillance footage showed that the robber wore a yellow rain hat. A yellow rain hat of the same type was found in the garage of Bari’s landlord. Judge Chin found it ‘too much of a coincidence’ that it wasn’t Bari’s hat, given the similarity between the hats. But here’s the rub — Judge Chin reasoned ‘there are clearly lots of yellow hats out there,’ and ‘[o]ne can Google yellow rain hats and find lots of
different yellow rain hats.’ Earlier in the hearing, Judge Chin acknowledged
that his chambers had done a Google search and found ‘yellow hats, yellow rain hats,
yellow rain hats like this. But there are lots of different rain hats, many different kinds of rain hats that one could buy.’ U.S. v. Bari, 2010 WL 1006555, at *1.

“So what’s the big deal? Judge Chin’s use of Google confirmed his intuition that not all yellow rain hats are the same, and the one observed in the video footage was the same as the one in Bari’s landlord’s garage. But Bari sought to controvert Judge Chin’s finding for his having gone dehors the record to improperly rely on facts not in
evidence in deciding to revoke Bari’s supervised release. When you put it that
way, maybe it sounds objectionable. But is that really what happened?

“Well, what if the results of Judge Chin’s search showed instead that yellow rain hats only came in one model, based either on a visit to his favorite search engine, or else by having taken a walk the length of Fifth Avenue on a rainy day in New York and observed only one type. Is there any difference between the two — a Google search, a walk down Fifth Avenue two months before the hearing, or perhaps a paper he wrote
many years ago on the social significance of yellow rain hats? Do we want judges as hermits who come to the pristine laboratory of a courtroom unencumbered by what they can — or did — learn in the real world? ….

“The 2nd Circuit affirmed Bari’s revocation by concluding that the court’s comments were akin to taking judicial notice of a fact. The Court cleanly compartmentalized the evidentiary basis by which a court can take judicial notice of facts into two categories:
“matters of common knowledge” and “facts capable of verification.” U.S. v. Bari, 2010 WL 1006555 at *3 (citing Federal Rule of Evidence 201). Perhaps given the palpably obvious failing of the second category in these circumstances, the Court concluded that Judge Chin did not err by using an Internet search “to confirm a reasonable intuition on a matter of common knowledge.” The court also notably “relaxed the
evidentiary constraints” in this instance because the Federal Rules of Evidence
need not apply with normal force in a supervised released revocation
proceeding.

______________________________________________

 “No magician-not David Copperfield, not even Harry Houdini-can produce a rabbit from a hat unless the rabbit is in the hat to begin with. Moreover, if a hat does not contain such an animal, a magician cannot claim that anything he is able to produce from it is in fact a rabbit, no matter how sincere he may be or how great his forensic skills. All of this has something to do with basic physics. “

Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, 85 F.3d 1440, 1446 (9^th Cir., 1996)

     “One of themost interesting paintings I have uncovered hangs behind the bench in the main courtroom of the Hancock County Courthouse in Findley (sic), Ohio. Lady Justice
is portrayed as a young woman with black curly hair, dark – perhaps seductive –
eyes (without a blindfold), and a sexy pout. In her right hand she holds a scroll, no doubt symbolizing the written law, but it does not interest her. Her left hand appears to have just dropped something, and indeed, in the lower left a baby is trying to hand the scales of justice (back) to her. At her feet lies a sword (now hidden by a railing behind the bench).

“The Lady’s presence is formidable but her message and meaning for those gathered in the courtroom to receive justice is, at best, ambiguous. Is she bored with the
parade of supplicants? Would she rather be doing something else? Does she have
her eye on that handsome defense attorney who just approached the bench? Will
he ask her to the cotillion?

“The Hancock County Courthouse was completed in 1888 and presumably the painting dates from about that time. The artist is unknown but local lore tells that the model was
a lady of the evening. With this bit of intelligence we may view her expression in a different light. She looks at the courtroom scene with cool disdain. Does she see clients in the room?  Has she found herself in the position to judge those who in the past have judged her? Gilded Age and before, prostitution was somewhat more ‘respectable’ than in our time, a more accepted, though always illicit, part of society. The model simply
may have been the judges’ favorite.”

[From 13 Green Bag 2d, page 42, an article by James Fox, a law professor at Dickinson School of Law, Penn State University.]

I ran down a picture of the painting. Here she is:

______________________________________________________________

Justice By The Numbers

[From the New York
Times, an article by Amy Bach]

“In communities across the country, people use statistics on
hospitals, schools and other public services to decide where to live or how to
vote. But while millions of Americans deal with their local criminal courts as
defendants and victims each year, there is no comparable way to assess a
judicial system and determine how well it provides…

“That’s why America needs a ‘justice index’ to show how the essential aspects of our local courts are working. The index, compiled according to national standards, would function roughly like college rankings, evaluating county courts on factors like cost, recidivism, crime reduction and collateral consequences, including whether people lost their jobs or homes after contact with the criminal justice system…

“The information would be analyzed by a nonprofit organization then posted to a Web site in a ranked order and in terms clear enough for the public to understand.”

_____________________________________________________

 Sanction Earned

“A  track record of tardiness in filing Social Security appellate briefs earned a law firm a standing, $500-a-day sanction from a federal judge for documents submitted late without good cause.

“The fine, imposed by District Judge Faith Hochberg in Newark, N.J., when Rahway’s Langton & Alter filed a brief more than a month after a due date, will also apply in
future cases of late briefs and court personnel will no longer call the firm
with reminders.

” ‘Langton & Alter is a habitually late filer who has required continual and ceaseless prodding by the Court to file its briefs,’ Hochberg wrote on Sept. 1 in Gomez v. Commissioner of Social Security, 2:10-cv-01233. ‘This Court has tried everything within
its power and creativity to cajole, prod, warn, exhort, and practically beg this law firm to take seriously the deadlines that are needed for the Court to decide its cases. No case can begin without a plaintiff’s brief. Yet, over and over and over again, this firm does not file its brief until this Court is required to take time out of its busy schedule to order counsel to file,’ she continued. ‘At this point, the refusal to file on time verges on the contumacious
and is, regrettably, disrespectful of Court time and the duties of counsel to proceed without the need for the Court to become a nursemaid.’ “

___________________________________________________________

“A MODEST NOTE” INTRODUCING

/ A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION

ii (11th ed. 1967)

Columbia, Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale law reviews 

“The purpose of this uniform system of citation is to ensure that the authorities cited in legal writing can be identified and found by most readers. Thus if the use of a rule in this booklet would prove confusing in the citation of a particular authority, a clearer citation form should be substituted.

“The editors are unable to recommend that the Third Edition Merriam- Webster New International Dictionary replace the Second Edition as a general authority for definition and italicization. The new edition fails to distinguish those foreign words which should be italicized in English writing, and is in general insufficiently prescriptive. Continued reliance on the Second Edition is recommended.”

[From the GREEN BAG ALMANAC & READER 2007, page 16]

_________________________________________________________

 I thought some of you have been wondering about what Lizzie Borden (the alleged Fall River murderess) had for breakfast on the morning of the murders: “The morning of the grisly 18982 Lizzie Borden murders in Fall River, Mass., the family breakfasted on mutton soup and cold mutton from the day before.” [From a little quip by Abigail Carroll in the November 28 New York Times entitled "Remains
of The Day" about leftovers – my second favorite meal]

_____________________________________________

 Law Taken for Granted

“If a statistical table of legal propositions should be  drawn out, and the first column headed ‘Law by Statute,’ and the second ‘Law by Decision’; a third column, under the heading of ‘Law taken for granted,’ would comprise as much matter as both the others combined.’   O.Connell v. R. (1844) 11CL. & F. 155 at 372, per Lord Denman.”

Law Taken for Granted

“If a statistical table of legal propositions should be drawn out, and the first column headed ‘Law by Statute,’ and the second ‘Law by Decision’; a third column, under the heading of ‘Law taken for granted,’ would comprise as much matter as both the others combined.’   O.Connell v. R. (1844) 11CL. & F. 155 at 372, per Lord Denman.”

[Taken from Miscellany-At-Law by R. E. Megarry]

______________________________________________________

 “In 1731, the English Parliament came tantalizing close to beginning the use of Latin phrases like habeas corpus and corpus delicti. In that year, the House of Commons passed a law prohibiting Latin, French, and all other foreign languages in legal proceedings. Here was an invitation presented to British lawyers on a silver platter with watercress around the edges. They could finally embrace the language of their clients without fear of being
professionally disadvantaged. It was a gigantic leap toward plain language in the law.

“What happened? The legal establishment bellowed its protests from the highest courts to the lowest. Lord Raymond, then the Chief Justice of England, saw no end to
the horrors. Why, if lawyers were allowed to speak English, they might just as well speak Welsh. (In fact it was not until 1942 that people were allowed to speak the Welsh language in Welsh courts.). By 1733, a chastened Parliament passed an amendment that allowed
lawyers to continue to use ‘technical words’ and other ‘commonly used’ terms in
foreign languages.”

[From the Careerist, a lawjobs.com blog, an ALM Website, an article by Vivia Chen, March 29, 2011]

“Like others who’ve dropped out of law, I’ve always been convinced that I was miscast for
the lawyer role from the get-go. In fact, I thought my unsuitability was confirmed after I took the McKenna Long personality test that’s administered to potential hires (the computer generated what I thought was a rather harsh review of my personality).

“Now here’s the really distressing news: My ‘negatives’ make me lawyer material. At least
that’s my takeaway after reading Hildebrandt’s study of lawyer personality traits, which was based on data from nearly 2,000 lawyers at four big firms, collected in 2009-10.

“According to the Hildebrandt study, lawyers are:

• High scorers on learning, ‘suggesting that they value education and enjoy
academic activities’;

• Self-critical and temperamental;

• Lousy on interpersonal sensitivity. They are task-oriented and speak their
minds, coming across as ‘cold, critical, and argumentative’;

• Easily excitable, ‘becoming tense and overly critical’;

• Cautious to the extent they have a hard time taking risks and making decisions;
and

• Resistant to authority and skeptical of others.

“Of all those factors, lawyers scored particularly poorly on interpersonal sensitivity, says
Larry Richard, a psychologist (he recently left Hildebrandt), who conducted the research (psychologists Jeff Foster, Mark Sirkin, and Lisa Rohrer also worked on it). ‘They always argue with me about it, and they do it in insensitive ways, like, ‘Oh, this is so stupid,’ says Richard. (For the record, I feel I’m fine on the sensitivity front–though others might disagree.)”

___________________________________________________

[From The National Law
Journal, March 10, 2011, article by Karen Sloane]

“Last spring, 3L Tim Hardesty wasn’t having much luck landing a gig at a small or midsize firm in the Dallas area.

“Cold resume mailings landed him exactly zero interviews, and Hardesty grew increasingly nervous as graduation loomed with no job on the horizon. But Hardesty had an ace in his pocket: Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law was offering to pay legal employers to bring aboard its new graduates for a month — essentially a
no-strings-attached month long job interview.

“SMU’s deal was sweet enough to entice three-attorney Barnett McNair Hall, an estate-planning firm in Dallas, to bring on Hardesty in August with an eye to hiring him permanently. ‘They couldn’t afford to hire somebody without making sure they had enough work and they liked me,’ Hardesty said.

“They did. And he has been a full-time associate at the firm since October.

“In May, SMU unveiled its Test Drive program, in which the school pays employers $3,500 to take in recent graduates for one or two months. Advocates said the program is an innovative way to help graduates get a foot in the employment door amid an exceptionally tight job market. Skeptics dismissed it as an attempt to game the U.S. News
& World Report’s law school rankings by inflating job-placement data.”

__________________________________________________

Mom Was Always There

[From the Texas Lawyer, May 7, 2010, an article by John Council and Mary Alice Robbins]

“Regardless of whether lawyers win a $100 million verdict, close a huge international deal or fight the good fight in the criminal justice system, there is one person most attorneys should thank for their legal accomplishments: Mom.

“They raised, nurtured and supported you and — if you listened — told you the right path to take through life while helping clear the way.

“In recognition of Mother’s Day on May 9, Texas Lawyer spoke with attorneys across the state about how their mothers made them who they are today. One mom raised nine children, five of whom graduated from law school. Another set an example for her daughter by graduating second in her law school class and pursuing a legal career in an era when most women were expected to be homemakers. One debated the Constitution with a U.S. Border Patrol agent who stopped her child at an airport. One put up her house as collateral for hers daughter’s law school loan. Yet another took her daughter along to her argument at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. ….

Call your mom Sunday. And don’t leave dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. She taught you better than that.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­______________________________________________________

                                                        The Little Lawyer Man

ANONYMOUS

“It was a little lawyer man

Who softly blushed as he began

Her poor, dead husband’s will to scan.

“He smiled while thinking of his fee,

Then said to her, so tenderly,

‘You have a nice, fat legacy.’

“And when, next day, he lay in bed

With bandages upon his head,

He wondered what on earth he’d said.

___________________________________________ 

“A Man’s Home Is His Castle

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), British jurist 

“A man – or woman – is safest from harm in the confines of his – or her – own fortress: home. Not only are you the boss of your home, but no one can enter your home without your permission. The maxim was popularized by British jurist and politician Sir Edward Coke, whose defense of the supremacy of common law against Stuart claims for royal authority influenced the development of English law and constitutional government. Coke made the home of ordinary folk safer than it had ever been – the poor man’s castle. He
was fond of saying: ‘For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium one’s home is the safest refuge for all).’ Lexicographers believe he may have gotten the expression from a book of the period, The Stage of Popish Toys (1581).” [From Words To Live By by Charles Panati]

_______________________________________________

                                                   Hmmmm………….rather odd

[From the May 19, 2011 Wall Street Journal, an article by Damian Paletta]

“HUNTINGTON, W.Va.—Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits will often appeal to one of 1,500 judges who help administer the program, where the odds of
winning are slightly better than even. Unless, that is, they come in front of David B. Daugherty.

“In the fiscal year that ended in September, the administrative law judge, who sits in the impoverished intersection of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, decided 1,284 cases and awarded benefits in all but four. For the first six months of fiscal 2011, Mr. Daugherty approved payments in every one of his 729 decisions, according to the Social Security Administration.”….

[Let’s see now, that’s like 99.86% and 100%........Not bad – room for improvement though.]

_____________________________________________________________

 “We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be left out
of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that someone has been very careless.”

Pillars v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 78 So. 365, 366 (Miss. 1918)(2).

____________________________________________________

 Cases Too Old To Be Cited

 “In the last twenty years, the Court (U.S. Supreme) has cited its 1790s opinions only 50 times and 40 of the citations were to three of the early cases: Haybum’s Case, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 408 (1792) (13 citations); Chisholm v. Georqia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793)(12 citations), and Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386 (1798) (15 citations).”

9^th Circuit Chastised

[From the March 2, 2011 Los Angeles Times, article by David G. Savage]

“The Supreme Court unanimously restored the conviction of a California rapist (Steven Jackson) Monday and rebuked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for handing down an opinion it called ‘inexplicable’ and ‘dismissive’ in tone.

“The decision marked the 10th time since November that the justices had reversed rulings of the 9th Circuit Court; nearly all of the decisions were unanimous.

“The justices have repeatedly faulted the San Francisco-based appeals court for intervening in state criminal cases and second-guessing rulings of the California state courts. Their opinion reflected an unusual tone of irritation.

“The Supreme Court said ‘the court of appeals offered a one-sentence conclusory explanation’ for setting aside the rulings of a series of state judges in the case of a Sacramento-area rapist. ‘That decision is asinexplicable as it is unexplained. It is reversed,’ the justices said in an unsigned opinion. ….

______________________________________________

The things that lawyers know about,

Are property and land.

But why the leaves are on the trees;
And why the waves disturb the seas;

Why honey is the food of bees;
Why horses have such tender knees;

Why winters come when rivers freeze;
Why faith is more than what one sees;

And hope survives the worst disease;
And charity is more than these …

They do not understand.

By Hilary Douglas Pepler

________________________________________________

Wife Can’t Become Parent of Surrogate’s Baby

“New Jersey has no constitutional or legal basis for recognizing an infertile wife as the mother of her husband’s child born to a surrogate, an appeals court held Wednesday in a ruling that harkens the landmark Baby M case.

The court, in Matter of the Parentage of a Child by T.J.S. and A.L.S., A-4784-09, said it did not deny the ‘intrinsic societal worth, emotional appeal, and compelling logic’ of granting parenthood to the infertile wife. But it said adoption remains the means chosen by the Legislature to create that status.

“Indeed, nothing in our Constitution or law provides that an adult — male or female — with no biological or gestational connection to a child has a fundamental right to create parentage by the most expeditious or convenient method possible,” the court held.

[From New Jersey Law Journal, Feb. 23, 2011, article by David Gialanella]

____________________________________

One In A Million

Robert Reldan was in the New Jersey State Penitentiary serving a life sentence for murdering Susan Reeve. While residing there he was left $8.9 million by the death of his aunt (whom he once tried to kill). Reeve’s family heard about the inheritance and got a lawyer. The lawyer quickly tied up the money left by the aunt (which was in a trust) and then filed suit against Reldan for the murder of Susan Reeve. They settled and the Reeve family got more than $725,000 and income from the trust for the rest of Reldan’s life.

The Sept. 15 consent judgment, in Estate of Reeve v. Reldan, BER-L-9137-08, said the settlement came out to about $10 million – “about” because it will depend on how long Reldan lives. He is 70 now – and up for parole in 2012.

_______________________________________

“A Lawyer In Heaven

By H. Jefferson Powell

Quoting William Wirt to Dabney Carr Sept. 9, 1810 in I John P.

Kennedy, Memoirs Of The Law Of William Wirt, Attorney General Of The United States 288 (1849)

“Despite his admiration for legal learning and desire for professional accomplishment, William Wirt sometimes expressed uncertainty about the laws compatability with his deeper commitments. A distinct uneasiness lurks beneath the humorous tone of an 1810 letter to his close friend and fellow lawyer Dabney Carr:

“Do you think that a fellow, after wrangling and crangling (as Daniel Call says) for twenty or thirty years on this earth, is fit to go to Heaven? Don’t you think he would be perpetually disturbing the inhabitants by putting cases of law, and that he would be miserable for the want of a dispute?

_______________________________________

 The First Computer?

 [Plato in Phaedrus, quoting what Thamus, the King of Egypt, said to Theuth, an inventor, when Theuth proudly presented his latest invention that he thought should be given to all Egyptians. Thamus didn’t think much of it.]

“[T]his invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”

– the invention?  -  the alphabet

________________________________________

"Trust Nobody

"Joel Prentiss Bishop (1811-1884), the author of many major legal works, advised students of the law not to trust authority: 'A lawyer to be any­thing must enlarge his view by reading, and, above all, by thinking. And let me caution you not to believe everything you read in a law book. Take the caution with you in reading my books. I know that they are more accurate than our books average, but nobody is to be trusted. True, I trust myself, but God has given me nobody else to trust. And he has done the like with you. You must trust yourself ... ' "

[The Book of Legal Anecdotes by Peter Hay]

_____________________________________

A footnote on page 412 of 11 Green Bag. 2d, in Ex Ante notes: “Cf, Jodi Kantor, Teaching law,  Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart, N.Y. Times, July 30, 2008 (reporting that the University of Chicago offered Barack Obama tenure based on a publication record consisting of nothing at all).”

[Oh come, come, there obviously was a mistake there.]

________________________________________________

 Are We “IS” Or Are We “Are” ?

[In PBS’s The Civil War, Shelby Foote says:

_____________________________________________

Good Tip 

“Preparation of Notes…Do not exceed 750 words in your text. Anything longer will have to be boiled down unless very strong cause is shown. Avoid this by boiling it down yourself before handing it in. Almost anything is clearer if said in few words than if said in many.” [Harvard Law Review 1922 quoted in the Green Bag Almanac & Reader 2006.]

_________________________________________________

 “While waiting in the airport yesterday morning flying back from Florida I looked over and saw a man intensely reading the Constitution (the Cato version). The text was already highlighted in several places and he was now underlining other passages. Turns out that it was new Congressman-elect Allen West of Florida. I’ve occasionally seen politicians when traveling but I am certain that’s the first time I’ve seen one actually reading the Constitution.”

___________________________________________

 …………..About That Guy Webster

“It would be nice to think of Webster (the dictionary fellow) as a kind, scholarly man in a fuzzy cardigan. Unfortunately, history remembers him as a ‘severe, correct, humorless, religious, temperate man who was not easy to like, even by other severe, religious, temperate, humorless people.’ It was not enough for Webster to produce a dictionary – the ex-lawyer wanted his definitions to have the backing of law. He pressed then-Chief Justice John Marshall to adopt his dictionary as the official dictionary of the Supreme Court. Marshall declined.”   [From The Party of the First Part by Adam Freedman.]

__________________________________________

Attention Ladies, Please

[From The Careerist web site, by Vivia Chen, April 11, 2011]

“I’ve been racking my brains trying to find a connection between The Careerist and the upcoming royal nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Allen & Overy has gracefully obliged. Recently, that Magic Circle firm sent out an e-mail, which was leaked to Rolled on Friday, to its female junior lawyers (‘trainee solicitor’ in Brit-speak), warning them about the perils of inappropriate attire. Here’s what the A&O e-mail says:

“ ‘Ladies–bit of a random one, but we’ve been asked to draw your attention to the fact that HR have received numerous complaints about the way female trainees have been dressing around the office. The main problem seems to be very short skirts and high heels and generally looking like we’re going clubbing instead of to the office (as well as a failure to brush our hair, apparently!).

“ ‘HR would like this to be addressed asap so they don’t have to have uncomfortable discussions with individuals about it, especially as we’re now getting into summer and are more likely to be wearing less as it gets hotter.’ ”

________________________________________

 Negligence Is Not Unconstitutional

Alan Newton was convicted of rape and assault in 1984 on the basis of eye-witness testimony. There was no DNA evidence at the trial but in 2005 New York City police found a rape kit from the case that contained DNA evidence showing he did not commit the crimes. He sued the City and got judgment for $18 million. On May 12, 2011 a federal judge overturned the award holding that the failure to produce the DNA evidence sooner was not a constitutional violation – it was only negligence – saying:

“Where, as here, there is only a limited liberty interest at stake, a disorganized or even dysfunctional system for realizing that interest does not give rise to a constitutional violation. As disturbing as such negligence may be, in the end, that is what it is: mere negligence.”

[Newton v. The City of New York, 07-cv-6211]

_______________________________________

 There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. … As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, If the prosecution of crime is and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

Judge Learned Hand in Giuseppe v. Walling (1944).

                                                                                                                                                                                         Beyond here be dragons

http://www.oyez.org/media/oyezoyezoyez/download

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­                            ____________________________________________ 

Cases Too Old To Be Cited

 “In the last twenty years, the Court (U.S. Supreme) has cited its 1790s opinions only 50 times and 40 of the citations were to three of the early cases: Haybum’s Case, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 408 (1792) (13 citations); Chisholm v. Georqia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793)(12 citations), and Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386 (1798) (15 citations).”

9^th Circuit Chastised 

[From the March 2, 2011 Los Angeles Times, article by David G. Savage]

“The Supreme Court unanimously restored the conviction of a California rapist (Steven Jackson) Monday and rebuked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for handing down an opinion it called ‘inexplicable’ and ‘dismissive’ in tone.

“The decision marked the 10th time since November that the justices had reversed rulings of the 9th Circuit Court; nearly all of the decisions were unanimous.

“The justices have repeatedly faulted the San Francisco-based appeals court for intervening in state criminal cases and second-guessing rulings of the California state courts. Their opinion reflected an unusual tone of irritation.

“The Supreme Court said ‘the court of appeals offered a one-sentence conclusory explanation’ for setting aside the rulings of a series of state judges in the case of a Sacramento-area rapist. ‘That decision is as inexplicable as it is unexplained. It is reversed,’ the justices said in an unsigned opinion. ….

_________________________________________

  The things that lawyers know about,
Are property and land.

But why the leaves are on the trees;
And why the waves disturb the seas;

Why honey is the food of bees;
Why horses have such tender knees;

Why winters come when rivers freeze;
Why faith is more than what one sees;

And hope survives the worst disease;
And charity is more than these …

They do not understand,

Hilary Douglas Pepler

          _________________________________________________________

Wife Can’t Become Parent of Surrogate’s Baby

“New Jersey has no constitutional or legal basis for recognizing an infertile wife as the mother of her husband’s child born to a surrogate, an appeals court held Wednesday in a ruling that harkens the landmark Baby M case.

The court, in Matter of the Parentage of a Child by T.J.S. and A.L.S., A-4784-09, said it did not deny the ‘intrinsic societal worth, emotional appeal, and compelling logic’ of granting parenthood to the infertile wife. But it said adoption remains the means chosen by the Legislature to create that status.

“Indeed, nothing in our Constitution or law provides that an adult — male or female — with no biological or gestational connection to a child has a fundamental right to create parentage by the most expeditious or convenient method possible,” the court held.

[From New Jersey Law Journal, Feb. 23, 2011, article by David Gialanella]

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One In A Million

Robert Reldan was in the New Jersey State Penitentiary serving a life sentence for murdering Susan Reeve. While residing there he was left $8.9 million by the death of his aunt (whom he once tried to kill). Reeve’s family heard about the inheritance and got a lawyer. The lawyer quickly tied up the money left by the aunt (which was in a trust) and then filed suit against Reldan for the murder of Susan Reeve. They settled and the Reeve family got more than $725,000 and income from the trust for the rest of Reldan’s life.

The Sept. 15 consent judgment, in Estate of Reeve v. Reldan, BER-L-9137-08, said the settlement came out to about $10 million – “about” because it will depend on how long Reldan lives. He is 70 now – and up for parole in 2012.

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“A Lawyer In Heaven

“H. Jefferson Powell

Quoting William Wirt to Dabney Carr Sept. 9, 1810 in I John P.

Kennedy, Memoirs Of The Law Of William Wirt, Attorney General Of The United States 288 (1849)

“Despite his admiration for legal learning and desire for professional accomplishment, William Wirt sometimes expressed uncertainty about the laws compatability with his deeper commitments. A distinct uneasiness lurks beneath the humorous tone of an 1810 letter to his close friend and fellow lawyer Dabney Carr:

“Do you think that a fellow, after wrangling and crangling (as Daniel Call says) for twenty or thirty years on this earth, is fit to go to Heaven? Don’t you think he would be perpetually disturbing the inhabitants by putting cases of law, and that he would be miserable for the want of a dispute?

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                                                                            The First Computer? 

[Plato in Phaedrus, quoting what Thamus, the King of Egypt, said to Theuth, an inventor, when Theuth proudly presented his latest invention that he thought should be given to all Egyptians. Thamus didn’t think much of it.]

“[T]his invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”

– the invention?  -  the alphabet

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"Trust Nobody

"Joel Prentiss Bishop (1811-1884), the author of many major legal works, advised students of the law not to trust authority: 'A lawyer to be any­thing must enlarge his view by reading, and, above all, by thinking. And let me caution you not to believe everything you read in a law book. Take the caution with you in reading my books. I know that they are more accurate than our books average, but nobody is to be trusted. True, I trust myself, but God has given me nobody else to trust. And he has done the like with you. You must trust yourself ... ' "

[The Book of Legal Anecdotes by Peter Hay]

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A footnote on page 412 of 11 Green Bag. 2d, in Ex Ante notes: “Cf, Jodi Kantor, Teaching law,  Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart, N.Y. Times, July 30, 2008 (reporting that the University of Chicago offered Barack Obama tenure based on a publication record consisting of nothing at all).”

[Oh come, come, there obviously was a mistake there.]

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                                                                            Are We “IS” Or “Are”

[In PBS’s The Civil War, Shelby Foote says:

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                                                                                    Good Tip

“Preparation of Notes…Do not exceed 750 words in your text. Anything longer will have to be boiled down unless very strong cause is shown. Avoid this by boiling it down yourself before handing it in. Almost anything is clearer if said in few words than if said in many.” [Harvard Law Review 1922 quoted in the Green Bag Almanac & Reader 2006.]

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________________

 “While waiting in the airport yesterday morning flying back from Florida I looked over and saw a man intensely reading the Constitution (the Cato version). The text was already highlighted in several places and he was now underlining other passages. Turns out that it was new Congressman-elect Allen West of Florida. I’ve occasionally seen politicians when traveling but I am certain that’s the first time I’ve seen one actually reading the Constitution.”

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…………..About That Guy Webster

“It would be nice to think of Webster (the dictionary fellow) as a kind, scholarly man in a fuzzy cardigan. Unfortunately, history remembers him as a ‘severe, correct, humorless, religious, temperate man who was not easy to like, even by other severe, religious, temperate, humorless people.’ It was not enough for Webster to produce a dictionary – the ex-lawyer wanted his definitions to have the backing of law. He pressed then-Chief Justice John Marshall to adopt his dictionary as the official dictionary of the Supreme Court. Marshall declined.”   [From The Party of the First Part by Adam Freedman.]

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Attention Ladies, Please

[From The Careerist web site, by Vivia Chen, April 11, 2011]

“I’ve been racking my brains trying to find a connection between The Careerist and the upcoming royal nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Allen & Overy has gracefully obliged. Recently, that Magic Circle firm sent out an e-mail, which was leaked to Rolled on Friday, to its female junior lawyers (‘trainee solicitor’ in Brit-speak), warning them about the perils of inappropriate attire. Here’s what the A&O e-mail says:

“ ‘Ladies–bit of a random one, but we’ve been asked to draw your attention to the fact that HR have received numerous complaints about the way female trainees have been dressing around the office. The main problem seems to be very short skirts and high heels and generally looking like we’re going clubbing instead of to the office (as well as a failure to brush our hair, apparently!).

“ ‘HR would like this to be addressed asap so they don’t have to have uncomfortable discussions with individuals about it, especially as we’re now getting into summer and are more likely to be wearing less as it gets hotter.’ ”

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                                                          Negligence Is Not Unconstitutional

Alan Newton was convicted of rape and assault in 1984 on the basis of eye-witness testimony. There was no DNA evidence at the trial but in 2005 New York City police found a rape kit from the case that contained DNA evidence showing he did not commit the crimes. He sued the City and got judgment for $18 million. On May 12, 2011 a federal judge overturned the award holding that the failure to produce the DNA evidence sooner was not a constitutional violation – it was only negligence – saying:

“Where, as here, there is only a limited liberty interest at stake, a disorganized or even dysfunctional system for realizing that interest does not give rise to a constitutional violation. As disturbing as such negligence may be, in the end, that is what it is: mere negligence.”

[Newton v. The City of New York, 07-cv-6211]

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 There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. … As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, If the prosecution of crime is and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

Judge Learned Hand in Giuseppe v. Walling (1944).

[Sebastian County Courthouse, Fort Smith, Arkansas]

May 2011 

http://www.oyez.org/media/oyezoyezoyez/download

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“Written Opinions & Oral Persuasion”

“The early American emphasis on written opinions stood in marked
contrast to the English practice of the time. The English judicial position has been
described as one of ‘comprehensive orality.’ Indeed, Sir Edward Coke wrote that requiring judges to write out their opinions would require immense labor by judges and take them away fromtheir duties. He wrote that their records would be “Elephantini libri”and would ‘lose somewhat of their present authority and
reverence.’ I wonder what he would think today.

“The
emerging primacy of writing over speech in American courts was not limited to
court judgments. We all learned in law school about the days-long orations by
early Supreme Court advocates such as William Pinkney, William Wirt, and Daniel
Webster. Yet it is said that those lengthy set-piece arguments prompted Chief
Justice Marshall to quip that the ‘acme of judicial distinction means the
ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a
damned word he says.?’ The emphasis on oratory in the Supreme Court nonetheless
continued well into the nineteenth century. In 1821, the attorneys in Gibbons
v. Oqden argued for six days. John Quincy Adams and Roger Baldwin argued
for eight days in the Amistad case in 1841. But by then pressure had already
begun to build for a move away from such lengthy oratory and toward a
writing-focused legal process in the Supreme Court.

The
first writing requirement in the Supreme Court was adopted in 1795; the Supreme
Court’s Rule 8 required attorneys to submit “a statement of material
points of the case. Then, in 1821, the Supreme Court rules made their first
reference to the word ‘brief,’ requiring ‘a printed brief or abstract … containing the substance of all the material pleadings, facts and documents…and the points of law and facts intended to be presented.’ As Justice Rehnquist once explained,  these
early ‘briefs’ were quite brief indeed, totaling no more than six or ten pages
in length. Still, it was a start, and was quite different from the practice prevailing
before the King’s Bench at the time.”

 Anonymous Juries

[From the March 25, 2011 Jur-E Bulletin] 

                     Illegal Alien Can Collect Unpaid Wages Under FLSA

[From the March 28, 2011 National Law Journal, an article by Sheri Qualters]

“A Boston federal judge has called the question of whether two plaintiffs are illegal aliens ‘irrelevant’ to their Fair Labor Standards Act claims about unpaid wages and their ‘suitability’ to lead a class.
“On March 23, Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of the District of Massachusetts
issued an order in Lin v. Chinatown Restaurant Corp. denying the defendants’
motion to compel the plaintiffs to respond to written discovery about their
immigration status. O’Toole also granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel
Brockton, Mass.-based Chinatown Restaurant to respond to its written discovery
questions about potential class members.”

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                                                                    British Bribery

The March 31, 2011 The American Lawyer, in an article by Chris Johnson, says that a new British bribery statute goes into effect in July and it’s a loo-loo. For instance:

“Any company that has a U.K. office, employs U.K. citizens, or provides any services to a U.K. organization will be subject to the bill, which carries unlimited fines and an increased maximum jail term of 10 years. That means that U.S. lawyers already advising clients on FCPA violations are likely to face an increased workload and new reporting obligations to the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

“And while the two laws will regularly act in tandem, there are a number of key differences. Most fundamentally, where the FCPA deals only with governmental bribery, the U.K. act also covers corruption between commercial entities.

The April 7, Miami Herald reported that Escambia County (Pensacola)
Sheriff David Morgan has stopped his practice of handing out his business card
to jurors as they gathered for duty after three federal judges protested that
it might create a pro-law enforcement bias.

[Oh goodness. Just how stupid do judges think jurors are].
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                                                           Miserable Lawyers

[From The American Lawyer, April 15, 2011, Steven Harper]

“Large law firms and their management consultants have redefined a word — productivity — to contradict its true meaning. Recent reports from Hildebrandt and Citi measure it as average billable hours per attorney.

“No one questions this definition given the primary goal of large law firms — maximizing partner profits. Billable hours times hourly rates produce gross revenue. More is better and the misnomer — productivity — persists.

“The Business Dictionary defines productivity as the ‘relative measure of the
efficiency of a person [or] system … in converting inputs into useful outputs.’

“The relevant output for an attorney shouldn’t be total hours spent on tasks, but rather useful work product that meets client needs. Total elapsed time without regard to the quality of the result reveals nothing about a worker’s value. More hours devoted to a task can often lead to the opposite of true productivity.

“Common sense says that the 14th hour of work can’t be as valuable as the sixth. Fatigue compromises effectiveness. That’s why the Department of Transportation imposes rest periods after interstate truckers’ prolonged stints behind the
wheel. Logic should dictate that absurdly high billable hours result in compensation penalties. But prevailing big law economics dictate otherwise.

“Here’s a partial cure. Rather than mislabel attorney billables as measures of productivity, an index should permit excessive hours to convey their true meaning: attorney misery. The Misery Index would be a natural corollary to NALP’s survey of minimum billable-hour requirements. Attorneys now accept as given the 2,000-hour threshold that most firms maintain, even though current law firm law leaders faced no mandatory minimum levels when they were associates. That’s a lot of hours, as Yale Law School described in a useful memo. But even if the 2,000-hour milestone remains immutable, the Misery Index could reveal a firm’s culture. ….”

********

“The story, doubtless apocryphal, has long been told that when some of his partners urged that the office was under such pressure as to make additions to the staff
imperative, Moore [Hoyt A. Moore of Cravath, Swaine and Moore] replied:
“That’s silly. No one is under pressure. There wasn’t a light on when I
left at two o’clock this morning.’” [Robert T. Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819-1948, at 2:143(1948)]                    ________________________________________________________

 “Common Common Laws

[From John Orth’s How Many Judges Does It Take To Make A Supreme Court? And Other Essays on Law And The Constitution, The Persistence of the Common Law, 73-74 (Kansas 2006)]

“It is generally understood that the origins of the common law are to be found in
the reign of King Henry II in the Twelfth century. No very great knowledge of
medieval history is required to say that the conditions of society then were very different than they are now. …In the early twenty-first century our society had little in common with that of the late twelfth century –except the common law.”

“It’s been called the Dodd-Frank Act’s sleeper provision: a little-noticed but far-reaching requirement that public companies disclose whether their products contain “conflict minerals” – gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum – blamed for fueling and
financing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“The problem: The minerals are ubiquitous, used to make everything from televisions to airplanes to medical devices to laptops.

“ ‘It’s incredibly broad,’ said White & Case capital markets partner David Johansen. ‘No one in the United States condones what’s happening in the Congo…but [the requirement] is so expensive compared to the effect it might actually have in the Congo.’

“The U.S. Securities and Exchange is writing rules to implement the disclosure requirement, and recently extended the comment period from Jan. 31 to March 2.

“The agency has proposed rules that would require a public company “to disclose in the body of its annual report whether its conflict minerals originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country.

“ ‘If so, that issuer would be required to furnish a separate report as an exhibit to its annual report that includes, among other matters, a description of the measures taken by the issuer to exercise due diligence on the source and chain of custody of its
conflict minerals.’

“The SEC estimates compliance will cost $71 million.”
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 Courts Reduced to Soliciting?

[From Jur-E-Bullletin, Feb. 16, 2011]

“Business leaders, judges, court staff, and advocacy groups testified before the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Preservation of the Justice System at hearings held last week in Atlanta, Ga. Sharing stories of courts having to suspend
civil jury trials for a year, solicit donations of pens and pencils, and struggle to conclude a divorce proceeding, those appearing before the task force emphasized how cuts to state courts’ budgets are undermining the integrity of the justice system, and
offered suggestions of how courts can stem the flow of additional budget cuts. ’ ‘This is a crossroad period in civil justice in America,’ former New Hampshire Chief Justice John T. Broderick Jr. said. Texas Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, who is chair of the
National Center for State Courts Board of Directors, and several other NCSC board members, participated in the hearings.”  [I added the italics ]
[You’re kidding….we’ve stooped to asking for hand-outs of pens and pencils? I
remember when people on street corners in Camden, New Jersey used to sell them
for a penny for a hot meal.]

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                                                   What Is That “SS” Thing? 

“Not all Latin was translated into English. Even more than today, medieval lawyers
used Latin for all kinds of documents. The scribed developed a system of abbreviating legal Latin known as ‘court hand.’ The system was ingenious, rather too ingenious, in fact, since the meaning behind some of the abbreviations was forgotten entirely. This is true of the abbreviation ss. These two little letters appear at the beginning of virtually every affidavit filed in the United States despite the fact that nobody knows for certain what they stand for. Seriously: ‘ss’ is sometimes said to be short for scilicet
(‘one may know’); other suggestions include subscripsi, sans, sacertotes, sanctissimus, Spiritus Scnctus, and sunt. Black’s Law Dictionary will only go so far as to say that it
is ‘supposed to be a contraction of scilicet.’ And yet, no self-respecting lawyer will draft an affidavit without it.”

[From The Party of the First Part by Adam Freedman.]
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                                         “Calling All Intrepid Trial Judges 

“The NCSC Center for Jury Studies is seeking trial judges in civil and non-capital criminal trials to participate in a study entitled ‘Jurors and New Media: A Baseline Exploration.’  The incidence of juror use of advanced communications technologies to conduct independent research on trial-related issues and to communicate with others about the trial while it is underway is a source of increasing concern about the fairness of jury verdicts.

“The study will document the extent to which jurors in contemporary jury trials use modern communication technologies to conduct research and to communicate with others about the trial.  The study will also identify trial characteristics, trial procedures, and juror characteristics that tend to exacerbate or minimize jurors’ propensity to do so.  The study is being undertaken with support from grants from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, and the State Justice Institute. …”
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Take time to read the April 2011 issue of the California Lawyer article about the ways jurors use the social media in inappropriate ways
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Crime is only a left handed form of human endeavor.

(Louis Calhern in the movie The Asphalt Jungle]