Free Republic

Lawyers might be going off the clock Saturday, July 5, 2008 3:00 AM By Braden Lammers THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH With money tight, we all want to know exactly what we are paying for. That applies to professional services as well as grocery-store staples. As a result, there is a change brewing in the legal arena on the best way to charge clients. One Columbus law firm has abandoned the long-established standard, the billable hour. Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley moved to a fixed rate, or an alternative fee as it is called, in January. "Lawyers call it alternative billing because...

Judge Neal Biggers handed down Dickie Scruggs fate calling his conduct reprehensible. Dickie Scruggs will serve five years in federal prison and pay a $250K fine. Before sentencing, Scruggs told the judge, "I could not be more ashamed to be where I am today. I realized I was getting mixed up in it and I will go to my grave wondering why. I have disappointed everyone in my life - my wife, family and friends here to support me today. I deeply regret my conduct. It is a scar and a stain on my soul."

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday. The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had...

Agrees To Testify Against Cheney About PlameSo much for Scott McClellan's claims to move beyond the partisanship of Washington. The former White House Press Secretary has agreed to tesify about the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity before Democratic Rep. John Conyers' House Judiciary Committee. Sadly, it now appears that Scott is less of "useful idiot" than a closet liberal. The Associated Press identifies McClellan's legal team as Michael and Jane Tigar. Michal Tigar represented terrorist sympathizer lawyer Lynne Stewart, who served prison time after being convicted of assisting her client Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, also known as "The Blind Sheikh." Rahman...

Alton attorney Emert Wyss thought he could make money in a Madison County class action lawsuit, but he accidentally sued himself instead. Now he has four law firms after his money - and he hired all four. Wyss’s boomerang litigation started in 2002, when he invited Carmelita McLaughlin to his office at 1600 Washington St. in Alton. Acting as her attorney when she bought a home in Alton and when she refinanced it, on both occasions she had chosen Centerre Title--a company that Wyss owned--to close her loans. In the course of the attorney-client relationship, Wyss advised McLaughlin she might...

Thompson says You don't know Jack Jack Thompson, the infamous attorney that has been a factor in multiple anti-video game lawsuits, reportedly walked out of a hearing before the Florida Bar Association today. Thompson’s hearing went on without him and the Florida Bar Association recommended Thompson be disciplined with an “enhanced disbarment” stipulating that Thompson can’t apply to practice law again for a decade. ***** Thompson filed a massive and rambling 14 page document he titled “Thompson’s Formal Objection to June 4 Sanctions “Hearing””. Thompson points out in the opening lines of his objections that, “I depart from the traditional...

Greg Craig: Obama's Next Thorn http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26816 He defended John Hinkley, Jr. after the latter’s attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. He defended former Bolivian Defense Minister Carlos Sanchez-Berzain, a human rights violator accused of 67 deaths. He was a “personal attorney” for Kofi Annan in the UN Oil for Food scandal and he provided “special counsel” to Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial. Currently, high powered attorney Greg Craig of the DC-based Williams and Connolly law firm, is defending Pedro Miguel Gonzales, President of the Panamanian legislature, accused of murdering U.S. Army Sgt. Zak Hernandez. And he’s a senior foreign...

The proposed Patent Reform Act of 2007 will be coming up for a vote in the Senate in a few months. A similar version of the bill has already passed in the House. The bill has certain relatively benign provisions, but let's ignore them since they just cloud the argument and are of little interest to either side in the debate. Let's instead just cut to the chase. In lay terms, the bill makes it easier to challenge issued patents and harder for patent holders to obtain compensation through the U.S. legal system. Regardless of how that sounds to you,...

Women lawyers might have more opportunities to get into a law firm but they remain less likely to be promoted to partner, according to a U.S. study. Researchers from the University of Iowa found women who practiced in a firm for five or more years were 13 percent less likely than men to make partner -- even if their qualifications were equal and regardless of whether they had children. The study was based on data collected from two groups of Michigan Law School graduates -- the classes of 1972-78 and 1979-85 -- who completed surveys one year, five years and...

A Texas appeals court has scrapped a $26 million verdict against the drugmaker Merck stemming from the first trial involving its once popular painkiller Vioxx.

WASHINGTON - A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully restore the two states as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers. Democratic National Committee rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, the party's legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo. The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 members of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee, which plans to meet Saturday at a Washington hotel. The committee is considering ways to include the two...

Dear Friends,  I ran into the article below and think it offers some great insights into key differences in perspectives of leaders in the Republican and Democratic parties. I have great respect for many lawyers and consider them to be personal heroes. Justice Richard Sanders on our state Supreme Court, who swore me in as a state representative the first time and is a consistent defender of individual rights, comes to mind; Judge Richard Eaton, who as my merit badge counselor for Citizenship in the Nation back in 7th grade taught me much about our Declaration of Independence and fundamental...

snip- For decades, malpractice lawyers and insurers have counseled doctors and hospitals to “deny and defend.” Many still warn clients that any admission of fault, or even expression of regret, is likely to invite litigation and imperil careers. But with providers choking on malpractice costs and consumers demanding action against medical errors, a handful of prominent academic medical centers, like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, are trying a disarming approach. By promptly disclosing medical errors and offering earnest apologies and fair compensation, they hope to restore integrity to dealings with patients, make it easier to learn from mistakes and dilute anger...

An Arlington attorney was arrested and accused of soliciting a minor for sex on the Internet. Ronald Cohen, 57, was arrested Thursday and charged with soliciting sex on the Internet with a girl under the age of 15, but the girl was really a police officer. "They decided that they would set up a meeting. Mr. Cohen went through with the meeting and that's where he was met with detectives and state troopers," said Crystal Nosal, of the Arlington County Police. Cohen is a prominent attorney in Arlington, working largely in real estate. He is one of five directors of...

The fraudulent nature of many legal cases alleging damage from exposure to asbestos, long documented in legal and other publications, was officially confirmed to the world by a savvy federal judge in Texas three years ago. However, if allegations in a new report are true, similar rip-offs are still being tried. The most disheartening thing about the report, “Trial Lawyers Inc. Asbestos,” fifth in a series from the Manhattan Institute, is that the reader can count on the fingers of one hand the number of doctors and lawyers who have been punished for abusing the system. A federal grand jury...

ALBANY — Hundreds of lawyers across the state have been illegally granted state pension benefits by school districts, towns and other governmental entities, according to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who has opened an investigation into the abuses. The problems stretch back decades and may have cost the state millions of dollars in pension payments, Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Thursday, where he announced settlements involving lawyers at firms in Buffalo and Albany. Many of the cases involve politically connected lawyers who work as independent contractors for regional school districts but are classified by the regional officials...

A posh pet shop that has peddled dogs to Paris and Britney is headed to court over some sick puppies. A fraud and false advertising lawsuit against Pets of Bel Air claims animals the store said were from private breeders actually came from puppy mills and were less than healthy and hardy.

Priya Venkatesan ‘90, a former Writing 5 lecturer and research associate at Dartmouth Medical School, is threatening to name seven of her former students in a potential civil rights lawsuit against the College, DMS and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Venkatesan announced Friday. Venkatesan also plans to write an autobiographical book that will include details of her experience at Dartmouth and name the seven students in question, all of whom were members of her Winter term Writing 5 class in 2008, she said.

The state has agreed to give 21 families of the Virginia Tech massacre $11 million in blood money to avoid lawsuits that would attempt to assign responsibility to anyone other than the lone nut job. This reflects the grievance-minded culture of the day and unscrupulous lawyers ever willing to sue businesses, institutions and private citizens over the flimsiest reasons. People are killed each day, each loss of life as painful as the next, none more financially worthy than the next, unless apparently you are related to one of the 32 dead and 24 wounded on the Blacksburg, Va., campus. Then...

Citing numerous instances of professional misconduct, the State Bar of Texas this month suspended local civil rights attorney James Myart Jr., a once acid-tongued critic of law enforcement who in recent months has fallen conspicuously silent. The three-year suspension, beginning May 1, will commence about three weeks before Myart, 54, is scheduled to face trial in state district court on an unrelated charge of aggravated perjury. On Oct. 31, he'll be placed on probation for 30 months. Myart agreed April 1 to the judgment, which marks the fourth time in less than a decade that the association has sanctioned the...

BALTIMORE - A federal judge in Baltimore ordered Westboro Baptist Church members to post their church building and nearly $500,000 more in cash and property while appealing a judgment for protesting a Marine’s funeral. The Kansas church members had hoped to avoid posting a bond while delaying payments in the $5 million judgment a jury awarded Albert Snyder, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder who died in Iraq. Westboro church members preach that God kills American soldiers as punishment for the country’s tolerance of homosexuality. They protested Matthew Snyder’s Westminster funeral in March 2006 by waving signs...

Kathleen Seidel is a New Hampshire mother of two. She runs a blog, Neurodiversity.com, about autism--a topic of special interest to her as one of her children had an "autistic spectrum diagnosis." There is a theory that thimerosal, a preservative formerly used in vaccines, causes autism. Seidel has written skeptically of that theory, and of the trial lawyers who have sought to cash in on it.

A western Pennsylvania couple has sued Google Inc., saying pictures of their home that appear on the Web site's "Street View" feature violated their privacy, devalued their property and caused them mental suffering. **snip** The couple's attorney, Dennis Moskal, said that is not the point. He said the Borings' privacy was invaded when the Google vehicle allegedly drove onto their property. Removing the image does not undo that damage — nor will it deter the company from doing the same thing in the future, he said. "Isn't litigation the only way to change a big business' conduct with the public?"...

Foes of lawsuit abuse have been writing gleefully about the fall of Dickie Scruggs, Bill Lerach and Melvyn Weiss. All three lawyers are likely to spend time in jail for plotting to bribe a judge (Scruggs) or paying kickbacks (Lerach and Weiss). Good riddance. Locking them up will stop them from further damaging America – at least for a few years. But it's a small victory for reformers. New members of the parasite circus will just step forward to take their place. And what these aggressive class-action and securities lawyers do legally is more damaging to America than the crimes...

Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs has a gentlemanly demeanor seemingly at odds with his profession as a take-no-prisoners trial litigator. A decade ago, the Mississippi native was riding high. Nobody in the plaintiffs' bar struck as much fear in the hearts of the nation's tobacco manufacturers as he. Now his career appears over, a casualty of scandal, though not of the sort that recently felled securities-industry scourge William Lerach. This March 14, Scruggs, along with his Oxford, Miss. law firm partner, Sidney Backstrom, pleaded guilty in federal court to bribery charges. According to the indictment, the pair, along with three other...

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States.  I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights.  I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead.  I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select.  It likely depends upon the serendipity of...

Ashfield (MA) lawyer Stewart 'Buz' Eisenberg visits Guantanamo Bay every 10 weeks. He refers to the base's prison, which now holds about 275 terror suspects, as 'hell's lobby.' For the past three years, Eisenberg has represented several Guantanamo detainees, men suspected of being terrorists or having knowledge of terrorist activities. His clients have spent four to six years, and counting, in isolated cells at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. All three have been declared 'no longer enemy combatants' by the U.S. government, which means, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, they 'no longer pose a significant threat.' But...

Doctors (A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000. (B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000. (C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171. Statistics courtesy of U.S.Dept of Health Human Services. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Now think about this: Guns (A) The number of gun owners in the U.S is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)

The title is from a song by Warren Zevon, I’d always heard the line as a telegram from a banana republic in crisis, and that the whole line was, “Send lawyers, guns and money; all Hell has broken loose.” Still, this is a column about lawyers that is favorable, and kind. This morning, a lawyer I’ve known all my life invited me to go to the beginning of the session of the Superior Court in Sylva, the seat of Jackson County. (For those unfamiliar with that town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, many of the late scenes in “My Fellow...

Woman sues casinos over gambling problem As a young lawyer, Arelia Margarita Taveras made a name for herself representing the families of victims of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in New York City's borough of Queens in November 2001, killing 265 people. She had 400 clients and earned $500,000 a year. She appeared on TV and radio to discuss legal issues, and wrote a book titled "The Gangsta Girls' Guide To Child Support." In 2000, the New York Daily News named her one of "21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century." As an escape from the seven-day-a-week...

WASHINGTON - Robert Levy has never owned a handgun and has no burning desire to own one now. He hasn't been a Washington resident since he was a teen in the 1950s. But for six years, the wealthy attorney has carefully plotted a legal challenge to Washington's strict ban on handgun ownership, a case now before the Supreme Court. The Florida resident helped hand-pick the plaintiffs involved and is paying the legal fees himself. Why all the effort? Levy says he is driven to defend constitutional rights he believes are being trampled by the District of Columbia's strict ban on...

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.) Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Benson, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer. The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but...

I went to law school in my late twenties because as a child of a blue collar worker, the law still held the allure of respect, riches, and opportunity that I would never have gotten as a teacher or insurance salesman. Law, Medicine, and Education back in those days were the automatic tickets to professional validation and upward mobility. I think one of those professions took a huge step backwards this week and not for what you may think. People go to law school for a variety of reasons but one of them is not because they couldn't be hair...

The thing is, Eliot Spitzer is a crook. I’m not referring to the current prostitution scandal. I’m not referring to the scandal last year involving his senior aides and the leaking of confidential police information to the Albany Times Union. I’m not referring to the threatening phone call he made to the august John Whitehead, retired head of Goldman Sachs, who had the temerity to question a case Spitzer was building against an old friend of Whitehead’s. I’m referring to his conduct dating back to 1994, when he designed a complex scheme involving loans and real estate and collateralized apartments to evade...

Attorney-Client Privelege Kept Them From Speaking Up Before Man Spent 26 Years In Prison Alton Logan has spent the last 26 years in jail on a murder conviction that's now being called into question. Two local attorneys kept a secret for more than a quarter of a century. They knew about a wrongful conviction, but could not say anything. CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker reports they finally told their story on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, and went to court Monday. Alton Logan has spent 26 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. In 1983 he was wrongly convicted of...

You get the feeling Michelle Obama is never going to be boring to cover. (See here, here, here and here.) Hot Air and JammieWearingFool already noted the most eye-opening comment from Mrs. Obama... Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are...

KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- Most students are excited to get their high school diploma, but a former student at Sissonville High is suing the Kanawha County School Board for letting him graduate. Now the state Supreme Court has decided to hear the case. Thomas Sturm's attorney says Sturm shouldn't have graduated because he still reads on a third grade level. The school board's attorneys say Sturm had an individualized education plan, and neither he nor his parents filed any complaints while he was in school. “IEPs are developed and formulated and put in place anytime the parent would have...

Trial lawyers contend America isn't sue crazy, the mountain of irrefutable contrary evidence notwithstanding, and those who criticize the bar are un-American. Our system of laws and courts, they say, is open to all who seek "justice" (a third of which goes to the trial lawyers) for harm caused by negligence. Our favorite rejoinder was penned by attorney Norman Pattis in 2005: "Each year the bar belches forth a new class of lawyers; we add them faster than they die off. Lawyers need cases or controversies to survive. As the number of lawyers grows, plaintiffs' lawyers reach ever deeper into...

The nation's mortgage crisis is one of the best things that ever happened to law firms. Many of them are lawyering up as the flood of foreclosures rises to record levels. "Attorneys who work in this specialized area of legal representation are very busy, as one might expect," said Alberta E. Hultman, executive director of the U.S. Foreclosure Network, a Tustin, Calif., association of foreclosure lawyers and trustee companies. RDManley Inc., a Palos Heights, Ill., consulting company that helps lawyers set up law practices, said one of its firms started handling foreclosure cases in May 2006. Its business is thriving...

Sarah Weddington will forever be known as the lead attorney in the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case that allowed virtually unlimited abortions. As she prepares for a speaking engagement in Canada, she told a newspaper that nothing in her legal career tops her involvement in that decision. Weddington was only 26-years-old when she went to the Supreme Court in 1971 to argue the case that would eventually topple pro-life laws nationwide two years later. She tells the Vancouver Sun newspaper that, decades later, she can find nothing in her career or life that she realizes she will be...

Waxman Regrets Hearing Was HeldBy DUFF WILSON and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT Published: February 15, 2008 WASHINGTON — A day after a dramatic, nationally televised hearing that pitted Roger Clemens against his former personal trainer and Democrats against Republicans, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Thursday that he regretted holding the hearing in the first place. The chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said the four-hour hearing unnecessarily embarrassed Clemens, who he thought did not tell the truth, as well as the trainer, Brian McNamee, who he thought was unfairly attacked by committee Republicans....

LOS ANGELES – Famed San Diego class-action attorney William Lerach, a former partner at a prestigious New York law firm, was sentenced Monday to two years in federal prison for his role in a lucrative kickback scheme involving class-action lawsuits against some of the nation's biggest corporations. Lerach, 61, was also sentenced to two years probation, fined $250,000 and ordered to complete 1,000 hours of community service. “This whole conspiracy corrupted the law firm and it corrupted it in the most evil way,” U.S. District Judge John Walter said during the hearing. Authorities said Lerach's former firm, now known as...

Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The arguments, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, strike at the heart of a lawsuit filed on behalf of veterans that claims the health care system for returning troops provides little recourse when the government rejects their medical claims. The Department of Veterans Affairs is making progress in increasing its staffing and screening veterans for combat-related stress, Justice Department lawyers said. But their...

Twenty of the top 100 highest-grossing U.S. law firms are billing as much as $700 dollars per hour for climate change work that ranges from lobbying Congress to helping clients finance clean-energy projects, according to Bloomberg. And the move into climate-change law is gaining traction as Congress considers mandatory GHG caps.Baker & McKenzie, a Chicago-based firm with over 3,300 lawyers, pioneered a climate-change group ten years ago. The team of 60 lawyers brought in an estimated revenue of $15 to $20 million in 2007, said Richard Saines, who heads the US part of the practice.

February 2, 2008 -- Might terror-coddling attorney Lynne Stewart get her just deserts after all? It is to be hoped. A three-judge federal appeals panel heard arguments Tuesday from prosecutors seeking a harsher sentence for Stewart, who was given just 28 months in prison in 2006 for smuggling dispatches to and from her terrorist-mastermind client. She could have gotten 30 years. Nevertheless, District Judge John Koeltl decided that Stewart had performed "a public service . . . to the nation" in representing "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman - regardless of any, well . . . overzealousness in his cause.

Theodore Olson has been a hard-core supporter of Rudolph Giuliani -- but last week he wasted little time. Just 36 hours after Giuliani announced he was dropping out of the race, Olson, the chairman of Giuliani's justice advisory committee, had already jumped to John McCain. "I am disappointed that Rudy's campaign was not more successful, but I am proud to join him in endorsing, in the strongest possible way, the McCain candidacy," Olson says. Giuliani's campaign lined up the top players in GOP legal circles. Despite his relatively liberal New York credentials, Giuliani was feted by the Federalist Society and...

The ABC network said on Monday it will go ahead with plans to air an episode of its new legal drama "Eli Stone" despite objections from pediatricians who say the show may discourage parents from having their children immunized. The debut episode features the show's title character and hero, a trial lawyer for big corporations who decides to fight for the little guy, convincing a jury that a mercury-based preservative in a vaccine caused a child's autism. On the show, a jury awards the boy's mother $5.2 million in damages after it is revealed the CEO of the vaccine maker...

John McCain is earning more establishment endorsements these days, but prominent Republican lawyers -- a big part of that Capital "E" Establishment --, for the most part, are briefing someone else: Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Antonin Scalia and a former chief lawyer for the labor department, has been neutral in the presidential race until today. He's now aboard Lawyers for Romney, and joining him are about a dozen prominent Republican lawyers who, until Monday, had been supporters of Fred Thompson.

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- Marty Ummel believes she paid too much for her house. So do millions of other people who bought at the peak of the housing boom. What makes Ummel different is that she is suing her agent, saying it was all his fault. Ummel claims that the agent hid the information that similar homes in the neighborhood were selling for less because he feared she would back out and he would lose his $30,000 commission. Real estate lawyers and brokers say the case, which goes to trial in North County Superior Court on Monday, is likely to be...

Court Case Could Alter Nev. Outcome 2008-01-16 21:31:48 By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY Associated Press Writer LAS VEGAS (AP) — A last-minute federal court battle over caucus rules demonstrates just how important a tight three-way Democratic presidential contest in Nevada has become in the battle for momentum headed into Super Tuesday's votes. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a statistical dead heat in polling here before Saturday's caucuses. And Nevada's sizable blocs of Hispanic, union and urban voters could provide an indicator of where the race is headed on Feb. 5, when hundreds of delegates will be awarded...