We wrote earlier today about Brian Schroeder’s Halloween misadventures. On the morning of October 31, the Harvard Law ’09 grad set fire to a chapel housing the remains of unidentified 9/11 victims. He turned himself in that evening.
Sidley Austin has responded to our inquiry regarding Schroeder, who had summered with the firm in 2008. The firm says it officially rescinded Schroeder’s job offer today.
Many have written to us about Schroeder, expressing surprise that he would do something like this. A collection of comments, after the jump.
Continue reading “Sidley Austin Rescinds Brian Schroeder’s Job Offer”
At first blush, the judgment awarded to the parents of a fallen baseball player is enough to make a tort reformer vomit. The Helena Independent Record reports (gavel bang: Overlawyered):
After 12 hours of deliberation, a jury sided with the parents of former Miles City American Legion baseball pitcher Brandon Patch in a civil suit over the player’s death during a 2003 game in Helena.
Aluminum bat maker Hillerich & Bradsby Co. failed to provide adequate warning as to the dangers of the bat used by a Helena Senators player during the game, at least eight of the 12 Lewis and Clark County jurors agreed Wednesday.
Hillerich & Bradsby Co. was ordered to pay $792,000 to Patch’s estate, which is represented by his mother, Debbie Patch, who filed the suit.
The jury felt the bat makers should have had some kind of warning about the dangers of batted balls at high speeds.
Seriously? On first blush, this verdict makes me want to hunt down jury members, scream “warning, terrible judgments could result in you getting hit with a bat,” and play pepper using their eyeballs.
But in my homicidal fantasy, I’m hitting eyeball grounders with a wooden bat, not an aluminum one. Are aluminum bats different, in a way that might partially explain the verdict?
More details after the jump.
Continue reading “Do Baseball Bats Need Warning Labels?”
Happy belated Halloween, ATL readers. We hope your holidays were fun and free of criminal activity.
Over 2,000 people checked in over the weekend to vote in our caption contest. The winner after the jump.
Continue reading “ATL Caption Contest Winner: Spooky Services”
Trick-or-treaters can get into serious trouble on Halloween. Especially if their Halloween activities involve arson. Or blackface. Or guns.
A student at BYU Law School donned a costume last week that was police-raid worthy. From the Salt Lake Tribune:
When Attorney General Mark Shurtleff spoke at a BYU Law School criminal procedures class Thursday, one law student came to class dressed in full SWAT gear, including an armor belt, and some students said he had carried a gun on campus, although they weren’t sure it was real.
Yeah, that’s probably taking All Saints’ Day Eve a little too far.
Continue reading “Law Student of the Day: Bad Idea Costume”
* John O’Quinn, the legendary personal injury attorney killed in a car accident last week, had over 800 cars worth more than $100 million. What happens to them now? [United Press International]
* Can political connections help Florida attorney Scott Rothstein stay out of trouble? [Miami Herald]
* Judge decides Anna Nicole Smith’s boyfriend and doctors will be tried in her drug overdose death of two years ago. [Los Angeles Times]
* Washington bans Kenya’s attorney general from traveling to the U.S. [Reuters]
* Eric Holder keeps secrets. [Bloomberg]
* The New York Times reviews Ford County, John Grisham’s new book of short stories, and gives it the thumbs up. [New York Times]
* As we noted last week, you can read one of Grisham’s stories without buying the book. [Daily Beast]
Delaying start dates for incoming associates may have another downside: leaving them with nothing to do but get into trouble.
Brian Schroeder has an impressive résumé. The Texan graduated from Duke in 2005, having majored in theater studies, and went on to Harvard Law School. There, he was an editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review and a co-president of Lambda, an LGBT student group. He also took part in Parody, the HLS comedy show (which Elie was involved in during his time at Harvard Law).
After taking a year off to travel around Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe, he graduated from HLS this spring and moved to New York for a Biglaw job. He was supposed to start at Sidley Austin. [Update: Tipsters say Schroeder had taken the Sidley deferral package and was doing pro bono work.]
On Friday at 6:31 p.m., Schroeder’s Facebook status read, “Brian Schroeder is all tattooed and ready to go.” He included a link to these tattooed self portraits.
That night, Schroeder got very drunk and got up to some serious trouble on the morning of October 31. Yesterday a friend wrote on his wall:
“I totally just read this article that someone with your name and age set a fire…just a coincidence huh?!”
Unfortunately, it’s not a coincidence.
Continue reading “Harvard Law Grad Sets Fire to 9/11 Chapel (and His Future Legal Career?)”
Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks, which has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.
Last week we wrote that jobless claims were higher than expected and that predicting anything with any degree of confidence seemed pointless. This week, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits was lower than expected, the lowest levels in seven months, and that was before announcement that benefits will be extended again. Still, the best that can be said is that the cuts are slowing:
Companies are cutting fewer jobs as they see more evidence of a recovery, helped by government stimulus efforts and less weakness in housing and manufacturing. While a separate report today showed the economy expanded for the first time in more than a year, a rebound in hiring may take longer to materialize
So while things bounced around unpredictably in the broader market, we had two notable announcements in law-firm innovations this week. We’ll cut right to them after the jump.
Continue reading “This Week in Layoffs: 11.01.09″
