I’ve been here since 1977, and they want more money! It’s about ‘My Rent is Too Damn Low.’
Maybe the landlord doesn’t know, but he can’t bulldog me because I know the law.
— Jimmy McMillan, of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, commenting on the attempt to evict him from his rent-controlled apartment. The case is pending in Housing Court.
Judge Carlton Vines presides over traffic violations and DUIs in Chattooga County, Georgia. It’s a tiny county with a population of just over 25,000. The local newspaper, The Summerville News, has an ongoing investigative series examining the county’s drunk-driving phenomenon and growing number of DUI arrests.
Unfortunately, Judge Vines has become a part of the phenomenon. He was arrested in November of last year for driving drunk and leaving the scene of an accident after swerving into another car. The coppers just released the dash-cam video from the arrest. The man was trashed, slurring, and stumbling… though still cogent enough to refuse the breathalyzer.
From WBS TV:
Vines pleaded guilty to DUI charges in April. He has since spent three nights in jail, paid fines, done community service and was on house arrest.
On the tape, Vines can be heard admitting he has had “over the limit.” At one point on the tape, an officer asks, “Do you remember the wreck you were involved in?” Vines can be heard responding, “I’m not going to admit or deny it but I will take responsibility.”
A nolo plea — or just good drunken logic? Vines is under voluntary suspension, and the Georgia State Judicial Commission gets to decide whether he returns to the bench.
Judge Vines makes some bizarre comment about sharecropping at the end of the YouTube video. Can someone from rural Georgia please explain?
Caught On Tape: Georgia Judge Arrested For DUI [WSB TV]
Drunk Judge Arrested [YouTube.com]
Oh how the mighty have fallen. From the Miami Herald:
A Boston defense attorney once dubbed one of People Magazine’s Most Eligible bachelors was arrested for allegedly drugging and raping a college student he met at a Miami Beach nightclub.
Gary Zerola — already facing trial in two sexual attacks in Boston — was arrested last Friday night and booked into Miami-Dade County jail. Miami Beach police charged Zerola, 36, with sexual battery.
Once known for his work on behalf of foster children, Zerola was also a candidate to star in the first season of ABC’s reality hit The Bachelor,” according to Boston media reports.
More discussion, plus a photo of the handsome defendant, after the jump.
Continue reading “Most Eligible Bachelor Becomes Considerably Less Eligible”
If you’re driving 100 miles per hour, but in a hybrid vehicle, can you still get pulled over? Unfortunately for Al Gore III, yes. From Reuters:
The 24-year-old son of former Vice President Al Gore was arrested for drug possession on Wednesday after he was stopped for speeding in his hybrid Toyota Prius, a sheriff’s official said.
Al Gore III — whose father is a leading advocate of policies to fight global warming — was driving his environmentally friendly car at about 100 miles per hour on a freeway south of Los Angeles when he was pulled over by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at about 2:15 a.m.
Speed limits suck. Why can’t we institute a system of “speeding offsets,” like the market for carbon offsets? Grandmothers in Boca Raton, who consistently drive 10 miles under the speed limit, could supplement their incomes by selling the right to speed. Who needs Social Security?
After the traffic stop, things only got worse for young Al. From the New York Daily News:
Deputies then searched the car, and Gore faced an inconvenient truth when they allegedly found a small amount of pot and mind-altering pills – Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall.
“He does not have a prescription for any of those drugs,” [a sheriff's spokesman] said.
Finally, we loved this little detail:
Al the 3rd lives in Los Angeles and works for GOOD magazine, which describes itself as “media for people who give a damn.”
If this arrest is BAD for Al’s career at GOOD, we hear they’re accepting résumés over at High Times.
Al Gore’s son busted for drugs in hybrid car [Reuters]
He’s our li’l eco-maniac! [New York Daily News]
Al Gore’s Son Busted! [TMZ via Jezebel]
Is this case proof that you shouldn’t do your own taxes? Even if you’re a tax lawyer, who previously worked for the IRS?
(Also, we like the detail that the petitioner wife operated a business known as “Nature’s Touch.” And no, it was not a massage parlor.)
Tax Court: Attorney In IRS’s Office of Chief Counsel Underreported Income and Overstated Deductions [TaxProf Blog]
LeBloch v. Commissioner [U.S. Tax Court]
A legal writing teacher who can’t spell? From the St. Petersburg Times (gavel bang: Paul Caron):
In 2004, the woman who would become legal writing director at Florida A&M University’s law school posted a working paper online so legal scholars nationwide could see her work.
The subject was heady: environmental dispute resolution.
But Victoria Dawson’s paper was so riddled with grammatical errors and mangled writing that some FAMU law students are now using it to help build a case that Dawson is not qualified to teach and was hired primarily on the strength of her personal ties.
Here’s an excerpt from Dawson’s magnum opus:
Continue reading “Law Professor of the Day: Victoria Dawson”
He’s not a judge yet, so we can’t bestow our coveted Judge of the Day award upon him. But he has secured the Democratic nomination for a judgeship, in Philadelphia — which means he has a decent shot of being elected.
Then again, whether Willie Singletary gets elected to the bench may depend upon how much the electorate appreciates irony. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Willie Singletary won a Democratic nomination for Traffic Court last week despite being a scofflaw of major proportions.
As of primary day, Singletary, 26, owed $11,427.50 for 55 violations, including reckless driving, driving without a license, careless driving, driving without registration, and driving without insurance.
In fact, a bench warrant had been issued for his arrest – a fact made public after the election by Bernard Strain, who lost in the Democratic primary for Traffic Court but who won a Republican nomination.
A little more discussion, after the jump.
One of you posted this in the comments, and we subsequently verified it with sources at the firm. Late last week, this announcement was made internally at Sullivan & Cromwell:
I am pleased to announce that Vince DiBlasi, Andrew Gerlach, Tracy Richelle High, Jessica Klein, Keith Pagnani, Melissa Sawyer, Karen Seymour, and Fred Rich, as Chair, have agreed to serve on a new working group focusing on the recruiting process and the associate experience. The group has been charged with looking at all aspects of our recruiting strategy and process, and, in conjunction with the Associate Development Committee, our approach to associate career development and every aspect of the associate experience at the firm.
We have no higher priority than continuing to attract the most promising law students, and then to provide them, and all our current lawyers, with training, professional opportunities and an overall experience that is second to none. I would be grateful if each of you would share your own ideas and suggestions with any member of this group.
Rodgin Cohen
Some of you will accuse us of seeing everything through an Aaron Charney lens, but we’ll pose the question anyway: Could this be a response to the public relations fallout from Charney v. S&C?
As for the composition of the working group, we have to ask: What’s up with the half measures, Rodge? If you want to put S&C’s best, jack-booted foot forward, why not throw Krautheimer and Korry on it too?
If you have any suggestions for the S&C committee, please offer them in the comments. We recommend weekly Leni Riefenstahl screenings to improve associate morale.
(The timing couldn’t be better — there’s a Riefenstahl renaissance afoot.)
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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