SOPA is getting pwned. Yesterday, all the uber players with their epic gear hopped on Vent and raided the SOPA base, and now the newbie Congress people who sponsored the law are running scared. As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act have “renounced” their law. The New York Times reports that Senators and Congresspeople are abandoning this thing like it was a campaign promise.
Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, all of the big internet corporations flexed their muscles — and oh, by the way, this is what it looks like when corporations use speech for speech, as opposed to pretending that anonymous corporate campaign contributions magically count as speech.
In the wake of this victory, here’s a question: Is this what we want? Yesterday, the internet used its power for good (though I fear the movie industry will strike back by making you watch full-length Kevin James movies before you can download the next Batman preview). But what if in the future “the internet” wants something bad, something that is more than the mere protection of freedom?
Continue reading “Should We Let the Internet Make Laws?”
Rick Perry is so sad.
* Rick Perry’s primary ballot election law suit in Virginia was unsuccessful, but maybe the Fourth Circuit will help him out on appeal. Or not. At least Huntsman’s out of the race, right? [Bloomberg]
* That didn’t take too long. The National Federation of Independent Business has officially popped the cherry on filing lawsuits challenging Obama’s recess appointments. [Businessweek]
* Even if law schools changed their teaching methods to include more experiential learning opportunities, would anyone care? To that, the latest hiring patterns say: “LOL, srsly?” [National Law Journal]
* Joran van der Sloot has been sentenced to 28 years for the murder of Stephany Flores. Parents will now be able to allow their college-aged kids to spend spring break in Aruba until 2038. [CNN]
* Protip for child predators: claiming that you don’t remember pleading guilty will bring you as much success as your career in children’s balloon entertainment and law — not a lot. [Orlando Sentinel]
* The lawyers at this small firm might quality for senior citizen discount specials, but they’re working hard to put their 161 years of experience to good use. P.S. they’re hiring! [New York Times]
When I was a kid, my father leaned across the dinner table and whispered to me, “Never ask a woman’s age or weight.” He then stole a glance at my mother, who was busy shoveling mashed potatoes into her maw, and sighed. I could never tell whether my dad was trying to offer the wisdom of the ages or making a statement about the tyranny of manners, the clichés they birth, and the way in which politeness can imprison a good man in a loveless relationship that inevitably leads to you watching your 400-pound wife shovel potatoes back like she was auditioning for The Biggest Loser.
And so it was that the Internet Movie Database, aka IMDb, found itself under attack for revealing an actress’s age and “real Asian name.” Kash detailed the charges last October. A few weeks ago, we noted that the woman would have to put up (her name) or shut up (legally speaking).
Well, I don’t want to waste any more of your precious time. The grand reveal is finally here.
After the jump, pictures of an attractive Asian woman….
Continue reading “Who’s the 40-Year-Old Asian Actress Suing the Internet Movie Database for Revealing Her Age?”
* Rick Perry’s motion for a temporary restraining order over the printing of Virginia’s primary ballots without his name on them has been denied. Damn all of those unelected, activist judges! [Bloomberg]
* Jed Rakoff isn’t the only one with cojones big enough to challenge the SEC. Wisconsin Judge Rudolph Randa fell right in line, and cited the controversial Citigroup case as precedent. [New York Times]
* Looking for ways to lower your law firm’s operating expenses in 2012? Here are some suggestions for Biglaw firms. At least they deal with technology, not layoffs. [Law.com]
* Long, hard litigation: a Los Angeles city attorney would like to pull out of a ballot measure that requires porn stars to wear condoms while filming before people start suing. [Los Angeles Times]
* Do you want to think about babies when you’re being served at a strip club? Didn’t think so. This pregnant waitress is suing over being demoted, and then fired by the Hustler Club. [Gothamist]
* Grumpiest old man: at almost 100, an Italian man is set to become the world’s oldest divorcé. Hope he had a prenup (even though they probably didn’t exist back then). [Herald Sun]
* Pizza, beer, and hot chicks: what’s the problem? A lawsuit over the “hot chicks.” A former bartender says he was replaced in favor of hotties, and now he wants justice (and money). [11 Alive News]
Kim Kardashian
* Deborah Batts, the first openly gay judge to serve on the federal bench, got married this weekend. We hope she doesn’t become the first openly gay federal judge to get divorced. [New York Times]
* Things are getting hairy for Kim Kardashian, and not just because she’s Armenian. A hair removal company is suing her, saying she’s lying about how she gets all of that hair off her body. [Fox News]
* Lori David: she’s every teenage boy’s dream, and every mother’s nightmare. A hot Texas mom has been banned from the internet after sexting naked pictures to her son’s friend. [Daily Mail]
Let’s see what else the ladies are up to this morning….
Continue reading “Morning Docket: 11.15.11″
Old people are so cute. From the way they don’t understand how to use modern technology, to the way they cringe at the music of our times, it just makes you want to squeeze their wrinkly, little cheeks.
And old people in love? Well, that’s even cuter. So when we heard about a British couple in their mid-70s who had finally decided to tie the knot, it was a total cuteness overload. But all of the cuteness screeched to a halt when we found out that the loving couple’s special day had been ruined by allegedly over-amplified versions of ABBA songs.
This bride had no desire to be a “Dancing Queen,” and it wasn’t because she might’ve had to use a walker….
Continue reading “This Bride Had No Desire to Be a ‘Dancing Queen,’ So She Sued”
Robert Bork
Some lawyers can be so circumspect in speech and so careful in action that they’re just plain boring. Such caution might help you make it to the Supreme Court someday, but it’s not a recipe for a very fun life.
Thankfully, not all brilliant lawyers are afraid of speaking their minds. Take Robert Bork, the former U.S. Solicitor General and D.C. Circuit judge whose Supreme Court nomination famously went down in flames in 1987 — due in part to his loquaciousness during his confirmation hearings.
Judge Bork, now 84, is currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank. He’s not as involved in public life as he once was, but he’s not completely out of the picture. For example, he’s serving as a legal adviser to Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney (a development that some on the left have criticized).
And Judge Bork continues to make controversial pronouncements, most recently in an interview with Newsweek….
Continue reading “Borking Up a Storm: Romney’s High-Profile Legal Adviser Speaks His Mind”
It’s said that it’s rude to ask a woman her age. In fact, it’s only rude to ask women 30 and over about their digits. It’s far worse, however, to ask a woman with decades under her belt for her age and then to publish it for the world to see. An actress in Texas says it wasn’t just rude but financially costly for her when the movie database IMDB publicized her nearly over-the-hill age in 2008. Cue, Robert Murtaugh.
The Hollywood Reporter has a copy of the actress’s complaint against Amazon.com, which owns the Internet Movie Database, in which she alleges that everyone’s favorite website for figuring out who-that-guy-in-that-one-movie-was-and-what-was-that-other-movie-he-was-in-with-that-girl screwed her over after she signed up for a Pro IMDb account. After entering credit card information and personal details, including her birthdate, to start the account, her age all of a sudden appeared on her public profile page, “revealing to the public that Plaintiff is many years older than she looks,” according to her humble complaint.
Age isn’t just a number, says her counsel, “Internet lawyer” John Dozier, but a $1,075,000 number…
Continue reading “Actress To IMDb: ‘I’m Too Old For This Sh*%’”
Ribs are delicious, but try not to eat your husband's.
* With about 90 vacancies in the federal court system, the Senate approved six for judgeships, including Judge John Roll’s replacement. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* $400 per wasted hour? That’s not what you’re paying your lawyer. That’s what he’s paying in sanctions for futzing around during depositions. [Daily Business Review]
* Texas Roadhouse: old farts need not apply. Apparently qualifications for working at a chain restaurant now include being young, hot, and chipper. [Los Angeles Times]
* Friendly’s used to be the place where ice cream made the meal, but now it’s the place where ice cream makes you bankrupt. That’s just sad. [Bloomberg]
* Memo to file: the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, not yours. A former model is seeking parole after she chopped up, cooked, and ate her husband. [Daily Mail]
* Derrick Bell, law professor and racial advocate, RIP. [New York Times]
* Steve Jobs, creator of the iPhone, one of the most popular tools for lawyers, RIP. [Apple]
* Will the DOJ ask the 11th Circuit to reconsider Obamacare before appealing to SCOTUS to get the president reeelected? Does a bear sh*t in the woods? [Los Angeles Times]
* The verdict is in on Elena Kagan’s first year on the bench, and one thing’s for sure: the ladies love her. That’s definitely what she said. Right, RBG? [Washington Post]
* Casey Anthony now owes Florida over $217K. That’s almost as much as it costs to raise a child to age 18. Talk about a bad return on an investment. [CNN]
* Antonin Scalia, the Rock Star of One First Street, banned paparazzi from his Duquesne Law appearance. Tiger Beat had to settle for pictures of Taylor Lautner. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Meth dealer: not a viable career alternative for attorneys. This 2011 law school graduate will be heading to jail after she gets her bar exam results. [Richmond Times-Dispatch]
* Never accuse an elderly New Yorker of incest. She might sue, because she “was never that hard up that [she] would tap on family.” You go, girl grandma! [New York Post]
Oh Hofstra Law, you didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you? The Pride? Home of the commenter formerly known as “Hofstra 2L” (may he rest in peace)? I’m a Long Island boy, don’t ya know.
Hofstra Law School will be renamed the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, according to the New York Law Journal. For those not ankle-deep in Hofstra friends, here’s the new slang you need to know. A tipster reports: “Hofstra Law School (aka the OTHER HLS) is now the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (aka the MAD School of Law).”
Straight outta Strong Island.
But the MAD Pride isn’t the only law school to accept big dollars in exchange for naming rights. As this trend continues, you wonder if any of this money being thrown around will benefit the actual students….
Continue reading “Is Any of This Law School Naming Rights Money Going Back to the Students?”
First class is a great place for napping.
Along with all of the other passengers, according to the Washington Post. The plane reportedly experienced engine trouble.
United Airlines Flight 586 was scheduled to depart Dulles for San Francisco at 12:34 p.m. The engine problems apparently started before the plane took off. The passengers were evacuated from the smoky plane via emergency chutes and sent back to the terminal. They will board a flight scheduled to depart at 3 p.m. today.
There were reports of three injuries — but Justice Ginsburg, 78, is doing fine, according to Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe Estrada. RBG is on her way to an appearance tomorrow at the UC Hastings College of the Law.
Elie wonders: “Is this God’s way of telling RBG to retire? Things aren’t looking so great for 2012.”
UPDATE (4:40 PM): More from the Associated Press.
Justice Ginsburg aboard plane evacuated at Dulles International Airport [Washington Post]
I’m thinking again, as I did on Monday, about why lawyers go insane over time.
Years ago (long before MapQuest was even a gleam in its inventor’s eye), an older lawyer sent me directions for driving to his home. It was pretty easy to get from my apartment to his house; I had to make only three or four turns. But the directions were several typed pages long. Why?
Because this guy had been driven insane by mistakes in the past. He had told someone to turn east on a road, and the person had turned west. So now the directions eliminated that possible mistake: “Turn east (that is, turn right as you are proceeding northbound on route 1) at the light.” Someone else had missed the turn. So now the directions eliminated that possible mistake: “If you see a shopping mall followed by a McDonald’s on the right side of the road, then you have gone too far. Turn around, go back to the light, and turn east (that is, left as you are now proceeding southbound on route 1) at the light.” Having experienced all of these mistakes, the older lawyer felt compelled to help me avoid them, which made his driving directions nearly incomprehensible.
What does this have to do with being a lawyer?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Analyzing The Generational Divide”
There’s a reason why people get crotchety when they get old. People forget about things that went right in their professional lives; that’s like water off a duck. But people remember things that got screwed up; that’s what sticks in their craws.
You personally are not necessarily incompetent. But you’re tarred by the ghosts of incompetents past. When your elder — a partner, a boss, a client, whoever — asks you to do something, the boss assumes that you won’t do it. The boss doesn’t assume this because she knows that you’re irresponsible; she assumes it because the clown she asked to do something six months ago was irresponsible, and she has to hedge against you being an irresponsible clown, too.
How do you prove that you’re not irresponsible?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: The Ghosts Of Incompetents Past”
'How do I get these stupid marks to disappear from my document?'
Over the last few weeks, I’ve written about some über expensive and embarrassing examples of lawyers making technological mistakes.
Those stories involved sexily scandalous blunders, but they were relatively extreme scenarios. (If turning over thousands of privileged documents happens regularly at your firm, may God help you.)
More frequently, firm employees deal with little technological snafus that are just annoying, pointless, and a waste of time. In a world where attorneys might literally be working themselves to death, every second of the day counts. It’s when people can’t handle mundane, seriously easy computer tasks that daily tasks become inefficient and infuriating.
Keep reading for some true stories of the technologically challenged….
Continue reading “All This Techno-Ignorance Will Make Your Head Explode”
Dr. Jack Kevorkian (via Getty Images).
Jack Kevorkian was a Michigan pathologist — but the doctor spent more time in the courtroom than in the operating room. He was a frequent litigant, thanks to his central role in the national controversy over assisted suicide, whose legality he advocated.
Early this morning, “Dr. Death” died, at the age of 83. It’s telling that Kevorkian’s passing was confirmed to the media by his lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger (whose awesome website we’ve previously deconstructed). The exact cause of death was not immediately known, but Kevorkian reportedly suffered from kidney and respiratory problems.
UPDATE (10 AM): According to Mayer Morganroth, another attorney for Kevorkian, Kevorkian suffered a pulmonary thrombosis, when a blood clot in his leg broke free and moved up to his heart. Morganroth was with Kevorkian at the time of his death, according to the Detroit Free Press (via ABA Journal).
The legal system tried to stop Dr. Kevorkian from assisting in suicides for many years, without success….
Continue reading “Jack Kevorkian, aka Dr. Death, Is Dead”
Does anybody really want to see grandma in this?
I have to do something I hate doing. I have to give Gloria Allred some publicity. Sure, I have to mention her only in order to say that I think she’s wrong and using the plight of women to further her own fame. But I still have to mention her, which is what she wants. It’s a great system she’s set up for herself: she wins even when people talk about how ridiculous she is.
But I can’t ignore Allred here because now she is messing with something near and dear to my heart: scantily clad cocktail waitresses in Atlantic City. That’s right, I live on the East Coast. That means I can’t easily get to Las Vegas or New Orleans. That means occasionally I have to go get my gambling fix in A.C. If you’ve never been to Atlantic City, imagine Vegas after the apocalypse: everything is broken and rundown and more desperate-looking. It’s pathetic. And you feel pathetic while you are there (until you start hitting some points and the table gets hot and you find yourself nailing a hard ten and it feels like the whole casino gives you a high five).
One casino was doing something about that depressing ambiance. It was getting rid of all of its old cocktail waitresses. Believe me when I tell you that this is an important move. Imagine sitting in A.C. down a grand at 4 a.m. and starting to think to yourself if there is any Swingers potential and then your watered-down drink comes back only it’s brought to you by a woman old enough to be your grandmother. And so instead of trying to figure out how to have sex with the waitress, you’re sitting there kind of thinking of how your mother would disapprove if she saw you in that moment. It’s enough to make you want to kill yourself.
It’s certainly enough to make you want to stop gambling. And now along comes Gloria Allred, trying to tell people that 50-year-old cocktail waitresses at casinos are still sexy, and can’t be fired….
Continue reading “Women Are Not Sex Objects; Cocktail Waitresses, On The Other Hand….”
Maybe RBG is still very young at heart.
Here’s the question swirling through the blogosphere today: Should Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg resign now — because if she dies under a Republican president, it will be a disaster for every ideal she fights for?
The question was teed up on the WSJ Law Blog this morning after an AP report noted that some liberals were “clamoring” for her resignation (and that of Stephen Breyer, to a lesser extent), just in case Obama loses in 2012.
You can see why liberals are nervous. The Court already has a 5 – 4 conservative majority (if you really think Justice Anthony Kennedy is a “swing” vote, you’re a Republican who likes to pretend to be an independent). Justice Ginsburg has had health problems, and some are not confident that she’ll last until 2016 — and it’s unlikely that either the 78-year-old RBG or the 72-year-old Breyer would make it to 2020, if a two-term Republican president is on the horizon.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Which is why I think my answer is going to surprise people…
Continue reading “Should Ruthie Stay Or Should She Go?”
It’s been a while since we have had a good ol’ Flori-duh story. I mean, that Miami kid came up with a ridiculous student bill of rights ages ago. We’re all overdue for some Everglades antics.
We’ll need to do a Florida potpourri here, but together these two stories have everything we’ve come to expect from the Sunshine State. We’ve got randomness, violence, crime, and circumstances that would seem improbable anywhere else.
And the fact that this is happening at arguably the top law school in Florida just makes everything so much better. Pass the Tropicana and strap in, for a look at life down in Gatorville…
Continue reading “A Real Life ‘Blue’ and a Pushy Prof Spice Up Life at a Top 50 Law School”
