Okay, she didn’t quite say that. But, for the record, the woman accused of groping Santa Clause denies the allegations, claiming that she never ever sat on his lap:
“I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know if he was confused, it was a false report,” Sandrama Lamy, 33, said this morning.
Lamy said she was window shopping at the mall Saturday with a friend when she decided to get a picture with a man playing Santa Claus.
A woman — apparently working with the mall Santa — made a comment after the picture was snapped, Lamy said.
“I did not sit on his lap. A woman there said ‘Be careful, that’s my husband.’ I said ‘What does that have to do with the picture?’” Lamy said. “That’s all I said, and I left.”…
“Why would I do this? There were so many people there. If he (Santa) needed a few extra bucks I would have given it to him,” Lamy said. “I’ve never been involved in a crime or anything. This is shocking to me.”
Selected amusing comments from readers of the Danbury News-Times, after the jump.
A 33-year-old woman was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault Saturday after allegedly groping a man playing Santa Claus at the Danbury Fair mall.
Sandrama Lamy, 33, of Danbury, is charged with fourth-degree sexual assault, according to Danbury Detective Lt. Thomas Michael.
She sounds like a total…. ho ho ho.
Details leading up to the alleged fondling are sketchy. “I don’t know what the deal was. It was just bizarre,” the mall Santa told a reporter…
The mall Santa told police that Lamy touched him inappropriately while sitting on his lap. “The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted,” Michael said.
Put Ms. Lamy on the “naughty” side of the ledger.
2007 has not been a great year for mall Santas. Earlier this month in Missoula, Mont., a mall Santa was assaulted with a pumpkin pie. Meanwhile, a department store Santa in Australia claims he lost his job earlier this month because he said “Ho, ho, ho.” (His bosses had asked him to say “Hi, hi, hi.”)
“Santa Tim” Connaghan is the president of RealSantas.com and teaches hundreds of people a year how to be Santas. He said the Danbury Fair mall incident, if true, is one of kind. Santas usually have to worry about kids tugging beards and teens throwing pennies from the mall rafters.
“I’ve had some very nice ladies sit on my lap,” Connaghan said.
As regular ATL readers will recall, Judge Samuel B. Kent (S.D. Texas) is currently on leave from the bench (although still collecting his $165,200 salary). The Fifth Circuit suspended him after allegations of what it described as sexual harassment.
But Judge Kent’s troubles may not be over yet. From the Galveston County Daily News (via How Appealing):
A woman who has accused U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent of unwanted sexual touching will have her case reheard by a disciplinary panel of the 5th Judicial Circuit, her attorney, Rusty Hardin, said late Monday.
Late that afternoon, Hardin gave the panel summaries of interviews his team did of 20 people who have had contact with Kent. Hardin claims those interviews show that Kent has misbehaved toward women since shortly after he was named to the federal bench in Galveston in the early 1990s.
Hardin said he and his client are asking that the panel refer the matter to the Judicial Council of the United States with a recommendation that Kent be impeached.
Additional discussion, plus a reader poll, after the jump.
Statutory interpretation is fun! Check out this wacky fact pattern, perfect fodder for a criminal law final exam, from Court TV News (via Blogonaut):
In a 5-0 ruling, the [South Dakota Supreme Court] overturned the conviction of Michael James Plenty Horse for indecent exposure because he didn’t attempt to arouse others when he tried to have sex with the mannequin in a dark, closed room at a YMCA in Sioux Falls, S.D.
On Nov. 14, 2005, Plenty Horse, then 19, went to the YMCA’s Alumni Room, which housed memorabilia and photos of local high school students, including a mannequin wearing a band uniform, on the second floor of the building.
Once inside the empty room, he closed the door, turned off the lights, took the mannequin over to a desk and began trying to have sex with it, according to court documents.
A security guard opened the closed door, turned on the lights and saw Plenty Horse on top of the partially undressed mannequin, his pants down and a wadded piece of paper in his hand, court documents said.
Plenty Horse immediately rolled off the mannequin and began adjusting his pants when he saw the security guard, according to the ruling. When questioned by police, he said he had not seen his girlfriend in a year.
Grounds for a temporary insanity defense? Wisely, his lawyers took a different approach:
Plenty Horse’s attorney argued throughout the legal fight that, while what the young man did with the mannequin would likely offend people, he did not “flash” his genitals “in hopes of being observed, thereby gratifying himself sexually.”
The defense succeeded in getting him off:
“Nothing establishes that his conduct was done with the specific intent to generate sexual arousal or gratification by the act of publicly exposing, displaying or offer to the public view, his genitals,” the ruling said. “Therefore, the defendant’s act, lewd though it may have been, does not fall within the purview of the indecent exposure statute.”
It seems like you can’t throw a web cam these days without hitting a lawyer trying to use the internet to sexually prey on our kids. Reference recent lawyers of the day here and here, for just a couple of examples. And remember that prosecutor in Texas that blew his head off because To Catch a Predator was coming? Well, here’s another one:
An attorney arrested in an Internet child-sex sting in the basement of the Ohio Statehouse thought he was going to meet a 15-year-old girl he had met online, authorities said.
Barry Mentser, 48, a former children’s services lawyer, was taken into custody Wednesday moments after the police officer who conducted the sting testified two floors above in favor of a bill that would increase penalties for such offenses.
Lt. Jeff Braley, a detective from Hamilton Township in Warren County in southwest Ohio, said he posed as the girl to set up a Statehouse meeting with the man.
[FOX News]
Wow, the Statehouse, really? Is that the hot hangout spot for the teenagers in Columbus? Perhaps Mentser should have been a little suspicious.
What’s the deal with all these lawyers getting busted for this? Is there something about the legal profession that drives lawyers to this in higher than usual numbers? Or do we just hear about all the lawyers that get busted because everybody hates lawyers and is looking for any excuse to ridicule them? We suspect it’s the latter, but we’re still given a little pause by it all.
A little more discussion after the jump. Attorney Seeking 15-Year-Old Girl He Met Online Arrested in Sex Sting at Ohio Statehouse [FOX News]
This “news” is from last week. But we did want to mention it briefly, just for the record, since ATL strives to be a fairly comprehensive compilation of lawyer misbehavior. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Robin Meredith “Robbie” Levin, 36, of Jonesboro is charged with felony sexual exploitation of children and misdemeanor criminal attempt to contribute to the delinquency of a minor and electronically furnishing obscene materials to a minor. He faces 10 years in prison and disbarment if convicted of the felony….
Clayton County police Chief Jeff Turner said the alleged victim is the 16-year-old daughter of an employee in the county’s Indigent Defense Administration which has assigned court-appointed cases to Levin. The girl told her mother that she’d been having sexually-explicit conversations with Levin through the Internet. Turner said the girl reported the contact because she was afraid of where it was leading.
An undercover officer took on the identity of the girl to continue conversations with Levin, Turner said. The Internet contact soon included Levin performing a sexual act through a Web cam, Turner said. Levin was arrested Tuesday when he showed up at the Steak and Shake [sic] on Mt. Zion Road in Morrow to meet the officer posing as the girl, Turner said.
It’s a surprising turn of events, considering that Levin is described as a “good guy and a great lawyer” who has “represented several high-profile cases, including a gang member accused in the July 2004 shooting death of 4-year-old Travon Wilson.” Then again, it’s not inconsistent with otherallegedactions of lawyers in the news lately.
(Also surprising: that Levin looks much better in a prison jumpsuit. Who would have thought that orange could be so flattering?) Lawyer charged with sexual exploitation of colleague’s daughter [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] Attorney Arrested for E-Mails to Teen [11Alive.com] Attorney Held in Internet Sex Case [11Alive.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.
Maximilian Cordero believes the second time is a charm — with respect to (1) a gender and (2) suing rich guys. From DealBreaker:
In the grand tradition of trying to turn the (real or imaginary) sexual assault you suffered at the hands of a creepy old guy into stocks and bonds, everyone knows you don’t start at the top of the food chain. You get a few starter suits under your belt first, THEN you go to the top. Got to walk before you can run, got to allege “he put his hand on my knee and I didn’t like it” before you allege “he jerked off into a towel while I stood there awkwardly, and I think there might’ve been a purple vibrator in there, too” (those are just for instances).
A few years ago, Maximilia née Maximilian Cordero filed a $10 million lawsuit that accused her former lawyer, Glen Gentile, of statutory rape and endangering the welfare of a minor 2002, when she was “under the age of 17” (representing Cordero was her new—at the time—boyfriend/attorney, William Unroch).
Unfortunately, the case got thrown out when the court informed Cordero (yes, it informed her) that in 2002, she was over the age of 17, and, actually almost 19. For her part, Cordero said that she was “shocked” to find out how old she was.
A former Legal Aid Society lawyer pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally using a hidden videocamera to spy on female co-workers as they changed clothes in their offices.
Peter Barta, 32, of Queens, used a camera hidden in a clock to videotape five co-workers in the public defense agency’s Manhattan offices, recording at least one woman with her breasts and buttocks bared….
Barta, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful surveillance, a felony, in exchange for a conditional discharge. The case will be dismissed and sealed after he completes a year of counseling.
When we recently wrote about the case of Cordero v. Epstein, in which model Maximilia Cordero alleges that high-profile financier Jeffrey Epstein took advantage of her when she was underage, one of you wondered: “[H]ow many of [Cordero lawyer William] Unroch’s models do you think are really trannies?”
One possible answer: at least one. Namely, Maximilia Cordero herself — who allegedly was “born Maximillian Cordero in 1983.”
Read the original Dealbreaker post, which has a wealth of other details, over here. For What It’s Worth, Jeffrey Epstein Has Been Known To Spend A Lot Of Time In Scotland [DealBreaker] Earlier: Lawsuit of the Day: Cordero v. Epstein
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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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;
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“I did not sit on his lap. A woman there said ‘Be careful, that’s my husband.’ I said ‘What does that have to do with the picture?’” Lamy said. “That’s all I said, and I left.”…
