The power to thwart God's will is at your local drugstore.
Who’d have thunk it? These days, contraception is a hot-button issue. On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Rick Santorum thinks that Griswold was wrongly decided. Inside academia, students are challenging the refusal of one Catholic university (including its law school) to let its health centers prescribe birth control.
Getting upset over inadequate access to contraception is one thing. What about getting upset — at a Catholic law school, mind you — over a discussion of birth control? Can you imagine what kind of comments about contraception could cause a law school community to get all riled up?
Let’s look at — and argue about — the email that caused students at one top-ranked Catholic law school to get their diaphragms all scrunched up proverbial panties in a wad. Even the dean had to get involved….
Continue reading “A Contraception Controversy — and an ATL Debate”
A lesson that Matt Couloute Jr. is learning.
It’s a sad fact, but almost everyone has had the opportunity to partake in a bad romance or two. And although it may sound elegant when Lady Gaga sings about it, in real life, it can be devastating. That’s why websites like LiarsCheatersRUs were created — so that jilted lovers could have a place to unleash their angst about failed relationships caused by a lover’s supposed infidelity.
But what happens when you’re a lawyer and a scorned ex-girlfriend lets loose on the internet about your infidelities? That is apparently what happened in the case of Matthew Couloute Jr., a former prosecutor and Court TV analyst, after he allegedly cheated on Amanda Ryncarz.
Now he’s suing Ryncarz and another ex-flame, roller-derby diva Stacey Blitsch, both represented by feminazi lawyer to the wannabe stars, Gloria Allred. Thus far, we’ve kept our coverage of the drama to Morning Docket entries (here, here, and here), but now, Matt Couloute has spoken out about the situation on television.
Check out Couloute’s on-air coverage, and see pictures of the women in question, after the jump….
Continue reading “Lawyer Suing Hot Exes Over Scathing Relationship Reviews Speaks Out”
A game that nobody wants to play.
Even though serving on a jury is considered an important civic duty, people in this country seem to loathe the mere idea of being forced to do it. After all, because of jury duty, people have to miss work — hell, some people even get fired because of it.
And even though jury duty is something that is required by law, instead of just doing it, people would rather make jokes about others being too dumb to get out of it.
One judge in Indiana is well aware of that fact, and he’s on a mission to get people to serve willingly, lest they be forced to face some embarrassing consequences….
Continue reading “A Sign That You Should Always Show Up for Jury Duty”
Prosecutable hate speech in 17th-century Massachusetts included calling people “dogs,” “rogues” and even “queens” (though the last referred to prostitution); magistrates took serious umbrage at being labeled “poopes” (“dolts”).
– John McWhorter, the noted linguist, in his New York Times review this past weekend of Speaking American: A History of English in the United States.
(Additional fun facts about language and the law — specifically, facts about statutes criminalizing oral sex — after the jump.)
Continue reading “Fun Fact of the Day: Talk Dirty to Me”
Being a student at Penn State has to be about as close as you can come to being in a World War I foxhole. Their reputation is just getting bombed from all sides. Right now, kids should just be trying to keep their heads down and ride this out.
But in the PSU Law foxhole, somebody just laid an egg.
Apparently students at Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law have already been banned from a few area hotels for drunken and inappropriate behavior this fall. And now a student is throwing around a slur on the school list-serv.
It’s not happy times in Happy Valley…
Continue reading “Penn State Law Students: Now Might Not Be The Best Time To Be Getting Drunk And Calling People ‘Queer’”
If you have watched political campaigns all of your life, or if you are just a student of modern political history, you’ll notice that the poor are rarely talked about on the campaign trail. We can talk about the rich (or at least our so-called envy of them), and the middle class is like the pretty girl in school who thinks she’s well-liked but really everybody just wants to screw. But you rarely hear candidates talk anymore about any kind of national commitment or shared responsibility to help the poor and destitute. (John Edwards tried for a minute, but… see screwing analogy above.)
Our politicians apparently concern themselves with helping only those people who have “worked hard” and “played by the rules.” We have Reagan to thank for that.
But what about the “undeserving” poor? What about the lazy, the shiftless, the ignorant masses yearning to just get by? Is it right that we consign them to backbreaking poverty simply because they don’t vote and they’re easy to pick on? I went to Catholic school just long enough to learn that we’re supposed to have compassion for all of God’s children, not just the people whom it’s easy to put into a campaign commercial.
I’m just talking, of course. Other than giving a dollar to the occasional panhandler, I’m unwilling to get any skin in the game to actually help the truly disadvantaged in this country. Why? Well, I don’t want to end up getting taken advantage of, like the woman who let homeless people stay in her house for Christmas and now can’t get them to leave….
Continue reading “The Flori-duh Version of Charity Towards The Homeless”
Gregory Berry
As mentioned briefly yesterday, a New York state court judge just dismissed the celebrated lawsuit of Berry v. Kasowitz Benson. As you may recall, a former Kasowitz first-year associate named Gregory Berry, who entered the legal profession after “conquering Silicon Valley,” sued his former firm for over $77 million. In his kitchen sink of a complaint, filed pro se, Berry tossed in some 14 causes of action, including wrongful termination, fraud, and breach of contract.
It appears that Berry’s “superior legal mind” failed to impress Justice Eileen Bransten of New York Supreme Court. Ruling from the bench, she dismissed his entire case, with prejudice.
But that’s not all. Her Honor was displeased when Greg Berry walked out of her courtroom before the hearing was over, while she was still putting her ruling on the record. So later this month, he’ll have to appear before Justice Bransten again and explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt….
Continue reading “Berry v. Kasowitz Benson: Superior Legal Mind Fails to Conquer”
The blogosphere has been buzzing since we first wrote about Ice Miller attorney Courtney King’s alleged criminal activity. In case you missed our coverage, King was arrested after allegedly uttering, to the police, the words first made famous by rapper Eight Set: “Google me” (sans the “bitch”).
King, whom we recognized with Lawyer of the Day honors, was charged with alcohol intoxication, assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and terroristic threatening. She allegedly stated the following to the police, immediately prior to her arrest:
“You are going to… die. I’m a lawyer. You can Google me. You are dead. I work at a law firm in Indianapolis.”
People have quibbled over King’s attractiveness, but more importantly, they’ve speculated as to whether there was, in fact, any actual violence on King’s part leading up to her arrest. Was King overcharged? Was race a factor in her arrest? Is she on “possible probation” with the firm, or was she fired? All of this, and more, after the jump….
Continue reading “Google Me, B***h: The Real Deal on Courtney King’s Arrest”
Here at Above the Law, we know a thing or two about how lawyers should deal with the police. Incidentally, we also know how lawyers should not deal with law enforcement officers. And if you truly value your job as an attorney, it’s best not to mouth off to the cops, or to threaten them in any way, shape, or form.
But Courtney King, a rather attractive attorney with Ice Miller, apparently didn’t get the memo. Last week, after allegedly downing a few too many shots of liquid courage, King got into a stand off with police that may have iced her nascent legal career….
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: Alleged Death Threats Put Attorney on Ice”
UVA is a hell of a law school.
So, I finally caught Your Body On Drugs, the Discovery channel program narrated by Robin Williams in which scientists make people who are high on drugs perform various tasks. Frankly, I thought it would be a little bit better — like, American Gladiator, only with people on cocaine instead of steroids.
Anyway, there’s this part where the cokehead is saying cokehead things, and Robin Williams says something like “cocaine gives the users an inflated sense of self-confidence.” Then the cokehead puts together a bookshelf by balancing the wood in a general cube shape instead of actually screwing things in; it looks great but can’t actually hold any books. At the time, I thought, “Man, this is like going to UVA Law School.”
Oh, I kid, UVA Law students. But between the alleged criminal activity of current students, alleged tall tales told by former students, and all the popped collars, you gotta ask if a little humility might do the campus good?
Continue reading “Is Going To UVA Law School Like Using Cocaine?”
Sometimes silence is golden.
The executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson — who once worked as a legal journalist, for Steve Brill at the American Lawyer — recently issued A Note to Our Readers About Comments, in which she explained various changes to the Times’s commenting system. We thought we’d follow in the Gray Lady’s footsteps and announce a tweak of our own to the Above the Law comments.
Comments and online anonymity are hot topics right now, both here and abroad (e.g., India). Writer Katie Roiphe just mused about the angry anonymous commenter. Privacy lawyer Christopher Wolf recently argued, in the New York Times, that websites should “consider requiring either the use of real names (or registration with the online service) in circumstances, such as the comments section for news articles, where the benefits of anonymous posting are outweighed by the need for greater online civility.” Many Times readers disagreed, defending the value and importance of anonymous speech online.
In light of these conflicting concerns — civility, privacy, free expression — let’s turn our attention to the ATL comments….
Continue reading “A Note to Our Readers About Comments”
Of course not! But the headline got your attention, didn’t it? The notion of Judge Richard Posner as being anything other than a genius will certainly make people sit up and take notice. There’s a reason why there’s a Facebook group called Richard Posner for Philosopher King (of which I am a proud member).
It should be noted, however, that Judge Posner’s opinion in Gonzalez-Servin v. Ford Motor Co. was not 100 percent perfect. It initially contained some infelicitous wording — which has since been fixed.
Let’s look at the language that was perhaps imprecise….
UPDATE (4 PM): Additional comment from Judge Posner, added after the jump.
Continue reading “Was Judge Posner a Dodo in His Ostrich Opinion?”
As I waited for my plane to take off Sunday morning, coming back from Thanksgiving vacation, I was listening to music on my iPod. We had been waiting on the runway for 25 minutes and I was bored, tired, and roasting hot. I needed to distract myself. But then, before I knew it, it was apparently time to take off. Without warning, the stewardess came from the back of the plane, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “SIR, you have to turn it off now. SIR. SIR.”
Like I do every time I fly, I took off my headphones until the flight attendant walked away. Then I put them back on. I also never turned off my cell phone or put it in airplane mode.
You probably know this is not allowed. Airplane passengers are supposed to turn off all electronic devices for takeoff and landing.
But WHY? Is aviation safety so delicate that a few Kindles or iPads endanger hundreds of lives? I don’t think so. A New York Times article from Monday takes a look at this mysterious, anachronistic facet of America’s law of the skies….
Continue reading “Why I Refuse to Turn Off My iPod for Takeoff and Landing”
UPDATE (5 PM): Sigh. According to the Smoking Gun, the “poop tattoo” story — reported by The Sun and picked up by Drudge, among many other outlets — is full of crap. But it was fun while it lasted, no?
Some people love tattoos, other people hate them. I’m one of those “other people.” I have no idea why people would want to turn their bodies into coloring books. But if people want to permanently decorate themselves, then by all means, go right ahead.
Besides, if people weren’t so obsessed with inking their bodies, we wouldn’t have awesome lawsuits like this one to talk about. Here’s some background information before we get into the heart of this case:
Boy, a tattoo artist, meets Girl. Girl is a nerd who has a thing for Narnia. Boy and Girl fall in love. Girl decides that in addition to Narnia, she has a thing for Boy’s best friend. Girl cheats on Boy, thinking Boy is none the wiser. Girl asks Boy for a Narnia tattoo. Boy finds out Girl’s dirty secret, and begins to plot his revenge….
Continue reading “Love Hurts, Especially When Your Boyfriend Gives You a ‘Tatt-poo’”
On Thanksgiving Day, while you were enjoying your turkey (or tofurkey), we wrote about a different bird: namely, the ostrich. In a somewhat snarky opinion, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit compared a lawyer appearing before him to an ostrich: “The ostrich is a noble animal, but not a proper model for an appellate advocate. The ‘ostrich-like tactic of pretending that potentially dispositive authority against a litigant’s contention does not exist is as unprofessional as it is pointless.’”
Ouch. Judge Posner even included a photo (above right) of a man in a suit burying his head in the sand.
What did the lawyer in question, David “Mac” McKeand of Houston, have to say for himself? And what did McKeand have to say about Judge Posner?
Continue reading “A Reverse Benchslap? Chastised Lawyer Lashes Out at Judge Posner”
Welcome, William and Mary law students!
Virginia is for Lovers, not Partiers. Law students in the Old Dominion State are not as much fun as we thought they were.
We recently wrote about a law school party — called the “Fall From Grace,” aptly enough — that supposedly spiraled out of control. According to an email from the Student Bar Association (SBA) at William and Mary School of Law, the raucous event featured law students “urinating on the bathroom floor, breaking a toilet paper dispenser, knocking over a flower pot, and engaging in inappropriate behavior” at the Williamsburg Crowne Plaza. This supposedly culminated in the Crowne Plaza calling W&M Dean Davison Douglas “to inform him that the law school is no longer welcome at the hotel.”
But now we’re hearing that this incident has been overblown, and that the law school has not been banned from the high-end Holiday Inn at Fort Magruder….
Continue reading “Reports of a Law School’s ‘Fall From Grace’ Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”
I bet William and Mary Law students are still allowed to party in Colonial Williamsburg.
It’s been a while since we had a story about an entire law school student body getting banned forever from a party venue. I think maybe the last school law to have this public shame was Tulane? I know things got pretty crazy at the UC Davis Law “prom” last year, but they didn’t get banned from anywhere.
But apparently neither of these schools has anything on the law students at William and Mary. According to the school’s Student Bar Association, the conduct of the students has been so disorderly that they’re running out of places in Williamsburg willing to host law school events.
Man, I guess you can see why a lady like Laura Flippin (she of the alleged .253 BAC) is on the William and Mary Board of Visitors….
Continue reading “William and Mary Running Out of Local Places Willing To Host Law School Events”
Gun hard!
Last week, we told you about some law students who were holding tryouts — and charging a $20 application fee — to fill the final two spots in their study group.
The students in the group were roundly mocked. Charging an application fee made demanding an undergraduate transcript from applicants pale by comparison.
Now, if the school had been a place like UVA Law, the student body would have gotten defensive and lashed out about how the study group post “didn’t tell the full story.” They’d whine about how the study groupers didn’t “represent” the student body. They’d claim that ATL “planted” the poster, because we “had it in” for the school.
But some students at the Georgia State University College of Law didn’t feel the need to defend their school or the silly students in the study group. They realized that nobody would impute the toolish behavior of a few 1Ls to an entire institution.
Instead, they chose to have a bit of fun with it. Confidence and a sense of humor are beautiful things….
Continue reading “Georgia State Law Students Poke a Little Fun at Their Classmates”
Judge Maryesther Merlo. Who will play her in the movie? Suggestions welcome.
Earlier this year, we brought you the story of Judge Rae Lee Chabot, a state court judge in Michigan. Judge Chabot was accused of taking three-hour lunch breaks and long shopping trips to the Gap, in the middle of the workday.
I wrote in defense of Judge Chabot, whose judicial work was well-regarded despite her, ummm, flexible work schedule. I opined that “[a]s long as a judge is reasonably current with his docket, he should be left alone. There is no face-time requirement for judges.”
But even I would have a hard time defending the latest judicial diva under fire, Judge Maryesther Merlo of Allentown District Court in Pennsylvania. Judge Merlo — or make that ex-judge Merlo, since she just got removed from the bench — allegedly missed 116 days of work, from September 2007 to December 2009. That amounts to over 23 weeks, in a period of about two years.
And that’s not all Maryesther Merlo stands accused of. Her treatment of defendants appearing before her may have strayed beyond the merely tough into the downright rude….
Continue reading “Judge of the Day: Banned from the Bench
(Not that she spent much time on it anyway.)“
Want to join them? Bring a writing sample -- and twenty bucks.
In some imperceptible yet significant way, the experience of American legal education has reached a new low.
We all feel this. Between tuition that is out of control, deans who don’t tell the truth, and students who are willing to fight other students to the death to get jobs in a market where there aren’t enough to go around, law school feels like less of a good experience than it used to be.
And we feel that in the air even if we can’t put our finger on it. And then we see something like what’s happening at one state law school, and the whole sad experience of getting a legal education in America suddenly has a new mascot.
Today we have a flyer from a group of three 1Ls who want to hold “tryouts” for the other two members of their study group. We’ve seen this type of thing before — remember the study group at a top-ten law school that required a transcript? — but this latest application process takes things to another level.
This study group wants to charge people $20 for the opportunity to try out….
Continue reading “1Ls Hold Tryouts For Study Group Slots, Charge Application Fee”
Admin, Announcements, Blogging, Free Speech, Media and Journalism, New York Times, Rudeness
A Note to Our Readers About Comments
By Above the LawSometimes silence is golden.
The executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson — who once worked as a legal journalist, for Steve Brill at the American Lawyer — recently issued A Note to Our Readers About Comments, in which she explained various changes to the Times’s commenting system. We thought we’d follow in the Gray Lady’s footsteps and announce a tweak of our own to the Above the Law comments.
Comments and online anonymity are hot topics right now, both here and abroad (e.g., India). Writer Katie Roiphe just mused about the angry anonymous commenter. Privacy lawyer Christopher Wolf recently argued, in the New York Times, that websites should “consider requiring either the use of real names (or registration with the online service) in circumstances, such as the comments section for news articles, where the benefits of anonymous posting are outweighed by the need for greater online civility.” Many Times readers disagreed, defending the value and importance of anonymous speech online.
In light of these conflicting concerns — civility, privacy, free expression — let’s turn our attention to the ATL comments….
Tags: Admin, Announcements, Anonymity, Beware the comments section, Blogging, Free Speech, Media and Journalism, New York Times, Online anonymity, Rudeness