Last week we complained about an insufficient number of summer associate scandals so far this year. But maybe things are starting to pick up.

We begin by giving props to Proskauer Rose for their commitment to public service. They bring all their summers down to New Orleans to work on a Habitat for Humanity project. From the press release:

On Friday and Saturday, June 20 and 21, law firm Proskauer Rose LLP will work with Habitat for Humanity to build three houses in the Musicians Village' section of the 9th Ward of New Orleans. The firm aims to help families displaced by Hurricane Katrina, giving them a place to once again call home.

Proskauer Rose summer associates, lawyers and staff, including Howard Shapiro, head of the firm's New Orleans office, and local Habitat for Humanity representatives will be available for interviews and photographs during the house building. The houses will be located at 1817, 1821 and 1825 Bartholomew Street and work will take place from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. both days. A check presentation ceremony will take place Friday, June 20 at 8 a.m. at 4000 North Roman Street.

Proskauer Rose is bringing together 90 summer associates, lawyers and staff from its New Orleans and national offices to participate in the event. The firm will also donate $75,000 to Habitat for the cost of one of the homes. This is the third consecutive year the firm has participated in and sponsored such an event.

So that's the background. Read the story, after the jump.

The legal profession is populated by some colorful characters -- like our latest Lawyer of the Day, Jack Tuckner. From the New York Post:

A leading lower Manhattan women's-rights lawyer watched porn at his desk, discussed his "pierced genitalia" and wears a "slave" collar at work as part of a sadomasochistic relationship with his girlfriend, a shocking sex- harassment suit alleges.

Jack Tuckner, 50, whose law firm says it's "dedicated to the empowerment of women in the workplace," is a "self-described 'testosterone-poisoned' attorney with a penchant for bondage . . . who demeaned all of the women who worked for him," says the suit.

It was filed yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court by former office manager Lisa Brockington.

But if the slave-collar-wearing Tuckner is the "sub" in the S&M setup, doesn't that make it okay? Isn't he the one being demeaned, rather than the one doing the demeaning?

More after the jump.

A teenage girl has filed a lawsuit against Harrison, N.Y. police officers for violating her civil rights. According to the complaint, the police came to arrest the girl's boyfriend for marijuana possession. While conducting a search of the house, they got overly friendly with the girl during her patdown, seized her sex tape, and played with her anal beads.

The Smoking Gun has the filed complaint along with the story. We've added some line breaks for your reading pleasure:

The girl claims that police watched the video in her presence "while laughing," and that they put a camcorder in her face and "mockingly" asked her questions about the explicit video as it played. She also alleges that a Harrison detective told her, "I should beat your ass for this. I hope your parents beat your ass."

The teenager claims that the investigator also retrieved anal beads from a bedroom, put them in her face, and asked, "What do you do with these -- put them in your mouth?"

The girl charges that cops subsequently played the video "sufficiently close to the cell in which the boyfriend was incarcerated so that he could hear the audio component of the video," and that they laughed about the video and made "repeated references by name to his girlfriend as she was depicted on the video."

She also contends that the Harrison officers "thereafter played the video for other members of the department to watch for their amusement, sexual gratification, and to further degrade Plaintiff."

Yet another reason not to make a sex tape.

We might have left the little anecdote about the anal beads out of the complaint. That's just plain embarrassing.

Girl Sues Cops Over Sex Tape "Screening" [Smoking Gun via Drudge]

The divorce trial of James and Dina Matos McGreevey gets under way today. Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey resigned from the governorship in 2004, announcing that he was a "gay American," who had carried on an affair with a male advisor. The McGreeveys returned to the headlines earlier this year, when a different male aide claimed Mrs. McGreevey had gotten in on some three-way action with him and her husband.

From the New York Post, back in March:

"We called it the Friday Night Special," [former aide Teddy] Pedersen said. The "intense" escapades, he said, usually began with a "couple of drinks" at a local T.G.I. Friday's and culminated in "a hard-core consensual sex orgy" between the three of them at McGreevey's Woodbridge condo.

The three-way action, if true, complicates Dina Matos's claim that she was not aware of Jim McGreevey's homosexuality. From WCBS TV:

The first order of business are closed door proceedings concerning their six-year-old daughter. Jim McGreevey is seeking equal custody.

Dina Matos McGreevey wants $600,000 as compensation for time she would have spent in the governor's office had her husband not resigned in disgrace. She claims she was not aware of his homosexuality.

McGreevey is apparently studying to become an Episcopal priest right now, while his wife was recently called upon to offer analysis of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. So she didn't get to spend those years in the Jersey governor's office -- but now she's a scandal expert and talking head. Isn't that worth something?

McGreevey Divorce Trial Underway Tuesday [WCBS TV]

Earlier: New York and New Jersey in Competition for Dirtiest Governor Sex Scandal

Professor Deana Pollard Sacks writes, over at Feminist Law Professors:

Since 2005, four states have finally recognized that fraudulent inducement of sex is rape. Not just immoral, not just “boys being boys” behavior, but misappropriation of a woman’s personal right to choose who invades her body. Perhaps surprisingly, the first state to recognize fraudulent inducement of sex as a basis for rape was Alabama in 2005.

Well, it's not that surprising -- Alabama's not really that big on sex. Remember their sex toys ban?

California, Michigan, and Tennessee followed suit the following two years, and Peter Koutoujian of Massachusetts filed a similar bill in February, 2008, which, when passed, will make Massachusetts the fifth state to recognize the crime of “stealing” another’s sexual prerogative.

As Britney Spears famously sang, covering the Bobby Brown hit: "That's my prerogative. They say I'm nasty. But I don't give a damn. Getting boys is how I live."

Oh, sorry, we got distracted. Back to Professor Sacks:

.... In a world filled with dangerous sexual diseases, it is particularly important to protect women’s rights to protect their own bodies, not just against physical violence, but against fraudulent inducement of sexual decisions and all of the dangerous consequences that can result from a lack of truly informed consent to sexual relations. For more background about the need for tort law to respond to the reality of sexual misappropriation, see my new article, Intentional Sex Torts, to be published in the Fordham Law Review in the fall of 2008.

Marc Randazza -- whose Legal Satyricon blog is excellent, even if more sex-obsessed than ATL -- is skeptical:

Expanding tort law to cover dishonest sexual encounters is a horrifying proposition. We have to be left to be human — even if that means that some immoral, abhorrent, and even disgusting behavior will leak through the sieve of our legal system. There simply does not need to be a law to cover every bit of sketchy behavior. For as long as we live and love, someone will lie about their feelings to someone else. Hearts will break. Men and women will lie to each other. Men and women will sleep with each other for the wrong reasons. I’m not simply arguing that “boys will be boys.” I am arguing that this is the yin to the yang of love, passion, and ecstasy.

Every time you meet someone or f*** someone, you are taking a risk. That’s part of the thrill!

True. But if it burns when you pee a few weeks later, the "thrill" is pretty much gone.

I wonder how the legal academy would respond if I published a law review article, Cock-blocking as tortious interference with sexual relationships.

Sounds like a tough sell. Try the Journal of Law & Chauvinism. But if they don't accept it, nobody will.

We have enough problems with the religious right trying to squeeze government under our bedroom doors. Don’t let bored law professors push tort lawyers under our sheets too.

These are just snippets from two interesting, longer posts. Read them in full over here (Sacks) and here (Randazza).

Intentional Sex Torts [Feminist Law Professors]
“Intentional sex torts” [Legal Satyricon]

Associate Dean Walter J. Dickey, of the University of Wisconsin Law School, is no stranger to these pages. Back in 2006, ATL named him America's hottest law school dean (male, B-bracket).

Now he makes these pages for less positive reasons. From the Badger Herald:

The University of Wisconsin Law School canceled an event with controversial sexual content last Wednesday, and some students are calling the action a possible First Amendment violation.

The Wisconsin Law Students for Reproductive Justice had planned an event called “Sex Toys 101” to promote safe alternatives to sex, educate about sexual health and pleasure, and discuss law concerning sex toys, according to the group.

As long as you're outside Alabama, a Tupperware party for dildos should be just fine, right?

Well, maybe not. From a tipster:

[Dean Dickey] cancelled a sex toy party, sponsored by a pro-choice student group, because he found the sex-positive subject matter offensive. And he did it 2 hours before the event, without explanation. Then he hid behind adminstrative rules, then it became clear that he just didn’t like it. First Amendment violation, sex toys, Dean Dickey… You have to run this!

Dean Dickey's dictat displeased the students:

Members of the organization submitted a formal complaint to Law School Dean Ken Davis Friday, requesting a formal apology, refund of event expenses and clarification of student organization event rules.

In an interview Monday, Law School Associate Dean Walter Dickey said the event was canceled for content-neutral reasons, pointing to a Student Organization Office policy that prohibits the promotion or sale of commercial products by a private company.

Professor Marc Randazza's take: "That sure sounds reasonable, and it might be if it wasn’t bulls**t!"

Why does Professor Randazza view Dean Dickey's defense as BS? Find out, after the jump.

Dr. Marty Klein is a sociologist and therapist who writes a blog on sex and some other stuff, called Sexual Intelligence. He was asked to testify in the trial of Dominic Jones, a University of Minnesota football star accused of rape, but the judge turned him away.

Jones was found guilty of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct earlier this month, but his defense attorney, Earl Gray, plans to appeal the verdict, and here's why:

Hennepin County District Court Judge Marilyn Rosenbaum did not allow Gray to call a sexual behavior expert, or to present evidence that the woman had sex with three other players that night, or describe what Jones was told by his upstairs neighbor Alex Daniels or to call a sexual behavior expert.

"The next time we try it, we will be able to give the jury a full picture of what happened that night," Gray said.

Did the Star Tribune mean to repeat "call a sexual behavior expert" out of sheer disbelief, or was that a typo?

Apparently, Judge Rosenbaum pooh-poohed the whole sexpert field, and Dr. Klein is not happy about it. Here's an excerpt from his blog:

Former University of Minnesota football player Dominic Jones is accused of sexually assaulting a woman by, among other things, ejaculating on her face while she was drunk.

Despite eyewitness accounts that the woman asked to be “rained on,” the State says it must be rape because no sane, sober woman would actually consent to such a perversion.

Jones’ attorney requested I testify as an expert witness about the many ideas and practices regarding ejaculation and semen (and faces) that have developed over the centuries.
...

[The judge] said even if I were an expert, such expertise wouldn’t be relevant to the case—that is, wouldn’t involve any special knowledge beyond what a typical jury member already knows.

In a single judicial gesture, Judge Rosenbaum dismissed an entire profession and its field of study.

We think Judge Rosenbaum was just acknowledging that we are all experts in the bedroom.

See Dr. Klein's full rant after the jump.

Former Gophers player Jones acquitted of rape charge [Star-Tribune]
Minnesota Justice Paralyzed By Facial [Sexual Intelligence]

Last year, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called "D.C. Madam," was suggested as a possible running mate for John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But thanks to a development from earlier this afternoon, that probably won't be happening. From the AP:

A federal jury has convicted a woman of running a high-end prostitution ring that catered to members of Washington's political elite.

The verdict against Deborah Jeane Palfrey was announced in a courtroom Tuesday afternoon.

Palfrey has repeatedly denied the escort service engaged in prostitution, and that any sex acts happened without her knowledge. Palfrey caused a sensation last year when she announced that she would sell her phone records to news outlets to pay for her defense.

But the trial didn't reveal many new details about the service or the identities of its clientele. Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana was linked to the case but didn't testify.

Well, even if it wasn't as explosive as expected, the trial yielded up a few new juicy details. Like the fact that one of Palfrey's escorts was a former professor and university department chair. Or the fact that Palfrey's prostitution service was patronized by several well-pedigreed lawyers (including Yale law grad Christopher Sorrow, who is presumably pretty sorrowful about being involved in this mess). Or the fact that Palfrey employed "testers," like trial witness Paul Huang, to evaluate the suitability of aspiring escorts (think "Consume-Ho Reports").

And the show's not over just yet. Palfrey has made a spectacle of herself from the start of this case, and we still have a sentencing and possible appeal to look forward to. So stay tuned.

Woman convicted of running Washington prostitution service [AP]
Professor for Hire [Inside Higher Ed via TaxProf Blog]
Four Former Call Girls Testify at Palfrey Trial [Washington Post]

For the record, here's some follow-up on two Bay State lawyers previously discussed in these pages, who have been cleared of the charges against them. At least to some extent.

First, remember Carl Stanley McGee (right), who was arrested after being accused of going down on a 15-year-old boy? Earlier this week, Florida prosecutors decided to drop the case.

Apparently the teen had trouble identifying McGee. But maybe he also learned that it's bad form to complain about getting a BJ. Unless teeth are involved.

Second, remember the handsome Gary Zerola (below right), named a "Most Eligible Bachelor" by People magazine, and accused of rape and attempted rape by three different women? One of the cases against him went to trial, and he was acquitted (back in January; we missed the news when it came out).

A second trial is currently underway. In that case, as reported in today's Boston Herald, Zerola's defense team argues that the victim wanted to shakedown their client for $150,000.

The third incident, which is the one that we wrote about, has not yet gone to trial.

Sex Case Against MA Guv's Aide Dropped [AP]
'Most eligible bachelor' acquitted in attempted rape case [Boston Globe]
Zerola team: Alleged victim sought $150G [Boston Herald]

Earlier: Lawyer of the Day: Carl Stanley McGee
Most Eligible Bachelor Becomes Considerably Less Eligible

When it comes to horrible (and horribly trashy) conduct, it's tough to top microwaving your baby. In a room at a La Quinta motel.

But you can certainly supplement it with additional misbehavior. From the Houston Chronicle:

A jury should not hear an allegation about sex in an interrogation room that occurred after the arrest of a man accused of burning his 2-month-old daughter in a microwave oven, a defense attorney argued Monday.

Prosecutors say witnesses saw Joshua Mauldin, 20, of Warren, Ark., have sex with his wife in an interrogation room at the Galveston County Jail several days after he is accused of placing his daughter in a microwave oven for 10 to 20 seconds on May 10.

Keep in mind, however, that this is a mere allegation:

[Defense attorney Sam Cammack III] denied that the sex act occurred and said a DNA test of the chair in the interrogation room tested positive for someone other than Mauldin or his wife.

ICK -- but that must be one comfy chair. Time to cover it in plastic, just like grandma used to do.

P.S. If the allegation is true, it wouldn't be the first time people have gotten busy in a courthouse. As chronicled in these pages, witness rooms and courthouse showers have also hosted assignations.

Lawyer: Microwave baby's dad had interrogation room sex [Houston Chronicle]

Guess we picked our Lawyer of the Day too soon.

Update (2:30 PM): Press conference scheduled for 2:15 p.m., but Governor Spitzer is running 15 minutes late. "I don't blame him," said Ben Smith of the Politico, interviewed just now on CNN.

Update (2:35 PM): Jeffrey Toobin, who was an HLS classmate of Eliot Spitzer, described the news as "a total shock." He said Spitzer has been "nothing but a straight arrow" for many years.

Update (2:50 PM): Still no press conference. Brooke Masters, author of Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer, was just interviewed on CNN. She noted that this scandal comes at a bad time for Spitzer politically, in the wake of last year's scandal involving his misuse of the State Police for political purposes.

Update (3 PM): We're stepping away for a bit, to give a talk at Stanford Law School. We'll be back online as soon as we can. Some content will be posted while we're gone (material prepared ahead of time, not Spitzer updates).

Developing... Check back for updates.

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring [New York TImes]

Check out this rather odd appeal from Florida, arising out of a prosecution for sexual assault charges. The defendant was originally charged with three counts of sexual battery, but was convicted on lesser included charges of misdemeanor battery.

One of the issues was whether the trial court should have granted a continuance based on the availability of a defense witness (even though the defense failed to move for a continuance at the time). From the opinion (PDF):

Defense counsel proffered one aspect of the urologist's testimony: because Tyrrell's penis was "smaller than average size" it "could not have caused" the injuries that Nurse Gibson observed during the rape exam.

You don't normally see a man proclaiming his small penis size in public proceedings. But if a teeny weenie is a "get out of jail free" card, expect the defendant to play it. Think of it as the flip side of that Japanese appeal, in which a busty babe overturned her conviction by arguing that she was too well-endowed to fit through a hole she allegedly used to enter a building.

Our tipster described a second strange argument raised by the defense:

[The defense also argued] that the injuries were caused by the victim's "aggressive" use of a dildo. [The opinion] mentions that the defense lawyer wanted the victim to identify the dildo from a "dildo lineup," and that the defense attorney "extensively explored" the dildo issue with the victim on cross.

Seriously. The words "dildo lineup" actually appear in the opinion (and not even in scare quotes):

Tyrrell first argues that his "right to due process and right to confront witnesses" was violated because the state did not produce the [sex toys] that were the subject of the July 23 and August 2 orders....

Tyrrell contends that the trial court erred in failing to let him show the victim a dildo lineup.

If that doesn't violate the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause, which guarantees a criminal defendant the right "to be confronted with the [dildos] against him," we don't know what does.

Tyrrell v. State (PDF) [Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal]

Marc J. Randazza fills us in on the Texas sex toy ban, just struck down by the Fifth Circuit. According to Marc, the arguments for outlawing the sale of toys for your pleasure-parts are thus:

(1) If the Texas dildo law is invalidated as an improper encroachment upon personal liberty, this will open the floodgates, and laws on bigamy and incest will be struck down too.

(2) Striking down the law “impermissibly overrides state lawmakers’ settled ‘authority to regulate commercial activity they deem harmful to the public’” (naturally citing a dissenting opinion from the 11th Circuit).

Marc slams the arguments for his own well-articulated reasons at the link. To us, the first argument is a slippery (heh) slope argument, which is usually a weak logical tactic. The second argument is stronger, although we’d like to see a list of reasons why sex toys are so harmful.

It is still illegal to sell sex toys in Alabama. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an Alabama case in 2007 on the subject, so the lower court’s ruling (upholding the ban) remains intact. This quote, from Alabama store owner Sherri Williams (the store’s name is “Pleasures”) sums up the passion of people across the Southland who find the ban ridiculous:

“My motto has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up,” she said.

You go, girl. By contrast, guns are perfectly legal in both states.
Texas -- Still Obsessed With Dildos [Legal Satyricon]

We greatly enjoyed our recent visit to the University of Chicago Law School. The U. Chicago students were very welcoming and made us feel right at home, even inviting us to their law school musical -- which, by the way, was delightful.

(We added many of them as friends on Facebook before we were mysteriously banned from the site, without notice or explanation. So if you no longer see us on FB, it's not because we "de-friended" you, but because our account was disabled.)

A few Chicago students, however, had a bone to pick with us. They objected to this ATL post, which cast the recently announced departure of Professor Cass Sunstein -- prominent scholar, beloved teacher, and possible Supreme Court nominee under President Obama -- as a hiring coup by Harvard Law School, a triumph by HLS over Chicago. They emphasized that Professor Sunstein's leaving the Windy City for Cambridge was prompted by personal rather than professional reasons.

Professor Sunstein said as much his farewell email (emphasis added; in fact, all emphases added throughout this post, unless otherwise indicated):

I'm writing to say that I've just accepted an appointment at Harvard Law School. It is an understatement to say that I don't take this step easily or lightly. As most of you know, I've been reflecting on this question for several years. I finally decided, for personal reasons, that I need a change.

Since he's a prominent Obama supporter -- as well an adviser to the campaign, but more on that later, since it ties into our tale -- it's not surprising that Professor Sunstein is All About Change.

The law school's popular leader, Dean Saul Levmore, also stressed the personal component to Professor Sunstein's move. As he told the University of Chicago's student newspaper, the Maroon:

“I’m sort of embarrassed that [the story] said that the University of Chicago couldn’t be reached for comment,” Levmore said. “It looks like we didn’t want to talk, but the truth is that this decision [to leave Chicago for Harvard] was based on personal reasons and I respect that privacy. The media will find out about them soon enough.”

With a comment like this, Dean Levmore was basically begging us to go digging. So dig we did.

Let's see, Cass Sunstein's "personal reasons" for leaving U. Chicago... hold on a sec. Isn't Professor Sunstein part of legal academia's most fabulous power couple, together with that renowned philosopher queen, Professor Martha Nussbaum? And didn't Professor Nussbaum just turn down a Harvard offer?

That was then; this is now. What we learned in our investigation is consistent with this ATL comment, as well as this (subsequently removed) Wikipedia edit.

It appears that Professor Sunstein may be part of a new "power couple" -- in the most literal sense. Rumor has it that he's romantically involved with Professor Samantha Power -- a beautiful, brainy professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who is roughly 15 years his junior. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner who has also been profiled in Men's Vogue (see glamorous photo, at the top of this post). What's not to like?

Update: More about Samantha Power here (from a college classmate who tried to hit on her, without success, and just ended arguing politics with her).

Now, please don't give us full credit (or blame) for bringing to light the Sunstein-Power relationship. When we attended the Chicago Law School musical last weekend, Samantha Power got a shout-out near the end of the show, when the Cass Sunstein character announced his departure for Harvard. So the rumor of her romance with Professor Sunstein is already widely known throughout the U. Chicago community (and beyond); it's no state secret. It is already known to hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

We reached out to all three members of this Mensalicious love triangle, which seems to come straight out of a Saul Bellow novel. Find out what we learned -- two of them had no comment, but one of them did -- after the jump.

One of our favorite lawyers, Michael Inglimo, is back in the headlines. You may remember him from this post on the Volokh Conspiracy, linked to on ATL, which raised the following question:

Does "engaging in a three-way sexual encounter with [a current client] and [the client's] girlfriend" count as having sex "with a current client" (a practice forbidden by state bar rules)?

Wisconsin answered in the negative, but disciplined him for other infractions. Now Minnesota has stepped in. From the Pioneer Press:

The three-way sex did not get a lawyer's license suspended - but plenty of other things did.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered that attorney Michael R. Inglimo stop practicing law for three years....

The high court decision comes after the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Inglimo's license in October for illegal drug use with clients, having sex with a client's wife, misuse of a client's trust account, failure to maintain proper trust account records and criminal conviction for possession of marijuana. The Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility sought reciprocal discipline.

And got it -- for the next three years, Inglino can't practice in Minnesota as well as Wisconsin. There's no split in authority, then, on the question of three-way jurisprudence originally posed.

3-way sex did not suspend lawyer's license [Pioneer Press]

Hey, if they can make it past the metal detector at One First Street, it's all good. Is that a gavel under your robe, Your Honor -- or are you just reviewing the Joint Appendix?

This is certainly one of the more interesting circuit splits out there. Let's hope for a cert petition and a speedy grant.

Dildoes Going to the Supreme Court? [Volokh Conspiracy]

* The NYT's official statement on L'Affaire Berenson. [Starkman & Associates]

* A slew of law school hypotheticals about sex with and between minors, triggered by Carl Stanley McGee, our Lawyer of the Day. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Second runner-up for Lawyer of the Day? And a punitive damages award of $33 million. Ouch. [How Appealing]

* Man saves dog; law student saves man. Congratulations to GW's Jason Coates, our Law Student of the Day! [GW Hatchet]

* "Derek Jeter has romanced Mariah Carey, squired Jessica Biel, sweet-talked Scarlett Johansson -- and now he's made it to first base with the state taxman." [TaxProf Blog]

* Wow, this is wild. Has Gary Crossen, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Foley Hoag, read too many John Grisham novels? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Speaking of white-collar criminal defense lawyers, more business may be headed their way, courtesy of Andrew Cuomo. [DealBreaker]

* You've got... male? [Reuters]

* Are you a Disgruntled Republican? Join the club -- or buy a mug. [Zazzle]

The day is still young, but we already have our Lawyer of the Day -- and we doubt that anyone we hear about later today can steal this honor away from him. Via the Boston Globe:

A top official in the [Gov. Deval] Patrick administration has been placed on unpaid leave because he was arrested in Florida and charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old male in a steam room at a $500-a-night Gulf Coast resort.

Carl Stanley McGee, 38, assistant secretary for policy and planning, is scheduled to be arraigned next week for sexual battery in Lee County, Fla.... According to police reports, McGee was arrested Dec. 28 and accused of performing oral sex on the 15-year-old, who was a guest at The Gasparilla Inn & Club, a 95-year-old hotel and championship golf course in Boca Grande.

As they like to say up in Massachusetts, "Thar he blows."

McGee, a former Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate, was previously a corporate lawyer at the law firm WilmerHale. He was instrumental in the movement seeking to defeat efforts to overturn legalization of same-sex marriage, serving as director of the civic and business outreach efforts of the advocacy group MassEquality.

A year after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts in May 2004, McGee's wedding to John Finley IV was highlighted in the "Vows" section of The New York Times....

Known for his shock of platinum hair, McGee was named one of The Boston Globe's 25 most stylish Bostonians in November. In the article, he described his style as "traditional, but it's also subversive and ironic."

"Traditional," but "subversive." Sort of like married men engaging in steam-room hook-ups?

Good thing Carl McGee isn't running for office. We're reminded of the famous quotation by former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, who once boasted that he couldn't lose an upcoming election unless he was "caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy."

Update: Just a reminder that these are obviously mere allegations. Sources mentioned in the Globe article said they "were stunned by the news of McGee's arrest and said they do not believe the charges." One colleague of McGee told the paper, "I know it didn't happen."

Further Update: Best comment thus far, from an observant, Spanish-speaking reader: "He was arrested for blowing a 15 year old in... huhuhuh... Boca Grande..."

Key aide to Patrick accused of sex assault [Boston Globe]
John Finley IV and Stan McGee [New York Times]

In last week's ATL / Lateral Link survey, we asked you about how often you cancelled your personal plans for work.

We received 633 responses, and, by and large, you should just stop making personal plans. Thirty-six percent of respondents had cancelled plans "too many times to count" last year, while another 17% had cancelled plans six to ten times. Eighteen percent had broken plans three to five times, and sixteen percent had cancelled plans only once or twice. Only thirteen percent of respondents never cancelled personal plans over work last year.

Associates in New York and Los Angeles were the most frequent date-breakers, with 78% of respondents in each city cancelling plans at least three to five times, and over 40% cancelling plans too many times to count. Washington, DC and the Bay Area were close behind. Associates in Atlanta, Boston, and Texas were more likely to have personal lives, with Chicago somewhere in the middle.

Most respondents, 84%, simply missed dinner, and about 70% of associates have worked through the weekend. Fifty-six percent of respondents blew off parties, and about half missed family dates. Around forty percent of associates missed dates, TV, or holidays, and around a third cancelled vacations. One quarter of associates reported that they have skipped sex to work, but only eleven percent said they had missed a religious event. Associates in Chicago were the most likely to miss dinner, while Bostonians were the most likely to cancel a date -- but the least likely to miss sex.

Why all the social de-scheduling? Sixty-five percent of respondents have put their personal plans on hold because a partner asked them to finish something. Another sixty percent just decided they had things they needed to get done. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said a client told them to do it. Twelve percent needed the hours. Five and a half percent of associates just wanted to impress someone. A little over half of respondents thought the work was not important enough to justify breaking their plans.

These numbers were dramatically different for the respondents who had actually blown off sex to work. Ninety percent of these respondents were asked to finish something by a partner (at the office). Sixty percent were asked by a client. Almost a quarter thought they needed the hours, while eleven percent skipped their personal plans because they "wanted to impress people."

For Monday's Lawyer of the Day, we faced an embarrassment of riches -- of embarrassment. So we nominated a quintet of contenders: a North Carolina lawyer caught reading Maxim in court, a former prosecutor who allegedly had sex with two teenage boys, an AUSA arrested on DUI charges, a Canadian lawyer/politician who allegedly overbilled an order of nuns, and a Chicago lawyer who keyed a Marine's car. Then we had you vote on who should take the honors.

Participation was enthusiastic, with almost 1,300 votes cast. Two contenders emerged early in the voting: Beth Modica, the allegedly predatory prosecutrix, and Jay Grodner, who pleaded guilty to keying the Marine's vehicle. Competition was fierce. But in the end, Mrs. Modica came out on top.

So congratulations, Beth Modica. You take the prize as Monday's Lawyer of the Day!

Read more about her alleged misadventures, after the jump.