Deaths

Non-Sequiturs: 03.22.11

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When in need of a pic of a T.V. cheerleader, am I right to go with Minka Kelly over Hayden Panettiere? Can we get some kind of ruling on this?

* Is it possible that in South Dakota you have to go through a shorter waiting period to buy a gun and shoot someone who is already alive than you have to go through in order to have an abortion? Could somebody check on that? [MSNBC]

* Did you see this chart showing that law professors make more than all other professors at the college level? I think I forgot to mention it because when my brain sees such horrible atrocities it enacts self-defense protocols and deletes the knowledge from my… Did you see this chart showing that law professors… [Chronicle of Higher Education]

* Same-sex couple gets deportation put on hold to pursue marriage-based immigration case. I think we’re all safer when Homeland Security isn’t run by Leviticus. [Stop the Deportations]

* If cheerleading were a real sport, this lawsuit might be really interesting. [Jezebel]

* If you think our coolest law firm bracket is dorky (don’t forget, voting ends tonight at midnight), you should check out what the bankruptcy people at Weil are up to. [Bankruptcy Blog]

* Once you get off the legal treadmill, do you ever have the urge to go back? “… That’s pride f**king with you. F**k pride.” [Law and More]

* If you think about it, pay raises should really come in the spring, when everything is new and happy, instead of the middle of winter, when everything is cold and dead. [What About Clients?]

* An obituary for Warren Christopher, former O’Melveny partner (and secretary of state, too). [Huffington Post]

61 Comments

Morning Docket: 03.16.11

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* Sorry Wisconsin, but Judge Sumi’s going on vacation, so you can take your bargaining rights and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine. Man, I hope she’s going to a place where the sun does shine. [Wisconsin State Journal]

* An NBA referee is suing a sportswriter over a tweet made during a Timberwolves/Rockets game. Seriously? You can’t call a foul just because someone hurt your feelings. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

* Quinnipiac Law: where being convicted of fraud is a pre-req for employment as the registrar. I guess they must have a work from home option, since Mary Ellen Durso is under house arrest. [Hartford Courant]

* Should all buildings that were damaged in the September 11th attacks be declared landmarks? Probably not — after all, Century 21 was damaged, and that’s just a landmark for crappy couture. [Reuters]

Capturing Somali pirates.

* Arr, me matey. Five Somali pirates were forced to walk the plank. Okay, not really, but it was the first time in 190 years that a U.S. jury convicted a defendant of the peg-legged kind of piracy. [CNN Justice]

* Because common sense is hard for some lawyers, you probably shouldn’t advise your clients to break into their foreclosed homes. You probably shouldn’t break in on their behalf, either. [ABA Journal]

* William J. Stuntz, Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, R.I.P. [Harvard Law School]

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Morning Docket: 03.09.11

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Gov. Pat Quinn

* The opening of the RaJabba Rajaratnam trial will be gripping, apparently. [Reuters]

* The S.E.C. is being attacked again about its ethical standards. It’s not like these problems started with Cam Newton. I mean, the S.E… what’s that? The Securities and Exchange Commission? What? No, I don’t even know what that is. What does that have to do with football? [New York Times]

* Horrifying syphilis experiments keep coming back to haunt the United States government. That’s so syphilis. [Charlotte Observer]

* Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is expected to sign legislation today ending capital punishment. I couldn’t think of a joke here, but this cat thinks it’s a frog. [Chicago Tribune]

* In Buffalo, a fight over attorney pay. I blame Norwood. [Buffalo News]

* A judge helped cut an attorney out of his father’s will and claimed he was still able to act impartially on a case the attorney was handling. That sh*t-eating grin on the judge’s face every time the attorney spoke? Oh, that was just a joke he remembered. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Former U.S. attorney (S.D.N.Y.) and Davis Polk litigator S. Hazard Gillespie, R.I.P. [New York Times]

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Skadden Name Partner Joe Flom, R.I.P.

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Earlier this month, the son of Joseph Flom — name partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and a legendary figure of the M&A bar — wrote a moving tribute to his father. He explained that the 87-year-old Flom was gravely ill and not far from death.

This morning, Skadden confirmed the sad news of Joe Flom’s passing….

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Widener Law School Still Isn’t Telling Students Its Stance on the ‘Dean Killing’ Hypothetical

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Last week, we briefly mentioned the situation of Lawrence Connell. Connell is the Widener Law School professor who wrote a hypothetical involving him killing the dean of Widener Law.

Was the hypo in poor taste? Probably. At the very least it was somewhat disrespectful to his boss. But people are making a huge deal about this. I mean, it wasn’t like Connell wrote a fantasy, or a theory. He wasn’t plotting to kill the dean. He wrote an exam question, a law school hypothetical. I had a professor “hypothetically” fail me during an exam question (I got a B-something in the class I think). These hypos really aren’t that big of a deal.

I don’t expect laypeople to understand this, but I’d expect law students and professors to get it.

But not the educational professionals at Widener. In fact, the school is still kind of fanning the flames of this issue…

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Good Samaritan Liability? Reflexive Trust of Police Costs a Man His Life

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Good Samaritans are supposed to help strangers, not beat them up.

Joke about Good Samaritan liability all you want, but we’re about to talk about an interesting case that is right on point.

The Philadelphia Daily News reports on a lawsuit that has been filed in New Jersey. Keith Briscoe was killed during a scuffle with Winslow Township police officer Sean Richards and other men who came to the officer’s aid. Some of the men were cops, while others were random citizens — so-called “good Samaritans” — who had no idea what was going on but tried to help out the cop anyway. All of them are being sued in a civil action brought by Briscoe’s family members.

I hope Briscoe’s family wins.

I don’t know about you, but when I see a cop and a citizen having an argument or even getting into a fistfight, I don’t assume that the cop is in the right. I don’t assume the cop is addressing the situation with the best intentions or proper motives.

But I don’t assume that the cop is doing anything wrong either. I simply don’t assume and go about my business.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I do think I’m in the minority. And I think it’s about time that some in the majority feel some heat for making, and then acting upon, faulty assumptions that reflexively favor the police…

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John Taylor Skilling Found Dead

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John Taylor Skilling, the son of former Enron executive Jeff Skilling, was found dead in his apartment in California. The Associated Press says that a bottle of medication was found next to John Skilling, and they report that he had been distraught over a recent breakup with his girlfriend.

His father, Jeffrey Skilling, served as president of Enron. In 2006, Jeff Skilling was convicted after a jury trial of multiple charges arising out of Enron’s collapse, and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He appealed to the Supreme Court, which vacated part of his conviction in a major ruling on the “honest services” fraud statute, and sent the case back for resentencing.

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Morning Docket: 01.20.11

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* Modesty reared its ugly head after Jersey Shore’s JWoWW discovered that she might not be able to cash in on her naked photos. [New York Law Journal]

* Which is Mayor Bloomberg more pissed about — that some more ice melt could’ve saved a life, or that it could’ve saved $20 million? [Wall Street Journal]

* No more time outs for federal prosecutors behaving badly. Thanks to Eric Holder, they’ll be subject to a much swifter spanking. [USA Today]

* You really can get anything on Groupon, even legal services. What you can’t get is your dignity back after peddling coupons for cash. [ABA Journal]

* A lawsuit that’s sure to balloon into notoriety. If copying Jeff Koons is wrong, then I don’t want to be copyright. [New York Times]

* Failing the bar exam is one thing, but failing to sell your law degree on eBay is quite another. Resume Goddess did both. [Out of the Storm News]

* R. Sargent Shriver, former Fried Frank name partner, R.I.P. [Associated Press]

18 Comments

Pls Hndle Thx: Requiem for a Rival Attorney?

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Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL:

I work in a fairly specialized litigation sub-field in a suburban market. The bar of attorneys who do what I do around where I am is therefore a pretty small and cutthroat group that hasn’t exactly emphasized “civility” in recent years.

I found out that a lawyer who’s one of my firm’s regular adversaries recently died. It wasn’t a big surprise; he’d been sick and in the hospital for some time, plus he was pushing 65-70. The thing is, he was (and his law partner still is) a gigantic asshole. He’d engage in frivolous tactics to rack up billables and then cut clients loose as soon as they couldn’t pay anymore. He’d insult other lawyers, including judges, in correspondence and at depositions. He’d condescend to women and junior attorneys. He even once wrote a smear piece about my firm as an op-ed in the local bar newsletter.

All this is to say, I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I’m not exactly grieving. There’s going to be a memorial service, but I’m not exactly sure what to do in this situation. Should I go and at least make an appearance, and duck out at the earliest opportunity? Would it be bad form not to go, because the legal community in my practice area is so small? Should I just send a card? Or should I go and secretly gloat?

– Left Behind

Dear Left Behind,

When it comes to death and funerals, there is no right or wrong. People grieve in their own way, and sometimes not at all, particularly if the deceased was a truly horrible person…

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Non-Sequiturs: 12.28.10

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Does Sarah Palin's home state need a law school? One legislator says: You betcha!

* An impressive collection of legal humor — amusing motions, orders, opinions, and the like. [Law Law Land]

* (Celebrity) Lawyer of the Day: Michael “Mickey” Sherman, a prominent criminal defense lawyer and the husband of a Fox News legal analyst, is going to prison Physician, heal thyself. [TaxProf Blog]

* Elie isn’t feeling well right now — no, it wasn’t all that Kwanzaa cake — but if he were writing today, I suspect he’d have a lot to say about whether Alaska needs its own law school. [Tundra Drums via ABA Journal]

* What does the Ohio Supreme Court have against satellite television? [Consumerist]

* Support staff members at DLA Piper in the U.K. are getting a pretty slim pay raise. [Roll On Friday]

* If you haven’t done so already, check out Mike Sacks’s interesting and elegant analysis of the four youngest Supreme Court justices (which got a well-deserved shout-out from Adam Liptak in the New York Times today). [FIRST ONE @ ONE FIRST]

* Eric Fatla, a law student at GW, passed away from injuries he sustained in a fall at the Union League Club in Chicago. Professor Jonathan Turley remembers his former student. Eric Fatla, R.I.P. [Jonathan Turley; Chicago Breaking News]

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