DUI

Non-Sequiturs: 05.20.13

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* Justin Bieber has apparently abandoned his 20-week-old monkey, Mally, after having her confiscated because he couldn’t comply with animal control laws in Germany. Now in a shelter somewhere in Germany, there’s one more lonely girl. [Lowering the Bar]

* Ann Althouse posted FOUR TIMES about Barack Obama’s umbrella over the weekend. Somebody is really putting off grading those papers. [Althouse]

* Alabama judge faces $25 million lawsuit alleging he improperly took a case from another judge and issued damaging rulings. This is the judge who ran against Chief Justice Roy “Don’t Remove the Ten Commandments From the Courthouse” Moore. The moral of the story is: don’t use the Alabama judicial system. [Legal Schnauzer]

* The FBI may be looking into whether lawyers conspired to have opposing counsel arrested on DUI charges by using a “comely paralegal” to get the lawyer drunk and then ask him to drive her home. [Tampa Bay Times]

* Statewide Virginia Republican candidates are no friends of the libertarian wing of the conservative movement. On the other hand, are there viable conservative candidates not named “Paul” that are friends of the libertarian wing of the conservative movement? [CATO at Liberty]

* The IRS scandal gets the SNL treatment courtesy of Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Video after the jump…

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NTSB Recommends Lowering BAC Limit — That Sound You Hear Is DUI Attorneys Applauding Their Good Fortune

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It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me first. Lawmakers at the National Transportation Safety Board have recommended that states lower the legal blood-alcohol concentration for drivers from .08 percent to .05 percent. For a normal-sized person, that’s going to be little more than a glass of wine with dinner. For a guy like me, that means I’ll only be able to have one bottle of whiskey. In a country that claims it can’t be bothered to run a simple background check before allowing people to legally purchase military grade weapons over the internet, we’re thinking of criminalizing having some wine with dinner and then driving home.

I suppose you could have all the alcohol you want if you drive home in a freaking tank, because as long as there is a gun involved, the government isn’t allowed to do squat.

But even if we ignore the hypocrisy and move past the obvious enforceability problems of turning nearly everybody on the road after 1:00 a.m. into a criminal, there’s still another huge problem with this NTSB recommendation. It’s a “national” standard for what absolutely is a state-by-state concern.

That’s right, I said it, I object to this recommendation on federalism grounds….

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Legally Blonde: A Potpourri of Disorderly Conduct Claims

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Legally Blonde is a movie that inspired many a ditzy sorority girl to apply to law school — obviously the appeal of wearing a pink power suit to court was just too great for them to resist. Let’s face it: whether you like it or not, Elle Woods has become an icon of sorts for a generation of women who never realized that they could be smart and pretty at the same time. For that reason (among many others), she was able to make it to the Final Four of our Fictional Lawyer Madness competition.

Is all people see when they look at you blonde hair and big boobs? Then it’s highly likely that you, too, can get into Harvard Law on a whim! What, like it’s hard?

Unfortunately, there are some legal issues that not even women like Elle Woods can talk themselves out of, and we’ve got a potpourri of disorderly conduct allegations for you to feast your eyes upon….

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Mel Weiss Learns You Can’t Say Your ABCs Without D, U, and I

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Melvyn Weiss, founder of the famous (or infamous) plaintiffs’ firm Milberg LLP, and the man who put the “klass” in class action litigation, landed in hot water back in December when cops pulled him over on suspicion of driving under the influence.

The 77-year-old lawyer was still serving out the last couple months of probation stemming from his 2008 guilty plea for paying kickbacks to lead plaintiffs. Now the judge is calling Mel Weiss back into court to figure out what to do about this violation of Weiss’s probation.

But in the meantime, we can get a giggle out of the alleged details of Weiss’s arrest….

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That Awkward Moment When Your DUI Mug Shot Appears Right Next to Your Law Firm’s DUI Defense Ad

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Thomas Edwards

Under the American criminal justice system all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

– Thomas L. Edwards, a Florida lawyer who handles DUI defense, offering comment on his recent legal wranglings. Edwards was criminally charged this weekend in an alleged drunken hit-and-run accident, and a banner ad for his law firm appeared on the same page as his mug shot.

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Conservative Law Professor Who Sued School Busted For Drinking And Idling

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Personally, I think it would be more dangerous for Teresa Wagner to get drunk and file a lawsuit than it is for her to do what she’s charged with doing a couple of days ago.

Wagner has sued Iowa Law School for First and Fourteenth Amendment violations. We’ve talked about her because she argues that Iowa Law didn’t hire her as a faculty member because of her conservative views.

Iowa Law claims that she wasn’t hired because she wasn’t qualified.

Iowa City Police allege that she wasn’t very conservative when it came to drinking and then driving a few blocks from her home….

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A Children’s Treasury of Hitler Reacting To Legal Stuff

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The Internet naturally devolves to Hitler references. Call it Godwin’s Law. Call it reductio ad hitlerum if you’re into the whole unnecessary use of Latin thing (and you’re lawyers, so you totally are). But with the advent of the Internet, Downfall video became inevitable.

And with bored lawyers seeking Internet-based distractions at their desks (or law library carrels), the legal Downfall video was even more inevitable.

Above the Law has linked to some of these before (for example here and here), but I figured I’d treat the readers to a collection of some of the finer videos here as part of my role as the editor covering the tech beat.

If you have others, link them in the comments. I’m sure someone out there in the middle of a two-week document review somewhere will appreciate it….

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Lawyer of the Day: DUI Attorney Tackled, Then Arrested For DUI

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Friends, this is a fun one.

Not just because a DUI attorney was arrested for a DUI — potentially his third DUI. That story would be cool, but a little trite.

No, what makes this story particularly fun is that the attorney was apprehended by a passing motorist as he allegedly tried to flee the scene of an accident. The Good Samaritan motorist got out of his car and chased down our attorney on foot, all while wearing flip-flops.

Oh, and I should mention that this particular DUI attorney has a YouTube ad where he doesn’t “speak,” but has some scary music, pictures, and a screen shot of his bio.

Yeah, this is a fun one….

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‘Prominent’ Attorney Accused of Patronizing Alleged Prostitute Who Once Starred in ‘Wife Swap’

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Today, we’ve got a tale for our readers about a lawyer from upstate New York who seems to be the epitome of a DUI defense lawyer’s worst nightmare. As the old saying goes, “the third time’s the charm,” but apparently when it comes to this guy and allegations of drinking and driving, the third time’s when you get caught with an alleged prostitute in your car.

Did we mention that the accused prostitute once starred in a reality television show, Wife Swap? That’s certainly not going to help this fellow keep the allegations under wraps….

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Is Your Law School A Dram Shop?

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Maybe law schools should be more like strip clubs?

There’s been an interesting lawsuit filed in Florida. The father of a woman killed by an allegedly drunk driving law student (who also died in the crash) is suing the driver’s law school for allowing the kid to get liquored up at the school’s “Barrister’s Ball.”

We’ve done a fair amount of stories about drunken shenanigans taking place at these Barrister’s Balls (or law school proms) at law schools across the country. It really makes for a perfect Above the Law story: take booze, add law students, mix with camera phones, and the thing writes itself.

But usually people don’t end up dead. The only thing a Barrister’s Ball is supposed to kill is your Google footprint. Then again, usually there isn’t a (cough, cough) intervening cause between the Ball and the ride home…

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