Wisconsin

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 04.10.19

* Tired of remaining silent, Jones Day is now defending itself against a $200 million gender bias class-action lawsuit, saying that the firm is "proud of its success in promoting a diverse group of outstanding lawyers." [Law.com] * Meanwhile, MoFo is seeking sanctions against the attorneys at Sanford Heisler Sharp who filed the "mommy track" lawsuit against the firm, as well as against one of the anonymous plaintiffs, alleging that the claims made were "knowingly baseless." [American Lawyer] * As it turns out, during his testimony yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin acknowledged that his legal department had already been in touch with the White House Counsel’s Office over the release of President Trump’s tax returns — an exchange that’s “deeply troubling and certainly violates the spirit of the law” meant to prevent such communications. [Washington Post] * In case you missed it, Michael Cohen is no longer as useful to the House Intelligence Committee as he once thought. Chairman Adam Schiff seems to have no interest in helping Cohen to delay his upcoming prison sentence. [CNN] * Senator Lindsey Graham has once again again introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. He’s proposed this bill since 2013 and it gets slapped down each time, but this time... things could change. [CBS News] * Two Wisconsin lawyers claim that being required to pay bar dues to practice in the state is unconstitutional because it requires them to participate in the state bar’s advocacy. You can look forward to more lawsuits like this thanks to the Janus ruling. [Big Law Business]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 02.19.19

* 16 states, including New York and California, filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump yesterday -- yes, on President's Day -- challenging his declaration of a national emergency. [NBC News] * Meredith Watson, one of the women to accuse Virginia Lieutenant Governor and MoFo partner Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, writes in an op-ed that she's willing to publicly testify about the allegations. [Washington Post] * North Carolina elections shenanigans: state investigators the allege Republican candidate engaged in a “coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced” absentee ballot strategy. [New York Times] * Gibson Dunn is suing the Justice Department over their about face on online gambling. [Law.com] * Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers really wants to bring medical marijuana to the badger state. [Huffington Post]

By Kathryn Rubino
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 11.15.17

* Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks that the people of Alabama should choose Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a write-in candidate to replace alleged pederast Roy Moore on the ballot for his former seat, but the AG has no desire to return to the Senate. [NPR] * The Ninth Circuit has temporarily allowed part of Travel Ban 3.0 to proceed. While that means issuances of visas to citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen will be restricted, there's a catch. Applicants with concrete ties to the country will be exempt. [POLITICO] * Wisconsin is so desperate to get lawyers to help indigent criminal defendants in rural areas that lawmakers have introduced new legislation that calls for the state to fund law school loan payments of up to $20,000 a year in exchange for the representation of these clients in need. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel] * Newsflash: In-house legal departments are planning to spend more on outside counsel in 2018. This is the first time this will have happened in more than a decade. Hopefully Biglaw's fee hikes don't come back to bite them. [Corporate Counsel] * After a two-month national postal survey, Australians have voted "overwhelmingly" in favor of same-sex marriage. Now it's up to the country's government to work out the details of the bill that will bring marriage equality down under. Congrats! [CNN]

By Staci Zaretsky
Non-Sequiturs

Non-Sequiturs: 07.07.17

* Indiana Jones v. Hobby Lobby. JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the court. [Held] As applied to closely held corporations, regulations prohibiting the purchase of stolen antiquities violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which clearly states the Christian companies like Hobby Lobby can indirectly fund ISIS should the black market or stolen artifacts have relevance to their deeply held beliefs. Petitioners' claim that it belongs in a museum is denied. [NBC News] * The Supreme Court lifted the injunction against Wisconsin's "cocaine mom" law, which allows the state to send expectant mothers to jail because it claims jurisdiction over the unborn fetus. It just goes to show that it's better to be unborn in Wisconsin than actually having to live there. [ABA Journal] * States are suing because Betsy DeVos is delaying Obama regulations designed to protect students from for profit colleges. Given that the head of one of these "universities" is now the President of the United States, I do wonder what good a few regulations are going to do. The fox is already in the hen house, do I really care if he opens the gate for the rest of his friends? At this point, I blame the dumb ass chickens for being such easy prey anyway. [U.S. News] * Man arrested for assaulting his roommate during an argument about Star Wars vs. Star Trek. We don't know what side he was on, but I'd like to point out that the alleged assailant is black. Dear everybody who called me "oreo" in middle school: this brother here was willing to go to jail over Trek v. Wars. He grabbed the blade end of a knife with his bare hands. Please, go tell him he's not black enough because he has a deeply held opinion about science fiction. Report back how that goes for you. [The Root] * Penn State football is being counter-sued by a coach who claims that there were "intolerable" working conditions. I know nothing about the veracity of the coach's claims, but I'm pretty sure they could have forced him to diagram plays in his own blood and that wouldn't make the top ten "intolerable things that have happened in the Penn State locker room." [Deadspin] * Obviously, the big Alt-Right story this week was the CNN blackmail letter. The Alt-Right pot caught the kettle being black as night with CNN's veiled doxxing threat. The thing that's weird about the Alt-Right's obsession with CNN is: they seem to be the only ones watching the network. Like, this story details CNN's recent ratings struggles, but who is really surprised by that? CNN is not a #resistance network, and it's not a white supremacist network. Running a network for "moderates who like to be screamed at by partisans from both sides," seems like a good idea to who? CNN is not balanced: it just gives equal airtime to both extremes, creating a dystopian false equivalency that venerates Don Lemon's ability to make every thoughtful person on the planet hate his guts. If CNN is the great scalp the Alt-Right wants to take, they can have it. Wake me up when they come for the NewsHour. [Breitbart]

By Elie Mystal
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 11.28.16

* "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." President-elect Donald Trump can't keep himself away from his Twitter account thanks to the recount that's going on, and now he seems to have accidentally called into question the legitimacy of the election in its entirety. Oopsie! [New York Times] * Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has jumped on Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's election recount bandwagon, but according to campaign general counsel Marc Elias, it's only "to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides." Thus far, Wisconsin has already agreed to perform a recount. [CBS News] * Just like the president-elect who's included him on his Supreme Court shortlist, Judge Raymond M. Kethledge of the Sixth Circuit seems to be incredibly blunt. The judge expects civility between parties in briefs, but is well known for his "caustic rebuke[s]" and "eviscerat[ing] [litigants] like first-day law student[s]." [Big Law Business] * Per recent TV ads, "Wells Fargo is making changes to make things right," but only if those changes don't involve public court records: Wells Fargo customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names have filed a class-action suit, but the bank is trying to quash their claims by forcing plaintiffs into arbitration. [CNN Money] * "If you look at other parts of the state — Houston, Dallas, San Antonio — everybody has a law school." But that doesn't mean that everybody needs to have a law school. A dearth of potential applicants be damned, because lawmakers in the Texas Rio Grande Valley are going ahead with plans to establish a public law school in the area. [Valley Star]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 11.17.16

* Don't say we didn't tell you this, but according to the latest report from Citi Private Bank's Law Firm Group, the great Biglaw salary increase of 2016 is now being cited as a strain on law firm profits. Expenses are now growing faster than revenues at many firms. We'll have more on this later today. [Am Law Daily] * This is one promise that President-elect Trump is sticking to: Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, has confirmed that he will choose a Supreme Court nominee from the list(s) he released earlier this year: "You’ve seen the list of 21. The list has not changed." You can see Trump's shortlist(s) here and here. [Big Law Business] * "Every good person has an obligation to both to continue being heard and to continue doing the right thing. We can’t afford for a president to fail." Justice Sonia Sotomayor has spoken out about the results of the presidential election, and she thinks that we must guide President-elect Trump to make the right decisions for the country. [WSJ Law Blog] * The American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has sanctioned not one, but two law schools for their lax admissions standards. Valparaiso Law has been publicly censured and Charlotte Law has been placed on probation. We'll have more on this later today. [National Law Journal] * Judge William Duffin of the Eastern District of Wisconsin has denied a request made by state prosecutors to delay "Making a Murderer" subject Brendan Dassey's release from prison. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says he will appeal Duffin's ruling to the Seventh Circuit. Dassey is scheduled to be released on Friday. [Reuters]

By Staci Zaretsky
Non-Sequiturs

Non-Sequiturs: 10.25.16

* Judge Alex Kozinski's acting career continues; check him out in Goliath, the new legal drama from Amazon. [Trial Insider] * Bizarre federal crimes. [Versus Texas] * If HRC is president, who might she nominate to the Supreme Court? [Empirical SCOTUS] * More Supreme Court BS from Chuck Grassley. [Huffington Post] * Hey, look! There's some good news for women in Biglaw. [WILEF Tribune] * The Senate is bringing down the Supreme Court. Will the institution ever recover? [Slate] * More voting shenanigans in Wisconsin. [Salon]

By Kathryn Rubino
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 09.12.16

* “We believe the magistrate judge’s decision that Brendan Dassey’s confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law." Prosecutors in Wisconsin have appealed the overturned conviction of "Making a Murderer" subject Brendan Dassey. He'll remain in prison pending the outcome of the appeal. [New York Times] * A Canadian judge is facing possible removal from the bench after asking this question to the accuser in a rape trial: "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?" The judge also made other inappropriate remarks during the trial, and blames it on his failure to understand changes to the country's sexual-assault laws. [ABC News] * Desperate times sometimes call for really desperate measures? California-based Prism Patents is cutting its executives' compensation by two-thirds in an attempt to come up with some cash. Its general counsel's salary fell from $240,000 to $90,000, and the company's CEO now makes $12 (not a typo), down from $300,000. [Big Law Business] * The battle between Houston Law School and the Houston College of Law (formerly South Texas Law) rages on, and now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is involved. Thanks to a complaint lodged by U. Houston, the USPTO has suspended Houston College's trademark application for its new name. [Houston Chronicle via TaxProf Blog] * It doesn't matter if Romy and Michelle invented Post-It Notes or if serial inventor Alan Amron did, because your lawsuit against 3M is likely to be dismissed -- especially if you've already settled a prior $400 million suit over the product's inventorship for $12,000 and released the company from all of your future claims. [CBS Minnesota]

By Staci Zaretsky