I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million. We’re listed in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, U.S. News’s Top Lawyers, [...]
Why George Bush’s Lawyer Sued The Governor, but not State, of California Over Proposition 8 (And Why He Didn’t Sue Arnold Personally)
JURIST's Paper Chase reports an interesting development: Former US solicitor general Ted Olson and prominent litigator David Boies [professional profiles] announced [video] Wednesday that they have filed suit [complaint, PDF] challenging California's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive], Proposition 8 [text, PDF], on federal Constitutional grounds. The complaint, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website], seeks to enjoin enforcement of the ban on the grounds that California state officials, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Edmund Brown [official websites], would be liable under 42 USC § 1983 [text] for ... Continue Reading
Can I Set Up An LLC To Avoid Personal Liability In A Lawsuit?
Among the many creative “legal” ideas floating around on the internet is: If you set up an LLC for yourself and conduct all your business through it, the LLC will be liable in a lawsuit but you won't. Last week, I was asked if this "asset protection strategy" worked. No, it doesn't. Conducting your personal business through an LLC provides no protection against a tort verdict, the type of liability that most people are worried about. The use of corporate forms -- like LLCs, S-Corporations, or Incorporation -- has many important purposes, but avoiding personal tort liability for your own conduct ... Continue Reading
Barnes v. Yahoo! Round-Up: Section 230 Immunity Doesn’t Cover Promissory Estoppel
The Ninth Circuit just decided Barnes v. Yahoo! (link to PDF opinion). Here are the facts, as summarized by Anita Ramasastry at FindLaw: The facts begin when plaintiff Cecilia Barnes learned that her ex-boyfriend – pretending to be her – had posted nude photos of her on Yahoo, along with her email address, work address and phone number, and an invitation to men to contact her for sexual purposes. The ex-boyfriend had also gone into Yahoo's member chat rooms to direct men to her profile. Soon, as the Ninth Circuit summarized it, "men whom Barnes did not know were peppering her ... Continue Reading
Pennsylvania Superior Court: Psychiatrists Liable For Medical Malpractice For Sexual Relations With Patients
Summing up their reversal of a Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas' dismissal of plaintiff's complaint on preliminary objections: Therefore, taking the facts pled in the Thierfelders' complaint as true, we hold that when a physician is providing specific treatment for psychological problems, and has a sexual relationship with the patient, if that sexual relationship directly causes the patient's psychological/emotional symptoms to worsen, that patient has potentially stated a cognizable cause of action for malpractice. These doctors need not be specialists in psychological care, but merely must be medically licensed to treat patients for such conditions. We note that in this ... Continue Reading
Law Practice Tip: Avoid Multitasking and Use Batch Processing
There is no shortage of productivity advice on the internet. Notable examples include Getting Things Done, 43 Folders (inventor of The Hipster PDA) and Zen Habits, and David Seah (inventor of The Printable CEO). Truth is, most of these systems are notoriously difficult to fully implement and, like Merlin Mann, after an extensive time following the productivity genre/industry in details, I have generally soured on the relentless gadgetry, listmaking, fickleness and obsessiveness of most productivity websites and communities, and so don't closely follow many of those blogs anymore. (Let me craft a specific exception for Lifehacker, which never ... Continue Reading
Can Philadelphia Sue Pennsylvania For More Court Funding?
At The Legal Intelligencer Blog: State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, the liaison justice to the First Judicial District who is in charge of appointing administrative judges of the court's divisions, said in an interview Thursday that the FJD may have to sue to secure a necessary level of funding in the next fiscal year. ... An inadequate level of funding for the courts that sabotages the courts' ability to function could necessitate a lawsuit, Castille said. "We don't want a constitutional confrontation but that will most likely end up before the Supreme Court," Castille said. "And we'd ... Continue Reading
Three Interesting Dissents By Potential Supreme Court Nominees Sotomayor, Wood and Wardlaw
Since I don't have access to President Obama's "shortlist," I'll rely on Intrade to tell me the most likely nominees for fill Justice David Souter's seat on the Supreme Court. Right now, five candidates break double-digit odds (links are to Wikipedia): Sonia Sotomayor Diane Pamela Wood Elena Kagan Kim McLane Wardlaw Jennifer Granholm [edit -- if this AP article is correct, then Wardlaw's not under consideration, but Janet Napolitano and Carlos Moreno are. I've thus added a dissent by Justice Moreno.] Since he's the one doing the choosing, let's quote Obama on the Supreme Court: [I]n the overwhelming number of Supreme Court ... Continue Reading
Most Popular Posts as of May 13, 2009
New to the site? Haven't been here in a while? Here are some of the most popular posts over the past few weeks. Litigations and Trials: Three Ways To Lose Your Business Lawsuit - Wachtell and The Failed Hexion / Huntsman Merger Does The Fumo Juror's Twittering Warrant A Mistrial? Harvard Law Professor Bungles Rules of Civil Procedure for Deposing Third Parties American College of Trial Lawyers Report Encourages Frivolous Civil Discovery Objections Another Preventable Small Business Lawsuit Horror Story Law Practice: How To Write Your Brief So That The Judge Will Hate You "How Low Could Associate Salaries Go?" ... Continue Reading
Have Big Law Firms Stopped Hiring First Year Associates To “Maximize Value For The Client?”
In the middle of an otherwise good article in The Legal Intelligencer about the creative solutions local biglaw firms (Eckert Seamans, Ballard Spahr, Fox Rothschild) have taken to the shrinking supply of corporate legal work is this absurdity: In response to the current economy and a clear shift to a buyer's market, firms are moving from the pyramid model of a few partners at the top and hoards of associates at the bottom to a diamond shape in which several senior associates and junior partners make up the bulk in the middle in an effort to maximize value for the ... Continue Reading
Another Opinion On Pennsylvania’s Duty of Good Faith and Fair Dealing In Breach of Contract Cases
I'm somewhat surprised this issue comes up as often as it does: "Scholarly commentary has recognized that Pennsylvania law has been riven with 'considerable confusion as to the nature of the covenant of good faith, when that covenant is implicated, and how claims arising from a breach of the covenant are enforced.' Seth William Goren, Looking for Law in all the Wrong Places: Problems in Applying the Implied Covenant of Good Faith Performance, 37 U.S.F. L. Rev. 257, 258 (2003). As the parties' discussion of the law illustrates, it has not always been clear 'whether the covenant is implicated in ... Continue Reading
