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, [...]
Ex Parte Blogging Ethics: A New Way To Make The Supreme Court More Inaccessible and Unaccountable
Dan Markel is "singularly unimpressed" with the arguments in favor of prohibiting newspapers from editorializing about pending cases before the Supreme Court: Over on Balkinization, Eugene Fidell has a post expressing sympathy with the idea that newspapers and others should forbear from trying to influence the Supreme Court on the same day that the Court is going to hear oral arguments in a case. Fidell seems to be persuaded by the gist of this student note in the Stanford Law Review, which raises ethical concerns with "ex parte blogging." With no disrepect to the competent job in the student Note, ... Continue Reading
Great Cases Don’t Always Make Bad Law
As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400–401 (1904)(Holmes, J., dissenting). That idea seems to be on David Feige's mind when he writes in Slate about the upcoming trial of admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: No jury on this continent is going to acquit their client, ... Continue Reading
Partial Judicial Immunity Granted To Corrupt Luzerne County Judges
Following up on my post of two weeks ago on judicial immunity in the "kids for cash" Luzerne County scandal, Judge Caputo of the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued his ruling yesterday, which holds in pertinent part: For judicial immunity to apply, only two requirements need to be met: jurisdiction over the dispute, and a judicial act. As to the first, a judge is not immune only when he has acted in the “clear absence of all jurisdiction." Stump 435 U.S. at 349 (citation omitted). Second, a judicial immunity extends only to “judicial acts,” not administrative, executive, or legislative ones. Id. at 360-61. ... Continue Reading
Are You Being Properly Joined And Served? Plaintiffs Are Winning The 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) Removal Debate
"Removal" is the process by which a defendant in a state court case "removes" the case to federal court. 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) makes it sound so simple: Any civil action of which the district courts have original jurisdiction founded on a claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States shall be removable without regard to the citizenship or residence of the parties. Any other such action shall be removable only if none of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen of the State in which such action is ... Continue Reading
The Simple Solution To Judicial Immunity In The Luzerne County Corruption Case
Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Journal reports on absolute judicial immunity: In January, federal prosecutors filed fraud charges against Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan, judges on the Luzerne County, Pa., Court of Common Pleas. Prosecutors alleged that the judges sent numerous juveniles to detention centers over several years in exchange for more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from the former co-owner of two centers. After the criminal charges, several lawyers filed civil suits seeking monetary damages on behalf of dozens of children and their families against the judges and other defendants. They alleged, among other things, that ... Continue Reading
A Panoply Of Cases On The Plain Meaning Rule In The Third Circuit
One of the positive parts of being involved with The Philadelphia Inquirer's bankruptcy is, though I've had to slog my way through over 1,500 separate filings (most of which are irrelevant to my clients) since The Inquirer filed bankruptcy in February, I've also been privy to extraordinarily exhaustive briefings of what are, on the surface, "simple" issues. A $300 million question in the bankruptcy is whether the banks that loaned the current owners the money to buy the company back in 2006 can use their existing debt to "bid" on its assets at the auction proposed by management. The question should be ... Continue Reading
Jones v. Harris Brings Out Another Harvard Law Professor Who Knows More About Writing Columns Than Litigating Cases
[Updated to clarify a distinction between securities suits and investment company act suits.] This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Jones v. Harris. Briefly, the Oakmark complex of mutual funds "hired" Harris Associates as investment advisers, paying Harris 1% (per year) of the first $2 billion of the fund’s assets, 0.9% of the next $1 billion, 0.8% of the next $2 billion, and 0.75% of anything over $5 billion. I write "hired" because the situation is murky: Harris is directly affiliated with Oakmark. Importantly, the fee charged by Harris to Oakmark is more than double the fee it charges unaffiliated ... Continue Reading
Does Copyright Law Care If James Cameron’s Avatar Ripped Off Parts Of “Call Me Joe?”
[UPDATE: Welcome, io9 readers! If you would like to learn more about this area, you should check out the Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Center.] The sharp readers of io9, themselves a collective Library of Alexandria of science fiction, noted surprising common elements between James Cameron's Avatar and a 1957 short story by Poul Anderson, "Call Me Joe:" Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like Avatar's Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength ... Continue Reading
