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 Are Taxpayers Criminally Investigating Shepard Fairey For Lying In A Civil Lawsuit?
Shepard Fairey, creator of the iconic "Hope" poster during Obama's Presidential campaign, is not perfect. After the Associated Press claimed that Fairey's use of one of their images for the poster required authorization, Fairey — represented by the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — pre-emptively sued to establish (by way of a declaratory judgment action) that his transformation of the original image constituted "fair use" and thus did not infringe on their copyright. Frankly, I thought he had a good case, but the suit hasn't gone well: last October, Fairey was forced to admit he spoliated and fabricated evidence: "Throughout ... Continue Reading
“Zubulake Revisited” — Judge Scheindlin Holds Carelessness In Preserving Electronic Evidence Warrants Spoliation Sanctions
Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 220 F.R.D. 212, 217 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) is, as I wrote before, the Tale of Genji for electronic discovery. It is as widely-cited as all but the most prominent of Supreme Court opinions. Gregory P. Joseph brings us selections from Judge Scheindlin’s new magnum opus on the subject, Pension Comm. of Univ. of Montreal, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4546 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2010): In an era where vast amounts of electronic information is available for review, discovery in certain cases has become increasingly complex and expensive. Courts cannot and do not expect that any party can meet ... Continue Reading
A Mountain Dew, A Body In The Trunk, and The Wacky World Of Probable Cause and Qualified Immunity
Sometimes, a police officer's hunch is right: Columbia [Missouri] Police Officer Jessica McNabb pulled over then-19-year-old Daniel Sanders at Stadium Boulevard and Audubon Drive for running a red light and failing to use his headlights at night. Sanders didn't have a license. He asked for an attorney almost immediately. After a search of the trunk, McNabb found the body of Sanders' mother beneath a tire — next to a new shovel with the price tag still on it. Sometimes not: Jordan Miles, who is black, thought his life was in jeopardy when three white men jumped out of a car ... Continue Reading
Citizens United v. FEC: The Supreme Court Invalidates A Law That Doesn’t Exist
[UPDATE: The WSJ Law Blog rounds up reactions by the parties, while SCOTUSBlog rounds up reactions from the media and bloggers.] [UPDATE II: For a peek behind the corporate curtain, see the memo that Republican election lawyer Benjamin L. Ginsberg (of Patton Boggs) is circulating. I think he's going too far in his conclusions; as much as he and his clients would like corporations' electioneering to drown out candidates' and parties' own communications, the disclosure requirements — which were upheld by the Court 8-1 — put a significant damper on that, since the money can still be traced to some extent, and since voters can ... Continue Reading
Judging Lawyers By Their Causes: Carter Phillips and Joe Arpaio
I was going to write about how the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) had hired Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin — perhaps the most experienced Supreme Court advocate in the country — to "study" the constitutionality of President Obama's proposed tax on the big banks, which is really just code for "SIFMA hired Phillips to create grounds for a 5-4 Supreme Court decision invalidating the tax." Then something funny happened. When I typed "Carter Phillips" into Google News to find an article about the SIFMA representation, I saw another story posted around the same time, "Joe Arpaio's Lawyer for Records Dispute ... Continue Reading
The Independent Invention Defense In Patent Infringement Lawsuits
Fred Wilson links to his partner Brad Burnham's post, "We need an independent invention defense to minimize the damage of aggressive patent trolls:" I know of no case where the engineers in one of our companies were aware of the patents that are now being used to attack them. The moral rightness of this screams at me. If, as an engineer focused on solving a problem, I happened to come up with an idea that is in some way similar to yours, then that in itself should suggest that it was obvious and not patentable. Unfortunately, that does not really help. ... Continue Reading
Second Circuit Revives Digital Music Price-Fixing Case, Takes A Bite Out Of Twombly
Before Ashcroft v. Iqbal improperly re-wrote the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly foolishly imposed a new hurdle for plaintiffs who brought antitrust claims. Specifically, in Twombly the Supreme Court held, In applying these general standards to a §1 claim [e.g., a price-fixing claim], we hold that stating such a claim requires a complaint with enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest that an agreement was made. Asking for plausible grounds to infer an agreement does not impose a probability requirement at the pleading stage; it simply calls for enough fact to raise a reasonable ... Continue Reading
Always Draft Angry Briefs. Never File Them.
Last spring, in How To Write Your Brief So That The Judge Will Hate You, I profiled a sarcastic and dismissive brief — filed by attorneys for West Publishing no less, in a case against a law professor — and concluded: An opening brief filled with sarcasm will perturb a judge doing his or her best to reserve judgment until they've heard both sides just as much as an opening statement filled with indignity will repulse a jury doing their best to be fair and impartial until they've heard all of the evidence. As Bruce Merenstein posted on The Legal ... Continue Reading
Blackwater Settles Iraqi Racketeering, Alien Tort Statute and War Crimes Act Claims
JURIST Paper Chase reports: US security firm Blackwater [JURIST news archive] on Wednesday reached a settlement agreement in seven federal lawsuits filed by Iraqi citizens. The suits claimed that Blackwater, now known as Xe, created a reckless culture [AP report] that resulted in numerous deaths, including the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians [JURIST reports] in September 2007 and the 2006 killing of an Iraqi guard. The suits accused Blackwater founder Erik Prince of personal responsibility. The terms of the settlement have not been made public, but Xe said in a statement that it is "pleased" with the resolution. The settlement ... Continue Reading
A Succession Of Lawsuits Is The Only Power The People Have Left
There's a myth — promoted by vested interests — that the United States is a free market economy. Don't believe it. Even in the smallest of transactions, monopoly power still rules, dutifully skimming its unearned share. "How Visa, Using Card Fees, Dominates a Market": Competition, of course, usually forces prices lower. But for payment networks like Visa and MasterCard, competition in the card business is more about winning over banks that actually issue the cards than consumers who use them. Visa and MasterCard set the fees that merchants must pay the cardholder’s bank. And higher fees mean higher profits for ... Continue Reading
