Civil Litigation Sanctions

The newspapers Friday were filled with disturbing revelations:

The Lower Merion School District today acknowledged that investigators reviewing its controversial laptop tracking program have recovered "a substantial number of webcam photos" and that they expect to soon start notifying parents whose children were photographed.

Responding to a motion filed Thursday as part of a

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

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

That’s one way to lose millions of dollars:

Disbarred lawyer Kenneth Heller’s refusal to turn over files in a matter that ultimately was resolved with a $3.7 million settlement was "symptomatic" of a 24-year record of "utter contempt for the judicial system," Southern District Bankruptcy Judge Stuart M. Bernstein wrote, quoting from an opinion

All’s fair in love, war and litigation:

An arbitrator cannot sue a lawyer for wrongful use of civil proceedings, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled, even if the lawyer allegedly lodged false accusations in court papers to have the arbitrator disqualified, because lawyers enjoy an "absolute privilege" that immunizes them from

[UPDATE: In its ruling, the Third Circuit set forth the appropriate standard for sanctions and concluded the conduct was likely sanctionable, but refused to remand the case back to the District Court for further proceedings, thereby vacating the order while still criticizing the attorneys involved. The opinion is at Grider v. Keystone Health Plan

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Here’s how it starts:

Nancy Kanter, Esquire ("Kanter") referred a case to Alan B. Epstein, Esquire ("Epstein"). The case involved a claim by a child in the foster system who was abused by her prospective adoptive foster parents (the "Tara M. case"). Kanter had served as

Legal Blog Watch catches Charles Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School and a founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, getting reprimanded in the SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum case. Recording Industry vs. The People has the Order (PDF), which says:

Absent plain evidence to the contrary, and the Defendant has presented