Free Republic

ATLANTA, GA—STEVEN H. BALLARD, 53, of McDonough, Georgia, was sentenced today by United States District Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. to serve over five years in federal prison on a wire fraud charge involving a real estate investment scam that lasted over five years and defrauded a dozen victims in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. Clayton County District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson said, “I am gratified that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was able to present the losses of so many victims to the Court, and thereby obtain justice for those who relied on this former attorney and his ‘legal’ papers. In...

Because I know you were worried. Section 2531 (pp. 1431-1433) of the "Bend Over And Take It, America" bill seems tantalizing at first glance. IN GENERAL.—To the extent and in the amounts made available in advance in appropriations Acts, the Secretary shall make an incentive payment, in an amount determined by the Secretary, to each State that has an alternative medical liability law in compliance with this section. Hooray! Some medical liability reform at last! With financial incentives to the states who implement it! Not so fast.

A deputy assistant attorney general who said he was on his lunch break when an officer found him with a stripper and sex toys in his sport utility vehicle has been fired, his boss said Wednesday. Roland Corning, 66, a former state legislator, was in a secluded part of a downtown cemetery when an officer spotted him Monday, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. As the officer approached, Corning sped off, then pulled over a few blocks away. He and the 18-year-old woman with him, an employee of the Platinum...

A new California law that gives poor residents the right to an attorney in civil matters such as child custody and foreclosure is being hailed as a model that could transform the nation's legal landscape. But critics argue that the law will result in a wave of case backlogs and could further burden court budgets. The law, signed this month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, assures the poor legal counsel in an array of civil cases. Advocates for the change say poor people often wind up in court facing life-changing consequences -- such as eviction -- but go through the process...

Fearing that negative public feelings toward lawyers could be let loose, the Pennsylvania Bar Association backed away yesterday from calling for creation of a citizens' commission to look into changes to the state constitution. The best that a roomful of 350 lawyers could do with the hot-potato issue was to decide to pick another group of lawyers to look into constitutional proposals at a later date. (snip) The group's worry was that an eventual constitutional convention might take up issues the Bar Association has been fighting for decades, such as tort reform and caps on attorneys' fees.

Meet Stewart Rhodes. He graduated in 2004 from Yale Law School, where his paper, “Solving the Puzzle of Enemy Combatant Status,” won a prize for the best paper on the Bill of Rights. Before entering the law, he served as a U.S. Army paratrooper. What’s Rhodes up to now? Many military men turned lawyers troop off to large law firms, where the discipline and diligence cultivated in the armed forces help them succeed. Others join the JAG Corps or work for defense contractors. But Rhodes, who was a non-traditional student at YLS, has taken a non-traditional career path since graduating....

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) rejected the idea of incorporating tort reform into the health care legislation now under consideration. The issue arose when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tort reform could reduce health care costs by $54 billion over the next decade. “Look, $54 billion is a drop in the bucket for a program that will cost at least $2 trillion over the same period,” Reid observed. “The impact on the taxpayers will be inconsequential.” Reid contrasted the “minuscule savings for taxpayers with the devastating impact that reducing tort costs would have on trial lawyers. The benefit...

(CNSNews.com) – International law dealing with refugees should be amended to cover people affected by disasters attributed to climate change, environmental lawyers are arguing. With the United Nations and others predicting upward of 200 million people being displaced by 2050 as a result of environmental changes, the London-based Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) says they will need help dealing with “statelessness and compensation.” “International refugee law focuses on those who are persecuted for political, racial or religious reasons,” the organization’s director, Joy Hyvarinen, said in a statement Thursday. “It was not designed for those who are left...

Thanks to an intrepid blogger with the tag Trapdoc posting a letter to Mark Steyn, the search for the Wikipedia Libelist responsible for damaging posts to the Rush Limbaugh account has been narrowed to the IP address of a New York City law firm: "The quotes were added by a user with the IP address of 69.64.213.146. This address has been used mostly to make changes to the article about Rush, but also Karl Rove, Sean Hannity,.. James Dobson and Sara Palin from 2005 until earlier this year. "While others have noted this in various forums, no one seems to...

      | |     Manhattan Moment [Print]  [Email]         James R. Copland: Here's what is stopping tort reform By: James R. Copland OpEd ContributorOctober 14, 2009 In his September 9, nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress, President Obama made news by saying that medical-malpractice litigation "may be contributing to unnecessary costs" in the U.S. health-care sys¡©tem.Since then, trial-lawyer advocates--including their lobbying arm, the American Association for Justice (AAJ), and various allied "consumer" groups such as the Center for Justice and Democracy--have been engaged in a fierce counter-attack. Front-and-center among the lawyer-advocates' arguments is that...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-Frivolous lawsuits filed by the nation's trial lawyers are a drain on the economy, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III said Thursday night. Meese, who served in Ronald Reagan's California gubernatorial and U.S. presidential administrations, said lawsuit abuse is a "silent drain on the economy" and "a stealth threat to businesses and consumers."

The ABA Journal has this interesting thought attributed to Justice Scalia. Asked to comment on whether the quality of advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court was too low, Justice Scalia is quoted as saying: “I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise. “I mean there’d be a … public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society? “I...

A unanimous Missouri Supreme Court has imposed a stayed suspension and probation for one year in a case that involved a fee agreement "purporting to give [the lawyer] sole authority to settle claims, with or without [the client's] consent." The attorney represented the client in three matters and initially charged by the hour. When the client was unable to keep current with the monthly bills, the attorney proposed (and the client agreed to) a contingent fee arrangement that included the following language: ...because I am taking a risk with you on this case, and because I am more familiar with...

Now that the Bush administration is no longer there to actively lobby for Israel, the situation for the Jewish state at the hands of the assorted Israel bashers and anti-Semites of the world is growing more and more grave. Currently, the top-of-the-page headline on the home page of the influential left-wing British newspaper The Guardian is “Lawyers seek arrest of Israeli defence minister in UK for alleged war crimes.”

Stung by the prospect of withdrawal of federal aid following the airing of video evidence of its corruption, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has filed a suit against filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. ACORN attorney Jack Cozener argued that “real damage has been done here. The ACORN organization is losing millions in government money. Justice requires compensation for this wrong.” Cozener said he will be demanding that “100% of the profits that O’Keefe and Giles reap from this effort—from the films, any books or other media—be turned over to my clients. After all, it is...

Many experts have pointed to tort reform as a key element of any effort to hold down the costs of health care: The New York Times has reported that as a result of such lawsuits, “doctors have responded by changing the way they deliver babies, often seeing a relatively minor anomaly on a fetal heart monitor as justification for an immediate cesarean.” .. President Barack Obama said to the American Medical Association: ..Now, just hold on to your horses here, guys. (Laughter.) I want to be honest with you. I’m not advocating caps on malpractice awards — (boos from some...

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

Tony Trimble couldn't catch a break. As one of the lead attorneys for Sen. Norm Coleman following Election Day, he hadn't stopped working in months. And as he watched the Republican's lead over Democrat Al Franken slip steadily and then finally vanish in the largest recount in American history, he marveled at how everything seemed to be breaking Franken's way. Clerical corrections, countless one- and two-vote shifts from sloppily filled-out ballots, major judicial rulings. They all added to Franken's vote quarry. In the closing days of the recount, Trimble watched, dumbstruck, as 933 rejected absentee ballots — once the domain...

Does anyone know why Michelle Obama had her law license revoked in 1993?

The U.S. Tax Court ruled Monday that Brooklyn, N.Y. tax lawyer William G. Halby, 78, had no legal basis to deduct prostitutes and pornography as medical expenses on his federal tax returns. Judge Joseph Robert Goeke upheld the Internal Revenue Service's determination that Halby owed $21,000 in back taxes plus $4,000 in accuracy-related penalties for his disallowed write-off of $120,000 of what the court delicately (and in quotations) called "service providers" as well as pornographic materials. According to the opinion, Halby did maintain careful records as is generally required for deductions. He "kept track of these visits in a journal,"...

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- As President Obama turns up the heat on health care reform, one new and surprising detail to emerge is his pledge to tackle medical malpractice. "I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs," Obama said Wednesday night. Obama's decision to wade into the issue has some insiders scratching their heads, because cutting down on medical malpractice lawsuits is a Republican tenet.

I was just watching Linda Douglass, Obama poodle, on FOX NEWS. She refused to answer whether BHO was going to promote TORT REFORM in his dog 'n pony show tonight...she merely said "Obama has talked about it a lot." blah blah blah So my question is: could Obama create "tort reform" this way: MAKE EVERY DOCTOR A DEFACTO EMPLOYEE OF THE GOVERNMENT. THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT BE SUED--SO NO LAWSUITS AGAINST DOCTORS WOULD BE PERMITTED. I know Obama and the libs are in bed with trial lawyers, so this may not happen...but it crossed my mind.

Another View: Lock the Law School Doors September 2, 2009, 10:00 am Dan Slater, a former litigator, argues that there are too many places at too many law schools, especially with the current hiring slump at law firms. This summer, in the staid world of legal education, where curriculum is uniform and scholars are trained in the art of like-mindedness, one dean hatched a contrary plan. In a memo to incoming students, Patricia D. White, the dean of University of Miami School of Law, surmised: “Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor in which...

Even though it is widely acknowledged that lawsuits are a major factor in the escalation of health care costs over the last few decades, no attempt to rein-in lawsuit abuse is included in the 1000+ page health care reform bill. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean explains why. “First, the bill is already long enough,” Dean argued. “Adding even one more page would make it unreadable.” “Second, lawyers are America’s heroes,” Dean contended. “You can’t turn on TV without seeing a lawyer fighting crime, ensuring justice, or rescuing the weak. Voters wouldn’t stand for a bill scapegoating this noble...

WASHINGTON — The US Central Intelligence Agency will pay the legal fees of any officers involved in a government probe of alleged abusive interrogation techniques, the Washington Post said Friday. CIA Director Leon "Panetta will do everything he can to ensure that anyone who needs legal representation has it, whether they have liability insurance or not," a senior intelligence official was quoted as saying. "It's a question of fairness. People who did tough jobs for the country won't be left by the side of the road." Some, but not all, CIA agents working on controversial assignments take out personal liability...

For arbitration’s opponents, ensuring that consumers can go to court is not the end goal. It is actually the first step of a two-step dance at the plaintiffs’ lawyer prom. The second step is to allow these consumer cases to become large class actions—the kind that are famous for making a relatively few plaintiffs’ lawyers rich while giving the consumer masses pennies on the dollar, or even coupons, for their trouble.

Dems' Ace in the Hole on Health Care: Tort Reform "It will be tough to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they're looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits... some doctors may feel the need to order more tests and treatments to avoid being legally vulnerable." (President Obama, American Medical Association June 2009). "Anyone who denies there is a crisis in medical malpractice is probably a trial lawyer." (Barack Obama 1996 Illinois State Senate race). "I'm not advocating caps on malpractice awards." (President Obama, AMA convention June 2009). The first two statements are right on Mr....

Dolphins Blamed For Woman's Slip And Fall Allecyn Edwards, possibly wanting to prove she could be as creative as her parents were with her first name, alleged in a complaint filed August 18 that the Brookfield Zoo and its dolphins are responsible for injuries she suffered last year. Yessss . . . Just a Little Closer to the Pool, Human Edwards alleges that the zoo "recklessly and willfully trained and encouraged" its dolphins to "throw water at the spectators . . . making the floor wet and slippery." The zoo and/or its dolphin accomplices are therefore blamed for the creation...

Sarah Palin is calling for Tort Reform to be the hallmark of any kind of health care reform: President Obama's health care "reform" plan has met with significant criticism across the country. Many Americans want change and reform in our current health care system. We recognize that while we have the greatest medical care in the world, there are major problems that we must face, especially in terms of reining in costs and allowing care to be affordable for all. However, as we have seen, current plans being pushed by the Democratic leadership represent change that may not be what...

I don't know if this has been posted but follow the link to the Washington Examiner. As usual Scott is on right on track.

The elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about is the very high and escalating cost of malpractice insurance that every health care provider must recover if they are going to practice medicine in this country. It all starts with tort reform -- putting some limits on the liability that our providers are exposed to whenever malpractice is charged or suspected. If there were some sensible limits in place, then there would not be the pressure to practice defensive medicine. Some estimates of the cost to our system of defensive medicine range upwards of 25-30 percent of...

An attorney was arrested late Tuesday after accepting $53,500 in cash that he believed was half of a bribe being paid in exchange for him instructing his client to lie to a federal prosecutor and a federal grand jury investigating allegations of immigration fraud. Alfred Nash Villalobos, 44, a South Lake Tahoe resident who recently relocated from West Hills, was arrested by FBI agents Tuesday afternoon at a law office in Century City. Villalobos was charged in a criminal complaint filed yesterday with obstruction of a grand jury proceeding. According to the affidavit in support of the complaint filed yesterday...

Seven lawyers in Tabriz and Mashhad who had been representing young Iranians detained in post-presidential election protests have been killed by the Iranian authorities in recent days, according to sources in Iran. Their deaths have deterred other lawyers from taking detainees' cases, they added. The sources spoke to The Jerusalem Post by telephone, and requested that their identities remain undisclosed for their own security. In Tabriz, Iran's fourth-largest city, the bodies of five lawyers were returned to their families earlier this week, the sources said. The five had been representing some of the hundreds of Iranians detained in the northwestern...

...strangely, tort reform is not part of any of the Democratic party bills revising the United States health care system. [Obama] told the American Medical Association that he is "not advocating caps on malpractice awards." Even though they might significantly lower medical costs, Obama said he believes caps "can be unfair to people who've been wrongfully harmed." That might very be the real reason, but there is a major question-mark that arises when you look at the campaign contributions from the 2008 presidential election.... If you look at the latest Federal Election Commission (released 7/13/09), you see that President Obama...

How great would this country be without lawyers

Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.Health Costs: Lawyers are responsible for more unneeded procedures than "greedy" doctors. But instead of capping malpractice awards, bureaucrats will soon decide which treatments are OK and whether you're worth it.

Why did Michelle Obama give up her license to practice law in 1993? Records listed at the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois list her status as "voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law." It further states that Michelle license is "on court ordered inactive status." The statement has many bloggers wondering why a court would issue an order to stop Michelle Obama from practicing law, and some have even suggested the first lady faced may have been facing allegations of misconduct. Michelle Obama, known as Michelle Robinson at the time, attended Princeton University...

Levi was dressed up for dinner with me, photographer Marc Lester, and his advisors, criminal defense attorney Rex Butler and private investigator Tank Jones. He had on nice leather shoes, slacks and a designer T-shirt under a gray North Face jacket. Up close under the restaurant lights, I could see that his facial hair was patchy and his cheeks were round and soft. He's only 19, but that's easy to forget.

WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials are holding discussions that could result in White House counsel Gregory Craig leaving his post, following a rocky tenure, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Craig, the top lawyer at the White House and a close aide to President Barack Obama, has helped lead the administration's efforts on several national-security issues that have stirred political problems for Mr. Obama. These include the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the release of Bush administration-era national-security documents, and efforts to find legal ways to indefinitely hold some detainees who can't be put on trial....

Lawyers emerge as the winner in Ford settlement SAN FRANCISCO – The lawyers were paid millions of dollars. Ford Motor Co. put behind it a costly lawsuit connected to the Explorer rollover scandal of the 1990s. And the judge closed out a complex case that clogged the Sacramento County Superior Court's overburdened calendar for more than seven years. Everyone seemingly got some tangible benefit — except for nearly all of the 1 million consumers covered by the class action lawsuit filed in their name. None of the consumers got money, only discount coupons toward new Ford purchases. Few used them....

SALEM — The driver of a minivan who was seriously injured when she was struck head-on by a drag-racing teenager doing 81 mph is now being sued by the teenager's passenger, who was also injured. A lawsuit filed yesterday in Salem Superior Court suggests that Christine Speliotis "carelessly and negligent (sic) failed to avoid the collision with the other vehicle head on." The lawsuit was filed by the father of Brandon Pereira, 17, of Peabody, the cousin of Timothy Pereira, the driver of the speeding Ford Mustang. Timothy Pereira, 19, of Salem is out on bail awaiting trial on charges...

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky talked about the high costs of health care today. In particular, Mr. McConnell pointed out how malpractice lawsuits affect how expensive healthcare can become. Dr. Orrin Devinsky, NYU Langone Medical Center neurologist and researcher agrees with Senator McConnell. Dr. Devinsky told the Washington Times,: "By some calculations forty-five to well over fifty percent of the money paid for malpractice actually goes to lawyers and administrators not to the patients. The large percentage of malpractice suits when reviewed independently of doctors and lawyers are felt not to be justified and many people who are wronged...

When the ABA gathers for its annual meeting in Chicago on July 30, the organization's board of governors will weigh a key question: How does the association get membership climbing again? The board will receive a presentation from its marketing consultant Leo Burnett Co. Inc., which was hired in March to aid in spreading the ABA's message to more lawyers. The association has never pursued a marketing effort of this magnitude, said current ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr. **** The recession, expansion of law firms, rise in industry competition and controversy regarding the judicial review process have conspired to...

As we asked earlier this week, if questions over President Obama's citizenship were valid, wouldn't they have come out during the presidential campaign? David Weigel talked with Trevor Potter and other lawyers for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign who said that they did look into the Obama citizenship rumors and found them without merit. Said Potter: "To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations. We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were...

Apple Stores are known for their knowledgeable personnel and excellent customer service. Not coincidentally, those are also the hallmarks of outstanding law firms. This month, the Law Practice Today's The Legal Mac features an article from Jay Shepherd which questions what it would be like if these stores were run like law firms — and by extension, why law firms can't be run more like Apple Stores. It is a very thought-provoking article, and I hope you enjoy it. – Ben Stevens, The Mac LawyerWhat if Apple Stores Billed by the Hour? Lessons for Law Firms by Jay Shepherd...

The following letter was confirmed to me by Mr. Greenberg with the following statement:"The letter was sent to Senators Sessions, Hatch, Grassley, Graham and Coburn. It was also sent to Cong. Peter King (R) NY. The story is being covered extensively by the photo blogs, the trade publications and the NY Times. No politician has responded. The NY Times quotes attributed to me are accurate and therefore I assume that the quotes of my adversary Mr. Fairhurst are accurate as well."Text of the letter: I am an attorney in NYC who represented White House Photographer Chris Usher in litigation against...

I could not approach being nearly as eloquent as Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman in an on-line debate over at the Federalist Society.Believe me, this guy is as liberal as they come. He not only defended SS's statements about being empathetic and being a wise Latina but also the irrelevancy of not being able to find a single case in which partial-birth abortion was medically necessary.But at least the guy is calling this nomination procedure like he sees it. On July 14 he wrote:"...I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor's testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme...

This one's going to blow baby boomers' minds. It concerns a little-known law dating to Elizabethan England suddenly being enforced with gusto in Pennsylvania. The law can force adult children to pay their parents' health-care costs. If Mom and Pop can't pay, you pay. If they have the money but refuse to pay, you pay. If you don't, watch your credit rating sink under the weight of a legal judgment that will haunt you for life. It happened to Don Grant. It can happen to you. The Havertown man is nearly 50 and struggling to pay his mortgage and $100,000...

He garnered some sympathy from two lower courts, but a three-judge appeals panel isn't letting a Minnesota lawyer off the hook from repaying his massive student loan debt. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a bankruptcy court and a district court and found that attorney Mark Allen Jesperson could not discharge more than $360,000 in student loan debt in a Chapter 7 proceeding. The two lower courts had found that repaying the "shockingly immense" debt would create an undue hardship for Jesperson. But the appeals court on Wednesday determined that his "self-imposed limitations," which resulted in a gross...