Posted on 07/16/2009 2:26:31 PM PDT by kristinn
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 Corbis, a privately held company wholly owned by Bill Gates. The case principally concerned lost Presidential and campaign photography during the 2000 Bush v. Gore Campaign and the US Supreme Court case related thereto.We won at the trial level in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York but the award to the victorious plaintiff was absurdly low.
We appealed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals where the award was inexplicably upheld. The New York Times reported on this high profile case today, please see:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/behind-6/
It was revealed therein by opposing counsel hat Judge Sotomayor and Mr. Gates’ counsel have known and (possibly worked with) each other for decades. Such relationship was never disclosed to me as plaintiff’s attorney by the Court. No opportunity for us to request that Judge Sotomayor recuse herself was afforded as this information was never disclosed.
The appearance of impropriety is astounding as Judge Sotomayor could have recused herself and we could have had another Appeals Panel within days.
Please contact me so that this apparently unethical judicial behavior is brought to the attention of the judiciary committee immediately.
Edward C. Greenberg, Esq.
contact info redacted
thank you for posting the statute, which was referenced in the pamphlet.
As for the part regarding bias, you will note it says bias towards a party, not towards bias towards counsel for party. That would be covered, I think, by the catch-all reasonable person provision already discussed.
I appreciate your position on this but have my own, and will leave it at that.
If it’s true, ole sonia will fit right in with o’s bunch of criminals, thugs, liars and lobbyists.
I see the point of the plaintiffs argument about setting future precedent of potential value of photos. However, the way the article was written it sounded like just because it was Bill Gates' company, one of the richest men in the world then they should've been awarded more based on Gates' wealth. That's BS. As much as I'd like to see Gates' stung whenever he can, his wealth is nobody's business especially determining damages from someone else's negligence.
The most likely reason he is upset is becaue he had a contingency agreement with the plaintiff. So as a result of the low judgment, he gets a small cut.
the reason it is so difficult to overturn damage amounts is because so much depends on the weighing of evidence, behavior of the witnesses, etc., that is best viewed at trial. Appellate review therefore is oft restricted to legal issues.
Yes but it also says:
“...in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Now we can’t decide what is reasonable here but neither could Sotomayor. But it’s not even the question now. Rather as we have been bantering here back and forth that it is the issue that she withheld the information and so precluded Plaintiff’s counsel from gathering grounds for asserting a reasonable doubt.
Yes we will leave it at that. We can’t really go anywhere with it anyways except to say that Sotomayor will honor ethical codes as interpreted for and by herself, and will withhold information from others, including prominant officers based on her own self-interpretation of ethical statutes. That in itself stinks.
NOOOO to Sotomayor!
Yes possibly, but we are now years after the fact and his willingness to commit energy to this and have it hashed out in public indicates he is a believer, that she is inclined to interpret ethics statutes on her own for herself, without affording anyone else an opportunity to have a say. So this is very relevant to the confirmation, or at least to the public paying attention.
In my experience, an attorney who was angry at an award level years back would not bother to come out and get in the public eye unless the anger transcended to areas other than simple dollars. Greenberg referred to the astounding appearance of impropriety, apparent unethical judicial behavior, lack of empathy ... all of which Obama himself has paid lip service to the contrary.
The bottomline is that Sotomayor could have easily recused herself or afforded opportunity to plaintiff counsel to motion for a new judge. Surely she could have gotten off the case and moved to another case. Maybe she really thought it was a trivial fact that she worked with and knew defense counsel, but she decided that on her own. That shows a certain callousness. So it begs the question that in her mind what was so special about this case that she needed to withhold information?
Nonetheless there will be some naysaying Republicans.
I am assuming everyone’s vote is public record, right?
The ones voting NO, are the ones we should respect.
I don’t think that the case (that is, the relationship between attorney and appellate judge) was special at all—I think it was perfectly common. That’s why it wasn’t disclosed—there was no real reason to because it is old hat.
Maybe we’ll see more in the coming days that persuade me otherwise
She'll minimize it. Blah blah know hundreds of lawyers blah blah.
Obama got his house because of felon Tony. Got his career because of Blago.
Pursue this and she'll charge McCarthyism. Or, Leahy and Schumer will charge McCarthyism.
Did Gates shop the case to her court.
Do Bears prefer Charmin or Scott.
That being said, it won't matter. She's going to be confirmed. The RAT party is the most unethical party ever and the Repubs are too wimpy to fight against her because the are afraid of losing the latino vote, which they're never going to get anyway.
Yeah - well you’re a racist for daring to stop her nomination.
/sarcasm
I'm fairly certain that your use of the future tense here was in error, so I fixed it for you.
I think you have summed up the situation very well.
Comes across as a money grubber to me. Throws in Bill Gates name and he didn’t get enough money and looks for sympathy.
You’re right about ideologically courrupt demrats. However, Pubbies are not “too wimpy” to fight back. They are demrats by another name. They actually support the demrat Marxist agenda.
Sotomayor is just one example of many that prove the point.
We’ll see in the next week or two whether there is more meat to this story, i.e., more to Sotomayor’s relationship with the defense counsel.
WAY TO GO.!!!!
I am tilted the other way because it is years after the fact and this ‘prominent’ attorney is writing frantically all members of the confirmation process and the press, to let them know he saw something that still bugs him to this day. He saw something in that courtroom years ago that he can't let go of. I don't think he would do this if it was only about a small award.
It’s amazing how some people think ethics in the JUDICARY is a foreign concept. AND THIS WOMAN IS JUDGE FOR LIFE.
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