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
Has the Senate given a date for this vote, yet?
REALLY??????
I think the appeal was only heard earlier this year.
The original judgement was a couple/few(?) “years” ago.
Don’t know - I’m in the dark w/o TV or computer, stuck on a blackberry. It’s a slow way to keep up with the world.
I’ll check sorry.
Liberals NEVER recuse themselves. Judicial ethics is anathema to them.
Maybe. But usually bigname lawyers get on with their next cases and don’t dwell on disappointing outcomes. Greenberg apparently saw something in Sotomayor’s courtroom that disturbed him greatly. I give him the benefit of the doubt over her.
There is no “relationship” to report if you know the judge.
The mere “knowing” of a judge and a lawyer is not significant at all. What is significant is that Sotomayor as a private attorney worked with Mr. Fairhurst also a private attorney, in a common effort to represent large foreign automobile manufacturers with similar interests. They did so in the 1980’s for a trade organization which according to the NY Times “no longer possesses any records”. According to my adversary, he and the judge were on the same team as advocates. The nature and extent of their association will not, and can not be determined.
If a judge recognizes or ought recognize a former colleague and there is “even the appearance of impropriety” that judge is to notify the litigants who can elect to seek her recusal - or - the judge to avoid any appearance of bias recuses herself. That’s the way its done and it is quite common.
As to being “eccentric” you can watch my interviews on www.photoshopusertv.com, read any of my monthly articles in Photoshop User Magazine or ask any of my clients who range from celebrities to nobodies and judge for yourself. I admit that I was and am “eccentric” enough to sue the richest man in the world four times on behalf of four individual photographers whose historic images went missing - hundreds of thousands of them. I retrieved hundreds of thousands but not all - their whereabouts remain unknown (See articles in the Washington Post, NY Times and countless photo publications on the vanishing of valuable political photography created by photographers in the US and France)
Mr. Usher WON his case. The court found in his favor on 12,640 out of 12,644 images he claimed Mr. Gates company lost. The judge determined (like another Federal Judge in one of my other cases) that Corbis kept no records and its tracking system was “wholly inadequate”. The “software God” had no software to track these valuable images.
Your sympathies for Mr. Gates are inexplicable. If it takes eccentricity to represent David against Goliath, so be it. The outpouring of support for Mr. Usher has been huge, I am amazed by anyone who given the fact that Corbis/Gates was held negligent TWICE and these valuable images are gone (?) your sympathies lie with Bill.
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