Thomas Wells Jr., president of the American Bar Association, spoke today at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about preserving the integrity of the American legal system after Guantanamo Bay.
— Jason Doiy
The patent paparazzi have arrived!
Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag got a nice picture of bratty Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being chatted up by what it refers to as a "patent vampire" — Nathan Myhrvold, he of the ominous and secretive patent-hoarding company Intellectual Ventures.
Feared in Silicon Valley (and not just because his name sounds like he’s a Harry Potter villain), Myhrvold’s company has extracted huge licensing deals from tech companies, including this $120 million one from Intuit in May. So what’re Myhrvold and Zuckerberg up to, besides smiling and oddly sipping on Diet Cokes? We’re guessing that Myhvold has a few patents that the Zuckster's company infringes on …is he making an offer that the Facebook Kid can’t refuse?
— Zusha Elinson
A couple of interesting opinions out of the Ninth Circuit today. One’s notable for employment and perhaps corporate contract folks, and the other’s just interesting for the Ethicist vibe Legal Pad got while reading it.
In Doe v. Wal-Mart Stores, the superstore corporation was sued by a bunch of employees at its foreign suppliers, who wanted to hold Wal-Mart liable for the conditions they worked in. Their claims were based in large part on a code of conduct Wal-Mart included in its contracts with suppliers, which said those whose working conditions don’t adhere to local laws and standards, or who don’t let Wal-Mart inspect their facilities, could have their orders canceled and their relationship with Wal-Mart cut off. At any rate, the plaintiffs accused Wal-Mart of reaping the PR benefits of this clause while being lax in its monitoring or even turning a blind eye. The Ninth Circuit turned down the plaintiffs’ four different theories of liability, affirming the Central District. (Judges Ronald Gould, Betty Fletcher and Raymond Fisher)
And in Kardoh v. United States, a Syrian national arrested — but deported rather than prosecuted — for paying $40,000 for alien registration cards from an undercover agent posing as a corrupt immigration official wanted his money back. Northern District Judge Vaughn Walker said okay, noting that Kardoh hadn’t been convicted, but the Ninth Circuit said no way. (Judges Richard Clifton and Procter Hug, and Federal Circuit Judge Glenn Archer Jr., who was sitting by designation)
— Pam Smith
Maybe intellectual property lawyers should worry about facing summary judgment in a higher court than they're used to.
An encyclical letter dated last week expresses some of Pope Benedict XVI's thoughts on the modern world; it's not a pronouncement of church law, more akin to thinking out loud about the problems the pontiff sees confronting the church and the world. One of those problems is IP lawyers. Pulling the relevant quote from the blog Knowledge Ecology Notes:
"On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care."
So while the Protestant Reformation wasn't exactly popular in the Vatican, apparently patent reformation has one seriously high-profile advocate there.
Los Angeles County Superior Court is already facing a lost business day next week when many of its courthouses go dark Wednesday to cut costs. Now it’s facing the loss of a judge, at least temporarily.
Judge Harvey Silberman was indicted by a grand jury on June 24 on charges that he tried to bribe Deputy District Attorney Serena Murillo not to run against him in the June 2008 election, according to a copy of the indictment provided by the attorney general’s office.
Also charged in the indictment were political consultants Evelyn Alexander and Alan Steinberg. Silberman’s attorney, Daniel Nixon, told the Los Angeles Times that the judge “is appalled and outraged” by the charges and that he is “absolutely innocent.” The two consultants entered not guilty pleas on Wednesday. Silberman’s arraignment was delayed pending the arrival of an out-of-county judge.
Witness list, after the jump
Silberman defeated Murillo 52.7 percent to 47.3 percent in the Office No. 69 race. Silberman was appointed as a court commission in 2004, according to his campaign Web site, which included a long list of endorsements from city officials, Democratic clubs, court commissioners and judges.
The indictment does not provide details of the alleged wrongdoing. It did include a list of nine witnesses: Lori Ann Jones (LA Court Commissioner Lori-Ann Jones ran unsuccessfully for the Office No. 84 judgeship in 2008, although the indictment doesn’t make it clear if this is the same person); Harriett Coleman-Russ; Alex Olvera; Serena Murillo; Harold Irving Dash; William James Kopeny; Armando Duron; Danny Kim; and Mary Kay Stephens.
Silberman has been placed on paid leave by the court, according to media reports.
— Cheryl Miller
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Thomas Wells Jr., president of the American Bar Association, spoke today at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about preserving the integrity of the American legal system after Guantanamo Bay.
— Jason Doiy
Yesterday our sister publication Cal Law had the man-bites-dog story of the Consumer Attorneys of California backing a tort reform measure: Senate Bill 367, which would explicity declare that promotional discounts and giveaways for laid-off and furloughed employees don't constitute a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Nobody has actually brought such a lawsuit, as best we could tell. But it appeared Consumer Attorneys might have had at least one lawyer in mind: Alfred Rava, a San Diego attorney who has brought numerous Unruh Act challenges to gender-oriented business promotions. Rava has generated negative headlines in the mainstream press and on the blogosphere for challenging such giveaways as an Oakland A's Mother's Day gift of floppy hats to women in 2004.
It looks as if Consumer Attorneys may be too late to stop Rava from making bad caselaw for plaintiffs. Today we got word that he lost a class certification motion against Bear Valley Ski Resort over a "ladies day" promotion. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anthony Mohr issued a 13-page order [pdf] holding that, because the Unruh Act provides for minimum statutory penalties of $4,000 per violation, there's no need for a class action.
"Assuming plaintiff succeeds on the merits, Bear Valley Ski Resort would be liable for mandatory statutory penalties of $4,000 X 995 putative class members," Mohr wrote. "The product of $3,980,000 constitutes a draconian sum that would strip Bear Valley of its assets."
Rava was acting as the name plaintiff in the case, not as counsel. He was represented by Gregory Cartwright of The Cartwright Law Group in San Diego and Joseph M. Grant of Houston. Brian T. Clark of San Francisco's Knott & Glazier was lead counsel for Bear Valley while John Golper of Universal City's Ballard Rosenberg Golper & Savitt led a team for co-defendants Anheuser-Busch and Bacardi.
— Scott Graham
It wasn’t quite a non-denial denial, but the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office came pretty close with their Monday statement defending a former prosecutor (now judge) who was criticized last week in a state Supreme Court referee’s report.
Superior Court Judge Joyce Allegro prosecuted Miguel Bacigalupo for a double homicide in 1987, when she was a deputy district attorney, and according to the report withheld crucial evidence from the defense that could have supported Bacigalupo’s claim that he was forced by a drug cartel to commit the murders.
The statement from DA spokesman Nick Muyo said that the offices of the DA and attorney general both “have not determined that any misconduct or error of legal significance occurred in this prosecution.” (Which sounds slightly weaker than saying “have determined that no misconduct or error occurred.”)
“Were that the case,” the statement continues, “those issues would be conceded and steps voluntarily taken to modify these convictions and/or the sentence imposed.”
— Evan Hill
Legal Pad learned yesterday that longtime McCutchen, Doyle (now Bingham McCutchen) partner Jed Hurley died on July 4. The firm provided a brief obituary notice outlining Hurley’s accomplishments in and out of the profession, and announcing a memorial service for next Tuesday. The full notice is posted after the jump. Legal Pad offers its sympathies to Hurley’s family and colleagues.
— Brian McDonough
John Edward (Jed) Hurley, Jr., a well-known San Francisco trial lawyer and a partner for 30 years with McCutchen, Doyle, Brown and Enersen (now Bingham McCutchen), died July 4 after a brief illness.
Jed was born in Wichita, Kansas on October 16, 1932. He graduated from Wichita State University in 1959 after serving in U.S. Army Intelligence and obtained his law degree from the University of Kansas in 1962. Jed worked with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. before joining the McCutchen firm in 1964. During Jed’s career as a trial lawyer, he specialized in insurance, maritime, and products liability law, and he tried cases involving marine casualties, auto design and defects, and insurance broker malpractice, among other matters. From 1990 to 2003, Jed served as chairman of the State Bar of California Malpractice Insurance Committee, responsible for oversight of the State Bar-sponsored malpractice insurance program.
In 1985, Jed became a founder of MPC Insurance Ltd., a company that provided professional liability insurance to many of San Francisco’s largest law firms. Jed served as the first president and CEO of MPC, finally retiring 1999. Jed was also instrumental in the founding of Nor-Cal Mutual Insurance Company, Southern California Physician’s Insurance Exchange, and the Dentist’s Insurance Company.
Jed also acted as an Early Neutral Evaluator for the Northern District of California, a settlement panelist for the San Francisco Superior Court, a pro-tem judge for the San Francisco Municipal Court, and an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association. Jed lectured extensively in the U.S., England and Canada on legal and insurance broker malpractice topics, maritime law issues and the formation of captive insurance companies. Jed was a member of the state bars of Kansas and California and of the U.S. Supreme Court, and held memberships in the American Bar Association, the San Francisco Bar Association and the Maritime Law Association.
Jed was a member of the Wichita State University Board of Directors and was the 1996 recipient of the university’s President’s Medal. He was a past member of the University of Kansas School of Law Advisory Committee and in 1987 received the law school’s Distinguished Alumnus Citation. Jed was a member of the Finance Committee of St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco and was a past president of the San Francisco Easter Seals Society.
Jed is survived by his wife, Jo Sicking Hurley, a sister and three brothers, and numerous nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. at St. Dominic's Catholic Church, 2390 Bush St., San Francisco.
Updated: With a link to the memo, below.
Orrick has worked out a way to unclog a logjam of new associates coming through its pipeline: With its fall 2009 class already bumped to join the firm in January or March of 2010 or even 2011, Orrick has decided its current summers who get offers won’t be joining until January 2012.
The firm is also saying it will recruit from campuses starting in November and running through March, instead of the traditional late summer OCI season.
It made both announcements in a memo to law school deans and assistant deans yesterday, which was posted on Above the Law this morning.
“With the fall on-campus recruiting season about to begin, and with many law students needing to make plans and commitments for their future, we knew we had to deal with the issue promptly,” Silicon Valley Orrick partner Stephen Venuto wrote. “Therefore, we decided it was in the best interests of our existing summer associates and fellows, our upcoming new associate classes as well as those students we plan to recruit in the future to make and announce both of these decisions now.”
In a recent story in one of our sister publications, The National Law Journal, it seemed that other firms were advocating this kind of move, too. That all makes you wonder, when will the deferring end?
We’ll have a full story on Orrick’s recruiting change, and reactions to it, tonight on CalLaw.com.
— Petra Pasternak
San Mateo County prosecutor Stephen Wagstaffe, who could soon become the county’s next district attorney, got dinged by a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday for discriminatory jury selection.
The panel, led by Judge Marsha Berzon, overturned a high-profile 2001 murder conviction because Wagstaffe struck the only two black people in the jury pool during voir dire.
Wagstaffe said today in an interview that he stood by his peremptory challenges. He said he has “never misrepresented anything in a courtroom” in 32 years of practicing and that he doesn’t think the decision will hurt his chances of becoming district attorney.
“I don’t think you can find anyone, anywhere who would ever question my integrity,” he said.
(Unless you look on the Ninth Circuit, one supposes.) More after the jump.
A.J. Kutchins, a Berkeley-based appellate lawyer who argued Ali’s case, said that Wagstaffe is known as an able prosecutor and that his voir dire strategy did not “differ from what most DAs do in most courtrooms in California.”
Wagstaffe secured a sentence of 55 years to life in prison for Mohammed Haroon Ali, who murdered girlfriend Tracey Biletnikoff, the daughter of former Oakland Raider Fred Biletnikoff. But the Ninth Circuit, reversing both a federal district court and a California court of appeal, decided that Wagstaffe’s reasons for striking the two black jurors were pretexts and ordered Ali’s conviction reversed. Deputy Attorney General Michele Swanson, who represented the state on Ali’s habeas petition, did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Tuesday.
According to the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, Wagstaffe’s three reasons for striking one of the jurors didn’t stand up to scrutiny, and the fact that he struck the only other black juror for questionable reasons as well showed that he acted with “discriminatory intent.”
Wagstaffe’s three reasons for striking the juror known as M.C. were: She had come into contact with the criminal justice system when her daughter was molested; she would frown on the attorneys if they didn’t always act “decent” and “respectable”; and her Christian faith made her hesitate in answering a question about judging another person. But the Ninth Circuit noted that Wagstaffe had accepted two white jurors with “more problematic” criminal justice experiences, that M.C.’s expectations of decent behavior were reasonable, and that Wagstaffe didn’t seem to care about M.C.’s Christian faith before he was asked to justify his challenge to her, and had accepted a Jehovah’s Witness who made statements more equivocal than M.C.’s.
Wagstaffe said that he would retry Ali if the attorney general’s office does not seek further review and the case is remanded to San Mateo County Superior Court.
“I mean, the man confessed to killing Tracey,” he said.
— Evan Hill