January 27th, 2012
If you believe Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David T. Prosser Jr., he just wanted to get out a press release. It was June 13, and the justice wanted to announce a decision involving Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial 2011 budget bill eliminating most government employee collective bargaining rights. What followed was a donnybrook among the justices. Before it was over, Prosser stood accused of putting fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a choke hold. Bradley was accused of putting her fist in Prosser’s face. And the Dane County Sheriff’s Office was placed in the uncomfortable position of having to investigate. In…
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January 27th, 2012
A judge brought in to hear a lawyer's petition for removal of a North Carolina district attorney has suspended her from office, finding probable cause that she should be permanently removed from her elected office. A hearing on whether Durham DA Tracey Cline should be permanently removed will be held Feb. 13, the News & Observer reports. Three other judges had previously taken a dim view of Cline's campaign against Judge Orlando Hudson, the senior jurist in Durham, the newspaper notes, and one admonished her that she must take care to be accurate in court filings. Then attorney Kerry Sutton…
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January 27th, 2012
At the top of his game as Florida's unchallenged foreclosure king, David J. Stern had perhaps 100,000 cases and a back-office legal processing support operation that he sold for $60 million in 2010. Then came allegations of slipshod work and the firm's sudden collapse last year, after Fannie Mae pulled its files. Judges reportedly were left to deal with abandoned cases because the firm lacked the staff or funds to move to withdraw, and now-former employees sued for termination pay. Earlier this month, the purchasers who paid Stern $60 million for DJSP Enterprises sued him as well as an accountant…
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January 27th, 2012
New York Times reporter David Segal, whose recent series of stories on legal education has touched off a furor in the legal community, says law schools have taken the quest for higher rankings and greater prestige to "an incredibly destructive" place. Segal says the "madness" created by U.S. News and World Report's annual law school rankings have led many schools to employ all kinds of different "shenanigans" to make themselves more appealing to prospective students and to cover up just how bad the job market for law school graduates is. Segal's remarks came in an interview with Bloomberg Law's Lee…
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January 27th, 2012
A Tennessee court is closed today as a tribute to a highly regarded judge who died unexpectedly this week. Hamilton County General Sessions Judge Bob Moon's wife of 35 years found him dead early yesterday at home in front of his computer. He apparently had a heart attack, the Chattanooga Times-Free Press reports. He was 60 years old. “You expect to see him like you would the walls of this building. The idea of Judge Moon being gone today is like having the courthouse crumble,” former prosecutor Lee Davis, who is now a private defense attorney, told the newspaper. The…
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January 27th, 2012
A domestic violence victim who has made the best of her life after being burned over 80 percent of her body burst into tears yesterday as a Florida jury's verdict against her estranged husband was announced. Christopher Hanney, 46, was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery with great bodily harm and first-degree arson by the Hillsborough Circuit Court jury after less than six hours of deliberation, reports the Tampa Bay Times. When he is sentenced in March, the retired New York City police detective could get a maximum of life on the first two counts and as much…
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January 27th, 2012
A plan to make nurse practitioners part of collaborative health care teams leads the list of health care legislation at the 2012 Virginia General Assembly.
The nurse practitioner plan, a compromise forged over a year of dialog among doctors and nurses, puts an end for now to the NPs’ long standing efforts to get out from [...]
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January 27th, 2012
In this litigation over a noncompete clause, the Loudoun County Circuit Court declines to reconsider its decision overruling demurrers to two counts of plaintiff employer’s complaint, in light of the recent ruling in Home Paramount.
Defendants asked the court to reconsider its ruling with respect to two counts of plaintiff’s complaint in light of the recent [...]
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January 27th, 2012
The Arizona Attorney General’s office is asking a judge to block confidentiality agreements signed by borrowers who get mortgage modifications from Bank of America. Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne says the agreements are impeding his office’s investigation of the bank’s Countrywide Financial unit, according to the Phoenix Business Journal and Bloomberg News. One agreement is cited in court documents in Phoenix state court. It provides that the borrower "will remove and delete any online statements regarding this dispute, including, without limitation, postings on Facebook, Twitter and similar websites.” The settlements bar borrowers from revealing unflattering information about the bank, even…
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January 27th, 2012
Recent law grad James Sinclair adds a satirical disclaimer to his emails—and most people haven’t even noticed it. And that may be the problem, some lawyers tell the Wall Street Journal. Boilerplate language on every email marked “privileged and confidential” could make it difficult to argue that some electronic communications are more protected than others. There are few cases on the subject, and at least one ruling on the issue has been mixed, the story says. James Merklinger, vice president of the Association of Corporate Counsel, sums up the argument for the newspaper. "It gets harder and harder to argue…
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