Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m. my grandmother died at home at the age of 97. My wife Joy and I leave for Wisconsin this morning; the funeral is Saturday in Platteville, a college town of 10,000 people. Platteville is in the Southwest corner of the state and about nine miles from Rewey, the 200+ person village where my grandma lived most of her life.

Grandma graduated from college at the age of 16 (a teaching certificate took one year in 1924) and began teaching one-room school in a schoolhouse on County Trunk A in Iowa County, Wisconsin about 3 miles outside of Rewey. She taught school for thirty years, interrupting her service to raise two daughters. The last years of her career she taught a combined first and second grade class in the brick school across the street from her little yellow home on Main Street. My grandfather built that home from wood he recovered from an old house he tore down.

Every summer she had each of her grandchildren spent one week with her. This was a big deal for my family – Grandma lived 180 miles of two-lane roads away. How she managed to deal with a room full of little kids throughout the school year and then accept the responsibility of having a kid in her home virtually every week of the summer amazes me to this day.

The death of Natalee Holloway is a tragedy in every sense of the word. It is a tragedy compounded by screaming skulls (as opposed to talking heads) like Nancy Grace, a pseudo-journalist who has successfully managed to purge any gray matter she might have of anything she was supposed to learn in law school about the Bill of Rights. Nancy Grace is a poster child for what is wrong with cable “news” shows.

Back to Natalee. Her parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Joran Van Der Sloot and Paulus Van Der Sloot. Under the law in every state, they certainly have a right to do so, i.e. they have a right to prove in the civil justice system what the criminal justice system has not been able to prove.

The Van Der Sloots have been sued in New York. Natalee’s parents are asking Alabama law to apply to that case.

As I mentioned Sunday, I went to Atlanta Sunday night, locked myself in a hotel room, and spent all day Monday and several hours early Tuesday morning preparing for an argument in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. As a result, I am very behind in my work and need to concentrate on it today.

Back in the saddle tomorrow!

Sorry, folks, but I do not have time for a post today. I have an oral argument in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Tuesday and I am busy getting ready. I will post tomorrow morning.

I confess to being somewhat of a law geek. After almost 25 years of practice, I still enjoy reading opinions and getting my head in the books. I readily confess to not doing much legal writing in my practice anymore – I have several bright young lawyers who help with that part of preparing a case for trial. But I still love to read opinions, and still get a real thrill out of an extraordinarily well-written opinion.

This is one. It is written by Judge William Bedsworth on the California Court of Appeals. The opinion involves a probation revocation hearing; the defendant lost and got sent to prison for seven years. To get a feel for the opinion, consider this, the first paragraph of the opinion: “Occasionally, we see a case that “fell through a crack.” This case fell through a chasm. And no one, not the trial attorney, not the prosecutor, not the court – and certainly not the probation officer – can escape some degree of responsibility for the existence of that chasm. When the issue is whether a defendant goes to prison for seven years or to a drug rehabilitation program, someone should be paying attention. In this case, it appears no one but the defendant really was.”

This is the last paragraph of the opinion: “Finally, we must emphasize that if this case is not an utter anomaly, it is a
frightening example of what can occur when all the participants forget how high the stakes are in a probation revocation hearing. We have no problem concluding Gayton’s counsel had the primary obligation to review and present the evidence that might have assisted his cause. But prosecutors always bear some responsibility for the evidence they offer. And when it became clear during the hearing that the facts were so hotly contested, and that the probation officer had neither brought the file nor reviewed it in the last three months, it was perhaps incumbent upon the court to consider issuing an order to produce the file on its own motion. In short, it must be remembered that everyone in this case had a stake in getting at the truth: All failed.”

Rep. Duke Cunningham got sentenced to prison yesterday for accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes. He was looking at a maximum ten-year prison term and actually received eight years, four months.

Cunningham solicted and obtained bribes from defense industry contractors. He used his position to help his co-conspirators get contracts from the Department of Defense.

So, why is this on a blog about torts? Well, this sentence has nothing to do with torts but makes me think about Anna Alaya. She got nine years in prison for attempting to extort a personal injury settlement from Wendy’s.

Isn’t this nice?

I discovered this at Home Office Lawyer.

The United States Supreme Court does not hear many tort cases. However, the Court released a tort opinion on Wednesday that held that the U.S. Postal Service is subject to personal injury lawsuits if they do not use due care when leaving mail at people’s homes.

The Pennsylvania plaintiff tripped and fell over mail left on her porch. She sued the Post Office, which claimed immunity. The Court reversed two lower court decisions dismissing the case, holding that that a federal law giving the post office immunity from certain claims was only intended to cut off lawsuits that arise from delivering the mail late or in a damaged condition.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Kennedy. Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter. Justice Alito did not participate.

Do you have a smoking gun not covered by a protective order? The folks at Slate want it. Read about it here.

The AP just issued a story at 9:30 P.M. today that is titled “Cheney Apparently Breaks Key Hunting Rule.”

A quote from the article: “It’s incumbent upon the shooter to assess the situation and make sure it’s a safe shot,” said Mark Birkhauser, president-elect of the International Hunter Education Association and hunter education coordinator in New Mexico. “Once you squeeze that trigger, you can’t bring that shot back.”

Of course, you saw that analysis here before 7:00 A.M. this morning.