If allegations against Person County North Carolina District Attorney Joel Brewer are true, Brewer’s not content to be a prosecutor.  He wants to be a cop as well, complete with a badge and a fast car.

An unnamed female citizen interviewed by [a State Bureau of Investigation agent named] Meyers told him that she was stopped one day in the past five months “by a man driving a dark-colored Corvette, who flashed a gold/bronze badge and who represented himself as a law enforcement officer.

“The man wanted to know if [the female] wanted a citation or a warning ticket for illegally passing him,” Meyers wrote. “When [the female] protested that she had not passed the man, he then wanted to know if she wanted a citation or a warning ticket for following too close.

Supposedly Brewer carried a badge at all times, labeled “District Attorney”.  DAs in North Carolina are not authorized to carry badges, nor to issue traffic citations.  Perhaps the badge came from a box of Cracker Jacks, or maybe cereal.  By law, Brewer has no more authority to arrest his fellow citizens than Cap’n Crunch.

“When [the female] challenged the man, he got back into the Corvette and left,” Meyers continued. “[The female] obtained the Corvette’s license number and it was determined the Corvette was registered [to Brewer].”

A separate unnamed citizen, who Meyers wrote was familiar with the workings of Brewer’s office and has known the former district attorney for “a number of years,” reportedly saw “Brewer stop a motorist by use of the badge. …The motorist was stopped because District Attorney Brewer thought the motorist had committed some traffic violation.”

But that’s just petty abuse of power, all in a day’s work for a cop, even an imaginary cop.  It’s the political corruption that makes this story.

Meyers wrote that, according to an unnamed citizen, who was also familiar with the workings of the district attorney’s office, “Brewer would routinely dismiss minor citations and traffic charges for people and then save the pink copy of the citations, which District Attorney Brewer has kept in a manila file folder in his office.”

According to the citizen, Brewer “has referred to the manila file folder, called some of those for whom he has dismissed charges, reminded them of what he did, and asked them for their vote and/or for their help with working the polls.”

So the allegation is that Brewer would dismiss criminal charges in hopes of getting votes and political support.  That’s just good politics, all well and good for the people of Person County.  They get out of paying a fine, and in return all they have to do is stand outside a voting station every four years wearing a “Brewer for District Attorney” shirt, or something like that.

Pity about non-residents who get stopped for driving 10 over the limit.  They have to pay the fine and the added insurance premium.

But maybe it isn’t the political corruption that makes this story.  Maybe it’s the creepy overtone of, well, you decide:

Meyers added that the citizen “heard District Attorney Brewer agree to dismiss a charge for a female, while asking for the female’s phone numbers, which he then wrote on the pink copy of the citation.”

No doubt Brewer wanted the lady’s phone number so that he could thank her for her political support.  Or give her a ride in his Corvette.  Or something.

But maybe it isn’t the creepiness that makes this story.  Perhaps it’s the double standard, and the hypocrisy.

[Judge Gary] Trawick ruled Monday that the search warrant and a portion of Meyers’ affidavit be made public after Brewer, through his team of attorneys, had sought to keep the information sealed.

Two paragraphs from Meyers’ affidavit were redacted as ordered by Trawick before the search warrant information was unsealed and filed Tuesday afternoon.

Those two paragraphs, according to Yanceyville attorney George Daniel, one of three lawyers representing Brewer, contain information that “could very well be prejudicial, detrimental and inflammatory.”

Trawick said during Monday’s hearing, the redacted information “could ruin a man’s reputation.”

Considering what has been made public, it’s hard to see how Brewer’s reputation could be hurt further.  But riddle me this: When is the last time a District Attorney moved to seal an affidavit or search warrant on the ground that it could ruin a suspect’s reputation, when the suspect was not the District Attorney?

I’ll wait while you look that up.

He lost his coat. If you find it, please return it. Hopefully Mr. Ogletree will learn to be more careful in the future.

On Tuesday January 19, Massachusetts voters will go to the polls to decide whether the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat should go to Martha Coakley, the state’s Attorney General, or Scott Brown, apparently some guy the Republicans found lying in the street who didn’t have anything better to do.

Under ordinary circumstances, Coakley would be a shoe-in as a Democrat, but she appears to be running about even with Brown.  Especially given the stakes this race presents, on which the President’s health care reform bill may ride.  History is in the making.

But it’s past history that should concern us.  I’m writing to urge any Massachusetts readers we may have to suck it up and to vote for the bum the Republicans found lying in the street.  Martha Coakley is less suited for high office than anyone on the national stage.  Less suited than Sarah Palin.  Less suited than Carrie Prejean.

Prosecutors are called to do a tough job, but the exercise of discretion is part of that job.  Based on the evidence, Martha Coakley, in almost twenty years as a prosecutor, has exercised her discretion in every instance in favor of the State, in favor of her own ruthless ambition, and in defiance of any sense of compassion, or common sense.

Consider the notorious case of Gerald Amirault, convicted, in defiance of all reason and logic of inserting a wide-bladed butcher’s knife, and a “magic wand,” into the rectum of a four-year-old boy in the Fells Acres case.   (Miraculously the boy showed no physical injuries.)  It’s true that Coakley did not prosecute Amirault.  Her former boss, Scott Harshbarger, did that in the wave of “satanic ritual abuse” cases that swept America into a frenzy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  You may recall that dozens of children all over the country made fantastic allegations (often as a “recovered memory”) of abuse at day cares, leading to now-discredited verdicts such as Amirault, Little Rascals, and the McMartin pre-school case.

No Coakley didn’t prosecute Amirault.  She merely, when elected to succeed Harshbarger, did everything in her power to sabotage Amirault’s pardon or parole, when the state’s pardon commission concluded, unanimously, that Amirault wasn’t guilty and should be set free.  Though Coakley tries to avoid discussion of Amirault, now almost universally considered a travesty, Dorothy Rabinowitz shows that she continues to stand by her work in the case, and to maintain Amirault’s guilt.

That’s only one exercise of Coakley’s discretion.  Consider Coakley’s role in prosecuting nanny Louise Woodward, where Coakley pushed for and got a murder conviction in an infamous “shaken baby” case.  Despite Coakley’s resistance, the judge presiding over the case reduced Woodward’s conviction to involuntary manslaughter.  The Woodward case, like Amirault’s, is now discredited.  Most believe the death was the result of a latent pre-existing injury.  Martha Coakley exercises her discretion in favor of over-criminalization and over-prosecution, turning the tragic into the capital.  And she showcases these trials on her resume, riding them to higher office.

Except when she doesn’t.  When the perpetrator is a police officer, as in the case of Keith Winfield, who was convicted of raping a twenty-three month old baby with a hot curling iron, and given two life sentences.  Although this case would seem tailor-made for a guardian of children like Martha Coakley, she didn’t press for prosecution (that was done by the child’s mother), and didn’t ask that the defendant even post a bond.  The Winfield case, unlike others involving allegations of child abuse and Martha Coakley, is not a cause celebre, and no one seriously disputes Winfield’s guilt.  Strange that Coakley doesn’t trumpet this one.

But in every other high profile case where there’s something in it for Coakley, she has blown her trumpet.  Consider the Melendez-Diaz case, where Coakley, not an appellate advocate, chose to appear personally before the United States Supreme Court, to argue that bothering prosecutors to produce hostile witnesses (in this case forensic examiners) in compliance with the Sixth Amendment, is just too burdensome.  As Radley Balko points out, even Justices Scalia and Thomas didn’t buy what Coakley was selling.

If one is a liberal, it’s tempting to think that this election is just about health care, the burning issue of the day.  What damage can one Senator do?  Of course, one might ask the same of a prosecutor, and consider Coakley’s career.  But a prosecutor doesn’t make law.  A prosecutor merely enforces laws written by others.

Freedom in this country is under constant assault, from forces right and left.  Massachusetts voters, liberal, conservative, or none-of-the-above, should consider whether Martha Coakley is suited, by temperament and experience, to inflict her views on the rest of the country.  To take her ego, and her views, onto the national stage.

I say no.  Vote for the bum the Republicans found on the street.  It’s important.

Via Overlawyered.

January 18, 2010 Update: Scott Greenfield has more on Coakley’s effort, thirteen years after his conviction, to deprive Gerald Amirault of the counsel of his choice, using the freedom of Amirault’s sister as a wedge.  I’m not a Massachusetts lawyer and can’t comment on the legality of Coakley’s deal (which the Amirault’s lawyer, James Sultan, rejected out of hand), but I can comment, morally, on Coakley and her demands:

Sleaze.

Marc Randazza presents compelling evidence that Route 60 Hyundai, of Vero Beach Florida, does in fact suck.

I’d have been far harsher in my review of Route 60 Hyundai than Randazza’s client, if Route 60 Hyundai had done to me what Thomas Allegio claims.  I’d have named the employees of Route 60 Hyundai, who make it suck.  And I’d have named Route 60 Hyundai’s lawyer, Douglas Thompson of Vero Beach Florida, who has done nothing to allay my concerns that Route 60 Hyundai, of Vero Beach Florida, is the suckiest Hyundai dealership in America.

Via Walter Olson.

Back when I worked as a judicial extern, and then as a law clerk, one of the greatest challenges was to draft orders for the judge to address motions filed by deranged people. Often their legal theories were so bizarre and removed from real-world jurisprudence, their factual assertions so unbalanced, that even summarizing them for the purpose of addressing them was a Herculean task. My co-clerks and I were always tempted to have a DENIED: BATSHIT CRAZY stamp made for our judges. But both judges I worked for explained that summary denials never fixed the problem, and that both justice and the sound administration thereof required courts to address crazy motions as if they were serious, and analyze them based on established standards, rather than throwing up our hands.

Courtesy of Below the Beltway, I see that United States District Court Judge Clay D. Land of the Middle District of Georgia agrees. Faced with the bizarre sideshow antics of birther hive-queen Orly Taitz, Land has sanctioned her $20,000 — and done so in a masterful order that takes her and her arguments in court deadly seriously. The order is a model of judicial calmness in the face of unhinged shrieking by a litigant, dispatching Taitz’s nutty arguments one by one. (I particularly like Tatiz’s argument that the judge must have received improper ex parte orders from the Obama Justice Department because some birther saw a black guy at a local Starbucks who looked just like Eric Holder.) The judge even manages some real eloquence in his devastatingly well-documented rebuke. Good for Judge Land. Read the order through the link.

Some posts need a clever title to carry them. Some require a thoughtful lede. But some posts simply point the reader in the direction of sheer awesomeness, and all I need to do is step out of the way.

This is such a post.

Jack Thompson — the anti-gaming crusader and justifiably disbarred lawyer, who has made a name for himself by consistently exhibiting a level of crazy that makes him stand out even in Florida, has sued Facebook. Why? Well, basically, he’s mad that Facebook won’t make its users stop being mean to him. No, really.

Thompson asserts that he is the victim of bullying by the video gaming industry and gamers, and that he has received death threats as a result. He is unable to describe these threats without indulging in his anti-video-game rant:

And the harassing phone calls have been so continuous and so disruptive that Thompson has to take his phone off the hook each evening or he will be awakened, as he is when he forgets to do so, by miscreants who think that the First Amendment protects not only the predatory and illegal marketing and sale of adult porn and violence to kids but the criminal harassment of a citizen who has the courage to say what 90% of the American people know-that families are under siege by corporate predators who mentally molest minors for money.

And so on. Facebook failed to take down some groups that are mean to Jack. One offers someone $50 to punch him in the face. Another says he should be “removed from the populace.” Another suggests smacking him across the face with an Atari 2600. Thompson also complains of groups that simply say “I hate Jack Thompson.”

I’ve uploaded Thompson’s pro se federal complaint here. Given the amount of joy it will give us, it almost seems unfair to expose it to a rigorous legal analysis. That would be like having a professor of modern art criticize your three-year-old’s finger-painting. Suffice it to say that Thompson has not lost his talent for crazy, nor has he developed any more of an understanding of the law. Jack sues for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligent supervision. Jack is all wet. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Facebook can’t be held liable for what its users post on it, or for its refusal to take those posts down. Moreover, because the posts are so patently satirical, Thompson can’t make out a case of infliction of emotional distress anyway. The posts are not, by any stretch of the imagination, “true threats,” as no rational person would think they show a genuine intent to inflict harm. The standard is what a reasonable person would think, not what a deranged disbarred attorney would think.

Read the complaint, with Jack’s tale of woe. But then, if you don’t already know it, be sure to read Thompson’s history, particularly the things he did to get disbarred, lest you feel any sympathy for him. Jack Thompson is a litigation terrorist.

Jack’s mad, as he usually is, because those Facebook posts make him look like an ass. But if Jack is going to sue everything that contributes to making him look like an ass, then I advise logic, sentience, written language, and God to contact their insurance carriers.

By the way, Paragraph 9 of Thompson’s complaint suggests that he was inspired to sue Facebook because Facebook responded so quickly to take down the “should Obama be killed” poll, yet did not heed his entreaties to take down the mean things people said about him. That’s amusing.

Edited to add: More amusement: Andrew Eisen of GamePolitics, which is very critical of Thompson but gets press releases from him anyway, asks Thompson if he tried using the “report group” function. Thompson calls Eisen a “total moron.” So Eisen clicks on “report group” for the “$50 to punch Thompson” group, and the group is removed within a day. Eisen didn’t even have to file a federal suit! Lesson to Thompson: you catch more flies with the honey of a site’s established fly-catching procedures than you do with the vinegar of being a raving lunatic.

You lost the bet. Now, “it will be interesting to see your apology” Fred.

Background here.

I previously griped about the ubiquitous and obnoxious advertising by the web browser game Evony, which relies upon depictions of chilly women with incipient back problems to lure adolescents of all ages. Now, I am in general a staunch supporter of boobage, in the proper context. But Evony’s boob-based advertising campaign is gratuitous to the level of self-parody. Moreover, as I complained before, Evony conducted — or empowered its hangers-on to conduct — massive blog comment spam promoting itself.

I am by no stretch of the imagination the only one who has complained. Among the loudest voices has been Bruce Everiss of Bruce on Games, who has commented extensively on Evony, and has asserted, among other things, that Evony’s developers and promoters are associated with goldfarmers (for the uninitiated, goldfarmers sell the pretend currency of online games for real-world money to players, and in using bots or third-world workers to gather said currency in the games tend to ruin the games’ pretend economies and the gaming experience), that Evony rips off the intellectual property of various game developers, that Evony uses various crass and deceitful methods to manipulate its players, and that Evony’s advertising methods are highly obnoxious. You can find links to some of Bruce’s articles at the end of this post. I haven’t investigated most of those assertions myself, other than the advertising and spamming issue I have specifically addressed; you’ll have to evaluate Bruce’s proof yourself.

Now, the modern world being what it is, Evony has enlisted Australian lawyers to threaten Bruce.

Continue Reading »

Not everyone gets to live in paradise. Some people have to live in Chicago. Living in Chicago isn’t cheap, so if your apartment sucks you probably need to vent about it. And sometimes you need to vent 140 characters at a time.

Amanda Bonnen needed to vent her frustration that her landlord, Horizon Group Management, didn’t seem to care about the mold in her apartment. The 20 followers on her twitter account saw Ms. Bonnen tweet “… Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon realty thinks its okay.”

Then Horizon Group sued her for libel.

There are signs that Hardt Stern & Kayne are not experienced libel practitioners, chiefly that they allege that Bonnen’s statement was “liable [sic] per se,” but also that their website notes that they typically represent “automobile dealers and real estate developers”. I wonder, when Horizon Realty Group turned to Hardt Stern for “cost effective, logical, creative and commonsense litigation services,” if they expected to be counseled to brew up a massive shitstorm that resulted in the whole country – instead of Bonner’s 20 followers – knowing that they had a moldy apartment and an indifferent management company. The long list of fields in which Bret Rappaport claims expertise does not include libel law, nor does it apparently include damage control. Perhaps he should stick to wildflowers.

Since being sued, Bonner has closed her twitter account, a chirpy chronicle of a happy-go-lucky girl for whom things keep going wrong (See the suit here: Twitter lawsuit Horizon Group Realty v Amanda Bonner). On May 4, she tweeted “abonner Isn’t into this whole legal process thing”. She had no idea.

Via The Awl

In competition with Ken’s post immediately below, we do have a competitor for the “Quickest to act like an asshat lawyer” record: Dora V. Chen, “Esq.,” assistant general counsel to the Service Employees International Union.

Ms. Chen wants Little Rock Arkansas television station KTHV, and a few similar stations, to know that if they continue to run paid ads opposing the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, a federal bill which would abolish anonymous voting for employees considering the question of whether to unionize, her union, its officials, and members might, just might, flood the station with complaints to the Federal Communications Commission seeking revocation of broadcast licenses:

As you undoubtedly know, unlike federal candidates, political organizations do not have a right to command the use of broadcast facilities.  Because you have no legal obligation to air the advertisement, your station bears  responsibility for its content when you do grant access.  As a broadcast licensee, you must assume responsibility for all material which is broadcast through your facilities and therefore have a duty to protect the public from false, misleading, or deceptive advertising.  Failure to prevent the airing of false, misleading, or deceptive advertising may be probative of an abdication of licensee responsibility.

You should immediately cease airing this false and deceitful advertisement.  [Citations omitted.]

Let’s be clear here, since Ms. Chen isn’t.  Her warning is an implicit threat to file a grievance against television stations with the FCC concerning political speech.  It is highly, highly unlikely that even the FCC, a board consisting of appointed partisan hacks, would ever uphold such a complaint.  Even if it did, by the time the matter got to a federal court for review, the complaint would instantly be dismissed on First Amendment grounds.

The cases Ms. Chen cites in her letter concern broadcaster liability for the tort of defaming a private person (calling a politician a “communist” in 1947), and technical license violations by a broadcaster which obtained its license through false pretenses, informing the FCC that it would show news programming, which in fact consisted of reading the Racing Report in Hungarian.  Neither case applies.  The “communist” case was decided before New York Times v. Sullivan (actual malice for defamation of public figures) and a host of post-1960 First Amendment cases, and there’s no evidence that KTHV deceived the FCC, or anyone else, to obtain its license.

In any event, how can one defame a bill? This little guy:

presumably lacks standing to sue, or to file an FCC complaint.

No, what SEIU and Dora V. Chen, “Esq” (incidentaly, it is a hallmark of pomposity and pretension in a lawyer when one refers to herself as “Esquire”) are doing is using the threat of litigation to shut down public debate, political speech they, for understandable reasons, doesn’t like.  They know they couldn’t get away with suing the ad’s creators for defaming the Employee Free Choice Act, or anything else, so they’ll intimidate anyone who dares to run the ad, making sure its message isn’t heard, by threatening a license revocation complaint.

Winning the complaint wouldn’t be the issue.  Intimidation would be.  Of course any complaint against a small-town television station, no matter how frivolous, against the federal government as well as a million-plus member union like SEIU (which can spend its members’ money without their consent for this sort of intimidation), would be ruinous.  Don’t like it?  Enjoy the the legal bills, hicks!

And so political speech is shut down without a shot fired, or a suit filed.  Of course, threats and complaints of this sort could be addressed, and the tables turned, if federal law included remedies such as California’s anti-SLAPP law, which allows the victim of a complaint directed against legal speech to recover damages and attorneys’ fees from those, such as the SEIU, who abuse litigation to shut it down.

Perhaps KTHV and others in their situation should run a television ad in favor of a federal anti-SLAPP statute.  I’d watch.

Note: The title of this post is intended to remind the reader that many unions, such as but not necessarily including the Service Employees International Union, were or are affiliated with the Mafia and other organized crime gangs, and that many unions, such as but not necessarily including the Service Employees International Union, use intimidation, including the threat of baseless legal complaints, to enforce their will.

Perhaps Dora Chen, “Esq.” will now seek to have my blogging license revoked.

Via Walter Olson, through Twitter.

Failblog was originally a creation of Eric Nakagawa, who discovered a method of monetizing lolcats. Had he used that level of creativity for good, we might now all be riding cancer-free solar hovercars to a peaceful Gaza. Thanks a lot, asshole. Anyway, failblog runs pictures of various human failures, with FAIL printed over them for those of its readers who are a little slow on the uptake.

Recently Failblog had a good one. Noting that the Guiness World Records site featured a “Break This Record!” button on many of the pages describing various records, they searched for a record that would make that exhortation embarrassing. It wasn’t hard to find:

In case you can’t read it, Guinness just encouraged you to break the record for most people killed in a terrorist attack.

Funny. That is to say, amusing, to normal human beings. Not, though, to lawyers. Quick, send in the lawyers. Don’t worry, they’re here.

Dear Sir/Madam,
I represent and write on behalf of GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS LIMITED . . . .

. . . and so on, claiming trademark infringement. I guess it’s possible that Guinness’s lawyers are unfamiliar with the concept of fair use. Maybe they don’t have fair use in England. God knows their libel law is ludicrous enough; it wouldn’t surprise me. Anywhere else in the world, though, this is a patently frivolous cease-and-desist letter.

Failblog, to its credit, mocks them in response:

Thanks for writing us an email regarding the “Record Breaking Fail”. Unfortunately, douchebaggy cyber-bullying emails will only bring upon you more shame on your house. I am also resisting the urge to write this email in ALL CAPS.

It’s hard to imagine how Guinness could have thought that this would bring them anything but ridicule.

This weekend Cracked had a piece on The Seven Most Baffling Criminal Defenses, profiling inane, otherworldly, and seemingly bogus defense theories, some of which worked.

(I was pleased that they didn’t go for the cheap and easy shot at the frequently misstated “twinkie defense.”)

Surely, you think, these are mere outliers, exaggerated for effect. Surely people don’t routinely try such things in the courtroom.

Well, yes and no. Or more precisely, no.

On the same theme, via Walter Olson at Overlawyered, read the story of C. Aiken Blitz, who defended a speeding ticket by arguing that his BMW is simply so brilliantly engineered, its ride so baby’s-ass smooth, that he couldn’t tell he was speeding.

Legal realism note: as a rule, you will not find traffic court judges sympathetic to the defense “Your honor, I am not guilty because my German luxury car is too awesome.”

Blitz, I hardly need add, is a lawyer.

Houston Texas Judge Woody Ray Densen denies that this hidden surveillance video depicts the judge “keying” his neighbor’s Range Rover.  Judge for yourself:

A Harris County grand jury disagreed with the judge, who has been indicted for criminal mischief.

Hat tip: Defending People.

Kirk Bernard, of Bernard Lindquist and the Bernard Law Group in Seattle Washington, is using the tragedy of a five year old orphan to market his firm. There is no indication that Bernard represents the boy, or his parents’ estates. Kirk Bernard just wants you to know that a five year old was orphaned, and that if you’re orphaned, he’ll be happy to represent you.

Assuming there’s insurance and that someone else is at fault.

Via the inimitable Lowering the Bar, a story of an English lawyer accused of billing for time he spent screwing a client. I mean, for real.

The payoff is the client’s name, which I shall not spoil for you. It will, however, play hell with our search engine hits.