The March issue of Litigation News includes two items that will make beaucoups of hourly lawyers grimace. The titles say it all:
Blawgletter adores the myth-busting thunderbolt hurling that goes on across the pond at Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy. Why just today we read the estimable Gavin Kennedy electrocute those who misuse Mr. Smith’s occasional invocation of the “invisible hand” figure of speech:
Nobody has yet accounted for the invisible hand in their use of it
My message [to the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad] was very simple, you love democracy, you live in a democracy, why do you want to deprive us? You are always supporting the dictator.
Tariq Mahmood, former president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, in “Lawyers Rally Against Musharraf Government“, NYT, Mar. 8, 2008.
Awhile back, Blawgletter posted Open Letter: U.S. Should Support Pakistani Lawyers and Rule of Law. Yesterday, a commenter alerted us to Black Flag Week in Pakistan and an international effort to make common cause with lawyers there. The commenter referred to Achieving Our Country blog, which includes this information:
Who? We are a group
On February 27, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to add Rule 502 to the Federal Rules of Evidence. The text follows:
Rule 502. Attorney-Client Privilege and Work Product; Limitations on Waiver
The following provisions apply, in the circumstances set out, to disclosure of a communication or information covered by the attorney-client privilege or work-product
Blawgletter just spotted a thoughtful anti post on the wisdom of using contingent fee arrangements to hire private counsel to prosecute public claims. The post, in Bogartyag’s Weblog, summarizes the recent spate of attention to the issue. Then it gives four arguments against contingent fee deals with public entities:
We don’t have much
A different Draco.
The Seventh Circuit upheld dismissal of a complaint as a sanction for failing to abide by an order compelling plaintiffs to present knowledgeable witnesses to testify at a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition. After noting the "draconian" nature of the sanction and its status as a "last resort", the court said:
That doesn’t mean
There is no basis in fact or law for this award or for the earlier compensatory-damage award. We are confident in our position of appeal.
Doug Petkus, spokesperson for Wyeth, after a federal jury awarded $19.4 million in punitive damages for causing Donna Scroggin to develop breast cancer from her use of Wyeth’s hormone-replacement
Say you go to a meeting. You think the other company infringes your company’s trademark. To gain the other side’s confidence, you concede a weakness or two in your position. You go so far as to say that a particular design doesn’t "offend" you. The negotiations end without a settlement.
Four years pass. In the
There really are no new accounting debates, only new investors.
Jonathan Weil, "AIG, MBIA Show Whining Back in Vogue", Bloomberg, Mar. 5, 2008 (explaining that corporate "executives don’t know any better than you do if the values of their holdings will rebound").
