Scooter Libby — patsy or
perjurer?

Blawgletter never has liked the "I forgot" defense.  The "’tain’t so" defense usually works much better.  The trial lawyers for Scooter Libby have come up with a combo — I forgot because ’tain’t so.

If that has set your mind to reeling, welcome aboard the Blawgletter train of wonderment and confusion.  At least if Blawgletter has read press reports right (example here), Libby’s attorney said in his opening statement today that Karl Rove framed Libby — to save himself from prosecution for leaking the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame.  "They’re trying to set me up", Libby told Vice President Dick Cheney, according to the lawyer.  "They want me to be the sacrificial lamb.  I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."

Libby principally claims that he forgot that he, too, had revealed Plame’s CIA essence to reporters instead of the other way around.  Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has a document more or less cinching that Libby knew (from his boss Cheney) about Plame’s cloak and dagger.  Libby feared exposure, public shame, and termination if he fessed up after President Bush promised to fire anybody who leaked, giving him a motive to lie, says Fitzpatrick.

Blawgletter wonders how the I-forgot-and-am-a-patsy defense holds up.

BBar

Subscribe cost-free.

Blawgletter suspected that Internet gambling violates U.S. law.  Now comes news that even supplying capital (by way of investment banking services) to operators of Internet gambling sites may break American statutes, too.  See the NYT article here.

BBar

Subscribe.  Free — and legal!

Sonny Bono — singer, Congressman,
and protector of small-time artists.

The Ninth Circuit just blunted an attack on the automatic extension of copyright protection for works that someone created between 1964 and 1977.  The court thus refused to strike down — you guessed it — the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.  Kahle v. Gonzalez, No. 04-17434 (9th Cir. Jan. 22, 2007).  The decision, which enforces a not-very-old Supreme Court ruling, Elrod v. Ashcroft (2003), will further deter compilation of works for republication on the Internet.  View the Ninth Circuit opinion here.

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act eliminates the application requirement for renewal of copyright protection after the original term ends.  The Act especially affects low-value works, whose owners have little incentive to bear the cost of renewing.

Many Blawgletter readers no doubt remember Mr. Bono’s not-very-great musical career after his split with Cher (look here for a pre-divorce performance), and the less charitable among them may want to take ironic satisfaction in knowing that Mr. Bono sponsored legislation that mainly benefits hack artists.  But the Act, which became law after Mr. Bono’s death in a skiing accident, applied only to his pre-breakup songs.  So there.

BBar

Subscribe.  Free!

Does that guy on the horse have a law degree?

Nathan Koppel of the WSJ has an interesting article out this morning — Big Law Firms Try New Idea:  The True CEO.  It makes a nice contrast to recent buzz about lawyer-CEOs at public companies.

Mr. Koppel tells about lawyers who give up their practices to become full-time managers at law firms.  He notes that traditionally managing partners also practice at least part time, retaining the professional respect of fellow partners and better conveying a firm’s commitment to professionalism.

An earlier article in the WSJ speaks of another lawyer-as-CEO trend — one in which the lawyers give up their practices to run NYSE and other large companies, especially ones in trouble.  See summary here.

Blawgletter wonders what the dual lawyer-CEO trend means.  Can lawyers herd cats as well as (or even better than) non-lawyers (1) in law firms or (2) other kinds of enterprises?

BBar

Subscribe to our feed.

Blawgletter may have celebrated the triumph of the rule of law prematurely last week (here). 

Editorials today raised questions regarding the administration’s deference to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.  Lookie here (Houston Chronicle), here (NYT), and even here (WaPo).  Oops.

Maybe Blawgletter will stick with business trial law.

BBar

Subscribe.

Forces of English King Henry V and French King Charles VI sally out for the Battle of Agincourt (1415).  Henry’s introduction of the longbow helped him win the fracas — and the French regency.

An East Coast trial law firm distintegrated this month over a dispute about partner pay, according to a report that described the firm as an "eat what you kill" kind of place.

The imploding law firm story set Blawgletter to thinking about how little the defunct firm’s compensation system resembles the "eat what you kill" approach at Blawgletter’s firm.  (More on this later.)  But the imploding law firm story also got Blawgletter to reminiscing about where eat what you kill may have come from.

The September 2006 issue of Barnett’s Notes on Commercial Litigation challenged readers to find a pre-September 1986 publication that used eat what you kill in the sense of tying a lawyer’s compensation to his performance.  Peter Lattman’s Law Blog in The Wall Street Journal responded, asking online subscribers:  "Did Barry Barnett Invent the Phrase ‘Eat What You Kill?’"

The WSJ Law Blog comments didn’t settle the issue.  Some of them recalled earlier uses but gave no citations.  Others supposed that the coinage claim implied depravity or worse, and another suggested that claimant’s firm’s opening of a New York office drew "gunners" from everywhere to live on the streets of Manhattan in hopes of landing a job.  Touche.

But hark!  Another source cited a slightly earlier usage — from 1599.  He pointed to a play in which Shakespeare wrote about the French Dauphin, son of King Charles VI, who fairly panted to smash the English King Henry V’s smaller force at the impending Battle of Agincourt (1415). 

The heir to the throne, the Bard tells us, "longs for morning."  A lord replies that the French prince "longs to eat the English" and the Constable of France that "I think he will eat all he kills."  Henry V, Act 3, Scene VII.

A later posting in the WSJ Law Blog also didn’t draw a definitive answer.  What say you?

BBar

Hungry?  Subscribe to our tasty feed.

Ex-Vice Prexy Al Gore says "flame on!"

Blawgletter works so doggone hard at business trial law that a startling story last month passed without notice.  On December 18, 2006, The Onion (America’s Finest News Source) exposed Al Gore’s extreme avarice — and hypocrisy! — in "Al Gore Caught Warming Globe To Increase Box Office Profits".

BBar

Hungry?  Subscribe to our feed.

Absorbent and yellow and porous — but who?

Blawgletter remembers on-campus interviews during which a partner in Blawgletter’s law firm asked each student the question that heads this item.  Readers with kids will have already muttered the answer under their breath — SpongeBob SquarePants!  But none of the summer associate candidates knew.

Blawgletter, judging from the little information available, probably would like SpongeBob and other denizens of Bikini Bottom  — including SpongeBob’s best friend Patrick Star, a goofy starfish with a big heart; SpongeBob’s pet snail, Gary, who meows a lot; Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel with a Texas drawl and a taste for danger; Mr. Krabs, a greedy crustacean restaurateur who has a whale for a daughter; Sheldon Plankton, cyclopian archrival of Mr. Krabs; and Squidward Tentacles, SpongeBob’s neighbor and the owner of one bad attitude.  Or so Blawgletter has heard.

Can you think of a question worse than "who lives in a pineapple under the sea" to ask law students?  Please advise before September.  Blawgletter’s partner needs new material for interview season.

BBar

Blawgletter’s grown by leaps and bounds.  Join the fun with a free subscription!