Targeted killings are back online at Opinio Juris due to the recent deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists. The post includes links to various factual materials about the apparent tactics of the Israelis.
I'm one of those people who tends to comment on service - bad or good. The service provider below is one that I use domestically, and it's been great. So, I'm passing along its international offering.
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Legal humor for Christmas. The words have been circulating by email, and also are online at the Madison County Record. The image is courtesy of the Record, so far as I know.
Merry Christmas to all !
Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.
A variety of foot apparel, e.g. stocking, socks, etc., had been affixed by and around the chimney in said House in the hope and/or belief that St. Nick a/k/a/ St. Nicholas a/k/a/ Santa Claus (hereinafter "Claus") would arrive at sometime thereafter.
The minor residents, i.e. the children, of the aforementioned House, were located in their individual beds and were engaged in nocturnal hallucinations, i.e. dreams, wherein vision of confectionery treats, including, but not limited to, candies, nuts and/or sugar plums, did dance, cavort and otherwise appear in said dreams.
Whereupon the party of the first part (sometimes hereinafter referred to as "I"), being the joint-owner in fee simple of the House with the parts of the second part (hereinafter "Mamma"), and said Mamma had retired for a sustained period of sleep. (At such time, the parties were clad in various forms of headgear, e.g. kerchief and cap.)
Suddenly, and without prior notice or warning, there did occur upon the unimproved real property adjacent and appurtent to said House, i.e. the lawn, a certain disruption of unknown nature, cause and/or circumstance. The party of the first part did immediately rush to a window in the House to investigate the cause of such disturbance.
At that time, the party of the first part did observe, with some degree of wonder and/or disbelief, a miniature sleigh (hereinafter the "Vehicle") being pulled and/or drawn very rapidly through the air by approximately eight (8) reindeer. The driver of the Vehicle appeared to be and in fact was, the previously referenced Claus.
Said Claus was providing specific direction, instruction and guidance to the approximately eight (8) reindeer and specifically identified the animal co-conspirators by name: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen (hereinafter the "Deer"). (Upon information and belief, it is further asserted that an additional co-conspirator named Rudolph may have been involved.)
The party of the first part witnessed Claus, the Vehicle and the Deer intentionally and willfully trespass upon the roofs of several residences located adjacent to and in the vicinity of the House, and noted that the Vehicle was heavily laden with packages, toys and other items of unknown origin or nature. Suddenly, without prior invitation or permission, either express or implied, the Vehicle arrived at the House, and Claus entered said House via the chimney.
Said Claus was clad in a red fur suit, which was partially covered with residue from the chimney, and he carried a large sack containing a portion of the aforementioned packages, toys, and other unknown items. He was smoking what appeared to be tobacco in a small pipe in blatant violation of local ordinances and health regulations.
Claus did not speak, but immediately began to fill the stocking of the minor children, which hung adjacent to the chimney, with toys and other small gifts. (Said items did not, however, constitute "gifts" to said minor pursuant to the applicable provisions of the U.S. Tax Code.) Upon completion of such task, Claus touched the side of his nose and flew, rose and/or ascended up the chimney of the House to the roof where the Vehicle and Deer waited and/or served as "lookouts." Claus immediately departed for an unknown destination.
However, prior to the departure of the Vehicle, Deer and Claus from said House, the party of the first part did hear Claus state and/or exclaim: "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!" Or words to that effect.
-- Author Unknown
This recent post from the ASU Law Journal for Social Justice - titled The Right to Life - provides a timely reminder of the hypocrisy of many of the so-called "conservatives" who supposedly want "less federal government" in health care. Specifically, the post contrasts current posturing on medical care with the rush of some - including President Bush II - to pass legislation specific to the sad situation involving Terry Schiavo, the woman who was brain dead. Various alleged "conservatives" sought to intervene, waving the banner of a right to life. The Right to Life posts nicely contrasts the prior bannerism to more recent realities, such as the Tea Partiers cheering for the idea of letting a man die.
Here's the introduction to the post - it's well worth a Sunday morning read:
"“Today, I signed into law a bill that will allow Federal courts to hear a claim by or on behalf of Terri Schiavo for violation of her rights relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life. In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life. This presumption is especially critical for those like Terri Schiavo who live at the mercy of others. I appreciate the bipartisan action by the Members of Congress to pass this bill. I will continue to stand on the side of those defending life for all Americans, including those with disabilities.”
- Statement of President George W. Bush on signing P.L. 109-3 titled “An Act For the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo.”
In 2005, the US Congress passed a bill to save one woman’s life when her husband decided to take her off life support after she had been in a persistent vegetative state for fifteen years. A short six years later, a crowd at a Republican presidential debate cheered the hypothetical idea of letting a young man without health insurance die even though he had a curable condition. That concept became a stark reality for a young man in Phoenix, Arizona who was told to seek treatment in Mexico because he did not qualify for health insurance in the United States."
More treasure stories related to Odyssey Marine Exploration. This prior post covered an 11th Circuit ruling on sovereign immunity in a lawsuit between Odyssey Marine and Spain as to rights to treasure from a sunken ship said to have been on a sovereign mission. Now the NYT has a story by William J. Broad regarding two additional wrecks Odyssey is recovering with valuable silver bullion as cargo. These wrecks are being raised by contract agreement with the British government; the split is 80% for the salvagers and 20% for the government. Additional video is here.
What a cool way to earn a living.
Self-promotion. Lexis/Nexis seeks input on this and other blogs you may like as to insurance-related issues. If you wish to comment, please see the instructions in the email below, which was sent to me by Lexis/Nexis.
Thanks,
Kirk
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Greetings,
The nomination and recommendation period for the LexisNexis Top 50 Insurance Law Blogs of 2011 will end on Friday, October 7.
There is still time for your readers and colleagues to show their support for your blog and tell us why you should be included in the Top 50. Our Insurance editors and our Insurance Law Advisory Board will give strong consideration to the comments received when they review all of the nominees and select the Top 50 Insurance Law Blogs of 2011.
Your readers can support your blog by writing a comment at the bottom of the nomination post, http://www.lexisnexis.com/
Good luck!
Very truly yours,
Ted
Ted Zwayer
Community Manager, Insurance Law Community
LexisNexis | Legal & Professional
937 361 7498 Mobile
Please forgive a moment of crankiness associated with middle-aged eyes, and frustration with graphic design work by 20 or 30 somethings who either do not care about, or do not bother to think about, middle-aged eyes. The suggestion ? Try actually testing your design work with real people, including middle-aged people with the endemic bad eye sight that arrives between 50 and 55 for most people.
Example number 1. My American Express card has the centurion graphic pasted across 5 of the account numbers, rendering it impossible to read in most forms of light. And, the card number printed on the back is written in microdot. Lose the centurion, or move the location - there's plenty of room for both.
Example number 2. Because of a litigation conference, I recently stayed at the Peninsula hotel in Chicago. It's a nice place, but the rooms feature "high-tech" light switches and thermostats with tiny words not visible to middle-aged eyes in the day, much less at night. So, all the supposedly great feature become useless, and in fact are counter-productive.
Example number 3. Small print on drug boxes and package inserts. I've not yet seen a lawsuit over the small print, but .... An unreadable warning is less useful than a poor warning.
Here's the link to an eye-opening NYT article on the process of competition and federal judges hiring law clerks. The article, by Catherine Rampell, describes a frenzy quite unlike the process back when I was a baby lawyer almost 30 years ago.
This lawyer does not see too many opinions on treasure salvaged from Spanish galleons, so I'll mention one that popped up this week. This popular press article by Mitch Stacy summarizes an 11th Circuit ruling holding that treasure salvors must turn over the massive treasure they found on a Spanish galleon. The treasure must be turned over to Spain based on a form of sovereign immunity arising from the ship . The opinion is here.
110 years ago, in 1901, West Publishing created and distributed "Law Books by the Million," a self-laudatory but enjoyable and relatively detailed account of the early years of West publishing the casebooks that were part of my legal youth. The Green Bag journal, supported by the George Mason University School of Law, recently brought the article to life by publishing it in the Spring 2011 issue (Vol. 14, #3). If you like history, the article is interesting and includes some great old photos of the workers and devices. Ross E. Davies penned a helpful and enjoyable introduction. You can see the entire compilation at SSRN, at this page.
Update on A Long Swim
Doug McConnell is now the 48th person over 50 to swim the Channel - go here for a look !! The thirty mile swim took just over 14 hours. In honor of his father, almost $150,000 has been pledged for ALS research.
The power of human will never ceases to amaze.
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ALS is one of the world's miserable diseases. It's also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. More research is needed to stop the disease.
To that end, a friend from college fraternity days has embarked on a remarkable fundraiser which goes forward today: the journey is swimming the English Channel, starting in Dover today at about 1:00 (UK time).
He is Doug McConnell, and the project is called A Long Swim. Doug's twenty-one mile journey is to honor his father (a victim), to raise money for ALS support and research through the Les Turner ALS Foundation, and to embrace a great challenge and adventure after more than a year and a half of arduous training.
The Les Turner ALS Foundation sponsors cutting edge scientific research. For anyone so inclined, donations can me made through its web page.
Doug's progress can be tracked online www.ais-doverstraits.co.uk. The boat accompanying him is called Sea Satin.
Amazing. Scholars have digitized thousands of pages from trials in the Old Bailey. The story is told here in a NYT article by Patricia Cohen. The introduction is pasted below.
"For 240 years the grand parade of human greed, love, cruelty, longing, and foolishness was captured in the Proceedings, the published record of trials that took place at the Old Bailey, the central criminal court, in London.
Now, powerful digital tools developed by an international team of researchers to search these trial reports and summaries have begun to offer new insights into the evolution of the justice system, the institution of marriage and changing morals.
The Old Bailey offers a unique window into the criminal justice system and, by extension, British culture. The free searchable online archive, oldbaileyonline.org, contains accounts of nearly 198,000 trials between 1674 and 1913. “It’s the largest body of accurately transcribed historical texts online,” said Tim Hitchcock, a historian at the University of Hertfordshire in England and part of the team. “All of human life is here.”"
Going some place new and looking for a way to visualize the area and see hotels in the area? Try out Google's experimental application called hotel finder. It's here. It's useful and cool. Much easier than the websites for Expedia, etc.
Some history may come to light fairly soon. A DC District Judge has now ordered the release of President Nixon's grand jury testimony, as described here. The opinion is here. The issues are resolved under Federal Criminal Law Rule 6(e), and not, for example FOIA rules. An appeal may follow, but one wonders how continued secrecy could be justified for such a well-known event described in so many books and speeches. Indeed, John Dean is out teaching ethics courses about his destruction of evidence.
The opinion includes the following interesting set of citations to historic cases allowing release of grand jury testimony:
A new adventure is underway in my life. I've joined a wonderful group of non-lawyer experts at a national consulting firm known as Gnarus Advisors. The firm was founded by Steve Sellick, an asbestos expert for many quantitative issues, such as modeling claims for many reasons. Steve and I have worked together for years and he is a friend. Over the last four years, Steve has created a national counsulting firm with 40 non-lawyer professionals who are all highly expert (and degreed) in most phases of dealing strategically and analytically with mass tort and environmental claims.
I'm very pleased to join this group - Gnarus has an unmatched breadth and depth of experience. Our hope is that we can work with companies to help them see across all the usual informational and decision-making silos that tend to block unified and forward looking management. We also hope to help clients understand why repetitive claims should just be turned over blindly to an insurer, and to consider creative options. We expect to point clients to outside lawyers who can help them upgrade their defensive and offensive strategies, and we hope to team with a client's corporate counsel to help them look further down the line. The press release below is online here.
ARLINGTON, Va., July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Gnarus Advisors LLC (Gnarus), a leading consulting firm specializing in expert analysis, litigation testimony and business advisory, announced today that the company has opened an office in Chicago. The expansion into the Midwest continues Gnarus' overall strategy of providing broader and deeper levels of expertise for its clients across the country.
Founded in 2007 by Managing Director Stephen Sellick, Gnarus now has more than 40 highly experienced consultants throughout the country. In addition to the new office in Chicago, Gnarus operates from its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and additional offices in Waltham, Massachusetts, Los Angeles and Palo Alto, California.
"The launch of our new office in Chicago extends our geographic presence and provides a strong complement to our existing offices," Sellick said. "Our Midwest expansion includes the addition of a new Director who significantly enhances the depth of our expertise in key areas."
Kirk Hartley joins the firm as a Director to lead the Chicago office operations with a base of nearly 30 years of experience in mass torts, asbestos and environmental issues arising inside and outside of the United States. Hartley's practice at Gnarus will focus on assignments in the growing and changing intersections between science, tort law, corporate law, and insurance. His experience also includes the increasing use of bankruptcies, schemes of arrangement, and corporate use of dedicated funds (or trusts) to resolve or limit underlying contingent liability claims.
"Kirk's expertise in all phases of environmental, asbestos and mass tort claims extends significantly the scope of our expertise in those areas," Sellick said. "We also are pleased to add to Gnarus' knowledge of claims arising overseas because asbestos use and injuries are increasing around the globe, with asbestos-related deaths in Europe still many years short of peaks predicted by researchers."
Gnarus also announced today the addition of Eric Kirschner as a Principal at the firm. Kirschner will be based at Gnarus headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and brings more than 20 years of experience in asbestos, pollution and health hazard (APH) insurance claim analysis and recovery. He has spent time both as a consultant designing, developing and programming numerous financial models and data structures to facilitate APH insurance recovery and as an attorney litigating APH claims. His unique blend of skills and experience deepens Gnarus' ability to help clients efficiently distill the key pieces of litigation management information out of vast amounts of data, and to make forward-looking decisions based on the needed data. Kirschner's expertise and blends of skills also are frequently put to work in the context of insurance claim recovery matters.
"Kirk and Eric are experts in their fields and bring decades of experience to our clients," Sellick said. "I've known and worked with both of them for many years, and they've worked together on past projects. I'm very excited to welcome them to Gnarus as colleagues."
Gnarus has quickly established itself as a leader in the consulting industry. For more information about Gnarus Advisors LLC, the company's team of experts and consultants, and the scope of consulting services that Gnarus provides, please visit http://gnarusllc.com/.
About Gnarus Advisors LLC
Corporations, government agencies and law firms call upon Gnarus Advisors LLC to take on the challenges that arise from litigation, regulation and other sources of risk and uncertainty. Gnarus combines thorough economic analysis and advanced financial modeling with scientific and technical expertise to provide its clients with the resources and support they need across a wide spectrum of industries and disciplines. Gnarus experts and consultants are adept at solving complex business problems, identifying and mitigating risk, and supporting litigation efforts through in-depth research, analysis and quantitative modeling. The Gnarus team is comprised of hard working, experienced individuals who are recognized as leaders in their fields and bring years of academic, governmental and corporate experience to every client the company advises. For more information, please visit: http://gnarusllc.com/.
SOURCE Gnarus Advisors LLC
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An update on the post below regarding Verizon's much touted but lousy 4G wireless modem service for the southwest side of Chicago and its southwest suburbs (specifically, along Metrarail's Southwest line). The short update is that the 4G service also failed multiple times last night while on Amtrak's NY to DC train in order to get to court in Wilmington, Delaware. The supposedly wonderful 4G modem was put to work as soon as the train left NY's Penn Station, and the signal failed twice between NY and the Metropark stop. And, even when the train was sitting still at the Metropark station, the network would not activate.
2 more drops off the system between Metropark and Philadelphia. And, the modem could not even figure out that it had been dropped, so I had to trigger it to disconnect when data would not upload. Then another drop in the Philadelphia station. Also, i had to turn the VW Access Manager on and off by hand in order to connect again. Between Philadelphia and Wilmington, the signal was usually 2 bars or less, and dropped one more time.
Conclusion? Hold on to your 3G modem. Verizon's people at the store near my home tell me that it no longer sells a 3G modem and instead all new customers are forced to buy a 4G modem even thoughthe service stinks, to use a relatively polite word.
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An FYI for Iphone users and modem users thinking about moving to Verizon. My advice - don't bother. Back in March, 2011, I became a Iphone 4 and modem user when I abandoned my AT& T Iphone out of frustration with AT & T's miserable service. Guess what - Verizon is no better.
For the Iphone 4, calls continue to contain lots of words that are lost, and calls completely fail with great frequency. And, there's no hope of getting a call in my 31st floor office. And, that's still happening after being sent a second phone to replace a supposedly defective first Iphone. I may bring back my reliable old Motorola clamshell and TMobile.
Meanwhile, the 4g Modem is at best frustrating. Every now and then it works very well to bring down lots of data at high speed. BUT of course that's only part of the story. My 3G modem very seldom dropped the signal, but the 4G signal drops very frequently - sometimes 2-3 times per commuting trip on a commuter train from or to Chicago and the Southwest suburbs. I recently had a Verizon tech go through all the settings, but nothing improved. His comment was that the 4g network is not really intended for people who are moving when using the modem. Of course, Verizon's marketing material omits that material information.
So, at least in Chicago, don't expect "better" by moving to Verizon from AT & T, or from 3G to 4G.
My daughters and I now work for Comcast, apparently. Every day my daughters or I get to reset the internet modem at my house. And, that's after I tasked my eldest daughter with standing in line a couple of weeks ago to obtain a new internet modem to replace the prior modem which failed even more frequently.
It's disgusting to observe and feel Comcast's failure to provide anything close to quality service. It's also a testament to the lawyers or others who managed to create a quasi-monopoly clever enough to escape any effective regulation at either the state or federal level. Comcast's lousy service also makes it harder to accept the attractive but apparently illusory claim that consumer service businesses do not require regulation because they must serve customers well in order to stay in business.
I'll forever vote for and contribute to the campaign of the first politician to lead a successful effort to effectively regulate Comcast . One suggestion ? Require Comcast to automatically credit an account $ 5 every time a reset is required after service fails, and require it to automatically issue significant credits after widespread service failures. There needs to be a cost to Comcast for lousy service. Until it has to pay for failure, Comcast will keep externalizing the cost via turning my daughters and me into its unpaid tech personnel.
Update on Capital One
Set out below is my quick rant about lousy service by the credit card giant, Capital One. As I expected, Capital One never has bothered to contact me to confirm that it closed the account, as I had requested.
Capital One's latest failure came to mind when I saw this Dealbook article about Capital One claiming to offer great, transparent to its customers. However, other views of CapitalOne alos were expressed, including Capitol Hill testimony about for predatory lending practices for persons with subprime credit ratings.
“Is the Federal Reserve really prepared to turn a blind eye again and watch a new subprime crisis unfold?” Ed Gorman, chief membership officer at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said in written testimony to the Fed, which hosted the third and final public hearing to scrutinize the deal. “Capital One’s risky and subprime credit cards generate stellar earnings three times the size of their asset base through predatory interest rates, questionable fees and confusing terms.”
That is not the case, Capital One’s lawyers say.
“Our products are the most customer-friendly and transparent in the industry,” John Finneran, Capital One’s general counsel, told the Fed. “Given the size of this market, responsible lending to these borrowers is not only acceptable, but also provides a source of credit and purchasing power for these customers, and is thus necessary to the functioning of our economy.”
Still, Mr. Finneran acknowledged that about a third of Capital One’s credit card portfolio carries the subprime label, defined as loans to borrowers with credit scores below 660. The bank also has a heavy hand in the subprime car loan business.
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Like all of us, I've dealt with more than a few idiotic business organizations that lack any semblance of real customer service. Today a new low was reached. In my opinion, Capital One may be the worst customer service company I've ever encountered. So, I decided to write.
What happened? I tried to cancel a credit card account I've never used. I've tried to cancel this account a few times, but the account refuses to dies because CapitalOne never honored my prior requests to cancel the account, and so I keep getting statements. As detailed below, it took 22 minutes to obtain an address to which I can mail my latest cancellation request.
According to the monthly statement, a card owner can cancel by phone or in writing. But the statement does not provide an email address or snail mail address. So, my secretary called to get an address. The "customer service" representative refused to provide an address.
Needless to say, that did not sit well. So, I called the phone number listed on my statement. I spoke first to WER294. He could not provide an address. He kept putting me on "1-2 minute holds" so that he could connect with someone who could provide an address. After 16 minutes on hold (timed on my phone) we finally reached KDR027. He too could not provide an address, and also needed to transfer me to a supervisor. At the 21 minute mark, I reached finally reach LInda - MYE939, and she provided the address below.
Care to bet on whether CapitalOne actually honors this request to cancel ?
To cancel a credit card account with CapitalOne, the address provided to me is:
CapitalOne - General Correspondence
PO Box 30285
Salt Lake City, Utah 84130
To use a well-known form of expression: CapitalOne Sucks !!
Bank gouging is everywhere. I just ordered additional check from my bank (JPMorganChase), which linked me to Deluxe to order the checks. Cost ? Over $ 50, with "shipping" fee. What a rip off. By comparison, at the holidays, I ordered 100 greeting cards with three pictures and several colors, plus envelopes, for about $ 125. The profit margin on the checks is obscene.
My guess ? The bank takes a percentage of every order for checks, or somehow is paid/credited//benefitted by Deluxe. Or, maybe the bank owns Deluxe, or some portion of it.
The suggestion ? After the agency is up and running, assign some junior person to determine who is making all the money on the checks, and how payments are being shared. Sue or fine for rebates to the bank, or other unfair/illegal actions, if any. Then, require banks to provide a link to competitively priced vendors for checks.
In today's world of global travel and mobile jobs, where does an adult person "live" when he or she and/or the family sometimes occupy space in more than one location ? Seemingly simple questions are becoming even more challenging in this increasingly global world and careers involving increasingly impermanent jobs. And,the question even applies to corporations as some purport to skip around the globe to seek lower tax rates as exemplified by Cooper Industries and myriad insurance companies, or other legal advantages, as evidence by James Hardie (moved from Australia to the Netherlands to Ireland) and myriad insurance companies.
In the US, the question of residency has achieved some notoriety over the last few days due to rulings by Illinois courts on the eligibility of a candidate to become the new Mayor of Chicago. Under our state's statute on elections, a candidate for mayor must have "resided in" in the city for the year prior to the election. The candidate, Rahm Emanuel, clearly "resided in" in Chicago for many years, but then moved temporarily to Washington, D.C. to serve as Chief of Staff for President Obama. That position is necessarily impermanent, and so Mr. Emanuel and his family did not sell their Chicago home, and instead simply rented the home while "living" in Washington. Yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court issued its opinion affirming that Mr. Emanuel satisfies the standard because determining where a person "resides" includes an intent element plainly satisfied by Mr. Emanuel.
The impemanence of today's world raises interesing questions.
Merry Christmas
Best wishes for all to receive the the gifts of good health, peace, joy, love and hope !!
Remember Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, and all the lies that were told by senior Bush Administration officails to try to cover up the trumped up basis for invading Iraq ? The story is retold in Fair Game, with a focus on the marriage of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson. The movie is well done and powerful.
One caveat. Seeing the movie reinflames contempt for Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter, Fox "News,"and President Bush's commutation of Scooter's sentence.
I saw the movie yesterday after I took the Multistate Ethics Exam, and so was especially well-steeped in the ethical rules that are supposed to stop lawyers from lying. Hopefully Scooter stays disbarred forever. Wikipedia covers his various post-conviction ploys and disbarments.
I'm biased, but I love Chicago. So, today I'll be a booster for Chicago and my law firm.
On Chicago boosterism, Foreign Policy has issued its 2010 list of the top global cities. Chicago now ranks # 6. Go here for the article, and go here for its photo essay on major cities from around the globe.
Need more convincing ? Click here for Wikipedia on the details of Frank Sinatra's recording of My Kind of Town (Chicago Is). Click here for the recording, or click here for the YouTube video.
The Chicago photo above? The night scene looking southeast from the roof deck of our law firm, Childress Duffy, three blocks north of Marina Towers. If you'd like to see that view in person, please stop by our open house at the new office at 500 N. Dearborn on Thursday, August 26, after 5.
For various reasons, I decided to try an American Express platinum card this year,. One reason was that the ads promised concrierge service, and so I thought the hefty fee would result in actually good customer service. Silly me. To date, it's been all hassle and no service.
Today's example ? I want to go back to good old fashioned mailed statements so that I can avoid the download and print ordeal created by passwords. So, I called to ask for that change to be made. After 8 minutes, the answer was: N no, we will not do that for you. Instead you have to go on line and make that change yourself." ( per supervisor Mindy (# 57362 - Ft. Lauderdale). And, that answer cane after their systems kept failing to pass along information (e.g card number) that the system demanded before I could reach a human being (and even then only after proceeding further into the bowels of myriad levels of voice mail prompts.)
In short, paying the price for an AMEX platinum card does not produce actual customer service.
I've gone to trial as counsel for "asbestos defendants." Juror surveys rank them somewhere around child molesters. But, I'd really hate to be a trial lawyer for a big financial service company these days.
Why? On top of doing a lot of venal and stupid things to trash much of the US economy, they can't make online service work, and otherwise find ways to make customers despise them.My gripes ?
American Express - the Amex website refuses to process a request to institute automatic bill payment. For some reason, it does not like something about my bank's routing number or my account numer. Fast telephone support ? Of course not. The say they could, however, call me back within 48 hours.
Wilmington Trust - the bank's website does not work on Monday the 31st. Apparently it's holiday for both humans and servers.
JP Morgan Chase - A $ 15 fee charged last month as its fee to receive a wire transfer from another bank.
Profit is a great thing since it's what makes the world economy keep moving along. But profits should be made along with providing actual customer service, and without charging fees for executing core services. Frankly, I can't think of a large bank or credit card compnay that I respect. When that's my attitude, imagine how less fortunate jurors must feel when they sit to judge these entities. Good luck to their lawyers.
Times Online includes an interesting article on the possible legal consequences of the volcano and its impact on airlines and air travelers, and their jobs and expenses.
The ABA Journal links to an article arguing that a revolt is underway. The number of commenters, and the views, seemed surprising. Judging by the commenters, it seems there are plenty of lawyers out there who are indeed distressed by recent events in the financial world.
E-vendors. Some are great, some are not. Today, Blue Mountain e-cards is added to my list of "not great" e-vendors.
Why? I've learned to live with vendors that clearly and in big letters insist you go on line, register with most of your life history, and then we must do all the typing in order to buy services that include an "automatic renewal" term of service (a/k/a contract of adhesion). With customers having done all of that once, the vendors could then at least make it easy to cancel service ( or return goods). In fact, a few do operate in that way But, too often, when a customer wants to cancel a service that uses an "automatic renewal" approach, the path to cancel service is often obscured behind multiple layers of screens and links, and the website fails to include or offer a "cancel service" option to match the ease of "unsubscribe" for emails.
One such vendor is Blue Mountain e-cards. Early this morning, the firm sent me a reminder email that our family account was about to renew for another year. My girls and I never send their cards anymore, so I decided to cancel. I then proceeded to click on the link in the email. That took me off on a goose chase to sign in and find the information on canceling (of course it was not an easy to find subject). After wasting a couple of minutes, I finally found the right spot. What did I see ? A message (see below) telling me that the only way to cancel is to make a phone call. So, why weren't those instructions and phone number placed in the email reminder about subscription renewal ? Obviously the needed instructions were omitted due to Blue Mountain's hope of obtaining another annual fee.
Worse yet, when I called to cancel, the process also was poor. To starty, a acouple fo minte wait, followed by an automated voice insisting that I tell it my home phone number so that I could be helped faster. So, I complied, but of course the call center person did not have access to the record despite my providing the number. Thus, more wasted time to repeat the process.
Blue Mountain of course will never ever generate more revenue from my family. My hope is that this quick rant in some way costs Blue Mountain some revenue by reaching someone who decides not to subscribe, or by encouraging someone else to cancel. I presume some financial engineers have concluded that revenue generated from unwanted renewals will exceed the revenue lost from making people mad, losing them forever, and causing them to rant. I hope their calculations are wrong - it's a lousy way to do business, in my book.
"To request a cancellation of a subscription, please contact our membership support center by calling 1-888-254-1450, Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. EST.
Customers outside the United States and Canada should click here for further instructions
For 2010, I wish you good health, and lives full of hope, peace, joy and love.
While you are thinking about New Year's Resolutions, please consider two that may actually save some one's life. Both resolutions are easy to fulfill. For one, please spread the word that cord blood donations at birth offer enormous opportunities to save lives because the blood contains life-saving stem cells. For another, please go here to register to become a potential bone marrow donor.
Please read on for more facts on why the needs are so great and why it's easy to accomplish both resolutions.
Cord Blood Can Save Lives
There is enormous medical value to donating cord blood and placentas when children are born. Why? Because they are chock full of pluripotent stem cells able to evolve into cells performing most any cellular role in the body. Why does that matter ? Because the cells may replace existing defective or failed cells that cause cancers and other dread diseases. Go here, for example, to read a November 15, 2000 Science Daily article about great new science in which cord blood is used to achieve tremendous results for patients who need bone marrow (stem cell) transplants to overcome leukemias and other cancer involving blood and bone marrow. Or go here to download the full medical article. The short version of the story is as follows:
"ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2009) -- A new study from the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota shows that patients who have acute leukemia and are transplanted with two units of umbilical cord blood (UCB) have significantly reduced risk of the disease returning."
Is there really a need to spread the word about the value of cord blood ? You bet - the science above is new, and so most people have no idea of the value of the cells, and are not aware of the critical needs. As a result, we are missing enormous opportunities to save lives. How do I know that ? Various ways, but most recently I heard it at a holiday gathering from my old roommate, Dwight, a brilliant and compassionate person who is a practicing OB GYN. The topic came up because several former college friends gathered for the holidays, and one brought up the topic of knowing way too many people with cancer even though we are all less than 55. After various comments about cancer treatments and hopes for "cures," Dwight the OB GYN stated his intense frustration that many parents to be and hospitals pay virtually no attention to cord blood donations. The result ? Every day, thousands of people and hospitals fail to preserve and use thousands of placentas and cord blood that collectively contain billions of stem cells that could save countless lives. So, please spread the word. It takes only a few seconds, for example, to forward an email or to cut and paste some of this text into an email to your existing list of friends and neighbors.
Register as a Potential Bone Marrow Donor
For a second resolution, please consider registering to become a bone marrow donor. It's easy to register with the nationally-recognized "Be the Match Foundation." Click on Be the Match or use your web browser to go to www.marrow.org. Contrary to what many people think, the need for bone marrow has not ended. To the contrary, there is a growing need for bone marrow donors, and the need is especially critical for children. Why ? Because diversity and "mixed marriages" mean that traditional ethnic lines are being crossed, thereby producing new genomes for which there are few or no matches because the existing potential donors are typically older and not so diverse. So, registering new, younger and more diverse potential donors is of critical importance for children with leukemias and other blood cancers. The Wall Street Journal covered the topic earlier this year; go here to read the full story or see the text pasted below. As a result. Mayo Clinic and others are running registration drives, as described here by Mayo.
Registering more potential donors also is critical because some cancer rates are soaring. As shown here, some of the stunning numbers are that for just 2009, and for just the United States, over 65,000 people will be diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and another 8,000 will be diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. For too many of these patients, the only real chance for life is a bone marrow transplant.
What's involved in registering ? Not much - the registration process is simple, painless and can be done through the mail. How? First, the potential donor registers online with contact information. The mail will then bring a small packet containing a couple of cotton swabs (Q-tips) that you use to gather some fluid/skin cells from the inside of the mouth. Rub the swabs on the inside of your mouth, mail the swabs back in, make a small donation, and that's all there is to it. After that, the registration group submits the q-tips to a lab that analyzes the DNA on the swab to indicate the genomic types for which the registrant perhaps could be a donor. Please click here to go the Be The Match website and register right now to start the new year off with action that may save a life.
Isn't bone marrow donation very painful ? NO, NO, NO - that used to be true, but it's not true anymore ! The typical bone marrow donation process today involves extracting the needed marrow cells through a blood donation/filtering process that takes a few hours. In essence, a needle is inserted, blood is slowly drained out to run through a filter, and the needed cells are collected through a process known as peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation. You can easily talk, watch TV, or listen to music during the process. Or you could simply reflect on probably saving a life. Go here to read more myth busting about bone marrow donation.
Hopefully you are now resolved to take action? After all, how many other actions can you take this year that might actually save a life ?
But, if you need more motivation, here is a Wikipedia article on marrow donation and the various involved groups. Or, please read the full May 27, 2009 Wall Street Journal article below on the critical needs..
_____________________________________________________________________
• THE INFORMED PATIENT
• MAY 27, 2009
I. Building Diversity in Bone-Marrow Registries
• By LAURA LANDRO
Like thousands of patients battling blood cancers, Natasha Collins faces a needle-in-a-haystack search for a bone-marrow donor. But for the 26-year-old medical student with recurrent leukemia, the hunt is even more of a challenge because she is half African American and half Caucasian.
Transplants of bone marrow, which produces new blood cells, offer a potential cure for a growing number of cancers and other diseases, but only if the patient and donor are genetically compatible. Only 30% of patients have a sibling with the same genetic makeup who can provide marrow transplants. For other people, the best chance of a match is someone of their own race or ethnicity. That poses a special problem for minorities, and the growing number of people who identify themselves as multiracial, because for these groups there is a shortage of donor volunteers.
Some seven million people in the U.S. have signed up on a national registry to be potential bone-marrow donors. Even so, less than half the 10,000 patients who needed a transplant last year were able to find a genetic match that led to a transplant. While the odds of a white patient finding a match are 88%, the odds for most minorities can be as low as 60%. The odds of actually receiving a transplant are as low as 20% for some minorities because of other factors such as access to care in their communities.
Now, the National Marrow Donor Program, the nonprofit group that administers the registry with partial funding from the U.S. government, is stepping up efforts to recruit donors from different ethnic backgrounds. The 21-year-old program, which recently changed the name of its registry to Be the Match, is spreading its message through social media Web sites like Facebook and MySpace. It is trying to reach a younger generation that its research shows isn't aware of the program's mission or of medical advances that make it possible to screen potential donors by testing DNA with a simple cheek swab from a kit (available online at bethematch.org).
Marrow Transplant Myths
Be the Match also aims to shatter some myths about bone-marrow donation, such as the fear that it will hurt the donor. Traditionally, donors underwent general anesthesia so stem cells in the bone marrow could be collected from needles inserted into large bones in the back. About 20% of transplant donations are still conducted this way.
Now, in a relatively painless procedure that doesn't require anesthesia, some 60% of transplants are performed by harvesting a donor's peripheral blood stem cells, which are cells from bone marrow that circulate in the blood stream. These can be collected by circulating the donor's blood intravenously over several hours through a machine. The procedure also delivers a greater volume of stem cells to the recipient than a traditional bone-marrow transplant. The donor's body regenerates the stem cells within a few weeks. Donor costs are typically covered by the patient's insurance or by funds from the registry and other sponsors.
An additional 20% of transplants are performed using umbilical-cord blood cells that are donated after childbirth. This procedure, which doesn't require as close a genetic match between donor and recipient, is relatively new, and there isn't a large body of scientific evidence of its long-term effectiveness and complication rates.
Bone-marrow transplants, first offered in the 1960s, have been used to treat leukemia, aplastic anemia, lymphomas such as Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, immune-deficiency disorders and some solid tumors such as breast and ovarian cancer. Before undergoing transplants, patients typically are treated with chemotherapy and sometimes radiation to destroy their diseased marrow. The donor's healthy blood-making cells are then infused directly into the patient's bloodstream, where they help to build a new blood supply.
But for a transplant to succeed, markers known as human leukocyte antigens, or HLAs, have to match between donor and recipient. The body uses the markers to recognize which cells belong in the body and which are intruders. A close match will reduce the risk that the patient's immune cells will attack the donor's cells or that the donor's cells will attack the patient's body after the transplant. Patients inherit half their HLA markers from each parent, and each sibling has a 25% chance of matching. But it is possible to have even a dozen siblings and no match.
Diagnosed With Leukemia
I was one of the lucky ones. When I was diagnosed with a form of leukemia in 1991 and needed a transplant, both of my brothers tested as identical matches on each of six HLA markers used to determine compatibility (though five are sometimes acceptable). Because some HLA types are found more often in certain racial and ethnic groups than others, the HLA markers of a donor can be close enough to be compatible with a patient from a similar ethnic background. People with mixed backgrounds, such as African and European ancestry, for example, have unique combinations of HLA types. "As long as we create more diversity [in the population], we will need more and more donors to reflect that," says National Marrow Donor Program Chief Executive Jeffrey Chell.
Ms. Collins, the medical student, had a transplant from donated cord blood cells in May 2007, but her cancer, known as acute myelogenous leukemia, has returned. Her doctors now believe a bone-marrow transplant offers Ms. Collins the best chance of a cure. Her classmates at Yale University have held bone-marrow drives, sent emails to other medical schools to recruit donors, and created a Facebook group with over 1,000 members and a YouTube video (both accessible at www.matchnatasha.org).
Ms. Collins is now undergoing chemotherapy, which weakens her immune system. She says she is trying to keep up with her class work by studying at home. "The good news is that we've found some potential matches," she says.
The National Marrow Donor program says it is seeing results from its minority recruitment efforts. Groups such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities conducted drives that have signed up 5,000 donors in a program launched last year. The donor program is also working with Hispanic groups and Asian and Pacific Islander organizations, as well as with blood centers in states that have large Native American populations. In 2008, it signed up 440,000 new donors, just under half of whom were from diverse racial and ethnic communities. The group also is working with international registries, with a total of five million potential donors, and is signing cooperative agreements with countries like Brazil.
Studies show that there are a number of reasons why different ethnic groups don't sign up as bone marrow donors, including a lack of educational resources devoted to those communities, fear of doctors and hospitals, concern about putting personal information in a database, and cultural taboos about donating a physical part of oneself.
In one effort to recruit Asian and Pacific Islander donors, 26-year-old acute leukemia patient Michelle Maykin founded Project Michelle, an online campaign that includes a Web site, projectmichelle.org, with blogs, photos and videos. The project has recruited more than 15,000 new donors by sponsoring bone marrow drives with the help of the national registry at Asian churches and student groups, among others.
Advances in Matching
Improvements in matching techniques, using DNA-based testing methods, can more precisely identify the best donor. Be the Match recently started offering an online search tool that patients and doctors can use to get an idea of how many potential matches may be in the registry.
In the past 18 months, the registry found matches for more than 5,000 transplants, an 18% increase over the previous period. More diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, are now treated with transplants. And patients 50 and older, for whom transplants were once considered too risky, are now eligible for the treatment. That's because of new, pre-transplant chemotherapy regimens that are less toxic, and better post-transplant care to prevent infections and rejection.
Ineligible Donors
Some medical conditions may eliminate potential donors, such as bleeding problems or heart disease. When Christopher Bartley, a classmate of Ms. Collins at Yale Medical School who has African-American, Caucasian and Honduran roots, tried to sign up, he found that he was ineligible because he suffers from sleep apnea, which causes pauses in breathing during sleep.
And even though the hope is that more minorities will provide matches for others in the same ethnic mix, it is also possible to find a match where there is no ethnic similarity. Victoria Namkung, a Los Angeles writer of Irish, Jewish and Korean origins, who signed up as a donor several years ago, was surprised to learn that she was the match for a Mexican-American man in Ft. Myers, Fla. Donors and recipients can communicate anonymously for the first year through the registry and then meet if they choose. Ms. Namkung says she and her recipient have met and keep in touch. The feeling of having provided him a life-saving transplant "changed my life," she says.
• Email informedpatient@wsj.com.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1
Best wishes to all for a day full of hope, peace, joy and love.
With some regrets but also great excitement, I've decided to leave Butler Rubin Saltarelli & Boyd as of the end of the year. It's been a great 10 years at BRS & B. The firm is full of great people and lawyers who've been very good to me, and that support continues even now. But, serendipity and other forces are at work, so I've decided to start 2010 by becoming a partner at Childress Duffy Goldblatt. Known as CDG, the firm is composed of 20 or so lawyers, with the main office in Chicago and significant offices in Florida. Further expansion is envisioned.
Like BRS & B, my new firm is mainly a litigation boutique, but happily also includes a small but strong transactional practice. CDG, however, will be different for me because the firm includes two long-time friends with some shared dreams, and CDG sues insurers instead of representing them. CDG also is very creative and open to new ideas and approaches. Thus, the partners are involved in litigation-related consultancies and prefer to share risks and rewards with clients and others through contingent fees, joint ventures, and other creative approaches.
Here's the situation in a nutshell. I'm making this move:
• To pursue dreams in partnership with two great lawyers and friends I've known since law school and the first years of practice
• To continue my current commercial, mass tort and legacy liability work, but with materially greater flexibility to handle cases through alternative fee arrangements
• To help expand CDG's practice representing both corporations and individuals with issues regarding insurance policies, including CGL, D & O, property, business interruption, health and other types of insurance policies
• To help expand the business of a related consulting company known as Risk Assessment & Transfer International, which provides pre-loss creation and archiving of critical evidence and documents, and consults on risk-related issues, including identifying emerging risks, spotting unseen risks inherent in old and new business structures, and negotiating specific policy language to avoid issues
• To help expand CDG's contingent fee and/or pro bono practice suing insurers and others when insurance policies are illegally rescinded via "post-claim underwriting" or other unfair practices after submission of claims for expensive treatments for cancer or other diseases
• To use my passion for science and law to help expand CDG's contingent fee and/or pro bono practice suing insurance companies or health care plans for individuals when they are denied medical treatments such as bone marrow transplants
As of January 3, the cell phone number stays the same, but my new office information will be:
Kirk T. Hartley
Childress Duffy Goldblatt
515 N. State Street - Suite 2200
Chicago, IL 60654
(Direct) 312-494-0206
(Fax) 312-494-0202
(Cell) 312-802-4471
khartley@cdglawyers.com
For those who may be interested, the following text further explains the reasons for my move to CDG, and explains more about its practices and our plans.
Creativity and Flexibility: The opportunity to join CDG is irresistible because it offers the opportunity to pursue dreams in partnership with two long-time friends, TJ Loucks and Mike Childress. TJ and I became friends in law school and were roommates for several years. TJ introduced me to Mike, and various adventures were shared during our younger days. Both TJ and Mike are great people and lawyers. Perhaps better yet, both like to dream, and are highly creative and flexible. Those characteristics are embedded in the firm's DNA due to Mike founding the firm, and TJ being the Managing Partner.
CDG's litigation focus of course meshes well with my twenty-five years in commercial, mass tort and legacy liability litigation. For commercial litigation, CDG's flexibility is great because its lawyers have tried a wide range of commercial cases, and CDG offers greater flexibility to share risks through contingent fee and other alternative fee arrangements.
Insurance and Corporate Legacy Liability Issues: During the 25 years I've spent representing manufacturing conglomerates and individual corporations, a dominant factor always has been obtaining insurance monies or other sources of payment for defense and indemnity expenses for underlying "long tail torts." I've also spent much time in negotiations, arbitrations and trials to resolve myriad "shared insurance" issues that arise from conglomerates, environmental claims and other long-tail tort claims. CDG offers significant new opportunities to more effectively pursue insurance-related issues for clients because CDG's lawyers already are involved in a wide range of insurance coverage litigation against insurers, including obtaining coverage under CGL, D&O, property, business interruption, and other insurance policies. The firm's lawyers also have great depth in pursuing bad faith claims. The expectation is that I will add value to CDG with my experience in and knowledge of "shared insurance" issues, coverage in place agreements, and issues regarding whether underlying defense counsel are allowed to exercise their independent judgment in defending underlying cases. We also expect to build on our mutual experiences with insurance insolvencies, run-offs, and solvent and insolvent schemes of arrangement.
We also expect to further build CDG's significant national presence bringing claims for property owners that suffer heavy losses but are unable to obtain fair compensation through the insurance adjustment process. CDG's clients are nationwide, and include Fortune 500 companies, commercial and residential property owners of buildings (e.g. condominiums, hotels) damaged by weather, as well as processing facilities and factories damaged by explosions, fires or other problems that interrupt business operations. CDG takes on these and other claims on a contingent fee or hourly fee basis. Named partner Mike Duffy loves to try cases anywhere, anytime, and I'm looking forward to teaming with Mike and the rest of the trial lawyers.
Risk Management and Consulting: CDG's lawyers are well ahead of the curve in understanding the importance of risk management, and providing consulting services aimed at spotting and avoiding problems, as well as maximizing insurance recoveries when losses do occur. The consulting business, Risk Assessment & Transfer International, includes both non-lawyers and lawyers who advise on a wide range of risk management issues. For example, Risk's consultants help identify risks that ordinarily might be missed, and help negotiate better language for some aspects of some insurance policies. Risk's consultants also work with clients on pre-litigation record-creation and record-keeping needed in order to be prepared for disasters by already having built a file of trial-ready evidence. "Risk" also undertakes joint venture risk management programs with significant engineering and mechanical firms and other lawyers. The entire approach is broad in scope, which is refreshing and seems especially key in light today's vastly increased focus on active, wide-ranging risk management. Hopefully, I will add value to Risk through my years of experience with issues arising from mass tort claims, m & a transactions, indemnification rights and obligations, conglomerates, and "shared insurance" issues, among other legacy liability issues. Risk consultants also will seek to educate clients about their rights with respect to insurance run-offs, insolvencies and schemes of arrangement.
Science and Disease: CDG also offers the opportunity to do more with my passion for science and law through advocacy for persons confronting cancer or other serious diseases. CDG already is involved in contingency fee and/or pro bono work for disease and disability victims when insurers rescind health care or other insurance policies, or refuse to approve or pay for needed therapy. CDG also is supporting new, related pro bono initiatives that will start in 2010. Although there are of course responsible insurers, I'm excited to join in asserting claims against irresponsible insurers and their actions because I've personally observed the physical and mental anguish caused by irresponsible actions blocking timely and proper care for individuals facing diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. This area also is exciting because it's plain there are enormous changes ahead for both health care and science, and it's inevitable that new issues will divide insureds, hospitals, doctors and insurers, regardless of exactly how the effort ends with respect to federal health care legislation. To say the least, I'm enthusiastic about joining CDG's teams working on existing and future cases for cancer patients and others, and look forward to involvement in new issues as science and law push forward.
Mass Torts, Due Process, Bankruptcies and Future Claimants: CDG's practice areas also align with my personal focus on mass tort bankruptcy and mass tort settlement issues, including RAND's important new study on asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The flexibility of CDG will provide additional opportunities to pursue my interests in working towards bankruptcies, class actions and insurance schemes and runoffs that actually achieve a fair and constitutional balancing of the rights and interests of all concerned, including the rights of current and future corporate and individual claimants against bankruptcy estates and related entities and insurers. In my view, today's various types of proceedings too often proceed down unconstitutional paths that deprive current and future claimants of their property and due process rights.
Transactional Opportunities: CDG's Joel Goldblatt is an excellent transactional lawyer with significant complimentary experience in related business litigation. It will be enjoyable to work with Joel and his team since that offers new possibilities for work with lawyers around the globe who are part of the International Business Law Consortium. The IBLC, as its known, is a global group of medium and small law firms around the world. I've been active in the IBLC for about 4 years, and very much enjoy working with lawyers around the world.
Thank You: I appreciate you taking the time to understand what's ahead. In some ways, I'll be the same lawyer staying heavily involved in areas I've enjoyed for 25 years. It's exciting, though, to also look forward to adding new skills and hopefully finding new ways to assist a broader range of clients in new and emerging issues that keep tying back to the myriad intersections between corporate law, tort law, science, insurance, and bankruptcy law.
One of the best books I read last year was Nudge by Profs. Thaler and Sunstein, so I try to follow their ongoing Nudge blog. A post this week includes links to some interesting wesbsite on "greenwashing," "and a picture of a priceless old tobacco ad. Ads of that sort matter in some law suits today because some young jurors today have no idea why people ever smoked.
Here is a link to Pat Lamb's post about an airline customer exacting great revenge for the absence of good service. Great service is the focus for Pat 's blog, and also is the focus for Pat and the other great lawyers at Valorem Group.
Disclosure: Pat and I grew up together as lawyers and were partners for many, many years. Ultimately, the timing of life events caused him to make a move I could not join.
Posts to The Epicurean Dealmaker (TED) blog are infrequent but have been especially wonderful this month. The best is this week's post skewering the government's pre-election decisions on AIG and Goldman. The post was good enough that Paul Krugman cited and quoted it for this recent column that followed up on the SIGTARP report on AIG, Goldman and TARP.
Here are the insider trading charges against Galleon's founder and here is an NYT article on the scam. The insider trading ring is described as follows;
" As outlined by law enforcement officials, Mr. Rajaratnam tapped a vast network of informants across a swath of corporate America: a senior official at I.B.M. considered a contender for the top job at that firm; executives of Intel and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company; two former Bear Stearns employees who had moved to a hedge fund, New Castle Partners; and an analyst at Moody's Investors Service.
While trading secrets, though, one crucial piece of information was not shared -- the phones were tapped. The wiretaps, said by prosecutors to be the first in an insider-trading case, were made with the assistance of an unnamed cooperating witness, a former Galleon employee who was said to ply Mr. Rajaratnam with information originally to land a job."
The ABA is seeking nominations for good law blogs. If you like globaltort, please feel free (humor intended) to tell the ABA by clicking here.
How different is the Mexican legal system from the US system? The article pasted below provides a glimpse in to the current signficant differences between the US crininal law system and the Mexican criminal law system. The article is from the August 14, 2009 issue of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.
Great post on Conglomerate with links to lots of specifics about using plagiarim software to figure patterns and averages regarding the writing of Supreme Court opinions and other documents.
Hard to resist posting on this classic law school issue, even if not really a tort. The article below is excerpted from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin's story on a June 26, 2009 Illinois appellate court opinion.
http://www.chicagolawbulletin.com/case/get_story_text.cfm?id=100004556
"Plaintiff James Carroll filed a two-count replevin action against defendant Alison Curry after their romantic relationship ended. Count 1 sought the recovery of an engagement ring and Count 2 sought to recover other items of personal property, including a plasma television and audio equipment.
The record showed that the plaintiff proposed marriage to the defendant in late April 2000 and at that time, he gave her a ring he purchased specifically for the proposal. The defendant accepted the proposal, the two became engaged and some months later the plaintiff moved into the defendant's residence. On Nov. 16, 2005, the parties' relationship ended after the defendant accused the plaintiff of infidelity and ordered him to leave her home.
The trial court in April 2007 granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on Count 1. The trial court said that the appropriate analytical framework for the case lay in contract principles and that "fault" was not a consideration in the determination as to whether the plaintiff was entitled to the return of the ring.
The appeals court affirmed. The court said that replevin is a strict statutory proceeding and that the statute must be followed precisely. The primary purpose of the replevin statute is to test the right of possession of personal property and place the successful party in possession of the property, the appeals court said.
In this case, the appeals court said that the evidence showed that the plaintiff was entitled to possession of the ring because there was no dispute that the plaintiff alone purchased the ring or that he gave the ring to the defendant for the explicit purpose of proposing marriage.
"Thus it is undisputed that the ring was a give in contemplation of marriage. Gifts given in contemplation of marriage are deemed conditional on the subsequent marriage of the parties and the party who fails to perform on the condition of the give has no right to property acquired under such pretenses," the appeals court said.
"Given that the parties in this case did not marry and that defendant intended to terminate the engagement when she ordered plaintiff to leave her home, clearly the condition attached to the gift of the engagement ring was not fulfilled. The record reflects that plaintiff established his right of possession," the appeals court said.
In addition, the appeals court said that the plaintiff established that the defendant wrongfully detained the ring and that her continued possession of the ring constituted wrongful detention for purposes of the replevin statute. The appeals court rejected the defendant's contention that because the plaintiff breached his promise of fidelity and caused the engagement breakup, she was entitled to keep the ring.
James B. Carroll v. Alison E. Curry, No. 2-07-0812. Justice Susan F. Hutchinson wrote the court's opinion with Presiding Justice Kathryn E. Zenoff and Justice Donald C. Hudson concurring. Released June 26."
Wow - see here for a basic article on the Lehman fees, and here is a link saying that Prof. LoPucki thinks fees may end up at slightly less than $ 1 billion.
Among the fee earners, lawyers are doing well as shown by the exceprt below from an article on Lehman by LAW360 is a subscription service.
http://bankruptcy.law360.com/articles/110521
By Anne Urda
***
Thus far, Lehman has paid the firm an estimated $114 million for its services, which has included Marsal taking over the reins at Lehman and guiding it through the bankruptcy process.
In May and June alone, the firm earned $18 million for the interim management provided, according to the report.
Lead counsel Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP has also raked in an estimated $63 million for the work it has performed on the massive bankruptcy case thus far, with special conflicts counsel Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle LLP collecting an estimated $6 million over the past few months for the work performed, the report revealed.
Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP, which serves as lead counsel for the creditors committee, reaped just over $17 million for the hours logged, while court-appointed examiner's lead counsel Jenner & Block LLP has been paid more than $6 million for services rendered so far, according to the report.
An interesting and detailed post here from Empirical Legal Studies on the future of legal education, including recent "radical" but great questions/issues posed by maverick Paul Lippe of Legal Onramp.
Here is a blog entry from one of the lawyers at the Conglomerate explaining part of the personal and moving story behind how and why Major League Baseball is commemorating this July 4 as the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig's still-powerful "Luckiest Man" speech. It's a great reminder and its great to see this consciousness-raising, especially in this year of debate about health care reform. Such a shame we do not yet have a cure for this insidious disease and related diseases.
In response to some requests, there is now an email subscription that allows you to receive an email of every new post. If that is of interest to you, look at the top left hand corner of the blog.
As to technical issues, even Google screws up. In fact, Google is having problems getting posts to actually show up on the blog when scheduled to appear. So, for that reason, two new posts showed up at about the same time today. The same posts may repeat themselves in the future. If that happens, I apologize but I cannot control when Google gets the problem fixed.
How many chances will you have to actually save a life? An opportunity for you may be at hand. June 8 - 22 is the time period for free registration to be a potential donor for the bone marrow cells that may well be the only chance life for the hundreds of thousands of individuals in the United States who every day are battling blood cancers and other diseases. The matches really do happen; a recent news story describes one such match. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6854698
Perhaps you, like me, may have thought the need for bone marrow donations is an old problem that's been solved by new science. Not so. In fact, the need for bone marrow donors actually is increasing rapidly !
Why? Two key reasons, among others.
First, the rates for lymphomas and leukemias are spiraling upwards to stunning annual numbers. Consider just one of those cancers - non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The rate used to be 55,000 cases per year in the United States, but now the rate is up to 66,000 new cases per year in just the United States.
As of 2008, about 575,000 people in the United States are living with NHL, and the victims may relapse at any time even after having achieved remission through treatment. Some persons will need more than one bone marrow transplant to come even close to a normal life span. For all the grim statistics, go to the website for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It has all the stunning numbers. http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page.adp?item_id=7087
Second, there are today many inter-racial children, and many more will arrive in the future due to the huge growth in international adoptions that move children into a new continent where the odds are they will not marry another person from the same race. Finding marrow for children from inter-racial marriages is a rapidly growing challenge that will only get bigger due to globalization.
In short, leukemias, lymphomas and other diseases can be treated (sometimes cured) through bone marrow donations, so please register now while registration is free.
Two more things. Treating these diseases through chemotherapy requires significant amounts of blood transfusions to replace cells killed during chemotherapy, and therefore blood donations also are very important. Umbilical cord blood donations also are welcomed. So, please keep those donation paths in mind, including mentioning cord blood donations when grandchildren are arriving. And, donations for scientific research are always welcomed.
The online donation form is at the link below. All you have to do is fill out the forms and mail back in a swab you will be sent by mail.
Please take action now - time may well be short for the person whose life you really could save by donating bone marrow your body will easily replace !
http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/index.html
The 2008 elections in the US are hard fought and important. Indeed, the President of the American Bar Association has issued a call to lawyers to get involved in 2008 elections to ensure that voting rights are honored. http://www.abanet.org/op/2008elections/%22%3Ehttp://www.abanet.org/op/2008elections/
For those who would like to get involved with voters rights issues, the following describes both nonpartisan and partisan groups focused on voters' rights.
The web pages referred to below are embedded in links, and the link addresses also are spelled out for anyone who wishes to copy and paste the information.
1) The American Bar Association has a website page specific to 2008 voting rights issues. http://www.abanet.org/2008election/
The page includes links to sign up for various different types of activities ranging from state-specific efforts to staffing a national hot line for voters with questions.
2) The National Campaign for Fair Elections is an initiative of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and its website is here. http://nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/pages/about_us
That group and its efforts have been praised by the New York Times, among others, in editorials addressing some of the significant voting problems that marred the last two presidential elections. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat1.html
The sign up page is located at: http://www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/page/s/volunteer
3) Vote Trust USA is a subgroup for the Verified Voting Foundation, which was founded by a Stanford law professor concerned about preserving an audit trail that enables meaningful recounts in the age of electronic voting. http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?list=type&type=52
The Vote Trust website is at a different page, and includes substantive information and links to state-specific voting rights news and some groups involved in local voters' rights projects.
http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=8&Itemid=113
4) The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is not involved in poll watching per se, but does provides a wide-range of substantive information on voters right issues, and engages in some specific advocacy efforts in particular states.
http://www.brennancenter.org/
5) For partisan efforts, the Obama campaign is actively seeking lawyers and law students for election day poll watching and other voters rights efforts. The voters' rights sign up page is located at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/vrachome
6) A ten minute search of the McCain campaign website did not reveal a subgroup aimed at enlisting poll watchers. However, the website did include a September 15, 2008 press release yesterday promoting a voters' rights initiative by the campaign. http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/Read.aspx?guid=90c928f6-38c7-4dc3-86c6-15149dbb8e07.
The press release directs readers to a website that lists various persons involved in the effort and presumably they can be contacted for further information.
http://www.johnmccain.com/honest/
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