A Sunday morning traffic stop that ended with a tasering – I would rather have a cup of coffee for breakfast. But that’s just how 21-year-old Carl Bryan started his day early one summer morning in 2005. And according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Coronado police officer who zapped the young man with a Taser during that stop –…
The man who was dubbed New York’s most obnoxious lawyer (what a distinction!) by the Village Voice has been denied $1.2 million in contingency fees for his disregard to the judicial system and flight from New York to avoid arrest on contempt charges. No other lawyer in New York had been ousted for “obstructive and offensive behavior which did not involve fraud…
A French court ruled today that Google’s expansion into digital books infringed France’s copyright laws when they digitized books and put extracts online without authorization. The court ordered Google to pay over 300,000 Euros ($430,000) in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere – which brought the case on behalf of a group of French publishers – and slapped the Internet…
It seems like all the buzz over the changes made to Facebook’s privacy policy just won’t die down. Unfortunately for Facbeook, a group of ten privacy and consumer groups announced today that they have filed a complaint with the FTC, alleging that the changes to the privacy policy violates federal law. The groups are “urging the FTC ‘to open an investigation into…
Today, the Supreme Court announced that it will rule for the first time on whether government employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they send electronic messages on digital devices supplied by their governmental employers. At stake are employer’s and employee’s privacy rights in our new digital age and how far a government employer may go to monitor the private communications…
“That’s the way many of us are. We’re very good lawyers. It’s just that we’re very bad businesspeople.” So opens Put Out the Fire an interesting article by Jim McElhaney on the ABA Journal website, where he aptly points out that many attorneys are simply bad at business. In fact, I have often mulled the fact that there has always seemed to…
I was delighted earlier tonight when I went on YouTube to take a look at a couple of our MicroSeminars and I found a ton of video clips from Jose Rosa of WebJuris. I had the pleasure of presenting with Jose in our 1 hour CLE program entitled Due Diligence When Selecting a Web Development Firm. We often debate the role that…
While a judge in Florida may post comments and other material on the pages of a social networking site like Facebook, a judge may not “friend” lawyers who may appear before them and may not permit such lawyers to add the judge as their “friend.” This from the latest Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Opinion 2009-20 issued on November 17. I wonder…
The American Civil Liberties Union lost 25% of its yearly donations because a major donor cut off $19 million in annual donations due to economic difficulties. David Gelbaum, a wealthy conservationist, said he was discounting the donations that had previously made him the group’s largest anonymous donor. A native of Minnesota who now resides in California, Gelbaum made his fortune working for…
Attorney Credits has started a new feature in an attempt to reach out to attorneys online – our new MicroSeminars on YouTube. Our MicroSeminars will detail specific issues that plague attorneys that can be avoided with just a little forethought. Our second MicroSeminar on the Legal Ethics of Email details the ethical areas that attorneys must be concerned with when sending and…