Insults: $1.00

Reuters reports that a schoolteacher and a beautician have sued CNN for $1.3 billion for violating the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people.

Not good.

This post, from Legal Profession Blog, made me cringe.

Counsel shows up in court, woefully unprepared, and actually states at one point that he “[tries] not to read that many cases”.

I was reminded of an appearance I made once in Master Michael Funduk’s chambers, when he was sitting as a registrar in bankruptcy.

Nicholas White’s elevator ride

Overlawyered posted this comment on a New Yorker article about Nicholas White, who spent 41 hours trapped in an elevator, and then sued.  Rather than return to work when he got out of the elevator, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla, lost his job, spent all his money, and then settled for what appears to be not a whole lot of money, although he isn’t at liberty to say how much.

The title to Ted Frank’s article suggests Nicholas White’s lawyers made their client worse off than he was before he sued.  I disagree.

When to bow out

Mary M. Cheh recently published a paper for the Social Science Research Network, entitled, “Should Lawyers Participate in Rigged Systems:  The Case of the Military Commissions”.

Professor Cheh argues that these tribunals are governed by rules of evidence and procedure that are fundamentally unfair.  The accused can be convicted on secret evidence, hearsay, and evidence obtained by torture and coercion, and there is no civilian judicial review.  Under such circumstances, Professor Cheh argues that counsel who refuse to participate in proceedings before those tribunals take a stance that is fully defensible from an ethical point of view.

Professor Cheh’s paper raises an interesting question.  The Military Commissions are not the only example in recent memory where participation by ethical counsel seems to be questionable.

Under what other circumstances is it appropriate for a lawyer to refuse to participate?

Professional mistrust

I ran across a case recently, which brought to mind the way that the legal profession is perceived by the public.  The case is Whelan v. Beothic General Insurance Co., [1992] N.J. No. 336 (T.D.). 

The facts of the case are simple:  Mr. Whelan’s teenaged daughters set out to make some French fries.  They put some cooking fat into a large pot and put the pot on their electric stove, leaving the burner turned fully on.  Then they went upstairs to their room and started fixing their hair, forgetting completely about the fat on the stove.

Substitution of defense attorneys “a travesty of justice”

This seems to have been a novel, if misguided attempt on the part of a trial judge to save the Georgia legal aid system some money, and move a somewhat slow moving criminal case to trial expeditiously.

Why you shouldn’t sleep with your clients

News that Bay Street law firm Borden Ladner Gervais, and partner George Hunter are being sued by Mr. Hunter’s former client over a “romantic/sexual” affair he had with her in 2003 raises, once again, the thorny ethical issue of whether lawyers should be allowed to maintain this type of relationship with a client.  Mr. Hunter plead guilty to charges of professional misconduct in February 2007, and was suspended from practice for 60 days.

What makes this case interesting is that at the same time he carried on the affair over which he is now being sued, Mr. Hunter sat on a disciplinary panel for the Law Society of Upper Canada that also dealt with allegations of sexual involvement between another Ontario lawyer and that lawyer’s client.  That lawyer was disbarred.

Newpaper editors silenced for publishing Danish cartoons - Fighting the good fight

In Canada and the United States, we expect news items like this from Jurist, to deal with other countries.

This particular editor hailed from Belarus - a nation not well known for its tradition of freedom and democracy. 

We don’t, however, need to look that far.

Why did Keen have to be fired?

So asks the Toronto Star in this editorial.

Why indeed?