Archive for the ‘Legal’ Category:
31 Aug
SOURCE: Associated Press
A judge removed a juror from a trial in suburban Detroit after it was discovered that the young woman wrote on Facebook that the defendant was guilty.
The problem? The trial wasn’t over. Hadley Jons, of Warren just north of Detroit, could be found in contempt when she returns to the Macomb County circuit court Thursday.
Jons, 20, was a juror in a case of resisting arrest. On Aug. 11, a day off from the trial and before the prosecution finished its case, she wrote on Facebook that it was “gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re guilty.”
The post was discovered by defense lawyer Saleema Sheikh’s son.
This is not the only case involving a Facebook post and a faulty jury. In Manhattan recently, a juror on a case who also worked for a New York City computer service company was questioned about his comments involving knowing a defendant.
Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski confronted Jons the next day and replaced her with an alternate.
“You don’t know how disturbing this is,” Druzinski said, according to The Macomb Daily.
A message seeking comment was left for Jons on Monday.
“I would like to see her get some jail time, nothing major, a few hours or overnight,” Sheikh said. “This is the jury system. People need to know how important it is.”
Sheikh’s son, Jaxon Goodman, discovered the comment while checking jurors’ names on the Internet. He works in his mother’s law office.
“I’m really proud of him,” Sheikh said.
Without Jons, the jury convicted Sheikh’s client of a felony but couldn’t agree on a separate misdemeanor charge.
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MY TAKE: Personal information and secrets are no longer rarified. It’s fine to use the Internet and even friends on your Facebook page to find childcare, get some good advice about buying Carhartt flame resistant clothing, or even locating Marbella homes for rent. But the site is being used for people to essentially spew out what they’re up to and comment on what your up to all day long; comment on your pictures; your status and your previous comments to other people’s pages. It’s really too much connectivity for me. Don’t get me wrong: I am one of those people who have used FB to ask friends about a good childcare center and even get some advice about NY computer support services.
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OTHER RESOURCES
Mortgage Rates Set To Rise Soon
Is your Louisville mortgage a refinance product with dual loans attached? You might qualify for KY refinancing to help you consolidate the loans and make one payment. Check with your lender to see if you qualify because interest rates are very low and they are expected to start rising again as the economy recovers.
Speed Up Slow Computer
Over time computers get slower and slower because they tend to gather junk. This computer repair service will check your computer’s start-up items to ensure it is as lean as possible. They will uninstall any unused computer programs and clear out temporary files. They can remove extra toolbars and widgets that are just slowing down your computer. Finally, they will check your computer memory and if need be suggest upgrades. They also can troubleshoot your existing wireless network or help you setup a totally new one. Also they can help you add devices to your existing wireless network when you get laptop repair.
31 Aug
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines says he’s vowed to shutter a San Fernando Valley charter school over the alleged theft or misuse of as much as $2.7 million by the school’s founding principal.
The problems at NEW Academy Canoga Park turned up in an audit released Monday by the inspector general’s office of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
More than “$2 million of misappropriated and unaccounted public funds is egregious,” Cortines wrote in a letter to the board of the school. “Students have been inexcusably deprived of funds that were designated solely to further their education.”
As a charter school, NEW Academy is governed by its own board of directors, independent of L.A. Unified, which authorized the school. Los Angeles has more charters, public schools that are independently run, than any school district in the nation.
Virtually no local charter schools have been forcibly shut down by the district, although several have closed after officials failed to renew an expiring charter agreement, which typically lasts three to five years.
Other losses?
It’s often not easy to track down some unaccounted funds, especially when they might be related to small-scale expenditures, such as for imprinted pens for teachers or staff, Sacramento private security guards or fraternity clothing.
The elementary school of about 500 students faces a charter revocation hearing. The chairwoman of the school’s board contends that NEW Academy should survive because students are thriving.
Although the school’s scores are still in the lowest 30% of schools statewide, according to last year’s data, its students’ gains on standardized tests have been among the region’s strongest each of the last three years.
“It is clear that our school has been a victim of fraud,” board chair Maggie Cervantes said in a statement. “The school is taking aggressive and necessary steps to recover its assets and work to successfully resolve this issue. These steps have included terminating the employment of the former principal of the school.”
The former principal, Edward Fiszer, could not be reached for comment. Although not identified by name in the published audit, Fiszer was the target of the inquiry, officials confirmed.
NEW Academy Canoga Park opened in 2005 as an unusual example of public-private collaboration using school bonds and other funding sources to combine a new school with low-income housing.
The school’s visible face, Fiszer, the author of three education and motivational books, was once honored as a “Champion of Children” in a City Hall ceremony.
Among the auditors’ findings is that Fiszer allegedly withdrew cashier’s checks totaling nearly $1.1 million from school accounts between July 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2009.
“The former principal claimed that funds deposited into his personal Ameritrade account were not withdrawn, but were deposited and repeatedly lost,” the auditors wrote, apparently as a result of unsuccessful investments.
One cost questioned by auditors was $62,247 paid to a company called Burgundy Bunny for science enrichment for fourth- and fifth-graders over a six-week period. “We performed an Internet search to verify the validity of the vendor,” auditors wrote. “We noted that the address and phone number were invalid. The address shows as a vacant lot. In addition, the business entity name does not exist.”
Auditors also allege that the principal paid a former teacher — who at some point married the principal — $129,450 for services as a grant writer, although a company was already being paid for grant writing.
The audit included a harsh assessment of the oversight by the charter’s governing board and the outside company that provided accounting services.
Handling the audit became complicated because the school system’s interim inspector general is a member of the board of directors of the charter’s founding organization. Jess Womack is board secretary of New Economics for Women, whose acronym, NEW, is part of the school’s name. Womack, a retired L.A. Unified attorney, recently rejoined the school system as inspector general. Womack recused himself from dealing with this audit, district officials confirmed.
The charter has a board of directors separate from New Economics, but there’s overlap: Cervantes is executive director of New Economics and Loyola Marymount University Assistant Dean Marta Sanchez serves on both boards. A second NEW Academy operates near downtown.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said it hasn’t yet received the audit for review for potential prosecution.
The school becomes the second San Fernando Valley charter school facing allegations of impropriety. The founders of Ivy Academia face felony charges related to co-mingling private and public accounts. They have denied wrongdoing.
MY TAKE: I’m sure school principals all over the country are guilty of accepting promotional products, like golf shirts and pens, but not quite clear about possible expenses for Sacramento CA private security or Greek apparel unless we’re talking about a very expensive and exclusive school. In this case, the schools are not any of the above.
OTHER RESOURCES:
Fees are Negotiable
Monmouth County DUI attorney fees are negotiable. If you are looking to hire a Monmouth County traffics tickets lawyer, divorce lawyer or an attorney to help you with debt issues, remember to discuss all fees in advance and that not all costs are set in stone. The same goes whether you’re hiring a Philadelphia civil litigation lawyer, Philadelphia PA family attorneys, or a Philadelphia PA criminal attorney.
09 Aug
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Bell City Councilman Lorenzo Velez has called for the resignation of his colleagues who are under investigation for extraordinarily high salaries or targeted for recalls.
In a statement released late Sunday, Velez said he is now supporting the recall efforts of the Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse and believes the city must “clean house.” The four other council members — Oscar Hernandez, Luis Artiga, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal –- had been earning $100,000 a year until they announced recently that they would take a 90% pay cut.
“They have no credibility and have made Bell the laughing stock of the nation,” Velez said. “If they have any integrity remaining, they would save the city the cost of a recall and resign.”
Velez said the city must appoint a new administrative officer, police chief and city attorney to assure residents that the city can heal and move forward.
Velez’ statements come after new revelations that the city’s former chief administrative officer, Robert Rizzo, was earning a compensation package of $1.5 million annually, nearly double the $787,000 annual salary that The Times’ first reported. The councilman said he believes there is a “conscious effort to withhold information” and that officials have “dragged their feet” in releasing documents.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and state attorney general’s office are investigating the high salaries as well as allegations of voter fraud in Bell.
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My Take: I’ve see a lot of sleezy things done in my time by elected city officials. You name it: dressing up in sexy costumes for Halloween and trick-or-treating like teenagers. Not that Halloween costumes are only for kids, but these officials I’m referring to were going out door-to-door in costumes as a joke to try and pick up voters for a bond measure.
If you ask me the Los Angeles court reporting system and the confines of every city hall chamber in Los Angeles County ought to be working side-by-side to make sure we don’t see this blatant have/have not scenario going on again. I think every city hall meeting should have a paid Los Angeles court reporter on hand to tape every word said in chambers and take the tape with her or him when the meetings are over and put the entire meeting on the Internet for public viewing. I also think that many city halls should have walk through metal detectors to safeguard innocent residents who turn up to find out what their city is up. We need metal detection in some cities to protect people from angry or deranged meeting attendees.
As for these guys, I hope they are forced to make some sort of financial restitution for having overcharged Bell residents, some of the poorest in the county, and sitting fat while others struggled.
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Other Resources
06 Aug
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
A man’s secret life is revealed by his wife and once again Facebook does the digging.
After a fairy tale 2005 wedding in Italy, John and Lynn France moved into their dream home in Westlake, where they added two sons to their family.
But Lynn says, over time, John grew distant and disappeared for long periods of time.
Then one day on a hunch, she clicked on the Facebook account of a woman she suspected her husband was having an affair with, and discovered that John had married the woman in 2008 at Disney World in Florida.
Lynn says the discovery left her speechless.
“It’s heart-wrenching and it’s shocking and it’s just too many emotions to put into words,” she told Fox 8 News.
Lynn says she believes her husband is guilty of bigamy and filed a complaint with Westlake police after John returned from Florida earlier this year, took the couple’s two sons and returned to the Sunshine State.
Now, she is fighting for the return of her children, but John France maintains they were never married.
“You know, I feel terrible that they’re stuck in the middle of this, I want them home with their mommy,” Lynn said.
The primary issue in the bigamy investigation is whether John and Lynn France’s marriage in Italy is legitimate. John has one position on that issue, while Lynn’s view is quite different.
Mr. France claims there was never any paperwork filed by Italian authorities after the wedding. His attorney, Gary Williams, issued a statement that reads in part:
“The fact of the matter is that their marriage was never legally proper and therefore it does not actually exist.”
But Westlake police say Mrs. France has evidence that Mr. France left a paper trail that indicates he is her husband.
“She obviously felt that they had been married since 2005, she claimed that certain documents had been filed with the federal government pertaining to their marital status such as tax returns,” Sgt. Mark Krumheuer said.
“I hope women learn from my mistakes and trust their lawyers,” Lynn warns.
The bigamy allegations are being investigated by police in Florida, where the crime is classified as a felony.
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MY TAKE: Love how this guy puts it all on the women to “trust their lawyers.” A classic case of transference if I ever saw one. Or read one. He’s the kind of guy who’d try to sue the manufacturers of electronic cigarettes after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He’d try to say that his previous tobacco smoking had nothing to do with the cancer, that his cancer came when he started smoking his E cig. He’s probably down there doing some Key West Florida deep see fishing with his other wife and kids thinking this is someone else’s problem. What happens when the Key West Florida fishing charter comes to an end and he has to face court charges? I guess all those fancy marriage announcements and the honeymoon in Italy were a figment of the wife’s imagination? What about their kids’ birth announcements?
The thing about technology today as that everything is traceable, and the fact that Facebook is so widely used can only mean more of these kinds of stories will come out. I’ve heard of a story about woman who found out her husband was signed up for a child pornography movies download site. He not only charged the monthly payment for the movie downloads, he watched them on their son’s computer in his room when he and the wife were asleep.
Everything is traceable now.
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OTHER RESOURCES
Divorce Law
If you live in Austin and are considering filing for divorce, you should consult the services of a good Austin Texas divorce attorney. You don’t want a Texas divorce lawyer who is going to push you for upfront fees or not return e-mails or phone calls. Find one who offers a free 1 hour consultation, gives you their fee schedule up front and offers a cell phone where they can be reached 24/7.
23 Nov
Cited: The American Lawyer
Many people of the last generation do not believe that law firms change. This seems to be an arrogant and naïve point of view because change is inevitable as well as ongoing. For success, whether law firm or retailer, comes because there is someone that was able to manage change effectively in the past. Law firms operate through central consensus model of decision-making, which means that most law firms are not set up to manage change well. However, various areas of change and innovation to exist within law firms and give them the ability to sort through the good and the bad from normal organizational processes.
Recently, the opportunity to talk with two leading law firm innovators about how technology is likely to impact the practice of law in the next few years presented itself. John Alber is the technology partner and head of the client technology group at Bryan Cave in St. Louis. Mary Abraham, counsel at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, helps lead the firm’s knowledge management efforts. John and Mary recently returned from the International Legal Technology Association conference, the leading peer networking organization for legal technologists.
What were the top presentations at ILTA?
John Alber: Since I was on the conference committee, that’s like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. I have to say that I was very keen on the “futures” presentations done with [Oxford professor and Scottish legal futurist] Richard Susskind, not the least because I had the privilege of working with Richard in one of them. I was also taken with the many manifestations of social media at the conference. There were many sessions treating the phenomenon, a reflection of its increasing prominence in the legal public mind. I find social networking is on the tongues (if not the fingertips) of many lawyers.
What do you predict will be three key technology-driven changes in law over the next 24 months, based on what you saw at ILTA?
JA: I think enterprise search is finally here. I saw widespread recognition that tools like Recommind and other enterprise search platforms can, and should, do far more than simply help find documents. They are becoming the foundations of our knowledge enterprises. I found social media to be red-hot, which is both a reflection of its presence in the public mind and a function of its utility in the modern enterprise. I think we’ll see a rapid uptick in social media use.
Mary Abraham: If Richard Susskind is correct, the firms that embrace the current economic challenges as more than temporary discipline, and then use those challenges as incentive to understand and improve the way they deliver client services, will enjoy an enormous competitive advantage. So the first key change will be a perceptible gap between firms with “disruptive technology” (technology that creates change in organizations and business models, as first described in Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma”) and those without. This gap could be widened if Susskind’s observation proves true that lawyers are more concerned about suffering a competitive disadvantage than having a competitive advantage. (In other words, he believes that most lawyers would rather keep up with the pack than forge ahead.)
The second key change will occur in the way lawyers interact with clients. At ILTA the in-house counsel presentations and several law firm presentations pointed to a mode of operating in which firms offer a greater degree of transparency and access to their clients during a matter. One firm talked about providing a real-time collection of all e-mail correspondence between the client and the firm. Another firm supplied online tools that allowed clients to analyze problems and create specific documents. Several others enabled clients to generate progress reports at will on projects those firms were carrying out.
The third key change will occur in law firms. The drive to contain costs should push firms to find more efficient ways to share knowledge and speed the delivery of client services. The obvious answer is to increase transparency within the firm, not only among lawyers but also among administrative personnel. From the perspective of a knowledge manager, this will be a huge leap forward, since a firm that has easy access to what it knows can provide better service more efficiently. The key here is the need for cost containment, which should move firms away from expensive to maintain databases and document repositories toward simpler and cheaper ways of exchanging information, perhaps through the use of social media tools.
With regard to social media, it looks like Mary is a believer. I noticed you were Twittering from ILTA. What was that about?
MA: I’ve always been an active note-taker at meetings. At a different conference earlier in the year, I discovered that if I packed my notes into a series of 140-character nuggets, then people who were unable to attend could follow along. The power of this became evident when a panelist at that earlier conference provided some inaccurate information, which I reported. Within moments, the correct information was sent to me via Twitter from someone 500 miles away who had been reading the Twitter updates. I then passed the correct information on to everyone attending the panel presentation. As the discussion continued, people outside the conference tweeted their questions, which were then put to the panelists. This allowed for a richer, multidimensional conversation among the panelists, the conference attendees and the people following the session around the world via Twitter.
This year many people who normally would have attended ILTA were unable to because of budget constraints. ILTA responded by asking several of us to blog and tweet conference sessions, thereby sharing widely the benefits of the conference. My understanding is that ILTA was sufficiently impressed by the value of these efforts that there will be more use of social media by the organization going forward.
What did you think of Richard Susskind’s presentation?
MA: Richard Susskind has a great gift for making one think differently about the practice of law. And that’s exactly what I went to ILTA to find. While I had heard much of his talk before, I found that I listened differently in light of the economic pressures facing the legal industry. This time, I was particularly struck by his statement that we lawyers need to take a harder look at the components of the service we deliver to our clients. It was his contention that until we actually know what elements of that service can be standardized or automated and what elements truly must be tailor-made to suit a client, we won’t be able to make intelligent, facts-based choices about how to improve our client service. Obviously, a key component of this is understanding exactly what it costs your firm to deliver a particular service. In this regard, I was very impressed by the work done by John Alber and Constance Hoffman at Bryan Cave to analyze the costs of client service and then model the impact of changing specific elements of that service in order to make it more efficient and cost-effective. Based on the audience reaction to their presentations, I suspect there are not nearly enough law firms in this country that are able to do something similar.
How are firms implementing these changes?
MA: It may be a little too early to tell. From what I heard at ILTA, most law firms have spent the first year of the new economic reality trying to cut and contain costs. While this always is a useful exercise, it isn’t the best or only solution to what may well be a fundamental challenge to the way we practice law. The ILTA presentations indicate that there is a path firms will have to travel: from cost-cutting and discounting, to detailed cost analysis and, finally, to rethinking how we work together with clients to deliver services. One danger is that zealous cost-cutting may deprive firms of the creative resources (both people and tools) necessary to re-imagine the practice of law. That would be a pity, since many of Richard Susskind’s recommendations require enormous creativity, coupled with the ability to question the premises that underpin the last several centuries of legal practice.
The only other challenge to a law firm is technology which can provide assistance in delivering client services effectively. However, economic circumstances may make that change a little difficult today. This just means that lawyers and techs alike will have to work together and share their ingenuity to improve client services with existing tools in new ways. The ILP a conference has already shown many how this does not have to be hard, but a little bit easier.
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My Take: Technology has become more and more important in the practice of law in more ways than one. For example, at one time a Los Angeles court reporter used a stereotype or shorthand machine to type out every word spoken in a court room. Today, that same reporter can offer litigation support services in LA over the Internet.
A good example for technology working for a law firm would be when a couple is divorcing and they live in separate states. One spouse has a divorce attorney and the other has a divorce lawyer. With today’s technology, the child custody lawyer can easily communicate with the family lawyers resolve issues as well as save money on telephone calls or faxes.
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Related Resources
