Legal Pad

State Public Defenders Will Work Through Furloughs

Hit with an executive order to take a third monthly furlough day, the attorneys in the state public defender’s office aren’t exactly plotting more time on the local golf courses.

With court-ordered deadlines approaching in their clients’ death penalty appeals, these attorneys will find themselves working on days they’re not getting paid, said state Public Defender Michael Hersek.

“Those attorneys, regardless of whether we’re opened or closed, must continue working on those cases,” he said.

There's a word for when someone forces you to work but doesn't pay you for it, but it's not used after the jump.

Welcoming Lockstep's Demise

A quick followup on Orrick’s news yesterday that it’s dumping lockstep. We reached out to Susan Hackett at the Association of Corporate Counsel to see what she had to say about it.

The ACC launched an initiative last year called the Value Challenge, an effort to get law firms to … um ... they don’t put it this way, but it’s basically to get law firms to stop overcharging for stuff they could do more cheaply.

Corporate counsel like seeing the moves Orrick is making because it’s pretty much how they’ve been doing things for a long time.

“We are really supportive of firms that are considering performance-based comp throughout their ranks,” Hackett wrote in an e-mail.

“It would allow much greater freedom for associates and partners who would like to be judged on their contributions (and paid accordingly), rather than being told they can’t be valuable unless they generate a big stack of hours. Most clients I know who are watching these issues really laud firms who make this move — it is consistent with the corporate model that they also employ in their workplaces and which encourages evaluation, productivity, profitability, and efficiency, all based on performance and not on hours logged.”

(Note to associates: None of this means you’ll actually work fewer hours, of course.)

— Amanda Royal
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Retired Judge Faults Sitting Judge In Capital Habeas Proceeding

The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, dogged in recent years by accusations of overzealous prosecution, took another hit this week when a referee's report was delivered to the California Supreme Court. It found that a deputy DA -- who's now a sitting judge -- and an office investigator withheld crucial information in a death penalty case 25 years ago.

The report, by retired Contra Costa County Judge Richard Arnason, found that then-Deputy DA Joyce Allegro, now a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, kept information from the lawyers defending accused double murderer Miguel Angel Bacigalupo that could’ve persuaded jurors not to vote for the death penalty.

Allegro just left us a message declining to comment, since the case is still pending; she cited judicial ethics canon 3B(9).

Here's the more in-depth story we just put up on CalLaw.com tonight -- that's where you'll also find a link to the .pdf of the report. That story will also appear in the Recorder's print edition on Monday morning.

—  Evan Hill

Kozinski Admonished for Racy Web Pages

The Judicial Council of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has publicly admonished Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski for maintaining Web pages that included sexually explicit material. But the panel stopped short of further discipline.

"We find that the judge’s possession of sexually explicit offensive material combined with his carelessness in failing to safeguard his sphere of privacy was judicially imprudent," Third Circuit Chief Judge Anthony Scirica wrote for the council. Kozinski's actions "created a public controversy that can reasonably be seen as having resulted in embarrassment to the institution of the federal judiciary. We determine that the Judge’s acknowledgment of responsibility together with other corrective action, his apology, and our admonishment, combined with the public dissemination of this opinion, properly conclude this proceeding."

Our sister publication the The Legal Intelligencer has published a story here (though you must subscribe to that publication to read it). We will post a version on Cal Law this evening.

A .pdf of the panel's decision can be read here.

Further updates from the decision: "The Judge testified that he does not visit and has no interest in pornographic websites."

Kozinski knew as early as 2007 that some sexually explicit files he was maintaining on his computer could be accessed by the public. He removed some of them, but did not follow through on all of his files. "I was careless in that regard," Kozinski testified. "And for that, I am very sorry and offer my sincere apology."

—  Scott Graham

Chaney, Johnson All Good to Go For Second District Bench

That was quick.

No huge surprise, but the courts announced today that L.A. Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney (in our chain's news recently here and here and, back in 2007, here) and Central District U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Johnson were confirmed to the Second District Court of Appeal. They were both appointed less than three weeks ago.

—  Pam Smith

S.F. Courts Will Go Dark on 3rd Wednesdays Starting Next Month

Starting in August, San Francisco Superior Court will begin regularly closing its doors and furloughing its roughly 560 employees to save money.

Though such a plan is mandated in an as-yet-unapproved state budget, San Francisco court officials said today that they’re going to start shutting down every third Wednesday –- beginning on Aug. 19 –- no matter what. (It's so L.A.)

Shutting courthouse doors and furloughing staffers are both parts of a plan developed by state legislators and the Administrative Office of the Courts to cut $393 million from the judiciary’s budget, as California faces a roughly $24 billion $26 billion deficit. (That number just went up more. Ouch.)

These closures might only cover about 1/5 of S.F.'s problems. But there is a silver lining to that, unions ...

Orrick: Associate-Track Change You Can Believe In?

Orrick has put out an announcement of its “new talent model” today, not long after Howrey announced its new training model that cuts younger associates’ salaries but promises better development opportunities. Orrick’s move comes only a day after a survey of in-house departments found the widespread perception that law firms are not interested in change.

We’ve reported on Orrick’s new talent model and its planned departure from lockstep a few times, but now Orrick has announced some details. The press release is below. We’ll chew it over later this afternoon on Cal Law, and in tomorrow’s Recorder.

Press release after the jump.

Apparently 'Speedy Trial' Should Mean Breaking Speed Limits

For want of a courtroom, Firme Hajjaj almost went free. Almost.

After chronic delays last summer, Riverside County had come down to its last day — July 28 to be exact — to try Hajjaj on drug charges. Hajjaj’s speedy trial rights would require dismissal the next day.

About 4:15 p.m. on the 28th, a courtroom finally came open in Indio. But that was 76 miles away from Riverside, where Hajjaj, his lawyer and the prosecutor were sitting at the time.

You would think that high-speed merriment would ensue. It does not … after the jump.

Justices Get Hi and Mitey Over Superior Spelling Abilities

Here is the kind of sleuthery that gets done in our appellate courts. It makes me think of Hercule Poirot. Or actually, no: of Encyclopedia Brown.

So the Fourth District just tackled a case in which they try to figure out if some guy was really a vexatious litigant hiding behind some half-assed disguise. They determined that yes, he almost certainly was, and Footnote 2 lets us readers inside one of their “aha!” moments en route to that conclusion:

"Like something out of a mystery story where the person whodunit alters a letter already written by the deceased, this Yuki Kobayashi has, apparently with aid of photocopier and good word processing skills, contrived his request to look like a judicial council form entitled: 'Request and Order to File New Litigation by Wrongfull Accused of Vexatious Litigant.' Such a form is obviously not the one put out by the Judicial Council. One of the giveaways is that the Judicial Council form writers certainly know better than to describe a person 'wrongfully accused' of being a vexatious litigant merely as 'Wrongfull Accused.' Another giveaway is the spelling of this division as the 'tird division.' We in the judicial system aren’t perfect, but we -- and especially the Judicial Council -- usually manage to avoid typos in prepared forms."

As if that weren't enough of a roadmap on how to fool the courts better next time, the opinion (.pdf) also unveils what lengths the Judicial Council doesn't go to now in order to outsmart fakers. The courts do compare the address of the "new" plaintiff with the address on file for the vexatious litigant of the same name. But on the off chance that is not foolproof, Footnote 4 suggests the JC start using photos and social security numbers.

—  Pam Smith

Biggest IP Verdict Ever: $1.67 Billion. With a 'B.'

I will never again question the wisdom of the tired saying: Everything is bigger in Texas.

Abbott Labs just got slapped — and I mean slapped to the freaking moon — by an East Texas jury with the largest patent verdict ever: $1.67 billion, Bloomberg reports.

The winner: a division of rival drug company Johnson & Johnson called Centocor Ortho Biotech and its lawyers from Philly's Woodcock  Washburn and  the Texas firm Sayles Werbner. The big-time losers: the famed — at least before today — IP lawyers at WilmerHale.

The jury found that Abbott willfully infringed on J&J’s IP with its popular arthritis medication called Humira. The jury awarded $1.17 billion in lost profits and $504 million in royalties to J&J. Maybe Abbott should’ve bought a cow?

The previous record-holder was a $1.52 billion award against Microsoft in a patent suit with Alcatel-Lucent, which has since been overturned.

— Zusha Elinson