Legal Pad

Well, Someone Needs a Whale-Watching Cruise...

One would think that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is a pretty good forum in which to save the whales. It is stocked with out-of-control liberal activist judges, right? You know, the types reputed to value cetacean rights over, say the military’s right to zap whales with sonar.

But after a Los Angeles federal judge issued an emergency injunction on Aug. 7 against the Navy in one of a series of cases over a submarine-detection system that may injure the leviathans, the Natural Resources Defense Counsel got a remarkably unlucky draw: The panel hearing the Navy’s appeal consisted of Andrew Kleinfeld — probably the most conservative judge on the Ninth Circuit — and two George W. Bush appointees, Consuelo Callahan and Milan Smith.

Prosecutor Scolded, Husband-Killer Sentenced

An Alameda County prosecutor got scolded this morning for appearing an hour and five minutes late to the sentencing hearing of Marilyn Hudnall Johnson, convicted early this month of the voluntary manslaughter of her husband.

Judge Julie Conger had already begun speaking on the record, ready to proceed without Deputy DA Latricia “L.D.” Louis by 10:05 a.m., the moment Louis walked in the courtroom.

“Ms. Louis has just now graced us with her presence,” Conger said. (Louis later explained the hearing was not on her calendar and Conger replied that if it happened again, the prosecutor could face sanctions.)

But for Johnson, 52, Louis’ tardiness was the last of her worries.

Downing's Loss Was State Bar's Gain

It’s a good thing Marguerite Downing lost her bid for the State Bar presidency last month. Otherwise, she’d probably be stepping down before taking office.

Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Downing, a Los Angeles County deputy public defender, to the L.A. County Superior Court bench. It’s doubtful that Downing would have said no to a judgeship to remain Bar president.

Even before the State Bar election — which was won by Jeffrey Bleich, a partner in Munger, Tolles & Olson’s San Francisco office — word was out that Downing, 48, was under consideration for the bench. And that worried some Bar leaders, who knew there would be a mess if Downing won the race only to leave for a judgeship.

Under state Business and Professions Code 6016, Downing’s departure at this time would have forced the State Bar to hold a special election with Bleich and Ruthe Ashley facing each other again — or any other interested third-year Bar governor who chose to run.

However, if Downing had been appointed to the bench after being sworn in as president during next month’s State Bar annual meeting, B&P Code 6021 would have opened the special election to the current second-year governors — who would have been in their third year by then.

Thanks to Schwarzenegger, the nightmare scenarios didn’t develop. But it begs the question why Downing risked putting the State Bar presidency in such a flux in the first place.

Oh well, we guess everyone wants a shot at a presidency of some sort.

—  Mike McKee

Another Reason to Carry Crisp Benjamins

Before putting the cuffs on Rodel Rodis, the Ninth Circuit says the cops should’ve asked him more questions about his fishy-looking $100 bill.

No doubt.

Because Rodis, it turns out, is a San Francisco lawyer — one who has already helped sue the government for violating people’s rights. So it doesn’t surprise us that he wasn’t the type to forgive and forget when the police brought him down to the station so they could make a phone call to investigate the bill — one that, as it turned out, was perfectly legit.

Bell Arts Find Home in Court Building, Sorta

Beside each piece of art or sculpture in the Hiram Johnson Building — home of the Administrative Office of the Courts and several other legal entities — is a small plaque offering the name of the artist and a few details about the piece.

But some wisenheimer a few years back pulled a slick one, by placing a plaque next to three public pay telephones lined up side by side outside the offices of the state Division of Workers Compensation on the Golden Gate Avenue side of the building.

It reads:

A. Graham Bell
Telephone, Telephone, Telephone, 1999
Mixed media: plastic, metal and electrified silicon
Triptych: 33 x 93 inches

It’s a very cute idea. But the culprit must not have dropped by recently.

The plaque is still there, but the phones are gone! There are just empty spaces where the phones once existed.

And that’s too bad. In this cell-phone-crazed age, ancient pay phones that are disappearing faster than wheat in a locust swarm could be viewed as long-lost art.

Where’s Andy Warhol when you need him?

—  Mike McKee

Solution to the Billing Battle: Pad It

Our article on billing last week elicited an amusing and telling anecdote from a local e-billing maven and self-described persifleur, Phil Rubin.

As you know, e-billing companies often promise companies that they will hunt down and knock off any type of over billing from an outside law firm. Rubin — who’s with Legalmaster Law Office Financial Management Software — writes that at a recent meeting of insurance defense lawyers and e-billing companies, one lawyer proudly explained how to get around those pesky e-billing rejections while keeping everyone happy. Rubin writes:

“By far the most chilling moment occurred during the discussion session after our presentations … One of the attorneys, in the presence of 100 other officers of the court, admitted that whenever he submitted a bill through a third-party mediator (such as Serengeti or Examen or Tymetrix or Datacert etc, etc), he fabricated one completely nonsensical entry [emphasis ours].  The electronic billing middleman was thus able to reject something; the ultimate client was satisfied that the fee they paid the mediator was justified since something was rejected and the lawyer got paid for his actual services.  The state bar was apparently silent on the subject.”

OK. If that lawyer can talk freely about his billing mischief, we’re sure that under the cloak of anonymity, you can do the same in our comments. Have you padded?  Have you suspected someone billing to you has padded?  Let us know your billing horror stories — from either the in-house or outside law firm side of things.

—  Zusha Elinson

Is Dewey's New Flame Better Than Orrick?

Orrick’s ex has found a new flame. Dewey Ballantine is merging with another New York firm, LeBeouf Lamb.

We here at Legal Pad wonder whether Orrick is measuring LeBeouf out of the corner of its eye the way an old lover sizes up an ex-girlfriend’s new beau.

• Well, even if Orrick isn’t, we are. Here’s the breakdown: Not that size matters, but Orrick has about 1,000 lawyers and LeBeouf has 700.
• Orrick also has LeBeouf beat in the revenue department: $666 million to $513.5 million.
• Revenue per lawyer and profits per partner are about equal at around $800,000 and $1.4 million.
• Orrick has a much bigger presence on the west coast and in Asia. LeBeouf has a bigger presence on the East Coast.
  

The one thing that LeBeouf decidedly doesn’t have is Ralph Baxter, Orrick’s fearless captain. Even though Baxter was to share power with Dewey’s Mort Pierce in the failed Dewey Orrick deal, Dewey lawyers were reportedly put off by the Orrick chairman’s top-down management style. But in today’s merger, Dewey lawyers have ceded the throne of the new firm to LeBeouf chairman Steven Davis without as much as a whimper.

Ninth Circuit Backs Consumers Against FERC

Sure it’s been supplanted by more current outrages. But back in the days before 9/11, Iraq, Katrina and Kid Nation, the California energy crisis — and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s handling of it — caused widespread umbrage. Today, the Ninth Circuit provided some vindication for those of you whose vitriol remains fresh: A unanimous three-judge panel agreed that in 2003, FERC should have considered evidence that Enron had manipulated power prices in the Pacific Northwest before denying a refund request.

The decision (.pdf) by Judge Sidney Thomas — and joined by Judges Richard Clifton and M. Margaret McKeown — stems from a long and convoluted case (the opinion itself lists 27 different law firms and government agencies that submitted briefs on the matter) that began when a group of Northwest utilities took umbrage with the 2000 power spike.

Lawyer Wasn't the Only One Conned ...

Like so many other descents into disrepute, alleged con man Michael Edison's began in earnest in Nevada.

Edison stands accused by federal prosecutors of stealing $2 million from a San Francisco socialite — the widow of well-known Bay Area lawyer Atherton Phleger — and then having his wife craft a fraudulent document to make it appear the money was a loan. The document, court filings say, fooled Edison’s lawyer, Michael Thorman, but not the prosecutors.

Thorman wouldn’t be the first person to get burned by Edison — the purported investment banker ended up in his current predicament through a series of deals that began when he showed up in the Carson Valley in 2003.

WIKISCANNING ORRICK, MOFO AND OMM

You may have read about a new program that lets you see who is behind the sometimes controversial edits to Wikipedia entries. Type in the name of an organization, and you get a quick list of all anonymous edits created from that organization’s domain in the past couple years.

Legal Pad ran some big firm names through, and found plenty of firms fixing their own entries, though often in odd ways. Someone at MoFo decided to use a circuitously chaste way to explain just what “MoFo” means. At another point, someone at the firm wrote that it was “distinguished by its unsurpassed expertise in finance and financial services, life sciences and technology; its legendary litigation skills and an unrivaled presence in Asia.”  (Someone at MoFo also has "unsurpassed expertise" in the old TV show "Land of the Lost.")