Legal Pad

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

Gruel Bids for Russoniello's Gig

San Francisco defense attorney Steven Gruel has joined the ranks of those angling to replace Northern District U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello.

Gruel, a former federal prosecutor, said today that he submitted an application to Sen. Barbara Boxer last week. Boxer has assembled a committee to vet applicants for the position, and she will also appoint several other judicial and law enforcement officials around California.

President Barack Obama has not asked Russoniello to step down, but Boxer is accepting applications should he do so.

Gruel said Boxer’s office told him they were just beginning to interview candidates.

Since leaving the Northern District U.S. attorney’s office, Gruel has represented Los Angeles private detective Anthony Pellicano and San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew.

— Evan Hill

Court Leaders Try To Imagine Budgetless (Immediate) Future

As California crept closer to the 2008-09 fiscal year, lawmakers and the governor appeared no nearer to patching a $24 billion budget hole by midnight Tuesday and eliminating the need for IOUs to go out Thursday. That’s left court leaders and attorneys scrambling to figure out what they’ll do if some of the cash stops flowing later this week.

State Controller John Chiang has said that all court employees will continue to be paid, whether or not lawmakers agree to a budget fix. Less clear is what will happen to the many vendors who provide goods and services to the courts, including contract security screeners and appointed counsel. The controller intends to issue $41 million in IOUs for non-salary judicial branch operations.

Nobody loves a budget crisis, after the jump.

Legal Eagles on Parade

 

  

Over 200 floats rolled down Market Street during San Francisco's 39th gay pride parade. The City's three legal officials all made their way down the route waving and cheering.  While Kamala Harris and Dennis Herrera were merely just rocking the vote, Jeff Adachi did a different kind of rocking by adorning his float with a timely political statement.

-- Jason Doiy

Jury Convicts Immigration Attorneys for Making Stuff Up

A federal jury in Sacramento on Thursday convicted three Northern California attorneys and two interpreters of filing hundreds of fraudulent asylum applications.

Attorneys Jagprit Singh Sekhon, 39, of Westminster; his brother Jagdip Singh Sekhon, 42, of Salida; and Manjit Kaur Rai, 33, of Discovery Bay; as well as interpreters Iosif Caza, 43, of Sacramento; and Luciana Harmath, 29, of Glendale, Ariz., were all convicted of conspiracy to defraud federal immigration agencies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District announced.

In a press statement, prosecutors said the defendants, working for the Sacramento and San Francisco firm Sekhon & Sekhon, submitted asylum applications, primarily for Indian and Romanian nationals, “containing fictitious stories of persecution that the clients had supposedly suffered in their home countries.”

The paperwork included “harrowing, but fictitious, stories of arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and rape. Some persecution stories were reused in asylum claims for multiple clients,” prosecutors said.

The three attorneys denied fabricating information and said they relied heavily on accounts of events that their clients gave them, according to coverage of the trial in the Sacramento Bee. 

The defendants are scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 16.

— Cheryl Miller
Follow me on Twitter

Tortured Logic: Strange Pursuit of Another Torture-Memo Lawyer

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter delivered more than 100 complaints to the State Bar on Friday, demanding disciplinary action against former Department of Defense General Counsel William Haynes — now GC at San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. — for “championing policies of torture” at Guantanamo Bay.

But no matter how persuasive the legal group’s arguments may be, Haynes won’t be disbarred. He can’t be. Haynes is not a member of California’s State Bar.

Details, schmetails, after the jump.

Monday Event: The Strings on Government Money

Has the stimulus bill got you stimulated? Watch out, a government suitor can sometimes turn on you.

With over $350 billion available in stimulus funds for sectors including energy, infrastructure, construction, healthcare, education, public safety, and government services industries, a lot of companies are eager to get in the game, but unfamiliar with the rules.

D.C.-based Arnold & Porter is sending a government contracts expert out to San Francisco on Monday and Santa Monica on Tuesday to talk about what exactly it means to get in bed with the government.

More pillowtalk, after the jump.

Bankruptcy Appellate Panel Agrees Vallejo Insolvent

The city of Vallejo was eligible for bankruptcy when it filed its petition last year, a Ninth Circuit bankruptcy panel ruled today.

The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel turned back union claims that Vallejo could have dipped into restricted funds to honor union contracts and pay its bondholders when it filed under Chapter 9 in May 2008. The court instead agreed with a September ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael McManus of Sacramento that Vallejo was legally insolvent.

"According to the unions, Vallejo should have pillaged all of its component agency funds, ignoring bond covenants, grant restrictions, and normal GASB and GAAP practices, to subsidize its general fund," Judge Meredith Jury wrote for a unanimous panel. "The unions' suggestion would leave Vallejo more debilitated tomorrow than it is today. Under their reasoning, the assets of restricted funds would be spent, yet revenues would continue plummeting and expenses would continue surging."

Bankruptcy Judges Bruce Markell and Dennis Montali concurred.

McManus' separate ruling this March that Vallejo had authority to void its union contracts did not appear to be before the appellate panel.

The full text of the ruling will be available on Cal Law on Monday evening.

Update: Cal Law subscribers can read the opinion here.

— Scott Graham