Legal Pad

Lawyer's John Hancock Doesn't Mean Much For Arbitration

Interesting little case out of the Fourth District today, which might serve as a warning to any lawyers looking to safeguard a favorable arbitration result: If you signed the stipulation to arbitrate in your client's stead ... well, expect that the outcome might be jeopardized.

That's what happened today in Toal v. Tardif. From the opinion (.pdf):

"Each couple's attorney signed a stipulation to resolve the dispute through private arbitration. Although the parties themselves did not sign the stipulation, the document stated the attorneys' signatures were 'for' their clients."

So why so picky, Fourth District?

Ex-Heller Attorney: 'Your Honor, This Stuff Makes No Sense.'

One brave associate took to the podium in front of Judge Dennis Montali on Thursday, demanding a clearer liquidation plan and questioning the $1 million fee proposed for the employee’s lawyers at Blum Collins.

At a hearing on the employee’s $19 million proposed settlement in the bankruptcy, David Simon’s voice quavered slightly as he began to speak to a courtroom full of experienced bankruptcy attorneys and litigators and to a judge well-known for his intelligence and wit.

As the strawberry-blond young attorney stood up, Montali ruffled him, asking if he was an objector. Simon stumbled a little, saying, “I guess I’m an objector.”

But he got up his nerve and went straight to the point.

The point ... after the jump.

Skadden to Rep Intel Exec in Insider Trading Scandal

Rajiv Goel, the Intel executive caught up in the Galleon insider trading scandal, has finally hired himself some lawyers — and they’re not from the Bay Area.

Goel is being represented by two Skadden Arps white collar lawyers, David Zornow and David Meister, as well as veteran solo Martin Auerbach.

Zornow appeared in New York federal court where the case is proceeding, and released this statement to Legal Pad: “Mr. Goel looks forward to having his day in court and fully addressing these charges.”

Goel was an executive in Intel’s treasury department, who the SEC says passed inside information to hedge fund mogul Raj Rajaratnam.

Local lawyers have gotten some of the work generated by the wide-ranging insider-trading case. Orrick is doing the internal investigation at Intel and Wilson Sonsini is conducting a probe at Polycom, another source of leaked information. But with the case pending in New York, all of the individuals targeted have hired Big Apple lawyers, including the two defendants from the Valley: Goel and Anil Kumar, a McKinsey & Co director who lives in Saratoga, Calif. Kumar is using Chuck Clayman of Clayman & Rosenberg.

— Zusha Elinson

Entertainment Lawyers: To Infinity & Beyond?

In space, no one wants this guy, either.

Via The Wall Street Journal today:  Entertainment lawyers routinely phrase contracts to include rights "throughout the universe," as protection against unpredicted advances in technology or invasion and colonization by extraterrestrial forces.  For some reason, this strikes the WSJ as silly.

But don't let it be said that the paper didn't riff on the silliness to its utmost potential:

Lucasfilm Ltd., Star Wars creator George Lucas's entertainment company ... said the language is standard in Hollywood. "But, to be honest with you, we have had very few cases of people trying to exploit rights on other planets," says Lynne Hale, a Lucasfilm spokeswoman.

Yeah, that's what you say now, sister.  But watch the skies.  Watch the skies!

— Brian McDonough

Harris Hits Today Show With Book

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris sat down with Matt Lauer on the Today Show this morning to talk about her new book, Smart on Crime (which Legal Pad recently observed prominently displayed at one of the DA’s hometown independent bookstores, Green Apple Books).

The attorney general candidate’s on a media blitz for the book this week, and poor Legal Pad is far down the list of outlets clamoring for her attention. (We called her spokeswoman, who told us to call her publisher, who forwarded us to her book publicist in New York, who handed us off to her campaign manager.) We’re shocked to be considered less influential than, say, Lauer or an Oprah radio personality, but, sniff, we’ll be okay.

Check out the DA talking about her book, her Back on Track program for low-level drug offenders, and the importance of tackling truancy. There’s also her expert dodge when Lauer asks the would-be-AG and “female Barack Obama” whether she’s got ambitions for national office (at 4:30).

In addition to being smart on crime, the DA’s really good at talking with her hands.

— Kate Moser

Perkins Lawyer Trades Menlo Park for Oz

Miriam and David Chiappetta, down under. If you're not jealous of the scenery, be jealous of his hat.

If you try to ring up David Chiappetta, you won’t find the Menlo Park litigator at his old Perkins Coie office anymore.

That’s because in August, Chiappetta and his family left the country for Australia where he now works as an antitrust lawyer at Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

Chiappetta is a friendly guy who worked at Bingham McCutchen before moving to Perkins Coie where he took cases for Internet clients like Facebook. But a visit down under changed that in short order.

He just smiles and gives us a Vegemite sandwich, after the jump, um, mates.

Twitter Feeds You Democrats

Twitter loves Jerry Brown. But does Jerry Brown love Twitter?

The Associated Press reports that Twitter, which is apparently still the social media rage, is inspiring Republican rage in here in California.  Seems that when you sign up for the service — which, like Muzak in an elevator, is designed to help stamp out any brief time for actual coherent, trivia-free reflection in your waking life — it suggests a horde of quasi-famous or semi-interesting people you don't know, whose one-sentence proclamations you might want to never, ever miss.

And in California, it suggests Democratic political candidates. Only Democrats. Sayeth the AP:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is on the suggested user list and has 1.2 million followers. His likely opponent for the Democratic nomination, Attorney General Jerry Brown, also made the list and has 960,000 followers, even though he is not a declared candidate and has posted the fewest tweets of all the gubernatorial hopefuls. None of the three Republican candidates is on the list, and each has fewer than 5,000 followers.

Wait — Jerry Brown has the most verbal restraint?

Twitter's political monkeyplay is all fun and games, until that Glenn Beck guy gets ahold of it, fakes some righteous indignation and fear ("I am terrified about where this will go next," he'll say. "They're gonna force us to read the Huffington Post's RSS feed, and then They'll euthanize our grandmothers!"), and turns millions of paleo-Americans into frothing anti-Twitter crusaders, hell-bent on the destruction of the near-ubiquitous networking site and ... um ...

Never mind.  Carry on with your cheap, flagrant (and terrifying!) partisanship, Twitter.  Go, you!

— Brian McDonough

Kozinski Escaping Discipline Over Smut

Looks like the multi-front disciplinary campaign against Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski is falling silent.

The U.S. Judicial Conference dismissed an appeal by a former top judiciary staffer, in which Kozinski was accused of allegedly breaking federal law when he disabled the court’s Internet monitoring systems back in 2001. The staffer, Ralph Mecham, alleged that former Chief Justice William Rehnquist took a dim view of Kozinski’s actions and said that Kozinski should watch his porn at home.

But the conference found that Mecham’s allegations had been previously examined, and found not worthy of a judicial misconduct finding. And Meecham, the former executive director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, waited too long to file a formal complaint. At the time the chief justice himself didn’t ask for a formal misconduct investigation, and now many of the percipient witnesses — including Rehnquist — have died.

“A full and fair investigation into this aspect of the matter is not possible,” the conference ruled, upholding a decision from the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which heard the disciplinary case instead of the Ninth Circuit.

The Third Circuit has already wrung an apology out of Kozinski for making, if not porn, then NSFW images of a tacky and sexual nature, publicly available on a personal web site. Kozinski said he didn’t mean it to be accessible for everyone.

— Dan Levine

Dorsey & Whitney Help Diapers.Com Bag $30 Million

The success is no accident, according to Ted Hollifield, the Silicon Valley Dorsey & Whitney partner who represents the online diaper retailer.

Hollifield just helped close the Series E round, which was led by New Enterprise Associates and closed on Oct. 21. NEA was represented by Wilson Sonsini. Bessamer Ventures, which was also in on the deal brought in its lawyers from King & Spaulding. We assume that there was a lot of document changing going on.

The Diapers.com founders, Marc Lore and Vinit Bhara, who have their cute little baby pictures on the company's Web site, came to Hollifield through a referral from another Dorsey partner. Hollifield said he had an open mind and was quickly convinced. After all, as an MBA student Hollifield had come up with what he thought was a fail-proof Internet business plan: adult diapers, since no one wants to be seen in the store buying those.

Hollifield says venture capitalists were eager to invest: the latest round of financing took just 25 days from start to finish, about one-third of the normal time.

Although Hollifield has no kids to order diapers for, his paralegal is a devoted customer, he said. Hollifield said that he likes working with the company's founders ... who aren't ones to make rash decisions

— Zusha Elinson

Judges, Cop-Types and Such Complain More About The A.O.C.

Early today — and less than 24 hours before a planned legislative hearing on the budgeting process of the state’s courts — a group of judges, court workers, law enforcement officials and children’s advocates held a telephone press conference to air their gripes about the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts.

While upset about an alleged lack of budget transparency, a growth in staff and a controversial computer system under development, the speakers mostly focused their complaints on the AOC’s decision to close courts one day a month.

“Our priorities have always been that the courts remain open under all circumstances,” Justice Thomas Hollenhorst, of Riverside’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, said. “But recently in our budget crisis, we’ve decided that accessibility is not as important as other issues.”

“That,” he added, “has a terrible effect on the court system.”

Erecting Taj Mahals amid the rapid financial decline, after the jump …