Legal Pad

AOC Officials Could Probably Use a Martini

[Cheryl Miller]

It’s probably not in the budget, but it sure seems like the Administrative Office of the Courts could use some top-notch PR help right about now.

On Thursday night, San Diego television station KGTV slammed former Administrative Director of the Courts Bill Vickrey and current interim director Ron Overholt for allegedly spending lavishly on taxpayer-funded flights, hotels, fine dining and even alcohol.

The report, citing expense reimbursement claims from 2009 to this year, suggests Vickrey and Overholt traveled to posh resorts around the country, dined at swank eateries and swilled Grey Goose martinis -- all on the public dime. And when he wasn’t jet-setting, Overholt was billing taxpayers for stays and $51-a-night parking at a San Francisco hotel just blocks away from AOC headquarters, according to the piece.

The AOC refused to grant an on-camera interview, according to the reporter, but local assemblyman and mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher had plenty to say.

“The AOC is going to have a lot of tough questions to answer,” Fletcher said, adding that such profligate spending is one of the reasons the public “has lost faith in its government.”

The AOC, as you might expect, has a different take on the expenses. Trips to places like Vail, Colo., Washington, D.C., and Indian Wells were all business-related, according to AOC spokesman Philip Carrizosa. Although the men’s receipts note alcohol purchases, none of those costs were submitted for reimbursement, he said.

As for the pricey dinners -- $1,976 at L’Olivier in San Francisco in August 2010, for instance -- those meals were shared by groups of up to 40 attendees and were only reimbursed at the state’s travel meal rate of $18 a person, Carrizosa said.

Overholt did bill the AOC in 2010 for some overnights at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, to be closer to a Judicial Council meeting in San Francisco. Carrizosa said Overholt lives 30 miles outside the city and the meetings started early and ended late.

Whatever the reasoning or justification of the expenses, the report is sure to attract more scrutiny that the branch doesn’t need or want right now.

 

For Google GC, Job Just Gets Bigger

[Amy Miller]

Google employs 600 people in its legal department. Once it swallows Motorola Mobility, that number will jump to 800, General Counsel Kent Walker told an audience gathered Wednesday for his keynote address at Corporate Counsel’s 9th Annual GC Conference West Coast in San Francisco.

And while he waxed eloquent about the role lawyers have played in the information revolution that Google helped set in motion, he said his sizable legal staff faces serious challenges. “We’re the heat shield and the diplomats trying to pave the way for the next new technology,” Walker said.

For example, just about every country defines privacy differently, and Google’s lawyers have to understand and navigate all their rules and restrictions. And then there’s the inevitable legal wrangling that results when Google introduces a new product, with Google Books being a prime example.

It was no surprise when Walker complained about the U.S. patent system, pointing out that there are about 250,000 patents covering various functions and features on most smartphones these days.

“That’s a sign of a broken system,” he said.

But the legal team’s most important job is supporting the work of Google’s engineers, and that means learning how to be more than gatekeepers who just say what is and isn’t legal. It means offering insight, too.  “Lawyers can and should be innovation facilitators,” Walker said. 

 

Minority Bar Coalition Honors Diversity Champs

[Scott Graham]

The San Francisco Bay Area is known for its diversity of people and culture. It's no different with lawyers -- the Minority Bar Coalition of the Greater Bay Area spans a network of more than 25 bar associations organized by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin and sexual orientation.

The coalition is dedicated to working together to advance the cause of diversity in the legal profession, and on Nov. 14 it presented its Unity Awards at UC-Hastings to representatives who've helped advance that goal.

This year the awards went to Billy Chan (Asian American Bar Association), Fairuz Abdullah (Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers), Timothy Cahn (Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom), Stuart Plunkett (Bar Association of San Francisco), Candice Petty (Black Women Lawyers of Northern California), Gordon Greenwood (California Association of Black Lawyers), Jason Clay (Charles Houston Bar Association), Nicole Harris (California Minority Counsel Program), Ruben Sundeen (East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association), Genevieve Dong (Filipino Bar Association of Northern California), Nahal Iravani-Sani (Iranian American Bar Association), Kristina Chung (Korean American Bar Association), Judge Angela Bradstreet (Queen's Bench), Mica Estremera (San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association), Sharon Godbolt (Santa Clara County Black Lawyers), Eugene Flemate (La Raza Lawyers of Santa Clara County), Miruni Soosaipillai (South Asian Bar Association), Thanh Ngo (Vietnamese American Bar Association), Tara Flanagan (Women Lawyers of Alameda County)

Click on picture for larger image. Left to right: Soosaipillai, coalition co-chair Vidhya Prabhakaran (kneeling), Petty, Chung, Plunkett (kneeling), Godbolt, coalition co-chair Yuval Miller, Bradstreet, coalition representative Demetrius Shelton, Harris (and son), Ngo, Abdullah, Clay, Iravani-Sani, Sundeen, Dong, Cahn, Flanagan and coalition co-chair Ann Nguyen.

Count on the Plaintiff Bar to Land On Its Feet

[Amy Miller]

Class actions may be down, but they’re not out.

Yes, the U.S. Supreme dealt a couple of game-changers with AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and Dukes v. Walmart last term. But a panel of class action litigators, along with state and federal judges, told an audience of about 40 people at Cooley’s headquarters in Palo Alto Tuesday night that it’s unwise to underestimate the ability of plaintiffs’ attorneys to adapt. The seminar was sponsored by the Santa Clara County Bar Association Federal Courts Committee and Cooley.  

The landscape for class actions will change, and the numbers may drop -- but they won't go away completely, said Cooley litigation partner Michael Rhodes. "In the real world, plaintiff’s firms are creative,” he said.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys have nine lives, like a cat, said Nancy Fineman, a partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy in San Francisco. Someone still has to fight for the rights of consumers. “Are we down and bloodied? Absolutely,” she said. “Are we going to keep on fighting? Absolutely.”

The judges on the panel agreed that after the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, it will more critical for lawyers to choose class representatives who can withstand scrutiny and understand the legal issues involved. And they’re predicting attorneys will have to present better evidence backing up their claims earlier in the process. More expert testimony will likely be proffered earlier as well. Because Dukes and Concepcion are changing the game for judges, too.

Northern District Judge Susan Illston said those cases are nudging federal judges to consider the merits of class actions even before a class is certified, something they once went to great pains to avoid. “I just think that we are doing a lot more investigation into merits earlier on than we ever have before,” Illston said.

 

Gascon Outpolls Rivals in S.F DA Race

[Cynthia Foster]

S.F. DA George Gascon has a big lead over his challengers, capturing 42 percent of the first-choice votes Tuesday night. But a winner won't be declared until sometime Wednesday as election officials tabulate second- and third-place votes under the city's ranked-choice balloting.

"I'm feeling good, but it's early yet," Gascon said at his campaign event Tuesday night. Asked a bit later if he thinks Onek can catch up, he said: "I'm new to this."

Challengers David Onek and Sharmin Bock had 23 and 21 percent of the first-choice votes, with Bill Fazio at about 11 percent.

"No matter how it turns out," Bock said late Tuesday, "we ran a hell of a campaign and raised issues that needed to be talked about."

Gascon, a Gavin Newsom appointee endorsed by the Police Officers Association, Attorney General Kamala Harris and much of the legal establishment, lagged behind the other candidates in fundraising throughout the campaign. His opponents pointed to his lack of legal experience and the conflict they saw between his role as district attorney and his former role as chief of police, especially when Public Defender Jeff Adachi released video footage of cops allegedly conducting illegal searches and stealing items from citizens. Bock, Fazio and Onek teamed up in October to criticize Gascon for not releasing an internal memo, written by DNA expert Rockne Harmon, that alleged evidence coming out of the SFPD's DNA crime lab might be unreliable.

But that didn't move the needle much. "Gascon's the best choice for the safety of the city," Harris told supporters Tuesday night.

During his 9-month tenure as DA, Gascon implemented a neighborhood courts prosecution program, similar to that of the existing Community Justice Court, to levy outside-the-courtroom punishments for misdemeanors and quality of life crimes. By election time, Gascon had rolled the program out to four different neighborhoods.

Onek, Bock and Fazio never made much headway. Polls showed each of them with less than 10 percent

of the vote just a few weeks before election day. Onek, who like Gascon has never tried a case, ran on a reform platform, promising to never seek the death penalty and to make sweeping changes to how juveniles are charged in the city. Bock's 22 years of prosecutorial experience in Alameda County was a cornerstone of her campaign. Fazio, meanwhile, launched his fourth bid for the DA's job in August, after most major organizations (including the POA, a previous supporter of his) had made endorsements.

I Gotta Feeling (Little's Going to Regret This)

Rory Little: professor, ethics guru, of counsel for Big Law, former appellate chief of the U.S. attorney's office and rumored Ninth Circuit aspirant. Now add pop singer to the resume.

The UC Hastings professor took a Tenderloin bar stage Thursday as Will i am. (Lawyers of a certain age may wish to click here before reading further.)

Little was joined by some brave law students for the, um, spirited, rendition of the hit song "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas.

The karaoke contest was, of course, for a good cause. It was the annual fundraiser, "GAAP Idol," which supports the GAAP pro bono project started by Hastings students 30 years ago to assist the needy in the Tenderloin.

This wasn't Little's first time on stage. Last year, he and another professor did their best Blues Brothers impression (which included a lot of jumping around on the part of Little). Lucky for them, Legal Pad wasn't armed with an iPhone in 2010. This year, we bring you this:

In case you have trouble spotting Little in the shadows, we also bring you photographic evidence, courtesy of the professor himself.

Said Little: "I don't think I recognize anyone in it!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 At $5 a head, it might not have been the most effective money maker, but we found it thoroughly amusing.

 

Facebook's Former Privacy Chief Gets Behind Trafficking Measure

[Cheryl Miller]

Chris Kelly may be back on the ballot next year, but it won’t be as a candidate.

The former Facebook privacy officer and 2010 attorney general aspirant is co-proponent of a proposed initiative that would crack down on human traffickers, particularly offenders that troll the Internet for victims.

The so-called Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act would beef up sentences for convicted traffickers while forcing sex offenders to register their email addresses and Internet user names with authorities.

The initiative would be a marriage of two ideas that, so far, have failed to gain political traction in California. The group California Against Slavery tried to qualify an anti-trafficking measure for the ballot in 2010 but failed to gather enough signatures. Kelly has lobbied unsuccessfully for state legislation that would force registered sex offenders to identify their online personas.

“Our Legislature unfortunately invented the idea that it will cost money,” Kelly said.

Kelly, who finished third in the 2010 Democratic AG primary, said the campaign will use paid and volunteer signature-collectors to ensure it can gather the more than 500,000 qualifying names needed in 150 days. It’s a pricey task but a potentially priceless one if it ties Kelly, a possible future candidate, to a popular and winning measure.

Kelly, the father of two young children, said he’s simply trying to “step up” for an issue he believes in.

“It’s important to be publicly engaged,” he said. “And it’s important for people in the tech industry to be politically engaged.”

The attorney general’s office still must prepare a title and summary for the would-be initiative before Kelly and others can begin collecting signatures.