Legal Pad

Your Lurid Tragedy Link of the Day

During last week’s meeting of the State Bar Board of Governors in San Francisco, several employees talked about a sensational murder trial in Indio. A homeless man faces life in prison for murdering 85-year-old Garvin Shallenberger, who served as the State Bar president in 1977-78. Details brought out at trial revealed that Shallenberger was gay and was allegedly killed while having sex with 48-year-old Michael Anunciation. Jury deliberations resumed today. See the story in The Desert Sun of Palm Springs.

—  Mike McKee

Court Nixes Effort to Block Marriage Measure

The California Supreme Court, by an unanimous vote, declined today to hear or take action on an lawsuit that sought to block state ballot Proposition 8, the measure that would outlaw same-sex marriage.

The high court denied, without comment (pdf), the writ of mandate filed by Prop 8 foes, which included the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Here's (doc) the brief press release from the court.

The NCLR and fellow groups had argued that Proposition 8 would constitute a revision of the state Constitution, rather than an amendment, and would therefore require passage by the Legislature.

Stay tuned to Callaw.com for more coverage of the Supreme Court's denial later in the day. In the meantime, check out previous LegalPad and Callaw stories on the issue here, here and here.

—  Jessie Seyfer

Marvell Still Rides the Ragged Edge ...

Marvell Technology Group appears to be continuing to coordinate the use of its thumb and nose in the general direction of the government.

While many companies quickly pushed executives overboard when faced with the backdating investigations, Marvell clung to its leaders even against the recommendations of the audit committee. And when it came time to settle the backdating score, the SEC fined the company $10 million and barred COO Weili Dai from being an officer or director for five years, while also fining her $500,000. At the time, SEC San Francisco Chief Marc Fagel scolded Marvell for not cooperating and not cleaning up the backdating problem at the time, and said the company didn’t receive the credit afforded to other companies that did those things.   

Now Dai — who co-founded the semiconductor company with her husband Sehat Sutardja — has been made a vice president. Marvell announced in a June 2 regulatory filing that Dai would be taking the new position as vice president of sales for the communications and consumer business.

Second Life: Get CLE Credit in Your Underwear

Second Life isn’t quite a video game, and it’s more than a chatroom. You can hang out in virtual nightclubs, buy nonexistent real estate on which to build architecturally unsound houses, and now, you can get CLE credit.

Scene from the SLBA seminar.

The virtual world has its own bar group — the Second Life Bar Association — that brings together lawyers, legal professionals and others loosely interested in the law. So the digital universe permits your fire-haired avatar to discuss the rule against perpetuities while you sit at home in your socks and fluffy bathrobe. But today the bar group launched something genuinely substantial — a four-part speaker series on the application of law in virtual worlds that counts as continuing legal education.

About 25 avatars gathered in the online room, some decked out in professional suits, and one in a Victorian-era dress and hat, said San Francisco immigration lawyer Geri Kahn. “I think there was at least one animal in there,” said Kahn, one of the series’ organizers.

A Fine Time to Go Solo

In the shadow of an economy that hasn't spared the legal industry as it spirals ever downward, David Newdorf decided to leave his government job and go into business for himself.

This month, in the face of some colleagues' worries, Newdorf left the San Francisco City Attorney’s office to start his own practice — Newdorf Legal. Over coffee, the litigation specialist explained why he decided to leave behind the public sector, and its pension. (Full disclosure: Many, many moons ago, Newdorf was a reporter for The Recorder, which operates this here blog.)

France Hates the Internet. And Your Shoes.

The question: Should eBay be in trouble because people sell fake Tiffany jewelry and Louis Vuitton knock offs on the online auction site?

Sure, if you live in France: Last month, a French court told Ebay to pay a whopping $61 million to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to atone for all those fake wannabe Louis Vuitton bags and Dior perfumes being sold on the site.

Closer to home, a New York federal judge today ruled that eBay wasn’t responsible for all that silver quackery sold under the vaunted Tiffany name. Instead Tiffany is the one that’s responsible for monitoring its trademark, the judge wrote in his opinion. The big win for eBay was also a big win for its lawyers at Weil Gotshal & Manges. On Tiffany’s side was Arnold & Porter.

Legal Pad sent an email to Stanford intellectual property scholar Mark Lemley to ask why the difference between France and America? Lemley cut to the chase in his one line response: “Because the U.S. has a legal system that respects and encourages the development of the Internet, and France, so far, does not,” he wrote.

Okay — but they’ve got a pop-singing fashion model for a first lady and all the really good cheese.

—  Zusha Elinson

Disability Rights Advocates' Interns Speak Out

We here at LegalPad trekked out to Berkeley’s Disability Rights Advocates on a hot July afternoon last week to chat with this year’s interns. All three happen to be students in their final year or semester of law school, each with a disability that has recast their lives and their work.

Over 10 weeks this summer, they are learning the ins and outs of impact litigation, working on investigations and class actions on behalf of people with disabilities.

Two interns were at the office that day.

How Much Stripping Makes a 'Strip Search'?

Amid the constitutional jousting over whether school officials were allowed to strip search a 13-year old girl, Ninth Circuit Judges Kim Wardlaw, Michael Hawkins and Alex Kozinski couldn’t even agree on what constitutes a strip search.

“The majority favors the term ‘strip search’ to describe a search that took place in a closed office with only a female school nurse and female administrator present,” Hawkins wrote in today's dissent, “and began with [the girl] removing her jacket, shoes, socks, pants and shirt, and continued with her pulling her bra and shaking it, partially exposing her breasts, and pulling her underwear away from her body and shaking it, partially exposing her pelvic area. I would reserve the term ‘strip search’ for a search that required its subject to fully disrobe in view of officials.”

Wardlaw called this a view that “squeamishly avoids facing the reality of the nature of the search,” adding that the student did not have to fully disrobe in order for it to be a strip search. “The term may unsettle the sensibilities of our dissenting colleagues; however, the accuracy of the designation merely cements the intrusiveness of what occurred.”

Chief Judge Kozinski sided with Hawkins' view, which isn't surprising given the questions Kozinski posed to plaintiff lawyer Andrew Peterson at oral argument. Click here to hear the chief’s take; it’s the very first exchange of the proceeding.

—  Dan Levine

Alsup Tosses Patent Suit Against Comcast

The bad patent news keeps coming for Sunnyvale’s Finisar.

In April, the Federal Circuit tossed a $104 million award for patent infringement that Finisar won against DirecTV.

On Friday, Northern District Judge William Alsup granted (.pdf) a summary judgment dismissing Finisar’s $140 million patent infringement claim against Comcast, Comcast’s lawyers at Keker & Van Nest said.

Finisar, which makes high-speed data transmission equipment, accused Comcast of infringing with its digital cable systems. Alsup invalidated the only claim asserted by Finisar because of obviousness. Morgan & Finnegan represented Finisar.

No doubt this is good news for Comcast, which otherwise had kind of a crappy day at the hands of the FCC.

—  Zusha Elinson

Sexism: It’s all in how you do it

Here’s an interesting ruling. One Susan Ossakow feels that her sixth plastic surgery, to plump up her lips, was majorly botched when her surgeon also decided to do a little work — and bad work, at that — on her nose. She wants to sue. She’d signed an arbitration agreement, so both sides arrived at a three-neutral panel, and the patient/plaintiff loses, two to one. With the decision came this acid comment: “One thing probably everyone can agree upon, after five facial surgeries, [she] could have done without a sixth one.” So, ha-ha: every sixth surgery, a doctor’s entitled to screw up your face! Vain, frivolous girl!

The patient then sues upon discovering that, she says, one of the neutrals wasn’t necessarily neutral enough, and should’ve disqualified himself. 

Put before a panel of California’s Second Appellate District:  Should a retired judge acting as an arbitrator in a plastic surgery malpractice case have disclosed that while on the bench he’d been publicly censured, having “made sexually suggestive remarks to and asked sexually explicit questions of female staff members; referred to a staff member using crude and demeaning names and descriptions and an ethnic slur; referred to a fellow jurist’s physical attributes in a demeaning manner; and mailed a sexually suggestive postcard to a staff member addressed to her at the courthouse.”