Legal Pad

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.

 

Patent Suit Against Grateful Dead Seen as Gratuitous

[Amy Miller]

After decades of letting fans record their concerts for free, the Grateful Dead is now facing a patent infringement suit for sharing music on the band’s dead.net website.

And the irony has long-time Dead Heads in the Bay Area speculating that things are finally shaking on Shakedown Street.

“What has the world come to that the Grateful Dead is being sued for selling music when they’re famous for giving away thousands and thousands of their own concert recordings?” said patent litigator and Dead Head Edward Reines, a partner in the Silicon Valley office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

On Tuesday, Sharing Sound sued Grateful Dead Productions, along with Live Nation Entertainment Inc., Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Inc. and others in Delaware federal court, saying they had infringed a patent covering the online distribution of music and other media.

The Longview, Texas-based company launched a similar suit against Amazon.com Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Netflix Inc. in May, alleging that they, too, had infringed the patent called “Distribution of musical products by a website vendor over the Internet.”

Sharing Sound is seeking a permanent injunction, damages and attorneys fees.

Snoop Dogg: All Up In Fenwick's, um, Offizzle. We Guess.

Mr. Dogg is allegedly the blurry fellow in white, on the left there, in a Fenwick par-tay conference room.

Fenwick & West is a good law firm, a nice firm, even a profitable firm — but never a cool firm. That all changed today.

Snoop Dogg traveled from the LBC to Fenwick's Mountain View crib. Fo shizzle ma nizzle: he was there for an event for Fenwick client Ustream and the D-O double G took a video to prove it. Check it.

We imagine that the associates offered a rousing “bow wow wow yippe yo yipeee yay doggy dogg’s in the muthaf!@#n house.” And we can only hope that Snoop was rollin’ down El Camino Real smoking endo, sippin' on gin and juice. But we want to know: Is it true that the straightlaced Fenwick chairman Gordy Davidson actually has Lodi Dodi on repeat on his iPod?

Ustream, which allows you to broadcast video live on the Internet, is a client of Fenwick corporate partner Ted Wang. Says Wang about Snoop in the Valley: “The Valley used to be just technology and now we’re a hub of media”

Wang got to hear Snoop give a little talk and reports that “He’s a really entertaining and engaging guy.”

Wang’s favorite song: Nuthin' but a "G" Thang.

You’re a G in our book, Mr. Wang.

— Zusha Elinson

Cal Supremes Ponder Asbestos, Messages from On High

Terry McCann was exposed to asbestos in Oklahoma in 1957, but wasn’t diagnosed with mesothelioma until 2005 in California. In which state is he or his family entitled to sue for damages?

That was the question for the California Supreme Court during oral arguments earlier today, and it wasn’t clear which way the justices would vote.

The problem for McCann is that an Oklahoma statute prohibits suits for design deficiencies if brought more than 10 years after the completion of the project in which a hazardous substance was used. But the one-year statute of limitations for claims in California starts running only at the time a disease is diagnosed.

Big difference, and California law clearly works better for McCann. But there’s still debate about whether McCann’s injury occurred at the time of exposure or the time of diagnosis.

Mesothelioma madness in California, and input from the divine (?), after the jump.

Cop-Chewing Defendant Gets Familiar Juror: His Previous Judge

When a San Francisco man with an alleged penchant for biting cops was tried this week for his seventh such attack, did he immediately recognize one of the potential jurors — one with perhaps a particularly judicial demeanor — from a recent visit he made to the Hall of Justice, Legal Pad wonders?

Judge Bruce Chan, who had presided over a preliminary hearing earlier this year in which the same defendant had faced similar charges, somehow made it on the man’s jury this week. In that earlier hearing, Chan had reduced the charge to a misdemeanor, said Victor Hwang, the prosecutor in the latest case.

How did Chan stay on the jury, given his prior experience?

After the jump: Dude really wanted to be on a jury ...

The Pros and Cons of Toiling Away in Your Own At-Home Sweatshop

So this New York Times story has nothing to do with lawyers, except we thought it interesting that the writer chose to compare associates to the well-paid/overworked entrepreneurs on Etsy, that Web site where the arts-and-crafts inclined hawk their toilet paper cozies. (A brief aside: That was the first absurd tchotchke to come to mind so we went with it -- but we were quite pleased to discover, with just one Google, that even the stuff we spout off the top of our head turns out to be incredibly spot-on.)

Anyway, here's the part of that NYT story that caught our eye:

Ms. Gibran, who is in her 30s, had been selling her hand-knit scarves and accessories on the site for less than a year when she decided last November to quit her day job at a copy center in Atlanta. Thirteen months later, she would seem to be living the Etsy dream: running a one-woman knitwear operation, Yokoo, from her home and earning more than $140,000 a year, more than many law associates.

Jealous? How could you not be? Her hobby is her job. But consider this before you quit your day job: at the pace she’s working, she might as well be a law associate.

Unfortunately, though we loved the pose in the photo the NYT chose to run of Ms. Gibran, we were disappointed the paper didn't actually quote any lawyers-turned-arts&crafts moguls. If you're out there, email us. Maybe we'll write about you.

—  Pam Smith

Really, email me

An Attempt to Bring Bud Selig to His Knees

Oakland A’s fans queasy that their storied team could be lured south to San Jose have a new best friend –- San Francisco’s top litigator.

Today City Attorney Dennis Herrera wrote to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, advising him in a six-page “sternly-worded letter,” as his press release calls it, that San Francisco is not pleased by the notion of another franchise moving into Giants territory.

Herrera made it clear that San Francisco is interested in protecting the millions of dollars in rent and tax revenues generated by the Giants franchise, and he walked Selig through the promises San Francisco had to make to keep the Giants in town and build AT&T Park, all with the understanding that major league baseball wouldn’t do anything to undercut the financial viability of the franchise.

Stern words can hurt, after the jump ...

Illegal Alien Still Fighting 1986 Cocaine Plea

Cocaine! Courtesy of your Dept. o' Justice.

Some people just can’t let go of things.

Take Roy Cupis, who — 23 years after the fact — is still trying to withdraw his plea in a San Mateo County criminal case.

Earlier today, San Francisco’s First District Court of Appeal rejected the guy’s efforts, even though Cupis argued he didn’t understand the immigration consequences for pleading no contest to possessing cocaine for sale. Cupis was an illegal alien when he pled on Nov. 10, 1986, and today’s ruling doesn’t make clear his current status.

The court’s unpublished ruling held that Cupis’ motion wasn’t timely and his arguments had no merit.

Okay ... but who the hell is "Sherel Ann"?

S.F. Associate Wins a Million Bucks in Wonky ESPN Game

The young millionaire (pretax), as seen on his ESPN profile.

Update: We put together a longer followup on Thompson's big win, which you can read over at CalLaw.com.

We predict Blake Thompson is about to become the most popular associate in San Francisco.

Thompson, who focuses on constitutional and civil rights law at Rosen, Bien & Galvan, just beat three other contestants to claim a $1 million grand prize in ESPN.com’s Streak for the Cash Pick-Off after correctly guessing the Queens Park Rangers (QPR) would win or tie with West Bromich Albion in a Football League Championship match today.

The objective of the fantasy game is to accumulate the longest winning streak by selecting the winning team or player ahead of the matchups. Today’s game ended in a 2-2 draw, according to ESPN’s online coverage of the competition, which started in April. Thompson’s final pick extended his winning streak to nine correct picks in a row, while the remaining three contestants — all of whom picked West Bromich Albion — all saw their streaks come to an end.

Thompson, who’s 31, picked 29 winners in a row in various sporting events to land himself in the finals. He previously won $10,000 and a trip to Connecticut this weekend to compete in the finals.

Rosen, Bien & Galvan partner Mike Bien said the 16-lawyer firm is excited: “We told him if he wants the weekend off, we get 50 percent,” Bien said (only half-joking, we’re sure).

Bien noted that Thompson applied his well-honed legal skills. “He did some research and was able to track things. The guy used his brains as much as his knowledge of sports.”

Thompson, a 2007 Boalt grad, could not be reached this afternoon to tell us what his plans are. But Bien has some ideas. Asked whether he expected Thompson to return to his civil rights practice, Bien said: “He’d better. He’s doing a very important brief for me that’s due in a couple of weeks.”

— Petra Pasternak

Canopy Could've Been Saved With a Little Less Conversation

Who turns out to be the hero in the Canopy Financial mess? The young general counsel, Daniel Stevenson, who’d recently quit Wilson Sonsini to join what seemed like a promising startup.

The SEC office in Chicago charged Canopy and its COO, Jeremy Blackburn, yesterday for forging financial statements to impress potential investors like Spectrum Equity, which pumped $75 million into the healthcare savings account software company.

But the really interesting part of the complaint is where it talks about Stevenson’s somewhat accidental role in uncovering the fraud. The SEC says in its complaint (.pdf) that this month Stevenson began a search for a chief financial officer and contacted a buddy at accounting giant KPMG about possible candidates. The GC sent along what “he understood were the KPMG Audit Report and “Canopy’s audited financial statements” to his KPMG acquaintance.” But, it turned out that KPMG didn’t actually do the audit! (Cue Paul Hastings for the internal investigation!)

The accounting firm sent Canopy a “cease-and-desist” letter Nov. 3, saying it hadn’t been hired by Canopy, nor done the audit. Instead, the SEC alleges, the audit report was the handiwork of Blackburn — and the SEC says it has evidence showing that Blackburn told another Canopy exec to lie about the report.

The moral of the story is this: Your accountant friends may be kinda boring, but it’s good to keep them around. Because in Silicon Valley, everything comes down to who you know.

— Zusha Elinson