Patent Cases Jump In Front of New Rules

Fortune Magazine is reporting a surge in patent cases, mostly in East Texas, as new rules that will “raise the bar” for what a patent owner must state in a lawsuit. The report says that “… while the new pleading standards are intended to make patent complaints more like other federal lawsuits, some complained that requiring specific facts for each lawsuit will make it more expensive for patent owners to assert their rights.”
 
The new record is 257 cases filed in a single day.
 

Silver Trial Headed For Closing Arguments Monday

 
The federal criminal trial of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is expected to enter the closing arguments stage on Monday, with his defense team opting to call no witnesses. They did grab headlines with a motion asking the judge to dismiss the case – which is actually a routine step in such trials. While a criminal trial, the Silver case is being closely watched by the civil trial bar, in part because lots of the case rests on his referral arrangement with an asbestos litigation firm.
 
That firm has said that Silver was “of counsel” for many years but performed no legal work while receiving more than $3 million in referral fees. The government contends that the then-Speaker steered government contracts to a clinic that helped with the referrals.
 
See a good Wall Street Journal recap here:

U.S. Family Detention Centers: Still There, Still Debated

 
As events in Paris rivet the U.S. media on the massive immigration crisis in Europe, it’s worth noting that we still have
Photo from LA Times Report, 10/23/15, "Immigrant family detention centers are prison-like, critics say, despite order to improve"

Photo from LA Times Report, 10/23/15, “Immigrant family detention centers are prison-like, critics say, despite order to improve”

 450,000 pending cases in the United States immigration court system and our “family detention” centers have been ruled illegal by a federal judge, who has ordered them closed. The federal government has responded by trying to license them through state agencies. 
 
The Los Angeles Times reminds us that “… this summer, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles castigated federal officials, finding they had failed to meet conditions for detaining immigrant children established by a 1997 court settlement, Flores vs. Meese. The judge prohibited the administration from holding children at centers not licensed to care for them and from holding families unless they posed a flight risk or a threat to national security…”
 
Find the rest of that story and related reporting about the situation here:

New York Corruption Trial Said To Be Moving Quickly

 
The New York Times is reporting that the high-profile criminal trial of former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver is running quickly, with prosecutors indicating they might wrap up their case by mid-week. This week the highlight of the case was revelation of a letter that prosecutors contend prove Silver received “kickbacks” via a law firm.
 
The Times reported that “… in the scheme described in court on Thursday, prosecutors say Mr. Silver received about $700,000 in kickbacks through the Goldberg law firm — secret compensation for Mr. Silver’s having referred it tax business from Glenwood and a second developer. In return, as the government said in the trial’s opening statement, Mr. Silver took official action that benefited the developers, like meeting with Glenwood’s lobbyists and signing off on critical real estate legislation that Glenwood supported.”
 
(Editor’s Note: This site usually focuses on civil, not criminal, cases. We do update the Silver trial because it focuses on referral payments for civil cases.)
 

NYT Going Deep On Arbitration Issue

Image from NYT report, 11/1/15.

Image from NYT report, 11/1/15.

The New York Times continues its milestone series on arbitration this week and continues to set the stage for serious reform, especially in California where the practice is widespread across many industries. In particular, the series focuses on how arbitration clauses can remove disputes from courts into private practices.

The paper says that those practices “…often bears little resemblance to court… Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country — from big corporations to storefront shops — have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients, The Times found.”

This is the kind of series that nearly always brings a call to action, so stay tuned. Check in on the series here.

Lawyers Fight Bail Inequality By Filing More, Smaller Cases

The New York Times has a story about how some lawyers are battling bail inequality by filing small-town lawsuits, forcing policy changes one town at a time – but hoping to spark wider reforms. The NYT reports that there are many cases that illustrate the problem among the nation’s 15,000 trial courts, and both local and national groups are “… waging a guerrilla campaign to reverse what they consider unconstitutional but widespread practices that penalize the poor. These include jail time for failure to pay fines, cash and property seizure in the absence of criminal charges, and the failure to provide competent lawyers.”
 
This story is part of a significant trend toward reforming that limbo where “civil” cases, like fines and potential property seizure, evolve into situations where people can be arrested. Read it here: Court by Court, Lawyers Fight Policies That Fall Heavily on the Poor.

AZ Case Shows How Little Border Patrol Fears Courts

Anyone looking for an example of Border Patrol officials basically ignoring the U.S. courts might check out a southern Arizona case. Migrants there have long complained about dirty and overcrowded cells, explains the Arizona Republic newspaper, and about being held in frigid cells deprived of adequate food and water, not to mention denied medical care. The ACLU and other groups sued, and the Republic explains that “… a federal judge then ordered the Border Patrol to save all video surveillance tapes dating back to June 10 at the eight holding facilities in the Tucson sector, one of the nation’s busiest, in response to a request from the ACLU seeking evidence to prove its case.”

But it turns out the Border Patrol has since “willfully” destroyed video recordings in direct violation of U.S. District Court Judge David C. Bury’s order, the newspaper says. Government officials say it was a technical problem. The judge issued sanctions (no doubt strongly worded!) but otherwise there seem few consequences to defying the court.” See the story here.

Fraud Case Brings Jail Time For SoCal Attorney

Saying that Newport Beach attorney Gino Paul Pietro “had a bad week,’ the Courthouse News is reporting that the lawyer is being sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for two fraud schemes in Southern California – and that “It could have been worse…”
 
At issue is an attorney named Gino Paul Pietro, for Pietro, 54, who faced two fraud charges. One was for a tax scheme and another for representing solutions that were apparently untrue. The CN says U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego called Pietro a “disgrace to the entire legal profession,” and also ordered him to pay $18,000 in restitution. Meanwhile, his client in an Orange County tax case, Donald Goff, was sentenced to 78 months in prison.
 
Bad week indeed. Read the details here: Courthouse News Service

Lawyers’ Self-Regulation Question Is Part Of Newspaper’s Reporting

 
The Modesto Bee is reporting on state bar action against 28 attorneys in the newspaper’s reporting area, but those complaints also raise the question of how the legal profession will be regulated – in short, if it can remain a self-policing profession.
 
As an example, the newspaper says that “… the University of San Diego School of Law, the Consumers Union and the Citizen Advocacy Center sent a May 4 letter to attorneys general of all states warning that state bars are ‘theoretically vulnerable to federal felony prosecution’ unless their enforcement system is overseen by others. Occupational licensing boards that regulate accountants, doctors, brokers, barbers and other trades don’t serve the public interest if regulated by themselves, the consumer advocates say.”
 
Read the Bee’s story here.

Judges Oppose Proposed Budget Oversight

Judges and court clerks on the Judicial Council’s Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee are opposing a proposed rule change “… that would give a different council committee the authority to go back and review how the council and its staff spent judiciary funds on behalf of the courts,” the Courthouse News Service (CNS) is reporting.
   
In a detailed story, the CNS quotes a San Luis Obispo judge complaining that the rule change would be “… a complete diminution of the authority of” the existing committee while adding that “… this [judicial] branch has a history of problems with credibility and transparency. I think we’ve worked on that, but this goes backwards. It reduces transparency.”
 
The rule change comes in response to a harsh state audit that questioned how the courts spend money and create transparent decision-making.
 
Read the CNS story here.