Made of Only the Finest Felons: Frederick James is selling an exclusive selection of iPad covers made from the pants of Bernie Madoff, sourced from an auction held by the US Marshals Service last fall. We feel these modern day scalps would make the perfect gift for the attorney who makes a living going after white collar crime. Imagine the effect at a deposition: “Let me just take out my iPad… oh this? This cover’s made out of the pants of Bernie Madoff, I wonder how much yours will fetch.”
by Bitter Brief on August 4, 2011 in Uncategorized
[powerpress]
On this week’s special swingin’ Vegas edition of the Bitter Brief, Kimber regales Mark with tales of her adventures in Sin City, we tackle copyright troll Righthaven, and we discuss the scourge of The Strip.
One Man’s Squatter is Another’s Possessor: In honor of bar exam week, we kick off with this delightful attempt at textbook adverse possession happening in Texas. The man learned that the Lone Star State requires only three years and, finding an abandoned home in foreclosure with a bankrupt mortgage lender, he may have found the ideal property to give it a spin. Neighbors are shocked and appalled, but we appreciate that he took time to learn the law rather than blab about how “fair” things are.
• Capital BigLaw-ers unite. “Washington, D.C. has become the favorite area for wealthy young adults, with the nation’s highest percentage of 25-34 year-olds making more than $100,000 a year.” Some 10,327 young adults making more than six figures live in D.C.’s Loudoun county. [Reuters via Yahoo!]
• I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing. Roman Catholic choirs are singing. Coldplay’s copyright lawsuit over their hit “Viva La Vida” is kaput. [Billboard]
• Berkeley law school released a new report showing there is “strong evidence” that racial profiling goes down in Irvine, CA? Well, from the looks of it, that’s likely exactly what Erwin Chemerinsky did. [Dallas Morning News]
• Boon or boondoggle? The Working Mother Top 50 Law Firms for Women reception sounds like it was hardly worth getting a babysitter. [The Am Law Daily]
• Everyone is always so skeptical of technology’s ability to protect their private information. But when the lawyer you picked to execute your will postmortem steals more than $300,000 from your estate, as Frank P. Jenkins is accused of doing, that’s an even greater betrayal, right? Very uncool. Which is probably why we’re seeing the unveiling of a whole host of sites like Legacy Locker—practically eliminating the need for pesky family lawyers. [Washington Post]
• Facebook and MySpace were key in helping authorities apprehend Yale University lab technician Raymond Clark III for the murder of Annie Le, and now Quinnipiac University School of Law alum David Dworski has been hired to defend him. Good luck with TTThat. [Associated Content]
• Often mocked by the Gawker family of gossip sites, Duke Law graduate and infamous pussy hound Tucker Max has a little to be happy about. With all the snark thrown at him about his new movie and perceived female degradation, the tables turned this week when it was announced that Gawker editor Richard Blakeley was arrested on charges of domestic violence. [I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell | HuffPo]
• This is the dawning of the age a fixed-fee legal world. Mayer Brown and Reed Smith are looking at billing overhauls. And a leaked O’Melveny and Myers business plan was made public this week, the decision of which to publish seems grimy. But it revealed their hopes for the future—including efforts to develop a set rate card by fiscal 2012. [Legal Week | ABA Journal]
• Sir Allen Stanford isn’t the only man in the news in need of a legal hero—sperm-in-a-cup-makes-eight-babies reality TV dad Jon Gosselin needed some lawyer love too. His divorce lawyer dropped him cold turkey, but still above a poor-man’s public defender, a new one has leapt to his aid. [E! Online]
• Stephen Colbert stands up for the newest, hottest legally oppressed minority—corporations. Is big business getting a big sock in its mouth? Are corporations people too? Does money = speech? Huh, SCOTUS? Huh?? And WWSSD: What Would Sonia Sotomayor Do if left to her own First Amendment devices? [HuffPo | WSJ Law Blog]
09.09.09 Bitter Newsroom headlines to celebrate the last repeating, single-digit date til 01.01.2101:
• It’s official: Chihuahuas (chi-WAH’-wahs) are just a bunch of narcissistic bitches who love to be the center of lawsuit attention. In 2009 alone there have been cases of yapping Chihuahuas, “¡Yo quiero mi dinero!” Chihuahuas, Rock City-hoarding Chihuahuas, and price-of-gay-love Chihuahuas. Now two women have sued a dog’s owner for refusing to make good on an advertised $1,000 reward for returning Wilfred, a bitch-ass Chihuahua. [AP | Cincinnati.com]
• Riddle me this: Lawyers are supposed to be deathly confidential and trustworthy. And they love to burn potential jurors, defendants and job candidates by digging up dirt about them on Facebook. So why in the hell are “cash-strapped in-house attorneys” now using friends on social networks to review legal documents they write before sending to outside counsel? [Bloomberg]
• If I hear one more joke about people who had to labor on Labor Day, I’m going to throw tables. But two firms got served big, laborious ones over the holiday weekend. Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns (originals, not your sorority girl Bed Bath & Beyond posters) were the focus of a suit a prominent wealth manager filed against St. Louis firm Bryan Cave over his pre-nuptial agreement. Allegedly the firm forgot to consider a little thing called “capital gains taxes on the value of the marital estate.” [The Am Law Daily]
• And playing off our top story yesterday, another person saying, “You got served!” to his attorneys is discharged gay Army captain and lawyer James Pietrangelo, II. He’s alleging that Wilmer Hale made a deal with the Obama administration not to challenge “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so when Barack took office, the firm dropped his case. “[Pietrangelo is] suing the firm in D.C. Superior Court for malpractice and breach of, well, pretty much everything.” [The Am Law Daily]
• Lawsuits have become a bunch of star fuckers lately as Hollywood has been occupying judges’ time. Some of your favorite movie franchises burning up the court docket:
—J.R.R. Tolkien’s heirs won huge licensing payments from Warner Bros. for LOTR. [LA Times]
—IP boom pow continues in Disney’s $4 billion buy of Marvel (Spider-Man, Iron Man). [AmLawDaily]
—Company accusing Disney-Pixar of stealing their cute crane-necked lamp character. [NY Daily News]
• Are you married to your spouse or to your BigLaw career? Careful. One usually tries to talk you out of loving the other. [StarTribune.com]
• Hispanic Business Magazine released its top-10 list of law schools for Hispanics. The top three were: 1. University of New Mexico; 2. University of Texas at Austin; 3. Florida State University. Not-so-oddly, none of them graduated the top Hispanic lawyer from our next story… [Hispanic Business Magazine]
Frank: Unfortunately, this reminds me of my first BJ. After getting a taste of me, I couldn't get the woman to leave me alone for weeks... May 20, 7:09 AM
