On June 25, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the conviction of Conrad Black, one of several former newspaper executives found guilty last year of defrauding their company out of millions of dollars. In a bad sign for the defendants, the opinion…
Here’s an important tip: the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Canada, has ruled that lawyers who notice that their trial judge is sleeping must awaken him or her at the time and object, rather than waiting to raise the issue…
On November 29, the Ninth Circuit again applied the Slubby Mass Rule to reject an appellant’s brief and dismiss the appeal. In case you did not learn this one in law school, this rule provides that any pleading presented to…
About a month ago I mocked Jeff Skilling’s appellate team, not for the quality of what they said to the court but because it took them 239 pages to say it. (I enjoyed the fact that the word count made…
The Legal Times reported today that Judge Roy Pearson, who lost a bench trial in June in his $54 million lost-pants lawsuit against Custom Cleaners, has appealed. Pearson, who shed actual tears during the trial and yet seems to have…
According to a report on Monday, a Pennsylvania architect challenging the license of a rival architect recently appealed his case to the state’s highest court. This means Mark Altman is still trying to get Michael Molnar’s license revoked even though…
Reuters News reported today that a German man had ended his ten-day protest of a fraud conviction by coming down out of a treehouse-like box that he had built on top of a 72-foot-tall pole. As the report put it,…
Yesterday I argued an appeal in California’s Court of Appeal for the Second District, which covers Los Angeles, and I was just getting ready to leave after the argument when they called the next case, Christoff v. Nestle USA. That…
One called Ignacio v. Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. All the judges. If you really need a reason, it’s something called “the rule of necessity.” As in, if you sue all the judges…