The Los Angeles County Bar Blog

Newslines

"A Santa Clara, Calif., jury awarded $49 million in damages Monday to a college student who was on his way to a camping trip when two trucks collided and one struck the car he was riding in, causing him traumatic brain injuries." Cal Biz Lit.

Phone Apps for Lawyers. ABA Journal.

Worst of Recession Is Over for Law Firms, Says PricewaterhouseCoopers Survey. ABA Journal.

"The Commodity Futures Trading Commission wants the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to step off. The CFTC has a case pending in federal district court in New York against a commodities trader named Brian Hunter. FERC, however, also wants to investigate and prosecute Hunter." BLT.

Newslines

A First District decision agrees with the discovery referee that some objections to special interrogatories are "unreasonable, evasive, lacking in legal merit and without justification." The court also doesn't think that the phrase "all economic damages you claim to have sustained" is "vague and ambiguous." Sanctions upheld. Clement v. Alegre.

"The issue is whether the exception in section 1957 prevents the government from indicting a criminal defense lawyer for taking payment from a client." The attorney, Ben Kuehne, has been accused of laundering excessive fees.

"She participated in the hearing for some portion of time, but was ultimately escorted from counsel table to the jury box by one or two bailiffs." Service of process for legal at a post office box rental store, which is the address on an attorney's letterhead and the one that appears for her on the California State Bar's Web site, is adequate. Hearn v. Howard 9/1/09 CA2/2 B208782.

Thelen LLP filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. Legal Pad.

"Elyn Saks has been named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Saks is an expert in mental health law, and the author of a remarkable book about her own experience with schizophrenia, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness." Legal History Blog.

IRS Extends Amnesty Deadline

The Internal Revenue Service has extended the deadline to participate in the FBAR amnesty program to October 15, 2009, and has indicated that there will be no more extensions. Most of the clients that we have consulted declined to participate in the amnesty, but it may be a good idea in some cases. The amnesty would work well for those taxpayers who are worried about criminal penalties (applying for the amnesty automatically gets the taxpayer around criminal charges).  The amnesty, if the taxpayer is accepted, will also significantly drop the penalties imposed by the Service on the taxpayer.

Many taxpayers believe that they will never be caught, and participating in the amnesty is therefore not a good idea. That may be true in many cases, but the risk profile for each taxpayer is different, and the various options should be analyzed and weighed very carefully. So far, the majority of taxpayers that we have seen participate in the amnesty are those that the amnesty was not really intended to snare. For example, a lot of Iranians, Israelis, and Eastern European immigrants have offshore bank accounts. These accounts were funded with money not taxable by the United States (as these people were not US taxpayers at the time). Consequently, the only thing that these people are guilty of, is not disclosing the $12 of interest that they received on their foreign bank account. Hardly the definition of a tax cheat.

Those who have for years been hiding millions of dollars offshore will likely continue to do so.

Newslines

LACBA's Grand Opening happens Thursday evening, September 24, at 1055 West Seventh Street, Suite 2700, Los Angeles, CA 90017-2577. This is a great opportunity for members, affiliate partnerships, sponsors, new vendors, and friends to develop new business relationships and enhance existing ones. More.

BofA to Congress: Make Us. "Bank of America, advised by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, did not meet a Monday deadline to turn over documents related to its merger with Merrill Lynch to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, according to a source at BofA familiar with the matter." Zach Lowe at The American Lawyer has the story.

Affairs, officials, and surveillance. A First Amendment right to hire a private eye? Tichinin v. City of Morgan Hill (Cal. Ct. App. - Sept. 21, 2009).

"Helen B. Kim, a securities litigation partner in Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP’s Los Angeles and New York offices, is the new president of the Women Lawyers of Los Angeles." The Met News.

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to consider the First Amendment rights of corporations. Volokh.

The ups and downs of asbestos litigation: O'Neil v. Crane Co., Second Dist., Div. 5 (and here) and Taylor v. Elliott Turbomachinery Co., Inc., 171 Cal. App. 4th 564 (CA1/1 A116816 Feb. 25 2009), rev. denied June 10, 2009.

The Anti-Defamation league is to honor community leaders at 15th Annual Deborah Awards and 2009 Jurisprudence Awards Dinner September 30, to be held at The Montage, 225 N. Canon, Beverly Hills 90210. More.

Honoring Those Who Help Victims of Domestic Violence

Shauna M. Albright writes: On November 12, the John M. Langston Bar Association will host its 2009 Domestic Violence Cocktail Reception from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the California African American Museum, located in Exposition Park at 600 State Drive, Los Angeles, 90037. The event is being hosted by Langston's Family Law Committee. Kamala Harris, the district attorney of San Francisco, will be the keynote speaker. Honorees at this event are The Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Jenesse Center, Betty Nordwind of the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, and Bernita Walker of Project Peacemakers. The honorees have shown an undying commitment to helping victims of domestic violence. To purchase tickets to this event or to sponsor, visit langstonbar.org.

Newslines

"Los Angeles attorney Howard Miller lambastes lawyers who claimed to be offering help to homeowners facing foreclosure but did nothing except take their money." LA Times

"Wells Fargo & Co. said it fired [Cheronda Guyton], accused of using a bank-owned home in the exclusive Malibu Colony for personal use....A real estate agent for the Elins said the couple was financially devastated by losses in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme and had signed over the property to Wells Fargo to help satisfy a debt." Boston.com. In its October issue, Los Angeles Lawyer will have an article on the tax treatment of Ponzi scheme losses.

"Get Ready for More Bank Failures." Business Week.

Judge decries "façade of enforcement." U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff rules against accepting a settlement between the SEC and Bank of America. Bloomberg.

In LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka, the Ninth Circuit rules on an allegation of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), by an employee.

Newslines

Anthony V. Salerno and David M. Murphy's "Jailhouse Call" in the September issue of Los Angeles Lawyer offers guidance to attorneys who do not practice criminal defense law on what to do when a client calls from jail.

Len Aslanian worked as a law clerk with the HIV & AIDS Legal Services Alliance (HALSA) of Los Angeles on discrimination and privacy issues and was one of only eight students from across the country honored by Equal Justice Works as a Summer Corp Standout. He describes his creative legal work: "We are considering charging a certain employer with violations of multiple sections of the California Civil Code that have rarely been litigated, some less than a dozen times, and never in the context of HIV discrimination. If we are successful, we will help to set new precedent that future victims of civil rights violations can draw upon."

Just a reminder: Lawyers, do not call a judge an "evil, unfair witch" on your blog.

Overlawyered has the story of the Ninth Circuit decision that evidence that a criminal defendant has Asperger's syndrome should have been admitted at trial. The ABA Journal also covers the decision.

Newslines

According to the Met News, "The California Supreme Court has adopted a new rule requiring attorneys who do not have malpractice insurance to directly notify their clients about the lack of coverage."

Can Paris Hilton sue Hallmark Cards for a card with her likeness and her well-known phrase "That's hot"? The Ninth Circuit decides. Shuan Martin reports.

From today's LA Times: "Dimitrios P. Biller of Pacific Palisades, a former managing counsel for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., said in the suit that the company repeatedly forced him to illegally withhold information from opposing lawyers and made him resign in September 2007." Legal Pad LA.

USA v. Inzunza (9th Circuit): City council members convicted of fraud and extortion, strip clubs, a "concerned citizen" who'd appear at a hearing, and a guy named Tony who owns a gym and talks to the FBI. Stay classy, San Diego.