LAWYERSCHILE EL MUNDO INTERNACIONAL DEL ABOGADO

Rodrigo González Fernández y un grupo de egresados de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad la Republica en Chile ha decidido poner al alcance de todo el mundo de la profesion legal importantes materias en Ingles para ir practicando el trabajo en materia de Tratados internacionales y que nuestra profesión estará en primera linea. Invitamos a todos a opinar, debatir, participar activamente.Es el primer blog legal en inglés de latinoamerica.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Political Lawyers Ask, What Could Be Verse?

Political Lawyers Ask, What Could Be Verse?

It is the time of year when poor Clement Moore begins rolling restlessly in his grave. The author of the 1823 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," is condemned to endure a perpetual litany of adaptations and parodies of his one enduring work. The latest comes from the government affairs group at Womble Carlyle, where lawyers are predicting a Christmas Eve flurry of activity from the Federal Election Commission and felt compelled to rhyme about it.

At the Womble blog Political GPS, it is noted that the FEC has announced action on only 38 enforcement cases this year, compared to an average of 100 in previous years. There is good reason for this, the blog suggests. For the first half of the year, the Senate was deadlocked over new appointments and the FEC lacked a quorum. Without a quorum, it could not authorize any investigations or even any settlements.

The blog predicts "that a bunch of cases will come tumbling out of Santa's bag, just in time for Christmas." Many will involve routine matters, but a few will involve what election law insiders call "Christmas communications" -- notable announcements that get lost in the season's snowdrifts. To mark this annual end-of-December ritual, Political GPS offers its take on Moore's verse:

'Twas two days before Christmas at the Federal Election Commission,
When the press office issued a quiet transmission.

Whispers of cases backed up for weeks,
The docket shakes loose, with hardly a squeak.

There is more, but rather than deprive the blog of your clicks, I encourage you to read the rest here -- with due deference, of course, to the spirit of Mr. Moore, not to mention the FEC.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 17, 2008

CONSULTEN, OPINEN , ESCRIBAN LIBREMENTE
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Crack Cases Clog Federal Courts

Crack Cases Clog Federal Courts

A new report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission says that federal courts handled more than 17,000 cases this year brought by crack cocaine offenders seeking shorter prison sentences. The cases came in the wake of retroactive amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines that reduced prison terms for crack cocaine offenses.

Nationwide, 17,168 cases were filed seeking sentence reductions and 12,119 were granted. The jurisdictions that saw the greatest number of these cases were Virginia's Eastern District with 1,113 and Florida's Middle District with 1,065. The federal circuits with the most filings were the 4th with 3,899 and the 11th with 3,314. The cases that were successful resulted in an average decrease in sentence of two years, from 137 months to 114 months. Of the cases that failed, the most common reason was that they were deemed ineligible for the reduction under the revised guidelines.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 17, 2008 at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Worst Judicial Hellholes

In the spirit of the holiday season, the thoughtful folks at the American Tort Reform Association have delivered their annual gift to the defense lawyers and tort critics of the world. In what has become an annual tradition, ATRA has released its latest ranking of Judicial Hellholes, "America's most unfair jurisdictions in which to be sued."

After a reprieve last year, West Virginia reclaims its 2006 top spot on the list for what ATRA describes as "its near perfect storm of anti-business rulings, massive lawsuits and cozy relationships between the personal injury bar, the state attorney general and some in the judiciary." Six other jurisdictions make the list: South Florida, Cook County in Illinois, Atlantic County in New Jersey, Montgomery and Macon counties in Alabama, Los Angeles County in California and Clark County in Nevada.

ATRA also provides a "watch list" of jurisdictions that could become trouble and doles out "dishonorable mentions" to the supreme courts of Massachusetts and Missouri -- the former for a ruling about doctors' duty to warn of a drug's side effects and the latter for a ruling "that effectively invites plaintiffs from all around the country to file claims in the Show Me (Your Lawsuits) State."

For the first time this year, the report strays from its criticism of plaintiff-loving judges to include plaintiff-loving legislators. Judges, after all, must "play the cards they are dealt" by state legislatures, ATRA notes. In a section of the report titled "Tort Deform," ATRA criticizes a "more activist strategy" of lobbying by the American Association for Justice and its state counterparts to enact laws more favorable to plaintiffs. This seems odd, given the longtime activist lobbying pursued by so-called tort reformers and ATRA's own stated mission of lobbying for laws more favorable to defendants. When it comes to defining hellholes, I guess the devil is in the details.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 17, 2008