Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

BRIEF RELIEF

Immigration matter - forms and memo on seeking return of finds seized for failure to disclose.

New York - application for removal of executor and rights in joint account.

Right of husband to obtain alimony - general survey.

Procedures necessary for New York attorney to be licensed as real estate broker.

Locating sections of immigration law in effect in 1983/1984.

Florida case law as to distribution of pre-marital trust and equitable distribution.

Preparation of Federal District Court complaint.

Florida cases on right to have pleadings dismissed for actions of counsel in misrepresentations to court and influencing witnesses.

Opposition to summary judgment and preparation of interrogatories, requests for admission.

PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST

Blau, Theodore H. The Psychologist as Expert Witness. J. Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Strum, Philippa. When the Nazis Came to Skokie: Freedom for Speech We Hate. University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Zitrin, Richard A. The Moral Compass of the American Lawyer: Truth, Justice, Power and Greed. Ballantine Books, 1999.

Fred R. Shapiro and Jane Garry, eds. Trial and Error. Selections from the works of well-known authors on the law and legal institutions, or those involved in the legal process.

Barrett, Paul M. The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America. Chronicles transformation from a promising Harvard Law School graduate to an embittered plaintiff who unsuccessfully sues his law firm for race discrimination. New York: Dutton Press, 1999.

MATTERS OF INTEREST

A small law firm should be disqualified from representing a defendant and third-party plaintiff in an action after it hired an attorney who had formerly worked on the same case as an associate for the law firm representing the plaintiff in the suit. Where an attorney acquires significant client confidences and then engages in "side-switching" to the opposing counsel’s firm, that firm must be disqualified, regardless of any precautionary measures taken by the current firm to distance the attorney from the case. Kassis v. Teacher’s Insurance and Annuity Assoc., 1999 N.Y. Int. 0107 (7/1/99).

The "reimbursement clause" in an agreement between employer, a general partnership of CPA’s, and employee, an accountant, requiring employee to compensate the employer for serving any client of the firm’s office within 18 months after termination of his employment is invalid in part. Court severed overbroad provisions. Seidman v. Hirschberg, 1999 N.Y. Int. 0082 (5/13/99).

Oregon Supreme Court - ORS 18.560(1) placing a statutory "cap" on non-economic damages recoverable in a personal injury action is unconstitutional. Lakin v. Senco Products, Inc., SC S44110 (7/15/99).

California Supreme Court - The news media can be sued for infiltrating a workplace and secretly recording an employee. 

Ninth Circuit

(a) - A part-owner of a family business could avoid estate tax by exchanging a promise to bequeath a "remainder interest" in the company to his children for a life interest in a family member’s stock, says the Ninth Circuit. The Third and Fifth Circuits have held similarly. A dissenting judge in the Third Circuit case called this technique "too good to be true." Under 26 U.S.C. Sect. 2036(a), if a taxpayer transfers a remainder interest in property and keeps a life estate, the entire property is includable in estate tax, "except in case of bona fide sale for adequate and full consideration." Magnin v. Commissioner.

(b) - Eliciting witnesses’ opinions of the credibility of the testimony of other witnesses is prosecutorial misconduct and when it is more probable than not that the cumulative effect of their misconduct materially affected the verdict, a reversal is warranted. United States v. Sanchez, No. 97-30001 (6/1/99).

(c) - A search warrant must be served upon a person present at the search of his or her property at the time of execution absent some exigent circumstance. The court further held that the property seized when the search warrant was not served upon the individual present at the time of execution will be suppressed if the failure to properly serve the warrant was deliberate and prejudicial. United States v. Gantt, No. 98-50171 (6/7/99).

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