Bon Jovi headlines rockin’ court opinion
July 2, 2009
With the Court of Appeals on its summer break, I will have no more chances for a while to keep tabs on the annotations in Judge Glenn T. Harrell’s opinions.
Fortunately, I was alerted by Assistant Legal Editor Christina Doran of a U.S. District Court judge in Philadelphia who picked up the slack. Judge Michael M. Baylson wrote an opinion last month in a lawsuit involving the Arena Football League’s Philadelphia Soul and a former employee.
The Soul are partially owned by Jon Bongiovi - better known as Jon Bon Jovi, better known as the lead singer of Bon Jovi. That led Baylson to reference five Bon Jovi songs and multiple football terms in his first two and last paragraphs of the opinion. Sample sentence: “[T]he Philadelphia Soul… rose in a ‘Blaze of Glory’ to win the 2008… Arena Bowl and then was ‘Shot Through The Heart’ when its 2009 season was canceled by the League due to financial problems.”
Baylson thanked his law clerk in a footnote for helping with the Bon Jovi song titles. It should be noted, however, that “Shot Through the Heart” is popularly misidentified as the title of a song actually called “You Give Love A Bad Name.”
“Have A Nice Day” (and holiday weekend!).
HT: QuizLaw (second post down from June 30).
Sphere: Related ContentLaw school encourages new admittees to ‘think hard’
July 1, 2009
Students admitted to the Class of 2012 at the University of Miami Law School just got a little taste of what it’s like to be an associate in today’s legal market.
If you thought having your start date at the firm delayed was bad, admittees to the Florida law school have been asked to “think hard” about their plans and decide if deferred enrollment might be right for them. Dean Designate Patricia D. White writes:
While I would like to believe that this year’s elevated acceptance rate reflects the great sense of excitement about the Law School and its future that led me to become its new Dean, I fear that some of it may be related to the shortage of jobs in the current economy. Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor in which you can wait out the current economic storm.
If this describes your motivation for going to law school I urge you to think hard about your plans and to consider deferring enrollment. Law school requires an enormous investment of work, energy, time, and money. It is very demanding intellectually and emotionally. Beyond this, in these uncertain and challenging times the nature of the legal profession is in great flux. It is very difficult to predict what the employment landscape for young lawyers will be in May 2012 and thereafter.
The law school is also offering some incentives for deferment, such as a $5,000 Public Interest Deferral Scholarship.
If given the option of deferral, what would you have done?
Hat tip: Above the Law.
Sphere: Related ContentLend a Hand (or the Schooner Tuna solution)
July 1, 2009
I’ll admit, what made me click on the link in this blog post was the line:”This reminds me of the brilliant Scooner [sic] Tuna solution at the end of Mr. Mom.”
My love of Mr. Mom aside, I was intrigued when I was directed to LexisNexis’s “Lend a Hand” program Web site. Recently laid-off attorneys — from firms with 50 or more lawyers — can sign up for the program and receive free six-month profiles on Lawyers.com and martindale.com along with six months of free access to Martindale-Hubbell Connected and the Martindale-Hubbell Career Center.
That’s almost as good a deal as receiving fifty cents off your can of tuna.
Hat tip: Above the Law.
Sphere: Related ContentA Baltimore lawyer talks about Michael
July 1, 2009
After Michael Jackson died last week, I wondered if there might be a Maryland legal angle anywhere here. (Yes, I wonder that same thing about pretty much every major news story.)
So I called Guy Flynn, DLA Piper real estate and finance lawyer and master of the turntable to ask him about his memories of Jackson. Flynn, whom I interviewed last summer for a story on his DJ skills and 40,000-record collection, only collects records made from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, which of course was MJ’s heyday. When I visited Flynn with a photographer and multimedia reporter last year, he played us some tunes, including the Jackson 5 classic “ABC.”
Flynn said he has been playing a lot of Michael Jackson music since the King of Pop died. He has also been flipping through the record jackets, letting him chart Jackson’s evolution over the years. He said Jackson’s work fits in three distinct musical genres. In his early career with his brothers, Jackson was funky. During the 70s, he provided a soundtrack for the disco years. When he teamed up with Quincy Jones, he went pop and “Hollywood,” producing Flynn’s favorite Jackson album, 1979’s Off the Wall.
“If you want to add just a weirdness factor in the later years, that would be a fourth phase,” Flynn said.
Jackson was unique both for his talent and for his ability “to unify the diverse music audience in a way no one else has ever done,” he added. Jackson had black audiences from the beginning but managed to cross over to appeal to white Americans and eventually to music lovers worldwide.
“We’re going to miss him a great deal,” Flynn said. “I think all of us will miss him, the whole world.”
Sphere: Related Content4th Circuit goes 0 for 5 this term
June 30, 2009
It used to be a running joke among the Supreme Court bar that the scariest sentence a high-court advocate could write in a petitioner’s brief was “the decision of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should be overturned.” Such was the rarity of disagreement between the conservative high court and the like-minded appellate panel.
But this accord between the courts has been decreasing gradually during the past few terms. The justices, in their October Term 2006, disagreed with the 4th Circuit in one of the two appeals they heard; in the October Term 2007, the number was two out of three.
And during this Supreme Court session, October Term 2008, the justices rejected the 4th Circuit’s decision in all five written opinions they issued in appeals from the Richmond, Va.-based court. The high court reinstated a firearms conviction (United States v. Hayes); overturned an order for arbitration (Vaden v. Discover Bank); reversed a felony drug conviction (Abuelhawa v. United States); vacated the denial of an asylum seeker from Cameroon’s motion to stay a federal removal order (Nken v. Holder); and vacated the sentence in a drug conviction (Nelson v. United States).
In a sixth case, the justices issued an order vacating the 4th Circuit’s decision upholding the continued detention of a suspected Al-Qaida agent without trial in the United States and dismissing the case as moot. The high court took the step at the request of the Obama administration, which told the justices that the suspect, Ali Al-Marri, will face trial on federal charges of conspiracy and providing support to terrorists.
Anyone who delights in predicting how the Supreme Court will rule should take heed.
Hat tip: SCOTUSBlog.
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