Secrest Wardle exodus cancels city attorney agreement

Farmington Patch.com is reporting this morning that the departure of four attorneys from the Farmington Hills office of Secrest Wardle has led to the termination of a memorandum of understanding between the law firm and the City of Farmington.

One of the exiting lawyers, Thomas Schultz, is Farmington’s city attorney. He and colleagues Steven Joppich, Stephen Meads and Elizabeth Kudla Saarela, have left the firm to join a new firm, Johnson, Rosati, Schultz & Joppich.

Joppich is the City of Farmington Hills’ attorney. Internet news company Patch.com is not reporting on the status of the agreement between Farmington Hills and Secrest Wardle.

How dare you admit me into law school!

Still a couple weeks to go but here’s the early entry for Lawsuit of the Month.

Much has been made here and elsewhere about the lawsuits against law schools alleging falsified (or at the very least, inflated) job statistics. Most of these lawsuits are based in the idea that law schools care only about their bottom line and that they are letting in too many students without regard to what happens to them after graduation.

One student in Tennessee has sued her law school on a similar theory, I guess, a much more, shall we say, creative theory.  She’s suing the school claiming it negligently admitted her. [Knoxville News Sentinel via ABA Journal].

A student at Lincoln Memorial University is suing the institution in Knox County Chancery Court, claiming college administrators negligently allowed her to enroll in law school there even though she is ineligible to sit for the state bar exam.

Morgan Crutchfield, a part-time student at the Knoxville-based John J. Duncan Jr. School of Law, is asking for as much as $750,000 in damages after school officials told her she could enroll despite lacking 12 credit hours in her undergraduate degree, according to the complaint filed Tuesday.

“They discarded the rules at the very least, and I think that as attorneys and as administrators, they’re bound to know what the requirements are when they’re attempting to bring students into the law program,” said her attorney, Hugh Ward Jr. of the Knoxville firm Bernstein, Stair & McAdams.

According to the article, Crutchfield applied to the school before learning she was short of her requirements to graduate from Penn State. The school said it wasn’t a problem so long as she completed the credit before 3L. But when she applied for the Tennessee bar, the board wouldn’t allow her to sit for the exam because she had to finish the credit before starting law school.  It should also be noted that she still hasn’t completed the undergrad requirements, even though she’s 2 1/2 years into law school.

Underwear Bomber gets life in prison

Per the Detroit Free Press, and every other news outlet imagineable, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aka the Underwear Bomber, has been sentenced to life in prison.

The liveblog from the Freep is worth a read. Two of the people whose comments are described are Kurt Haskell, a Taylor-based attorney and his wife, Lori, who were on the plane.

Is this the solution to the indigent defense funding problem?

Let’s hope not. Over the last couple of years, we’ve devoted plenty of page inches to covering the sorry state of Michigan’s indigent defense system. And, needless to say, Michigan isn’t the only state having such problems.

In New Orleans, the public defender’s office cancelled the contracts of 33 lawyers last month, leaving 543 defendants without counsel. One judge, Arthur Hunter, came up with a solution, as far as the cases in his courtroom: he wrote letters to 33 high-profile lawyers asking them to handle the cases for free. [New Orleans Times-Picayune, via ABA Journal.]

“This is not a constitutional crisis. This is a constitutional emergency,” Hunter said.

Hunter said he would seek private lawyers to represent the 33 indigent defendants left without attorneys in his court section. He could end up ordering them to take the cases.

Hunter rejected a bid by private contract lawyers who asked to withdraw from a half-dozen cases because the public defender’s office is refusing to pay them. [Public Defender Derwyn] Bunton, who stopped the contract payments as of Jan. 16, said it’s not clear those lawyers will ever get paid for the work beyond that date. At last check, he said, his office owed about $200,000 in back pay for contract lawyers.

Hopefully we never get to this point.

Are you a lawyer? Then get $5 off new Mamet play

If you’re into gritty playwright David Mamet’s work, or only call yourself a theatergoer when law-related content applies, then mark your calendar for this coming Sunday, Feb. 19.

That’s because it’s “Lawyer Day” at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre (JET) in West Bloomfield, when tickets for both the 2 and 6:30 p.m. performances of Mamet’s newest play, “Race,” are $5 off if you simply mention you are a practicing lawyer.

It’s described as a “dazzling, instant classic,” about “a would-be client accused of rape and his defense that is plotted by a very small law firm with its two lead lawyers and young associate.  And yes, it comes complete with the bad-faith twist and the sustained surge of words rushing toward collision that are guaranteed to let you know that this is a Mamet masterpiece.”

Of course, it being a Mamet play, it contains provocative language, and racial and sexual references.

Performances take place at the DeRoy Theatre, inside the Jewish Community Center, 6600 W. Maple, West Bloomfield. Call (248) 788-2900 or visit www.jettheatre.org.

AG says ‘no dice’ to Lansing casino

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s latest cause is the defeat of a plan to build a gaming casino in downtown Lansing.

Schuette and Gov. Rick Snyder have told the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewas, which already operates five casinos, that they can’t build on non-tribal property, reports Michigan Public Radio.

But the tribe’s spokesman disagrees, and so does Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. The tribe says that it has the legal right to take the land into trust.

Will legislature try again for wrongful imprisonment compensation?

For at least the last four years, the Michigan Legislature has not passed proposed bills aimed at compensating the wrongfully imprisoned. And there would be no reason to believe that this year would be any different.

Except that the bill aimed at providing compensation to people who have been wrongfully locked up is tied to a bill that would tax any compensation received for lost wages.

Senate Bill 61, was referred late last year to the House Judiciary Committee, which was scheduled to hear testimony on it this week. The committee hearing was canceled, but the bill is still in the committee’s hopper. The bill would compensate those who were imprisoned in a state correctional facility, and whose convictions are later vacated or found not guilty in a retrial. Further, the person would have to have DNA or other evidence to support his or her innocence.

The wrongfully convicted person could be compensated up to $40,000 per year for each year he or she was in prison, economic damages including lost wages and costs associated with defense, and reasonable attorney fees.

Senate Bill 60 would tax the income for years beginning after Dec. 31, 2010, and would be passed only if Senate Bill 61 passes.

Now that seems like progress.

Shooting a rocket from one’s butt leads to lawsuit

Probably the best line from  from the 1994 stinker “Major League II” is when play-by-play announcer Harry Doyle describes an opponent’s home run with “He’ll need a rocket up his [BLEEP] to catch that one. That baby’s gone!”

Well, Harry, that one’s been tried. And the result has the rocket launcher’s fraternity being sued. [The West Virginia Record, via Legal Newsline; HT: Marcia McBrien @CourtInfo, which, if you are on Twitter, you should follow.]

A man is suing Alpha Tau Omega after he was injured at a frat party. Travis Hughes, another man at the party, was also named as a defendant in the suit.

On May 1, 2011, at about 1:30 a.m., the fraternity was having a house party both Louis Helmberg III and Hughes were attending, according to a complaint filed Jan. 23 in Cabell Circuit Court.

Helmberg, who plays for Marshall University’s baseball team, claims Hughes became intoxicated and attempted to “shoot bottle rockets out of his anus on the ATO deck.”
When doing so, Hughes startled Helmberg, who then jumped back and fell off of the deck of the fraternity house and was injured, according to the suit. He was lodged between the deck and an air conditioning unit.

The suit actually alleges that the fraternity should have had a railing on the deck, which might have prevented the guy from falling 3 to 4 feet off the edge.

So he didn’t exactly sue the kid for shooting rockets out of his anus. But still, this case goes from the bottom of the barrel to the top of the imaginary standings for 2012 Lawsuit of the Year.

And  those of you with kids in college, eh, I’m sure they’re not doing this kind of stuff.

They might not be able to sing, but can they lip-sync?

If Madonna can lip-sync to an audience of millions, so can Grand Rapids-based judges and attorneys.

OK, maybe to a smaller audience.

Taking a nod from the long-missed “Puttin’ on the Hits” TV competition, more 60 members of the Grand Rapids legal community will take to the stage Thursday, Feb. 9 for the fifth biennial Just Lips Celebrity Lip Sync.

The event, presented by the Justice Foundation of West Michigan and the Grand Rapids Bar Association, will be emceed by 63rd District Court Judge Sara Smolenski, and takes place 7 p.m. at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids.

The contestants, who will lip-sync popular songs while decked out in costumes and cutting whatever rug they can find, include Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Jane Markey; 17th Circuit Court Judge Christopher Yates; attorneys from Barnes & Thornburg, Varnum, Rhoades McKee, Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge, and Miller Johnson; and attorneys and staff from both Legal Aid of Western Michigan and the Kent County Office of the Defender.

Proceeds benefit the Justice Foundation of West Michigan.

Tickets are $25. For more information, call (616) 454-5550 or visit http://www.grbar.org.

COA says Moroun/Stamper imprisonment improper

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the imprisonment of Detroit International Bridge Co. bigs Manuel “Matty” Moroun and Dan Stamper was improper.

Last month, Wayne Circuit Judge Prentiss Edwards imprisoned the two for failing to follow a court order to finish the Gateway Project that the state sank millions into a few years back.

In a majority opinion, Judge Kirsten Frank Kelly said the judge’s order wasn’t specific enough to keep Moroun and Stamper in jail.

We cannot uphold the trial court’s commitment order where the condition for release requires DIBC to “fully” comply with the February 1, 2010, order as it failed to identify “the act or duty” which must be performed before the incarceration may be terminated. MCL 600.1715(2). While appellants may have the present immediate ability to commence and continue construction, they do not have the present immediate ability to actually finish the construction in accordance with the directives set forth in the February 1, 2010, opinion and order for a period of six to twelve months. Therefore, the condition does not permit appellants to use the keys to obtain their release until the project is completed, or, in other words, “to avoid the sentence” and purge the contempt. Our decision does not preclude further civil contempt sanctions, including imprisonment that was similar to the one imposed by the trial court in January 2011. However, we leave this decision to discretion of the trial court to identify the act or duty appellants will be required to perform, that will coerce the initiation and continuation of compliance with the February 1, 2010, order within the confines of the case law and the statute for civil contempt sanctions.

Judge Kurtis Wilder concurred re: the imprisonment, but Judge Karen Fort Hood said she would have upheld the sanction.