Insurance companies are eager to convince us that jury awards need caps. We most often hear about this relating to medical malpractice, but if these companies had their way, all lawsuits would be capped — at some ridiculously low figure like $250,000. After all, the less they pay out, the more they make. And it’s […]

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Today is the first of several Fridays I begin something new and interesting. Lawyers perform various types of services, some of which include representing people in disagreeable civil actions and criminal proceedings, both of which can be adversarial. Many people, when they think of using lawyers, think “I’m going to get the meanest pit-bull-of-an-attorney I […]

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Occasionally, people say to me, “Why would you want to be a defense attorney?” There’s a kind of ambivalence — which I share with them — over the idea of “protecting child molesters and murderers.”

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The President and Vice-President of the United States go to the Supreme Court today to see if they can withhold information from the American people. At issue is whether oil companies can write the United States Energy Policy without fear that we, the people, will find out how the government and legal system are being […]

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The police have reopened a case originally — and probably wrongly — deemed a suicide in 1946. If this was a murder, rather than a suicide, it occurred 58 years ago. Someone sent them a three-page, single-spaced letter, signed “M. Smith,” saying that she had flirted with Harold Vest and her boyfriend went into a […]

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The Las Vegas Review-Journal, on page 11A of today’s paper, reports that a U.S. marshal Friday confiscated recorders from two reporters and erased them after they recorded remarks made by Justice Scalia during a public speech. The reporters had no advance warning — although one wonders what Scalia fears in having his accurately-recorded remarks reach […]

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Anti-abortionists are walking a dangerous path these days. But in a world which is increasingly unable to make distinctions, it’s no large surprise. After all, this is a world which can’t tell the difference between al Queda and Iraq, doesn’t understand that it’s possible to be against religion in government without being against religion or […]

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The judge in the Michael Jackson case has issued gag orders on all involved. Well, almost all.

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Two Colorado state legislators want to pass laws that afford protection for those who claim to have been raped from having their identities publicly broadcast. “Sooner or later, the identity of the victim will get out. To try to enforce a scorched earth policy against anyone disclosing the name really doesn’t make a lot of […]

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It’s becoming more and more difficult to sit on the sidelines and not believe that Michael Jackson is anything but the victim of an attempted high-tech lynching.

In the latest round, Santa Barbara’s Sheriff Anderson suggests that he’ll charge Jackson with a crime that doesn’t even exist.

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