Thursday Digital Dump!

Hi kids, here's what is clogging up my ability to play words with friends all day:

1.  Rodier & Rodier to former client David Cassidy --  I don't think I love you:

Aging Fort Lauderdale heartthrob David Cassidy is getting sued yet again for not paying his bills – and this time, it’s for attorney’s fees!

The Partridge Family’s star and singer, 63, is being sued by the Broward County law firm of Rodier & Rodier, who represented Cassidy when he was sued for contract indebtedness in 2007.

The lawsuit, brought by a neighbor who owned a race horse with Cassidy, was settled in 2011. Terms were confidential.

But Cassidy was ordered to pay for his own legal bills – totaling more than $134,000!
Two years later, Cassidy has yet to make good on the debt, and now he’s being sued.

Always get a large retainer from aging rock stars, I always say!

2.  Turns out banks don't always do the right thing, according to DBR reporter PIA (that's Paola Iuspa-Abbott, a great scrabble word btw!).

3.   Adolfo Pesquera reports on the Florida Bar's investigation of JAABlog's William Gelen and our joint statement condemning same.

4.  Richard Shuler on the value of "Public Citizen":

I cannot tell you how many times the most ardent hardline defense attorney has called me to say: “My mother just lost her life savings in an investment scam; can you help her?” or “My father just died as a result of an accident or medical malpractice; can you help us?”

Because of abusive and unconstitutional arbitration clauses that corporations seek to use as a shield against accountability or the Anti-Consumer Medical Malpractice Act, it may be impossible to provide justice. Folks need to realize that their own liberties and rights hang in the balance.

The organization known as “Public Citizen” can make them aware of this reality.

5.  All hail General Zod!

(I've long argued the dude is due for a comeback).

 

Your Friday Morning Digital Dump!

Hi there, that was some debate last night!

Anyone else notice how much water Paul Ryan drank?

He's obviously following the P90X nutritional plan to a tee:

In all of the phases eating frequent small meals and drinking lots of water are emphasized.

Where were the celery sticks?  (Biden probably would have chomped them right out of Ryan's hands.)

In other news, DBR reporter Deb Espana reports on law students doing good things:

A Guatemalan teenager who came to the United States with his parents when he was 11 is attending a magnet high school focusing on law studies and dreams of becoming a Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

He is a senior at the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial High School in Miami and seeking admission to West Point.

But because of his status as an undocumented immigrant, he has been unable to take any jobs and faces other limitations as a noncitizen.

To help children and young adults like him, Florida International University College of Law has joined forces with the law schools at the University of Miami and St. Thomas University to handle applications under a change in immigration policy by President Barack Obama. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allows the deferral of removal for immigrant students and young adults.

Call me crazy, but don't you just love stories like this?

Meet the Herald's newest columnist, Florida Supreme Court Justice James E.C. Perry: 

Make no mistake. It’s not just about the Florida Supreme Court justices and appellate court judges on the ballot. It’s much bigger than that. The integrity of the entire judicial branch — and therefore, the overall balance of our state’s government — is in play.

Look at it this way: Will Florida Supreme Court Justices and appellate court judges in the future hesitate to make difficult decisions that they believe are required of them if their colleagues have been voted out of office for doing just that?

You be the judge.

Not bad, Your Honor -- and already a huge improvement on Garvin!

Finally, this guy is building a practice focusing exclusively on e-discovery: 

Teppler is now going where few other attorneys on the Gulf Coast are, by hyper-focusing his practice on a rare new section of the law: electronic discovery. The concentration isn’t only counterintuitive. It’s also timely, in that the Florida Supreme Court recently adopted seven new rules of civil procedure specific to electronic data discovery in state courts.

The rules are supposed to make the e-discovery process clearer, more specific and more efficient. The rules, which also spell out how judges can sanction attorneys in e-discovery matters, were adopted in July and went into effect Sept. 1.

The trick now is to ensure attorneys, and by extension, their clients, are fully aware of the changes. “There are some landmines (in e-discovery) that can trip up attorneys, to the detriment of clients,” Teppler says. “Attorneys know how to handle technology — kind of. But when it comes to litigation, they are at a disadvantage.”

Right, like I had to ask my kid last night how to change my default settings in iTunes.  He told me to stick my metadata where the sun don't shine.

The children really are our future!

 more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/11/3045785_p2/in-florida-separation-of-powers.html#storylink=cpy

Centennial Symposium Recap!

I must echo Rumpy and David O -- Robert Kuntz and Tim Ravitch put together a creative, informative and highly entertaining panel discussion today on "new media" and the 24-hour news cycle.

Kudos on a job well done.

In fact, it was so hip we actually got into a Twitter fight while making our presentations, and David managed to upload camera pics of the exciting, nonstop action.

A few highlights:

1.  Rump's voice-synthesized "I am Stephen Hawking" shout out.

2.  Brian Tannebaum calling this blog "a scabrous tumor that must be violently excised from the South Florida legal community before it slowly and inexorably kills us all."

(Brian, did I quote you right?)

3.  Eddie Dominguez of the DBR on their progressive and collaborative approach to new media, bloggers, plus how they all differ.

BTW, let me repeat -- we are extremely fortunate to have the DBR as our local professional and business newspaper, you guys are the best and we depend on you daily (on the weekends, however, we're totally screwed).

4.  Kendall Coffey holding up the panel discussion to do a five-minute segment with CNN on how to finally obtain lasting peace in the Middle East.

I'm kidding!

(It was actually on how best to solve the Japanese nuclear meltdown).

Either way, this guy really knows his stuff.

Have a great weekend!

Exclusive -- Shocking Stuart Rosenfeldt Turtle Tape!

It's good to see South Florida lawyers, in these difficult economic times, not live up to the cliché of being overprivileged, self-absorbed lunkheads:

Bankruptcy attorneys for RRA say Rosenfeldt went hog wild on the firm’s credit card, compiling $1 million in purchases. He bought cars and jewelry, but he also bought exotic turtles, often spending $1,200 to $1,500 a shot at places like Underground Reptiles.

At a July 2 deposition with bankruptcy attorneys, Rosenfeldt said he still had five turtles and spent about $20,000 on reptiles.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting anything remotely close to this classic Wikipedia punk, but our crack team of legal misfits have in fact discovered shocking exclusive video to corroborate these unusual reptilian revelations.

It's quite endearing, actually.

Hey, An Actual Interesting Judicial Panel!

My undying yet entirely professional devotion to Melanie Damian is well-known, and fortuitously the restraining order just happens to expire at the end of the month.

But there are other reasons why I have purchased all seats in the first three rows to this fabulous DBR event.

Let's see, Judges Gold, Jordan, Salter, Thornton, Huck, Walsh, and don't forget a certain Resplendently Robed One who seldom leaves the rarefied air of that bunker by the highway.....

In other words....this one actually looks good!

(BTW, I'll be wearing my hand-made, personally tie-dyed "3d DCA JUDGES ROCK!!" t-shirt)

Wet Hot South Florida Morning.

Hey, what do you know -- Jeff Sloman's a plaintiff's attorney!

This great Julie Kay article on the perils of suing clients for unpaid fees is instructive, but I had another takeaway -- the perils of litigating issues instead of attempting to resolve them:

The litigation triggered the competitor, Fort Myers-based Storm Catcher, to ask the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine Armor’s patents, which were ultimately deemed invalid.

The patent ruling destroyed Armor’s business, valued at more than $2 million, said Warren Trazenfeld, a Miami solo attorney who is representing Armor in the malpractice case.

“The patents were the most valuable part of the company,” he said. “Now the business’s valuation has been substantially affected.”

Trazenfeld claims the Squire Sanders lawyers should have requested a re-examination of the patents and could have fixed them in Armor’s favor. Instead, the firm deliberately headed into litigation to run up high legal bills, he alleges.

“It absolutely could have been an easy fix,” Trazenfeld said.

Litigation always has the potential to spin out of control, and always has the potential to result in unintended -- and even unforeseen -- consequences.

It's funny to see businesses that work so hard to contain and/or eliminate risk throw caution to the wind when they're embroiled in litigation (not that I'm complaining).

Besides the billable hour economic self-interest, why is reaching out early for a compromise resolution sometimes so difficult to do?

Swlip, this one's for you!

Ruden McClosky -- The Way We Were.

Julie Kay does a virtual commemorative edition look back at the rise and falling fortunes of Ruden McClosky.

There's so much good stuff in there you really ought to just break down and get a DBR subscription (not you guys still at Ruden -- you need to save some money).

Here's what a former insider said was the problem:

“They need to reach down in the ranks and get some young people,” said a former Ruden lawyer who did not want to be identified. “I think the problem is they refuse to change. Hildebrandt [the international law firm consultants] should be in there, cleaning the place out. The most critical thing a firm has to do is transition its leadership. That’s a critical failure.”

Hmm, wonder who he means -- firm leader Carl Schuster ran the ship for 23 years.

Could it be that all you guys did was real estate?

No way, according to partner Michael Krul, who's been there 35 years:

“I would say we did not make any mistake by not diversifying outside of real estate, period, end of story. If you’re going to be a major law firm in Florida, you better have a significant real estate practice. We have never failed to pursue other opportunities in other practice areas. We have hired intellectual property lawyers for 15 years. We have a very vibrant health care practice. The most available and strongest part of the economy has been real estate.”

So what was the problem, smart guys?

Of course:

The real problem, according to firm leaders, was the firm culture — essentially, Ruden was focused on being “nice guys.”

Isn't that always the problem?

Well, no more Mr. Nice Guy:

Some of the lawyers might have left after being asked to sign personal guarantees, Krul and Schuster said.

“I think if you were already on the fence, you might not want to make the commitment,” Krimsky said.

Krul said Ruden was asked for the personal guarantees after the firm needed to draw on its line of credit more heavily in the first two months of 2009 than in prior years. The assumption was the economy would turn around by early this year and they’d be able to pay the money back. That didn’t happen. When the line of credit came due in January, the firm wasn’t able to pay it off.

So the bank — now under new ownership and unfamiliar with Ruden — requested the personal guarantees, Krul said. Ruden approached other banks for a line of credit, but they all wanted the guarantees, he said. Eighty to 85 percent of the lawyers who were asked to sign did, but no pressure was put on them to do so, firm leaders said.

Schuster won’t say how much is owed except to say it’s “paltry compared to the size of the firm.”

A law firm consultant who did not want to be identified said it is highly unusual for a bank to require personal guarantees of lawyers, and the odds are against a firm surviving after such a “critical juncture.”

“I think that both people inside and outside the firm know that and sense that,” the consultant said. “Having partners sign guarantees is not in the mainstream at all. They need to look at what can be done to salvage the firm.”

Notwithstanding all this, Ruden -- believe it or not -- is in acquisition mode:

“Ruden is looking to acquire, not be acquired, if the right opportunity presented itself,” he said.

Right, like acquiring a firm with paying clients, a big line of credit, streamlined and well-run operations, this is just off the top of my head.......

(I'm getting verklempt)

Judge Zloch Sends New Year's Greetings to Loring Spolter!

Zloch Order 12-30-09 Re Spolter Sanctions

Hi folks, I hope you all had a tremendous New Year.

I think it's fair to say that whatever you did this New Year's, you probably had a better time than Loring Spolter, who was the recipient of a very special holiday card by Judge Zloch.

The entire Order is a must-read, but here's the kicker:

However, the Court wishes to make absolutely clear that Mr. Spolter is not being punished for his criticism of the undersigned. Despite Magistrate Judge Rosenbaum’s thorough and articulate 92-page Report and Recommendation confirming the same, this Court will state the basis for sanctions once more——for those who continue to mislead the public by characterizing Mr. Spolter as some sort of First Amendment martyr. Mr. Spolter has the absolute right to criticize a judge, but what he does not have the right to do is to file pleadings in Federal court for an improper purpose and in bad faith. For this, and for engaging in behavior that no reasonably competent lawyer in like circumstances would have engaged in, and for these reasons alone, Mr. Spolter will be suspended from practice in this District for 42 months, he will be referred to the Florida bar, a reasonable fine will be imposed, and reasonable attorney’s fees assessed against him and his law firm, Loring N. Spolter, P.A.

BTW, I had no idea the DBR is a "local tabloid"!

Did you see that, Julie?

If the DBR is a tabloid what does that make us?

(Don't answer).