A Ticket Attorney, A Furniture Attorney, And A Traffic Hearing Examiner Go Into A Bar......

And one of them comes out a Palm Beach circuit court judge:

Lemoine fired the first salvo by touting records that show he has handled 684 cases in Palm Beach County courts, compared to Daire's 143, Small's 118 and Goodman's 18. The records, he says, prove who has the needed experience.

Goodman counters that Lemoine is mainly a ticket doctor, which lends itself to high volume. Lemoine said traffic cases represent about 20 percent of his practice. Lemoine, in turn, writes off Daire's high numbers, saying many of the cases are to collect money from customers who stiffed the furniture stores.

Oy, good thing something like this could never happen here in Miami-Dade.

In other news, blind pig......Glenn Garvin.

Finally, Miami is in the running to land the BP Oil Spill litigation:

A federal judicial panel is meeting Thursday in Boise, Idaho, to consider whether to consolidate some or all of the lawsuits for pretrial decisions before a single judge, a development that most observers say is a foregone conclusion. BP and the other companies favor federal court in Houston — near their major U.S. operations — while a majority of plaintiffs' attorneys have suggested New Orleans, closer to the broken well and to many of the hardest-hit victims. Courts in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama also are being suggested as venues.

Bring home the bacon -- this could do more for the local economy than 15 Super Bowls.

Hey, I'm Just a Sociologist!

Kyle Munzenreider over at Riptide highlights an interesting interview from the Palm Beach Post with Palm Beach County circuit judge Krista Marx, who has some....intriguing theories on how crime is moving north from Miami-Dade County, like a "red tide":

After nearly 25 years in the criminal justice system and 11 years on the bench, Marx has developed a few macro theories, primarily that crime is a sort of reverse evolution, and, in terms of Florida, it is inexorably moving northward from Miami-Dade like red tide.

"We have crime in Palm Beach County, but not on the scary level of Miami-Dade; we have corruption in Palm Beach County, but not on the bench. ... Eventually, we'll be like Miami-Dade, and that's because we live in paradise and everybody wants to live here -- including criminals."

Maybe we could put up a fence, to keep the undesirables out?

To be fair, many of her comments, particularly as to upholding the Constitution and the presumption of innocence, and the reality that our system requires that some guilty people walk free -- and antiquated perceptions of women judges -- are insightful and even admirable.

But "reverse evolution" I'm not so sure about.