Criticism of Gov. Charlie Crist's trip to Europe is unfair. There is a reason that I and other Florida business leaders travel, at our own expense, on Team Florida missions: They help create investment and jobs in Florida. Economic development is not part of the state's problems; it is part of the solution to a declining economy.
These trips are not junkets. Meetings begin early and run well into the night. It is an exhausting schedule, but worth it.
In fact, they are so exhausting that $320 in electric fans were required to properly modulate the temperature of the Governor's face as he inked mega deals that would benefit all Florida residents:
This particular trip resulted in millions of dollars in sales of Florida products and services. Crist held discussions with companies that will expand or invest for the first time in Florida, creating jobs.
Oh goody! Well, that does seem worth it then. Ok, let's see what Alan submits in terms of evidence of the direct casual relationship between the overseas trip and the resulting millions of dollars of sales of Florida products and services:
...crickets chirping.....
Darn editors! Why does the Herald always leave all the good stuff on the cutting room floor?
Hi folks, it's another Monday morning in paradise. The Dolphins won, the stock market stinks, and I have a hearing in 20 minutes.
How was your weekend?
I've been thinking a lot about the implications of two astonishing frauds committed by well-respected, credible members of the business and legal community -- Marc Dreier (of Dreier LLP), and former NYSE chair Bernard Madoff.
In recent days, Dreier L.L.P., the Park Avenue law firm that Mr. Dreier founded, has been plunged into chaos. At least $35 million in escrow that was to have been held by the firm seems to be missing, the authorities say, and nearly all of its 250 lawyers are now looking for work.
The amounts pale next to the $50 billion fraud that another high-profile New York figure, Bernard L. Madoff, was accused last week of orchestrating, but they have unnerved lawyers and their clients in the broader legal community.
As the Dreier firm’s lawyers rummage through the law firm’s books, which had been until recently Mr. Dreier’s exclusive preserve, they are finding that bills have not been paid in months. Their health insurance is in default and the firm will not be able to make its $2.6 million payroll on Monday, lawyers there say.
“No one is in charge,” Vincent F. Pitta, a lawyer at the firm, complained last week in an affidavit in support of a government request to freeze assets. “The news of Mr. Dreier’s arrest has had a neutron-bomb-like effect on Dreier L.L.P.”
Few have fallen as quickly as Mr. Dreier, a Yale graduate and Harvard-educated lawyer who had been a partner at some of New York’s better known firms before opening up a high-profile practice of his own in 1996 that now has offices in five cities.
“He promised lavish salaries and lavish compensation and he was attracting the best and the brightest,” said Gerald L. Shargel, Mr. Dreier’s lawyer. Mr. Shargel said Mr. Dreier is cooperating with the receiver now running the firm.
The expense of running such an operation does not provide a ready explanation for thefts of such magnitude. Even the cost of sustaining Mr. Dreier’s appetite for luxury does not provide an easy answer for what instilled the desperation that seems to have prompted schemes involved here, schemes that prosecutors said involved Mr. Dreier pretending to be other people.
Mr. Dreier’s lifestyle includes a waterfront home in the Hamptons, a Manhattan triplex and a place on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, Calif. He kept a Mercedes 500 in New York, an Aston Martin in California, and a 121-foot blue and white Heesen motor yacht with a Jacuzzi and a crew of 10 docked in Manhattan or St. Maarten. Associates said the boat, the Seascape, was the site of late-night parties at which Mr. Dreier, who is divorced, was often joined by an attractive young crowd.
My own experience with Mr. Dreier and his law firm was limited, but negative. We resolved a fairly tricky threatened litigation, and I mostly dealt with other lawyers at his firm. The one conversation I did have revealed an arrogant, pompous, somewhat distracted figure with whom I had no interest in speaking to again.
Just days after the collapse of Bernard L. Madoff’s suspected $50 billion Ponzi scheme, two of his emissaries returned to the epicenter of the financial disaster to face some of the hardest-hit investors, many of them old friends whom they had recruited to invest in Mr. Madoff’s firm.
As Carl J. Shapiro and Robert M. Jaffe sat down at the Men’s Grill of the Palm Beach Country Club they scanned an awkwardly quiet room, seemingly looking for friendly faces and reassuring nods, The New York Times’s Ian Urbina writes.
The moment was a stark reversal for two men whom people used to trip over themselves to meet in hopes of a chance to invest with Mr. Madoff.
“You doing O.K.?” asked one of the several club members who approached the men in a show of support. “We’re here for you.”
While the fallout from Mr. Madoff’s suspected con game shook investors around the world, perhaps nowhere was there a higher concentration of victims than in this room. Investors were said to have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to remain members of this club in hopes of an introduction to Mr. Madoff, usually by Mr. Jaffe or Mr. Shapiro. Mr. Madoff has been a member since 1996.
But more than wealth, these people seemed to have lost a sense of trust and prestige. During a visit to the club on Saturday, many members, asked by The Times for their reactions, requested not to be named because they did not want to ruin their standing among friends.
In Mr. Madoff’s fall, their world turned upside down, they told The Times. Those who prided themselves as financially savvy suddenly seemed gullible. The trusted friend, sage adviser and model philanthropist they thought they knew was now charged with being a multibillion-dollar swindler.
There is no evidence that either Mr. Shapiro, who is 95 and joined the club in 1974, or his son-in-law, Mr. Jaffe, who is 64 and joined in 1992, knew of the fraud. Both men, who give millions every year to countless charities, are also said to have been duped of hundreds of millions of their own money, friends of their families told The Times.
Judge Seitz recently advised Bench and Bar Conference attendees that all litigators who appear before the Court have a certain amount of credibility stored in the Court "bank," and their actions will either add to or detract from that amount.
Yet here are two examples of individuals who had huge reservoirs of credibility, trust and respect, earned over a lifetime of achievement, that they manipulated to allegedly illegal ends. And their frauds could not have been accomplished unless the people, lawyers, and institutions they dealt with were willing to defer to their "bank" of credibility, trust and respect.
Madoff, who believes that he deserves "some credibility as a trader for 40 years," says: "The strategy is the strategy and the returns are the returns." He suggests that those who believe there is something more to it and are seeking an answer beyond that are wasting their time.
Still, his refusal to take some investors added to his allure. Robert Ivanhoe, chairman of the real estate practice of the law firm Greenberg Traurig, said that he asked one of his clients who over two decades invested at least $50 million with Mr. Madoff to approach Mr. Madoff to see if he could invest with him. He knew Mr. Madoff as a major player in charitable groups.
Mr. Madoff declined. Mr. Ivanhoe said that the rejection made investing with Mr. Madoff even more appealing.
“He was turning people away all the time,” Mr. Ivanhoe said. “He didn’t need to be active in a charity to get more investors. People chased to invest in him.”
Maybe the answer is not to accord "titans" of the Bar or industry automatic respect, credibility, deference and trust, and instead treat them the same as everybody else.
But let's wait until my hearing is over before we start this whole "treat everybody the same" business.
So folks the temperature is expected to drop over the weekend, but the weather otherwise looks fine. I'm off to a holiday party in a few and then gone for the weekend.
If you want to pass on what's happening at your firm holiday-party wise, feel free to email me -- anonymity guaranteed. The whens, the wheres, the what-to-expect, the post-party hookups (if any).
I may even crash one or two so our reporting can be as accurate as possible, but please make sure there are sufficient supplies for a decent Gibson.
When Eric H. Holder Jr. addressed a convention of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in June, he urged young lawyers to get involved in the liberal legal network, saying America would soon be “run by progressives.”
“With this new administration that will be taking its place in January of 2009, you know, we are going to be looking for people who share our values,” said Mr. Holder, a member of the society’s board. He added that a “substantial number of those people” would probably be “members of the A.C.S.”
Six months later, Mr. Holder is preparing to take over the Justice Department as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for attorney general. And the American Constitution Society, founded in 2001 to be a liberal counterweight to the conservative Federalist Society, is rising to power.
Although Mr. Obama has just started to fill the thousands of politically appointed jobs in his administration, the society’s affiliates are already well positioned to shape legal policy, hiring decisions and judicial nominations for years to come. In addition to Mr. Holder, other prominent officials in the new administration who have ties to the society include Lisa Brown, the White House staff secretary; Melody Barnes, who will direct the Domestic Policy Council; and Ronald Klain, chief of staff to Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Three other society board members are on the transition’s agency review team, and observers expect that the Obama team will turn to society members to fill subcabinet positions and judgeships.
“People who are committed enough to a progressive vision of the law to work for and with A.C.S. when progressives are out of office are going to be a natural resource when the electoral winds shift,” said Orin S. Kerr, a conservative-leaning law professor at George Washington University who has spoken at society events.
But with power comes temptation. Several society leaders said they were mindful that the Bush administration had gotten into trouble by considering applicants’ affiliations with ideological groups like the Federalist Society when hiring for nonpartisan positions.
“That will not be repeated in the Justice Department in the next administration,” vowed Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University who is an American Constitution Society board member and co-chairwoman of the transition’s Justice Department review. “I feel like I can say that with confidence.”
While of course I know of the Federalist Society -- how many times do I have to see Richard Thornburgh at the Miami City Club drone on about constitutional protections in the Age of Terror? -- I personally have never heard of the ACS.
Since it's unlikely Steve will be at the big St. Pete wedding, maybe he can weigh in on what the ACS is doing locally. If it involves Dick Thornburgh and the City Club, count me out.
If the $14 billion bailout plan for U.S. automakers passes, it will help more than just Ford, Chrysler and General Motors. Federal judges would get a pay raise, as well.
The raise _ an annual cost of living adjustment, or COLA _ would bring U.S. District court judges up to par with members of Congress, who will receive an almost $5,000 boost on Jan. 1. District judges and lawmakers now earn $169,300 a year but are expected to be awarded a 2.8 percent raise next year, said Dick Carelli, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., insisted that the judicial pay raise go into the automaker loan measure, which is the only item of business on Congress' lame-duck agenda.
Under ethics legislation enacted almost two decades ago, members of Congress get a cost of living raise automatically, but they have to vote to give judges an identical raise. Because the spending bill covering U.S. courts has not passed, the step is necessary if judges are going to get their COLA.
The Senate passed the judicial pay measure as a separate bill in November, but the House never acted. A House Democratic leadership aide said that while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supports the pay raise, it was difficult for the House to hold a stand-alone vote in the midst of a recession to increase the pay for people making far more than most workers.
As a result, Reid has taken the unusual step of linking the obscure but important judicial pay issue to the unpopular auto bailout.
Officer "Oreo" Lorenzo, a highly decorated Police officer with the City of North Miami Beach Police Department, was driving westbound on Pines Boulevard in Pembroke Pines, Florida on July 2, 2004, when 18 year old Natasha Russo failed to stop at a stop sign and attempted to make a left turn eastbound on to Pines Boulevard, causing Officer Lorenzo to swerve to avoid a direct impact. As a result, his car swerved and tripped on the median curb, rolled over and slammed up against a Royal Palm tree within the median that crushed the roof of his police car and ejected him into the street. He sustained a serious head injury that resulted in his death a week later.
The lawsuit alleged that Ms. Russo was negligent for failing to remain stopped at the stop sign and yield the right of way to Officer Lorenzo. The lawsuit also alleged that the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) violated its own internal rules and standards by allowing a drainage curb (referred to by the Department as an "F" curb) and very large Royal Palm trees to be present in the median of a road with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour. "The Florida Department of Transportation rules do not allow curbs and Royal Palm trees to be present on roads with speed limits greater than 45 miles per hour precisely because of the danger that they present to motorists who may roll over when they impact the curb of the median at high speeds," said Ervin A. Gonzalez, attorney for the Lorenzo Family. "Had the FDOT implemented its own rules, there would be no 'F' curb or rigid tree trunks on Pines Blvd. and Officer Lorenzo would have walked away from the accident."
The Jury agreed and found in favor of "Oreo" Lorenzo's family, awarding them 70% of the total $11,537,700.
First of all, I had no idea you could go 50 miles an hour on Pines Boulevard, even as a theoretical proposition. Second, 70 percent seems high, even if there were violations of the FDOT internal rules and standards.
In B.M., we painstakingly elucidated the statutory parameters which bind the judges of the juvenile courts of this state in the detention of juveniles. As in R.G. v. State, 817 So. 2d 1019, 1020 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002), we were of the hope “that the message to this trial judge should be clear . . . .” B.M., 979 So. 2d at 310. We also recognized that the trial judge, the same one as here, may have been acting from the best of motives in repeatedly ignoring the same legislative guidance. Nevertheless, as our colleague in the First District Court of Appeal, Judge Philip Padovano recently wrote when faced with the nearly identical circumstances in K.E. v. Department of Juvenile Justice, 963 So. 2d 864, 868 (Fla. 1st DCA 2007):
It is not for us, as judges, to question the wisdom of the legislation. Rather, our task is simply to carry it out. Section 985.255 establishes the criteria for detaining a child, pending the outcome of a juvenile delinquency case. A decision to detain a child must be made according to the statutory criteria.
Stated otherwise, no person, not even a judge, is above the law. If a trial judge is not satisfied with that law, he is free to make that fact known to his legislators, as is any other citizen. Meanwhile, we reiterate to the trial judge in this case, in the same words we iterated to him a few short months ago, “just as the trial judge in this case had the ‘right to expect that [C.B. would] would respect his orders,’ . . . ‘we, as a court created by the constitution for the purpose of supervising the lower court, are entitled to the same obedience.’” B.M., 979 So. 2d at 318 (quoting State ex rel. Schwartz v. Lantz, 440 So. 2d 446, 450 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983)). We will not permit the children of this state to be played as a game of ping-pong between courts.
This isn't my area of the law, and certainly all trial judges are obligated to follow the dictates of the appellate court and of course the operative legislation. But is there some intellectual point to Judge Langer's actions here? I mean, is he by his repeated violation of the law attempting to express some point to the 3d DCA that perhaps the 3d should address more directly? Is there anything within the legislative mandate that the 3d can do to assist the trial courts in situations where the minor repeatedly refuses to appear for hearings? The 3d makes no effort to address that point.
Or is Judge Langer's actions here an expression of simple frustration with the system as presently constituted?
The Herald's coverage is here, and Billy Shields files his report here.
