Delay is pernicious. For many lawyers, it is a bit of a sign of success. You are too busy to get to even your most important cases because there are fires to be fought on other cases. My clients don’t care that I am successful or that I am over busy or that I am working on someone else’s case. …
Judge Alito Gets Schooled By Sen. Markwayne Mullin
So, following hard on the heels of Judge Alito’s decision that Roe v. Wade was no good, our friends on the bench in the deep south just decided that fertilized embryos were also people. None other than esteemed meathead Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, quickly piped up that he and his wife had used IVF to have children and …
TRIAL NOTICES
When a case is getting close to trial, the Courts will let us know by sending out a trial notice. When I was a younger defense lawyer with an oversize volume of cases, this would start a panic at the office as we struggled to make sure everything was ready for Court. As a plaintiff’s lawyer, while trial notices are …
COURT TRANSCRIPT
In the next week or so, I will be posting the three day bench trial transcript of a recent slip and fall trial I had. It should be on my website. This is a slip and fall case which occurred at a TSA checkpoint at PHL resulting in my client fracturing her knee and requiring surgery. Since both TSA …
The Trump Show: A Separate Reality
I have spent my professional life in and around courtrooms. The Court system has a simple, clear, and traditional way to deal with litigants who reject its authority, reject the good faith of its prosecutors, and reject the fairness of its judges or elected officials. So, how does the system respond? With predictable results. The system’s only response to an …
TRIAL REPORT: FEDERAL COURT BENCH TRIAL
I just finished a three-day bench trial in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA). The facts of the case in brief were that a 68-year-old woman went through a TSA checkpoint at Philadelphia International Airport, removed her shoes, and slipped and fell on the terrazzo marble-type flooring after she was cleared to pick up her belongings. The …
Influencers Gone Crazy / How it Affects the Law of Evidence:
It is getting harder and harder to trust anything online these days. Be careful what you read or consume is just no longer possible. To be fooled is easy for all of us. If you are somewhat attuned to the social media world, like I am at 55 years old, it is easy to miss fakes, deepfakes, photoshops etc. I …
If you are a litigator, it’s time to get out the popcorn: Donald Trump Civil Trial
So, there are a lot of things that the general public does not know about litigation in the real world that lawyers who actually litigate cases consider litigation 101. Trump’s trial is going to reveal the basics to the public I guess. What are the basics so far? 1) request a jury trial at the time of your first pleading. …
You Get What You Pay For: Mediation
I am in the middle of negotiating the end to a case with clear liability, clear damages, and some thorny legal issues. When I get towards the end of a case, mediation is often a way to resolve it. I rarely arbitrate cases these days. Mediation is basically a negotiation where both sides want the case to settle but …
Influencers Gone Crazy / How it Affects the Law of Evidence:
It is getting harder and harder to trust anything online these days. Be careful what you read or consume is just no longer possible. To be fooled is easy for all of us. If you are somewhat attuned to the social media world, like I am at 55 years old, it is easy to miss fakes, deepfakes, photoshops etc. I …