Law And More

OH - Dann still playing the angles: Files paperwork to run for his old job in 2010

Former Attorney General Marc Dann aka Frat Boy is still playing the angles.  He filed the necessary paperwork with the secretary of state's office to run, if he decides to, for his old job in 2010.  What that does is allow him to raise and spend money from his campaign fund. 

Currently he is being investigated for how he used money from that fund when he was in office. For instance, he used over $1000 to pay his rent at Animal House. The truly amazing thing is that he has continued to dip into his campaign fund for expenses even after he resigned on May 14th.

James Nash reports in THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, "After leaving office, Dann billed his campaign for a drive to Cincinnati, a meal in Chicago, a cab ride in New York and a meal in Philadelphia.  In addition, he billed the campaign to attend a conference of state attorneys general in Rhode Island in June."

Surely the OH AG candidate Crites can use these stunning details in his campaign.

"Challenging Spitzerism at the Polls," K.A. Strassel, WSJ - Yeah, but can they win

In her opinion piece today in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Kimberley A. Strassel describes "an upstart reformer challenging an incumbent attorney general who, like New York's Eliot Spitzer, has cemented his position through populism and political patronage."  The upstart Strassel is referring to is Dan Greear, a GOP lawyer challenging current West Virginia AG Darrell McGraw.  But it could be any lawyer such as Crites who's running for the AG job in Ohio and doesn't seem hell-bent on making a name for himself through high-profile but questionable litigation.

Strassel chronicles the changing mood in the country that is now much more wary of the tactics and litigation of state AGs. She states, "As state attorneys general have become more brazen with their power, and as outside groups have started shining a light on their backroom practices, votes have become uneasy."

However, the incumbents and their kind usually have an embedded patronage system.  Given these tough economic times, you can bet those kept working in politically sponsored jobs intend to stay working. They will campaign hard for the AGs who seem to be throwbacks to old-machine bosses. That brings up the issue that Strassel herself raises: Can the challengers win, and not just symbolically question the status quo?

That will be interesting to find out this November. 

First Gen Mafia - How we working-class kids from non-top-tier schools make it big in 21st-cen professional workplace, including law

"My father's an electrician.  Maybe that's why I can't get a law job." A newbie JD from the class of 2007 told me that over the phone around Christmas. She wanted to hire me as her executive coach.   

"You can't get a job because you're telling the wrong story."  That's what I told her.  In the next 25 minutes I gave her a more accurate narrative of her skills and what she could offer a law firm. I didn't charge her.  That's all part of the process of being part of the emerging First-Gen Mafia. She nailed a job in Manhattan the next day, no kidding.  She insisted on paying me.  No, I told her, pass it on - to some other professional with no pedigree.

Unlike earlier First Gen lawyers, consultants, writers and corporate types, we are finally learning to help, not torment, make feel small, or even hurt, each other.  I love conspiracy theories. So I opt for the notion that the WASP establishment from top-tier schools shamed us First Gens from non-top-tier schools into hating ourselves - and therefore each other. They saw our raw energy and talent and knew they had to kill it off.

 Whatever.  They certainly did a job on us First Gens, that is until the turn of century. Thanks to two economic depressions since 2001, we First Gens have got it that it's us who are bouncing back - and often stronger and more successful than before - after layoffs, firings, and our businesses' tanking.  Therefore, we certainly have something to share with our fellow First Gens. And share is exactly what we've been doing since 2000.

See, we couldn't miss the reality, no matter how the supposed upper-class previously beat us down, what we got inside - intact.  That's the innate drive, unself-conscious ability to scramble and try new things, and common sense to spot actual opportunity.  And that's exactly what's needed to survive and thrive in these not-ordinary economic times. 

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Silicon Valley public relations guru, who started out in a community college and then went to a state university, Marsha Keeffer puts it this way:

"When I finally got into the big time professionally, the Ivy Leaguers, or as I have come to call them "The Crusties," might have had some advantages. [The article in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "Ivy Leaguers' Big Edge" by Sarah E. Needleman documents that.]

"But, the more deeply you go into your discipline and the more jolts you get from a changing organization, power structure, industry, technology, and economy, the less pedigree, ranging from an undergraduate degree from Harvard or your CEO father's contacts, will provide.  It can't and won't give you the sidelined a platform for hanging in, finding something else, or more often starting all over again. 

"The Crusties have been dropping like flies. I read that everyday in your blog here, Jane. Look at today's headline in THE AMERICAN LAWYER: "Laid-off Cadwalader Attorneys May Have Tough Time Finding Work, Say Recruiters." Pedigree might help a few of those 96 associates and partners who were terminated.  A few.  

"The rest, and I assume many of them are from white-collar backgrounds, will be thrown into a brutal marketplace that they might not be able to navigate. Do they know how to go after something in a non-linear fashion?  And can they get help, real help, from survivors and hustlers like you and me, Jane?

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It's so natural that we really can help each other because we First Gens, under the civility protective coloring we had to pick up or at least thought we had to, were born to struggle.  It's not a surprise to us that making a living is hard. So, when we give each other blunt advice - "Yeah, you better take that lousy survival job for now" - and point to possible opportunity we listen to each other.  There's no script from our parents, early network, traditional counselors that dictates the game has to be played one way. 

Could we approach The Crusties that way?  It would take years to break through the crust.  Why bother?  And would they "pass it on" to others?  That culture is highly individualistic, not communal. There was no old neighborhood.

Can The Crusties learn what we know intuitively?  They better if they want to make a living.  Here's some First Gen Mafia straight talk:

• There are no guaranteed payoffs. So, get over feeling cheated by having invested so much in good grades, hard work, and networking.  We create our careers anew every day. Opportunity, not handed-down success formulas bring home the bacon. Anyway, if we know how to play the cards we're holding, we can use all those "investments" some day. In this blog, which gets me plenty of new consulting assignments, I leverage my IL "investment."

• Find other hustlers to hang with. Ditch all Crusties.

• When we can't hang on to what we got, we try new things.  We keep trying them until we can make a decent living doing one or more of them.

• We're downright pushy in helping others whom we sense will pass that help on.

• We know we will have to struggle in our careers until we no longer want to or have to work.

• No sense getting upset about those watching us stumble.  If they were in reality they would be too busy struggling themselves to notice us.

Here is a list of First Gen Mafia assistance I've gotten since 2001:

• An Italian psychotherapist provided her services at the fee I could afford when my two boutiques collapsed.

• A woman who made it from the slums of Hartford gave it to me straight how to sell my house at the top of the market in 2004.  The proceeds paid off 70 percent of credit-card debt.

• A man from a farm in Germany who worked for a global company did all my IT work free.

• Marsha Keeffer hammered me to embrace my strengths and blow off my weaknesses.

• An acquaintance from my old neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey read my blogs every day until enough readers did to make me figure I should continue.

And, yes, I'm passing it on.

Shootout over American Dream: CA AG Brown vs. Kotkin in WSJ

The most powerful threat to the American Dream of home ownership is not the subprime meltdown.  It's the ideology of Christopher Leinberger, articulated in his manifesto "The Option of Urbanism," that the city will again become the center of civilization. High energy prices, the realization what gas emissions are allegedly doing to the environment, and a hunger for community [no more bowling alone] are the prime movers in this move back to the city, from the "Father Knows Best" suburbs.   

According to the article "Trading Places" by Alan Ehrenhalt in the August 13th edition of THE NEW REPUBLIC, that end of the American Dream of a single-family house and yard is already happening.  The only thing holding up a full migration from the suburbs to multi-unit apartments in Hartford, Chicago, and Atlanta is a lack of supply.

Of course, not every one is buying into that ideology.  If they did, suburbs like Darien, Connecticut and Lincoln, Massachusetts would soon be slums with untended McMansions that no one can heat or commute from. The debate between the liberal supporters of high-density urban living and the conservatives championing the privacy and symbolism of the home in the suburbs became mainstream as California Attorney General Jerry Brown and Chapman University fellow Joel Kotkin duke it out. In LEGAL NEWSLINE, Scott Sabatini reports on this high-profile brawl.

Brown has been advocating, some might say arm-twisting, high-density residential and commercial building to save energy, reduce GHG emissions and help us to know our neighbors. In an opinion-editorial in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Kotkin attacked Brown. Brown responded in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL today.  In that response Brown says he's not waging war on suburbs but just trying to get his state to smart energy policies.

Currently, the media, which has been accused of being held hostage to liberal thinking, have given lots more space to Leinberger's contention that those who have the resources to return to the city will. It's those without those resources - the poor - who can't.  However, if you check the highways and freeways during rush hours, there are still many many cars heading from the suburbs in the AM and back to them in the PM.

How this suburb vs. high-density city debate will play out depends, of course, a lot on the cost of energy, both for heating/air-conditioning and transportation.  If prices go down to double digits, as some analysts predict, Darien, CT might still be a place to live folks dream about.  If not, as Leinberger's apostles preach, by 2030, those tony places could morph into slums or ghost towns.

State Farm Investigating: Was Trent Lott one of the All the King's Men

Former U.S. senator and current lobbying consultant Trent Lott has been suffering because of guilt by association for a time now.  His brother-in-law is Dickie Scruggs, so his nephew is Zach Scruggs.  But now that suffering might be more concrete, e.g. criminal charges.

State Farm Insurance, through its attorney Jim Robie, is investigating whether Lott urged witnesses to give false statements. That allegation, of course, is very serious.  Robie deposed the Scruggs in regard to an alleged fraudulent claim his law firm filed in regard to State Farm's processing of Hurricane Katrinia homeowners' claims.  One of those claims, as we recall, was Lott's. That deposition was taken last week and soon enough the Scruggs filed a motion to have its contents sealed.

During that deposition, reports Scott Sabatini in LEGAL NEWSLINE, Zach took the Fifth Amendment when asked by Robie, "Has it been your custom and habit in prosecuting litigation to have Senator Lott contact and encourage witnesses to give false testimony?"  The focus of this deposition was, says Sabatini, "to get to the bottom of former Mississippi senator's role in a scheme to defraud the insurance company [State Farm] in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."   That role could have been for Lott to contact and persuade them to give information that was not true.

There's more. Some time ago, Lott's name also emerged in connection with an alleged bribery plot. During the Scruggs' legal problems which culminated in his being sentenced for five years, one of the other convicted attorneys testified that Dickie told him to attempt to bribe a county circuit judge with Lott's influence. The bait was supposed to be that Lott could put him on a list for a federal vacancy.  The aftermath of that was that Lott did contact the judge.  However, he did not actually nominate him for a federal vacancy. After that, as many of us remember, Lott suddenly resigned from the Senate. Shortly after that he launched his lobbying consulting firm The Breaux Lott Leadership Group.

Will this new shadow cast over Lott be a hit to his business?  Or, worse, will Robie be able to dig up concrete evidence to charge Lott with a number of criminal acts?  Although Robie has a handful of dust right now in terms of the deposition with Zach taking the Fifth, he has other avenues to explore.  As a results of Scruggs' post-Katrina suits, State Farm's reputation suffered immensely. Given that, Robie is probably determined to, as he said, "get to the bottom" of any Lott's alleged illegal activities.

"It's too bad the EPA took so long to develop these [lead paint] regulations in the first place," Sue Gunderson, CLEARCorps

Howard Shultz's commentary on the new EPA lead paint regulations has been stirring up a hornet's nest. 

Shultz's analysis was posted last night on this blog. Today, Walter Olson's Pointoflaw.com linked to it.  Traffic has been non-stop. And more than the usual number of comments have come in by phone, email and on the blog post.

Shultz is a Senior Fellow at the Senior Housing and Planning Council [CHPC].  The organization's deconstruction of those new regs is here.  And, those wishing to contact Shultz directly can reach him at hshultz@chpcny.org, 212-286-9211, Ext. 110.

One of those responding to Schultz's opinion is Sue Gunderson, head of CLEARCorps, a non-profit whose mission is keeping children healthy.  Its primary target is preventing lead poisoning among children.  And CLEARCorps has been accomplishing this through education, community-building, research and legislative advocacy on the federal, state and city levels.  The organization was founded by the National Paint and Coatings Association.

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Sue Gunderson, head of CLEARCorps, on the new EPA regulations:

"Jane - and your readers - to me it's really too bad that the EPA took so long to develop these regulations in the first place.  The lack of action on the EPA's part has created a vacuum which state and local jurisdictions have stepped in to fill for years now.

"Therefore, it is true that going from different cities to different states there are a variety of lead-related laws that landlords and contractors must know and fulfill, depending on the size and geographic location of your dwellings.  If the EPA had done its job 10 years ago when this was required, we could have had a reasonable set of national standards that everyone could have followed without a massive guidebook.

"Now we have a set of EPA regulations that are good tools for preventing the contractors and maintenance staff from accidentally poisoning children when they are renovating or performing maintenance on their pre-1978 housing.  While the new regulations are not perfect, they will hopefully reduce the rising number of children who are lead-poisoned by well-intentioned but clueless landlords and contractors as they go about their usual business.

"Unfortunately, there are several issue that will make these new regs somewhat frustrating for all.  First, they do not adequately protect the contractors and landlords at the end of the project because they only require a 'white glove test' to determine if lead dust exists.  Second, there is no money made available by Congress to provide the states with the necessary resources to integrate these new standards into their existing regulations and produce appropriate educational materials and classes for the entities which are meant to comply. 

"The next few years will be a test of patience and a lot of discussion among the EPA, states, and the local landlords and contractors to successfully implement the new regulations with the least amount of confusion."

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Sue Gunderson can be reached at CLEARCorps at Sue@clearcorps.org.

"CPSC's report on synthetic turf may not carry much weight," Legal Journalist opines

I smell lack of credibility in the CPSC announcement that synthetic turf, although it contains lead, is safe.  So does a legal journalist in the Northeast. 

This journalist opines, "Yes, the CPSC has issued a report indicating that its study of synthetic turf fields reveals 'no risk.'  But the troubles at the CPSC during the current administration, as well as the administration's curious relationships regarding environmental issues, as well as the science related to those issues, the CPSC's report may not carry much weight. Furthermore, the CPSC has been under fire ever since the lead toys from China debacle.  This turf war will continue, I predict, at least for a little while."

That Synthetic Turf - CPSC says it's safe, but that might not be end of it

Today, reports Ross Kenneth Urken in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, the Consumer Products Safety Commission issued a report stating that artificial turf used in sports field, although containing lead, was not a hazard to health. But it is calling for synthetic-turf producers to voluntarily eliminate the lead in the product. In West Haven, Connecticut, it was also announced that the synthetic turf for athletic fields is safe.

Several political leaders such as U.S. Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey asked the CPSC to investigate this product for possible threats to children's health. This has been an issue also in California.

But, given the distrust of government in some circles, I don't see this as reassuring activists, NGOs, plaintiff attorneys and perhaps even some related industries.  My experience covering the raw-milk users, who break or get around the law and/or pay premiums for this product, showed me how poor the credibility of government is to a growing number of people. [Marler Clark' blogs covers this raw-milk counterculture movement.] 

My perception has been confirmed in a seminal article in the June 2008 FORTUNE by Marc Gunter titled "Wal-Mart: the new FDA."  Gunther documents how consumers, industry and the plaintiff bar are ignoring government and deciding on their own what's safe, what's not, and what action should be taken.

Any group wanting to get headlines could jump on this CPSC report and sponsor its own independent testing. At the top of the list of must-dos for the next Administration is restore trust in government - federal, state and city.

OH Animal House still making headlines - That could help GOP AG Candidate Crites

Today, two "frat brothers" from Animal House in Ohio both made headlines.  One was former Attorney General Marc Dann.  He made a private-citizen request for all the documents associated with his time in office, including schedules.  He claims he needs them to restart his law office.

Later today that other well-known frat bro Anthony Guiterrez was also in the news.  Former director of general services in the OH AG's office Guiterrez was accused of sexual harassment.  Now, there's more, allegedly.

In the LEGAL NEWSLINE, Tami Kamin-Meyer reports that Guiterrez, when buying 94 new autos for state use, "allegedly [at least twice] tapped into a fund intended to cover the expenses of crime victims. That account is funded primarily from court costs and prisoner work programs. It is supposed to be used to pay lost salaries and other expenses of victims of assaults and other violent crimes."

This multifaceted scandal which isn't going away could be a gift from the universe for GOP AG candidate Crites.  Folks have to be asking:  Where was the adult supervision?

Lead in Synthetic Turf - It's there, but is it a health hazard

Is the lead in synthetic turf a political and not a health issue? 

Today, ABC-TV's Connecticut affliate carried a news segment on synthetic turf which has been used in athletic fields for years.  The turf in West Haven, CT was tested.  The lead was found not to be hazard, which confirms the local health department's findings.

On the other hand, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, stated MEALEY's July LEAD LITIGATION REPORT, sent a letter to the commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.  That was June 26th.  In that letter, the Senator asked the Commissioner to expand its investigation into the levels of lead in synthetic turf used in athletic fields.  In California, similar concerns have been made by political leaders such as Attorney General Jerry Brown.

What we know is that there is lead in synthetic turf.  But the jury is out if that lead is a hazard to those who play on it regularly.  Stay tuned for further research.

This blog thanks James Cordrey, Legal Editor at LexisNexis, for his report on synthetic turf in MEALEY's.