Via lawprof Gerard Magliocca at Concurring Opinions, the dissenting opinion by arch-conservative Justice James McReynolds in Casey v. United States, 276 U.S. 413 (1928).

Why Gregory M. Owens decided it was a good idea to open his life to the pages of the New York Times isn’t clear.  That he did, however, offers one of the few feel-good stories for solo practitioners in a long time.  The practice of law has been in the toilet for a long time now, and for many solos and smalls, images of life in the marble and mahogany hallways of Biglaw are the stuff of jealous nightmares.

Meet Gregory Owens.

The silver-haired, distinguished-looking Mr. Owens would seem the embodiment of a successful Wall Street lawyer. A graduate of Denison University and Vanderbilt Law School, Mr. Owens moved to New York City and was named a partner at the then old-line law firm of Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood, and after a merger, at Dewey & LeBoeuf. Continue reading →

When news broke that the most hated person on the interwebz, revenge porn maven Hunter Moore was arrested, a few thoughts ran through my head.  First, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Second, see how they get taken down without creating new crimes just to “get” hated people?  Third, maybe this will satisfy those who want to control speech on the internet.

Mike Masnick wrote about Moore’s arrest at Techdirt, and there wasn’t much that I could add.

So, with the news that Hunter Moore was indicted with a co-conspirator under the CFAA today, we feared the worst.  After all, the CFAA is already a terribly drafted law, regularly twisted by the DOJ to go after people for ordinary computing activities.  However, in looking over the details of the indictment, we can at least breathe an initial sigh of relief (well, and disgust at the two individuals), as it details what appears to be Moore’s “co-conspirator” Charles Evens (also known as Gary) hacking into emails accounts to get access to nude photos, and then giving them to Moore.  Moore gives Evens a bunch of money for this, at times calling him an employee, and urging him to break into more email accounts and to obtain more nude photos. Continue reading →

Straddling the fence between ethics and innovation is a really good way to get a butt full of splinters.  My pal, Carolyn Elefant, must have cheeks of steel to write a post at My Shingle suggesting that the ethics of solo innovation should be subject to crowdsourcing. Oh my.

Carolyn starts by noting that #Altlaw businesses, because they disclaim being law firms while selling the practice of law, are able to get a leap on solos and small firms based on their escaping the strictures of the disciplinary rules that apply to lawyers who admit to being lawyers.

It’s no coincidence that many of the innovations in the legal profession – the Axioms or RocketLawyers and matchmaking platforms are non-law firm entities that aren’t subject to ethics rules.  As a result, these companies can push the ethics envelope without fear of serious repercussions. Continue reading →

In an op-ed in the New York Times, long-time Supreme Court reporter and commenter, Linda Greenhouse, takes up the fundamental question raised in the two cases granted cert, United States v. Wurie and Riley v. California, in which the Court will consider whether cellphones can be searched incident to arrest.

Raising the perpetual struggle of applying physical world precedent to digital world reality, Greenhouse explains why the banal decision in Smith v. Maryland, the old pen register case that rested on the ill-conceived Third Party Doctrine, poorly serves the future.

The fit is awkward at best; the Supreme Court’s description of a pen register — “a mechanical device that records” on a paper tape “the numbers dialed on a telephone by monitoring the electrical impulses caused when the dial on the telephone is released” — reads like something from Alexander Graham Bell’s laboratory. Continue reading →

Among the many rules of engagement, surrender is the most universal.  In war, it’s understood no matter what language you speak.  At home, it’s how a guy who has done wrong ends it.  Surrender is where the threat stops and everyone takes a deep breath.

It’s the point where no one, no matter how badly you screwed up before, no matter what harm you did, gets killed. And the universal sign for surrender is to raise your hands in the air.  In Pinal County, Arizona, that got Manuel Longoria two bullets that ended his life.  Via Carlos Miller at Photography is Not a Crime: Continue reading →

I can hear what’s running through your head all the way up here in New York.

So you screwed up.  You played in a sandbox you thought you understood. You hired some slimebags to create and manage an online presence in order to market your way to prominence, and left them to do their job. They did, and did it in a way that blew up in your face.

You don’t think of yourself as a bad guy. You think you’re pretty good. Maybe even better than pretty good, even if others don’t appreciate you yet.  Why would anybody try to beat up on a good guy like you?  Why are other people so mean, so angry, that they would go after you as if you told them their baby was ugly or ran over their dog?

It was no big deal.  You didn’t care. It was just some fluff that the guys in Bangalore put on your website to fill the empty white space.  It wasn’t Moby Dick, for crying out loud. Continue reading →

The question of how to properly calculate restitution for Amy has been a subject of many posts here, which I note to avoid a full recitation of the entire history of Amy litigation. The short story is that Amy was the victim of kiddie porn, and has become the poster victim for restitution under 18 U.S.C. §2259.  The amount of damages suffered has been fixed at $3.4 million.

As prior posts have shown, there are circuit splits all over the place as to how to divvy up restitution among individuals convicted of having downloaded one or more images of Amy.  At one extreme, the argument is that each person convicted of having an Amy image should be jointly and severally liable for the entire $3.4 million. At the other end, the argument is that no restitution should be imposed as the individual’s “share” of the total amount of damages cannot be calculated with sufficient foundation to impose restitution.

And so the Supreme Court has taken up the question in Paroline v. United States. Continue reading →

The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in Navarette v. California, a case that tests the limits of when a police officer can conduct an investigative stop  based upon an anonymous tip.  The facts of the case, via WaPo VC’s Orin Kerr, are straightforward.

A 911 caller reported that he had just been run off the road while going southbound on Highway 1 near a specific mile marker by a silver Ford F150 truck with California license plate number 8-David-94925.  Officers spotted the truck and pulled it over.  The question in the case is whether the officers had lawful authority to pull over the truck based on the tip.

Had the caller identified himself, there would be no issue. For whatever reason, he didn’t, yet the police responded to the call nonetheless.  The rule is similarly straightforward, that the cops can make a stop based on specific and articulable facts giving rise to reasonable suspicion that a person is engaged in a crime. Continue reading →

Hot off the presses:

Mr. Hull –

You should be happy to know that I took down your content that has caused so much consternation.  Again, I feel this got way out of hand from my perspective.  Frankly, I was shocked when I read the blog post for the first time this past Saturday, and even more shocked at the continued posting by the owner of blog.simplejustice.us again, this time in regards to the message I sent directly to you.  I tried to write you as quick as possible, because it seemed everyone on the internet had negative things to say when I didn’t respond immediately.  So I did so on my way to court, again on my i-Phone, but later was commented upon, and lied about, when saying I was doing so while I also driving my car (my assistant drove me to court today which gave me time to write, although it is hard to do so in a grammatical fashion from just an iPhone). Continue reading →