Ramble On

If it's fall, that means I'm going out and speaking to people about what I do to put green tea on the table -- law.

A little over a week ago, I and one of my law partners lectured about public entity law in Harrah's Lake Tahoe. The organizers apparently expected a few people, so they put us in the South Shore room on the casino floor. I thus trod the boards on the stage where sixties rock bands play when they do Harrah's. In fact, Paul Anka was scheduled to sing there a few days later. (No word on whether he'd discuss the non-application of qualified immunity to Bane Act causes of action.)

Next month, I'll be one of the speakers at a Continuing Education of the Bar seminar on government tort law. My job: educate; illuminate; and keep them awake.

Write! Write! You Bloody Well Write!

Somewhere amongst our various family blogs, it was said that the family businesses are writing, the law, and scrap metal.

Well, I never worked out with the scrap metal thing. But I've done okay with the law; and now I'm doing a bit with the writing stuff. I revised eight chapters of this thirteen-chapter work.

Unlike my cousins' books, this one is unlikely to show up on any bestsellers' lists; be reviewed in the Washington Post; produce any signing parties on the second floor of the Westwood Borders; or even be analogized to fanfiction. But it does have the distinction of being one of the most expensive books written by a family member (although Burl Barer's scholarly works on The Saint may come close). Further, it may get cited to me by one of my opponents on a case.

I wrote a good chunk of this on our September vacation to Kauai, while Amy sewed. (Good thing our condo had broadband.) In fact, I worked on it just a few hours after breaking my wrist; and finished my draft with my wrist in a splint. My inspiration was my cousin Lee, who wrote at least one novel with both arms broken. (Lee, not the novel.) The deadline was a stirring inspiration too.

Laptop Liability

Today's Los Angeles Times has a startling story for folks who travel overseas with laptops: U.S. Customs officials believe they have the right to boot up your laptop, look at every file and photo thereon, seize it, and, yes, prosecute you based on the laptop's contents -- all without warrant, probable cause, or even the reasonable suspicion required for a pat-down search on the street.

According to the article, this erosion of 4th amendment protection is currently being questioned in the central district court here in L.A.

It's true that the 4th amendment search and seizure restrictions have been interpreted to grant border officers more leeway in searches, because of the interest in preventing smuggling (of both inanimate objects and humans) and cross-border contamination. But as the article points out, this is an intrusiveness that goes beyond simply looking inside luggage -- particularly since business laptops can contain proprietary information. And in a balancing test, the importance of searching laptops to interdict contraband is questionable; with the Internet, it's probably easier to move information via e-mail and ftp sites than to load it onto laptops. We'll see how this turns out.

"Shark" Chum

How can a production company and network shell out big bucks to hire James Woods as a star, and Spike Lee to direct the pilot episode -- and yet use a writer who either fails to research, or doesn't care, that:

1. The County of Los Angeles and the City of Los Angeles are separate governments.

2. The mayor of Los Angeles does not control the DA's office, much less have the power to create an elite prosecution unit within it. The DA controls that office; and the DA answers to the County Board of Supervisors, not the city government.

3. Ergo, ADAs are not city attorneys.

4. Felony prosecutions in California are not entitled "County of Los Angeles v. So-and-so." The State prosecutes felonies. The cases are entitled "The People v. So and so."

5. When felonies are tried downtown, they are generally tried in the Clara Foltz Criminal Courts Building. The courthouse shown in an establishing shot was the Stanley Mosk Courthouse -- which generally tries civil trials. The courtroom shown in the episode did not look like any courtroom I've ever seen in the Mosk courthouse.

6. When a prosecutor asks multiple argumentative questions, defense attorneys generally object-- more than a couple times.

7. A prosecutor who commits such misconduct as bribing bailiffs to obtain inside information about jurors (who somehow, strangely, were chosen before trial) is simply sowing the seeds for reversal on appeal.

8. Lawyers generally, y'know, practice law. There wasn't more than a thimbleful of law in this episode.