I should probably have put quotation marks around “Mother Teresa,” but the risk of being sued by the real one seems pretty low at this point. On July 16, Johanna Garcia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire or mail fraud, for which she faces up to 20 years in prison. According to the Miami Herald, this is the third guilty plea resulting from the actions of MJ Capital Funding, which operated out of a Pompano Beach strip mall and yet managed to steal almost $200 million. (The Herald notes that the entire strip mall is worth about $8 million, which I thought was a nice touch.) MJ Capital c ..read more

I offer this partly as a public service for those who have wondered, like most attorneys probably have at some point, just how annoying they could be without going over the line. Although the line here is the one that might get you subject to a restraining order if you pass it, so hopefully your imagination stopped well short of that line. On July 1, the California Court of Appeal affirmed the decision not to issue a restraining order in Saenz v. Martinez, holding that although there was no dispute Martinez had been “annoying,” he had not been so annoying that a restraining order was mandator ..read more

“The Court is in receipt of the parties’ joint monthly status letter,” it informed the parties in King v. Habib Bank Limited on July 1, and it was not pleased. The problem wasn’t what they said—the court probably didn’t even read it—but that they wouldn’t stop saying it. “As the parties are aware,” the court continued, “at the last status conference held in this matter, I told the parties “not to have the protracted letter-writing campaigns where you go back and forth arguing with each other.” The parties seem to have just been incorporating their dueling letters aimed at each other into the ..read more

Because my report on the “Eliminate Useless Reports Act of 2024” is taking longer than expected (but will be useful when finished), I wish to grace you instead with the order below recently issued by Judge Gregory Presnell in the Middle District of Florida. Long-time readers may remember the 2006 decision in which a fed-up Judge Presnell ordered lawyers having a particularly childish dispute to meet on the courthouse steps and resolve said dispute by engaging in “one (1) game of ‘rock, paper, scissors.'” See “Rock, Paper, Scissors Match to Resolve Discovery Dispute” (June 7, 2006). I’m pretty ..read more

LEAD STORY: As admirably summarized by the Columbus Dispatch, “[t]he Ohio attorney who was disciplined for pooping in a Pringles can and tossing it into a parking lot got his law license reinstated on Tuesday.” The pooper, who is a criminal-defense attorney, lobbed the can into the parking lot of a crime-victim advocacy center in November 2021, and the Ohio Supreme Court eventually held that this is the kind of thing that might call into question one’s fitness to practice law. But it imposed only a six-month suspension, which has now expired. According to the Dispatch, the attorney said that ..read more

Major developments recently in the case of the guy with the suspended license who took a court call on Zoom while driving. See Guy With Suspended License Takes Court Call on Zoom While Driving (May 31, 2024). For example, his license wasn’t suspended. Sort of. Corey Harris did get a suspension, way back in 2010, for failure to pay child support. But it turns out that a judge rescinded that in 2022. So Harris didn’t understand, he told WXYZ News, “how he even ended up being charged with driving while license suspended” after an October 2023 traffic stop. That charge was the subject of the Zoom ..read more

For all you people who think fonts don’t matter … well, you’re usually right, but not always. They do, and not just because choosing the wrong one might cause Ryan Gosling significant mental distress. They matter a lot to people who have to read pages and pages of frequently dull legal text and need that text to be highly legible. People like Judge Frank Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, for example. AsymaDesign v. CBL was a pretty straightforward case. AysmaDesign was an Illinois LLC until it went out of business and dissolved in 2017. If it was dissolved tha ..read more

You won’t be surprised to hear that the parties to this altercation, which took place in Florida on May 19, are disputing some important facts. But not the bite itself. According to this report, based on an affidavit that police submitted to the prosecutor’s office, the incident happened at a church in St. Cloud, about 25 miles south of Orlando. The priest told police the woman he bit had been turned away from the 10 a.m. Mass that day, on the grounds that she “had not fulfilled all the requirements for receiving communion.” She came back for the noon service, but was apparently denied again ..read more

Last month I mentioned Mike Dunford’s terrific two-word response to a letter from the “Los Angeles Police Foundation” demanding that Dunford’s client stop selling t-shirts that read “F*ck the LAPD” (asterisk not in original). See “LOL, no” (Apr. 24, 2024). But I wasn’t aware then of the much longer and yet equally great response Dunford sent at about the same time to the law firm that wrote the letter. That was proudly posted on Bluesky by Dunford’s client, and you can see a PDF version below. No asterisks in that one, either—except for those in the Westlaw cites Dunford includes to show the ..read more

No, not Donald Trump, who seems to be devoting all his energy to glaring and so must delegate everything else. Also not Bob Menendez, the Democratic senator currently on trial for bribery, who seems content to let others pin the blame on his sick wife, at least assuming the jury thinks there’s anything suspicious about keeping half a million in cash and a bunch of gold bars around the house. Depends where you keep it, as far as I’m concerned. See, e.g., “Jefferson Convicted of Bribery, Storing Cash in Freezer” (Aug. 5, 2009). No, it’s Nicholas Alahverdian, a.k.a. Nicholas Rossi, a.k.a. Arthur ..read more