Why can’t you be more like your brother?

It’s bad enough when parents play that sibling-rivalry card, but Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Wall actually tried it during oral argument today in the Supreme Court.

The case was Barber v. Thomas, which deals with calculating good-behavior credits for federal inmates, Kimberly Atkins reports for our sister blog, DC Dicta:

“It’s a very complicated system to understand,” [Justice John Paul] Stevens said to Wall at one point during the argument.

“Well, with all due respect Justice Stevens, Justice Breyer got it in the first five minutes,” Wall replied, sending howls of laughter throughout the courtroom.

DC Dicta also has capsule summaries of the three cases decided today by the court, Berghuis v. Smith (jury selection); Jones v. Harris Associates LP (shareholder suits by mutual fund investors) and Graham County Soil and Water Conservation Dist. v. United States ex rel. Wilson (False Claims Act).

Baltimore County District Court Judge G. Darrell Russell Jr. broke his silence about his controversial decision to marry a man accused of domestic violence and his alleged victim the day of the accused’s trial.

Russell e-mailed and spoke with The Baltimore Sun’s Dan Rodricks, who in a column Sunday described a condition he called “judicial glaze” that can affect district court judges who hear a variation on the same case over and over again.

You can read Russell’s comments here. Russell said he never read the statement of probable cause in the case in order to remain unbiased, “so I had no idea of the nature of the offense until I heard it on TV.”

There were two other passages from Russell’s comments I found interesting. First, on the defense request to postpone the trial so the couple could obtain a marriage license:

I had two options. Grant the postponement whereby they would be wed and later she would not testify, or deny the postponement and the public defender would pray a jury trial, thus giving the defendant a three week postponement and plenty of time to marry. What I did was a third option which cut to the chase. I expedited the inevitable. It’s a mentality engendered by big dockets in Essex and the necessity of moving cases.

Second, on what happened when the couple came back with a marriage license that afternoon after having the standard, 48-hour waiting period waived:

I felt I owed it to them to at least talk to them. I took them back in my chambers and questioned them thoroughly before deciding that they were indeed sincere, and why not legitimize their relationship and their children? It was perhaps my Catholic conscience. This was not a woman in any way in fear for her safety. In the courtroom her body language said that she wasn’t going to be a good witness. She wouldn’t stand next to the state’s attorney but rather clung to the defendant. Incidentally, she has since called to thank me.

Russell concluded that he should have let someone else marry them in retrospect and literally offered a “Mea Culpa” for making an “error of judgment out of good intentions.”

Thoughts?

University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias weighs in on President Obama’s efforts to fill vacancies on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. (HT: How Appealing)

Here are some other links:

• The National Law Journal releases its list of the past decade’s most influential lawyers.
• DirecTV files a lawsuit against Playboy over a “most favored nations” contract clause. (HT: Law Shucks)
• One lawyer’s daughter has an interesting way of playing “house” with her dolls.
• If you think your week is getting off to a bad start, you could be this Florida lawyer. (HT: ABA Journal)
• To all of you law school students out there who wish you could sue your teacher over a bad grade: it probably won’t work. (HT: Legal Profession Blog)

Janet Wallace is a 3L who, along with her husband, made an unusual New Year’s resolution this year: by year’s end, they would move to California’s Central Coast. Now, over at Ms. JD, Wallace is chronicling her attempt to find a law job there, despite career counselors’ advice to cast a wider net:

I was sitting in a recent career services presentation at my law school–one geared toward 3Ls without jobs–and there was one piece of advice that the presenter kept repeating for emphasis: Don’t limit yourself geographically. The wider your geographic scope, she pointed out, the greater your options.

It’s a great piece of advice.

I’m not going to take it.

Wallace explains that while the worst-case scenario–she can’t find a law job and ends up waiting tables–is unappealing, the best-case scenario is so attractive that she’s willing to take a chance:

But what’s the best case outcome? The best case looks pretty amazing. In the best case scenario, I’m exactly where I want to be, doing exactly the sorts of things I want to be doing.

…

I’m committed to living in the place I’ve chosen. And, after a long day of waiting tables (or whatever the worst-case scenario might be), I’ll turn my face to the sun, soak in the good fortune that I’m in the exact place I want to be, geographically, and buckle down for another day of opportunity searching. I know there’s something there for me, I just have to find it.

My first reaction when I read this is, “Wow, this woman is really limiting herself geographically, and that’s not a good idea in this economy.”

Then I realized that countless people, lawyers and others, operate under this type of geographical constraint when they are trying to find a job. Whether it’s because of money, family concerns, an attachment to one’s hometown or a significant other’s job or schooling, most of us have some limitations when we look for work. The only unusual thing about Wallace’s quest is that she and her husband, as near as I can tell, resolved to move to the Central Coast just because they think it sounds amazing. Good for them.

Maybe career counselors are being unrealistic when they advise law students (and the rest of us) to cast our nets with abandon, allowing ourselves to land wherever we can get someone to match our 401(k) contributions. Work is an important part of life, but it’s not the only part. If that ideal law job is in a city that you think constantly about leaving, it’s not your ideal law job.

So let’s hear it for Janet Wallace for injecting a little real life into the discourse about job searches.

Siblings fighting over money is, unfortunately, not news. But a financial dispute between sisters in Connecticut is newsworthy for two reasons:

1. The money is from a winning Powerball ticket.
2. The sisters are in their 80s.

Theresa Sokaitis, 84, and Rose Bakaysa, 87, went to court Tuesday for the younger sister’s lawsuit seeking a part of a $500,000 jackpot the older sister won in 2005. The lawsuit is being heard after the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed another lower court’s decision to throw out the case.

Bakaysa and the sisters’ brother won the jackpot, but Sokaitis argues a written contract signed by both sisters to split their gambling winnings entitles her to a piece of the financial windfall. Bakaysa’s lawyer said the sisters had a falling-out a year before the jackpot, effectively tearing up the contract.

The saddest part of the story to me is the sisters haven’t spoken in years and shunned each other in court. Don’t they remember what the Beatles said about money?

A judge is expected to make his ruling by the end of May.

Avid court-watchers can tune in at 2:30 today for a Webcast of the Senate Judiciary Committee‘s confirmation hearing on Goodwin Liu, the president’s pick to fill a vacancy on the 9th Circuit. As our sister blog DC Dicta notes, the nomination is being seen as “a preview of the contentious fight President Obama may face should he get the chance to nominate another Supreme Court justice soon” — not just as an example of the Republicans’ willingness to push back, but because Liu, 39, is seen as a potential Supreme Court nominee.

Here are some tidbits to take your mind off Maryland’s heartbreaking loss yesterday:

• Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker gives three immediate observations about the legal implications of the health care legislation, including how it might affect the Supreme Court.
• Above the Law has more on the potential, legal fallout of the bill.
• Speaking of SCOTUS, an Iowa lawyer provides an interesting take in today’s Baltimore Sun about its upcoming Snyder v. Phelps case.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica files a $250 million lawsuit against Dickstein Shapiro LLP for allegedly botching a patent application. (HT: Law Shucks.)
• A former Wisconsin state employee has won a discrimination lawsuit against his employer… the State’s Equal Division. (HT and “Dept. of Irony” headline to Overlawyered.)
• Today’s business tip – prevent profit “leaking” by recording all of your time while in the office.

Much has been written on the potential impact of Black & Decker’s sale to Connecticut-based Stanley Works. The deal was announced last fall, but B&D’s shareholders just voted last week to approve it.

What I wondered, though, was how the fact that B&D is no longer headquartered here in Maryland will affect Miles & Stockbridge. B&D has historically been a major client for Baltimore-based Miles. I imagine that from the beginning of negotiations with Stanley until the sale was finalized, the firm was swimming in deal-related work. But now that the company’s gone, how much business will Miles lose?

Miles “will not be discussing this matter,” the firm’s spokeswoman told me.

Maybe I’m naive, but two questions gnawed at me as I began reporting my story in Friday’s paper about the District Court judge who married a man suspected of domestic violence to his alleged victim on the day of trial:

1) Why would a victim agree to marry her alleged abuser?

2) Why would she not testify against him?

Prosecutor Stephen Roscher, who heads the family violence division in the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office, summed it up.

“The internal dynamic when we deal with domestic violence victims is completely different than any other crime,” he said.

He and Dorothy Lennig, director of the House of Ruth‘s legal clinic, cited a number of potential contributing factors. Their list is similar to the one offered by the National Center for Victims of Crime.

“Domestic violence is about power and control,” Lennig said.

Knowing that, Roscher has worked with county police on domestic violence case protocol for more than a decade and regularly talks to new recruits about the topic. The strategy, which has been adopted across the country, is to “assume the victim is not going to be cooperative at the time of the trial,” Roscher said.

That’s why police thoroughly document a suspected domestic violence crime scene and get a statement and photos of the victim. That’s why 911 calls are analyzed for “excited utterances” (which can be admitted in court, even though they’re hearsay) and for anything out of the ordinary, Roscher said.

All of this allows Roscher to prosecute a case even without the victim taking the witness stand. It can be challenging, he said, but it’s never impossible.

“There’s never been a murder case where the victim has testified,” Roscher said.

When former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich opened the Baltimore office of Womble Carlyle about a month after leaving office three years ago, taking key legal and public relations staff with him, there were those who wondered about the move: Was it a law office, or campaign headquarters?

The Maryland Democratic Party has wondered more vocally over the years, and according to the Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog, took formal action Thursday by writing to the state Board of Elections, challenging the propriety of the arrangement in light of Ehrlich’s expected return to the political sphere.