On the Record

“If this were play’d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”
- Twelfth Night

Alas, Fabian, it’s true: the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival is folding after 17 seasons. When I heard the news, I thought of Tom Schetelich, the BSF’s business manager I profiled last year.  Schetelich saw his first BSF show in 2004 and joked that he became such a regular presence at the nonprofit that it either had to give him a job or a restraining order.

Schetelich told me Thursday afternoon he’s helping the organization wind down. He declined to go into detail about the financial problems that reportedly led to the BSF’s folding but said theater companies like the Shakespeare Festival “need everything to go right to survive.”

“I enjoyed the process of making this work so much,” he said. “It was just a good thing for the city.”

Among Schetelich’s favorite things was getting to know the actors, directors and technical staff behind the productions and attending the popular outdoor stagings every summer in the Meadow at the Evergreen Museum & Library.

He also believes a new organization could step in to fill the cultural void left by the BSF and has even had some preliminary discussions about doing just that.

Until then, Schetelich has a new goal. Thanks in part to the BSF, he estimates he’s seen live performances of about half of the Bard’s plays. But he wants to see all of them, which could prove challenging.

“You can always go see a production of ‘Hamlet’ somewhere,” Schetelich said. “But if you want to see The Two Noble Kinsmen, you’ve got to look for it.”

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Happy bright and sunny Monday morning. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

• Byron Warnken weighs in on same-sex marriage.
• In an interview a couple weeks ago, DLA Piper Chairman Frank Burch told me not to believe everything I read when I asked about the reported $5 million payday it had offered to new hire James Wareham. AM Law Daily breaks down the history of the firm’s $5 million man.
• Speaking of DLA, word has it that one Julia Louis-Dreyfus will be stopping by the firm’s Mt. Washington office to film her HBO pilot, Veep. George Clooney’s movie Syriana also filmed at DLA’s Baltimore office.
• Fighting fair could save a marriage from divorce.
• Recounting Spiro Agnew’s fall from grace.
• Dish Network will have to put Elmo before American Idol.
• As partners continue to depart from Howrey, the Washington Post offers its take on the firm’s downward spiral and its efforts to find a new balance.

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Still upset about last night’s game? Just getting to work now because of last night’s game? Here are some links to take your mind off it.

• A former Baltimore County public defender starts a law firm in Annapolis focusing on “low bono” clients.
• Are we ripe for growth in the small-town lawyer arena? An Above the Law contributor says, “Possibly.”
• Turns out a stability ball in Sacramento might not have been all that stable.
• A primer on the “Repeal Amendment” you might be hearing more about once Congress becomes Tea Party-flavored next month. (The story has generated a spirited back-and-forth on The Volokh Conspiracy.)
• Say what you want about Eliot Spitzer, but “professional exerciser” Ron Miller gives the former New York governor high marks as a lawyer.

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Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, held on the National Mall in Washington drew an estimated crowd of more than 200,000.

The event featured Jon Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s routine shtick, as well as a several A-list musical performers (The Peace Train/Crazy Train duel between Cat Stevens, AKA Yusuf, and Ozzy Osbourne was a highlight). But what I’m seeing a the most of on news sites are photos of the signs that the ralliers held high.

Some of the sign-holders made a statement, some of them made jokes, and some of them made little sense. Legal Affairs Reporter Danielle Ulman was in attendance at the rally and took photos of some of the signs. They can be seen in the Flickr slideshow below.  More links to photos of the event can be found below the video box.

- From The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear website

- The Huffington Post: The funniest signs from the rally

- From The Washington Post

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What began as being too lazy to shave while on vacation last week has morphed into my first deliberate attempt at facial hair.

My goatee will be gone by the weekend, when I have to be in pictures for a family wedding, but for now it’s growing on me. (Ha!)

Whether I sport a goatee in the future will largely depend on what a future Mrs. Jacobs thinks of it. But then I read about Head and Shoulders insuring the flowing locks of Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu for $1 million.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Paul Allen

Happy Monday! While Danielle tries not to be a hurricane, finding those delicious legal tidbits is up to me. Here we go:

• Law Shucks calls it Paul Allen’s “gift to BigLaw”: the Microsoft founder is suing Google, Apple, YouTube and other Internet giants for patent violations.
• A group of Kansans is arguing the state’s selection and appointment process for Supreme Court justices violates the 14th Amendment because some commission members are only selected by lawyers. (HT: Constitutional Law Prof.)
• Thank you, Legal Marketing Blog.com!
• Meet the lawyer who will be representing Roger Clemens in the star pitcher’s federal perjury case. (HT: WSJ’s Law Blog.)
• Disturbing, potentially devastating news from the Jersey Shore. (I never thought anything could overshadow “That’s one shot!“)

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Longtime Cleveland Plain Dealer classical music critic Don Rosenberg last week lost his lawsuit against the paper and the Cleveland Orchestra, which he alleged forced him out of his position because of negative reviews in 2008. (Rosenberg has been re-assigned on the paper’s staff.)

Many in the classical music world have already weighed in. But I thought the best takes were those that spoke of the larger issue at play here: the role of the arts and the arts critic in society. It’s something Glenn Beck has discussed in recent weeks, taking Baltimore to task for maintaining funding levels on the Lyric despite all of its budget woes.

Martin Bernheimer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, wrote in the Financial Times that Rosenberg’s case is an “alarming sign of the times”:

As government cuts of arts subsidies start to bite all over Europe, especially in Britain, there is talk of relying on “the American model.” That means an increased reliance on individual contributions – which goes along with an acceptance, presumably, of the individual powers that accompany substantial donations. Where does critical independence fit into this?

Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips wrote it’s a healthy sign when the triangular relationship between critic, newspaper and art community gets “sticky.”

There is so much fear and self-censorship in the critics’ ranks in America today. There are so few full-time salaries. You can smell the caution and paranoia in too many reviews weighed down by generalities and a stenographer’s devotion to “objectivity,” which isn’t what this endeavor is about at all. It’s about informed, vividly argued subjectivity.

Phillips also responded to Beck:

Criticism is a way of writing about life, and the world, and a symphony’s place in it, or a performer’s, or a photograph’s. …[N]o matter how frightening the economy, we must remind ourselves that we demonize the humanities… at the risk of becoming a nation we don’t want to become.

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Uh oh, sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays!!! Hopefully our law links provide the antidote. (Note: Loyal readers recall Caryn Tamber writing last week that Danielle Ulman would take over the blog round-up. Danielle will, but today she is getting situated in her new business-of-law chair, so you’re stuck with me.)

“Is there a legal angle to the WikiLeaks story?” The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog asks — and answers that it’s unlikely the government can successfully prosecute anyone connected to the leak.

• Who knew pomegranate juice had so much bite? A D.C. judge prevents the National Law Journal from publishing details from documents it legally obtained in a lawsuit involving Hogan Lovells and POM Wonderful.  (HT: ABA Law Journal)
• Above the Law wishes good luck to everyone taking the Bar Exam this week. (As do we. But really, shouldn’t you be studying?)
• Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the best ways to recruit clients, and here’s a study that proves it. (HT: LawMarketing Blog)
• First Mel Gibson. Now Oliver Stone? Oy!

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Last time I wrote about Southwest Video, the Halethorpe business was closed even after the county Board of Appeals ruled it was improperly shut down by county officials. Southwest did eventually reopen – only to be shut down last week once again by county officials.

Meg Ferguson, the county hearing officer, ordered the business closed July 1 until it removed all of its “viewing booths and video display devices.” Ferguson also fined Southwest $13,200 on top of the $50,800 she fined the business in the spring for operating an adult entertainment business in a prohibited commercial zone.

Mike Mohler, deputy director of the county permitting office, said he and colleagues would be returning to Southwest today to make sure the video booths had been removed.

Howard Schulman, Southwest’s lawyer, called the closing illegal, alluding to his earlier, successful argument that a court order and the accompanying due process are necessary to shut the business down.

“The county unfortunately has resorted to illegal methods to enforce what it says is the law,” he said.

Schulman said Southwest is considering its legal options, one of which is to sue the county for damages in order to “decide the matter once and for all in a judicial setting.” (Southwest has filed two mandamus-related lawsuits against the county stemming from the zoning and code enforcement actions.)

All of this comes as the Baltimore County Council approved Tuesday more restrictive zoning laws for adult entertainment businesses. Among other changes, stores with adult content that exceeds 15 percent of the total inventory would be classified as adult entertainment businesses and must be located in manufacturing zones. That’s down from the 20-percent threshold but more than the 5-percent figure proposed in response to Halethorpe residents’ complaints about Southwest during a council session in May.

Schulman, who skimmed the legislation when I called him, said it seemed “too broad in terms of its scope and reach.”

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A recent declaration by our sister publication, Virginia Lawyers Weekly, that the “Shaggy defense” is a term of legal art went national this week.

That’s thanks to Slate, the online magazine that picked up a recent VLW story on a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling on a summary judgment motion. In Preston v. Morton, David Morton said he was working on traffic lights in a bucket truck when William Preston, driving a tractor trailer, hit the truck.

Preston’s defense? “It wasn’t me.”

You can read more about U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser’s opinion in the civil case here. The defense — coined during the 2008 child pornography trial of singer R. Kelly and attributed to the song “It Wasn’t Me” by reggae star Shaggy — got me thinking of other uses of popular culture in cases. As someone who has not gone through law school, this kind of terminology helps me to understand the basic facts.

For example, South Park taught me one way to win a case is with the Chewbacca defense. O.J. Simpson’s intrepid lawyer, Johnnie Cochrane, was cartoon-ized on “South Park” in the season 2 episode “Chef Aid.” He wins his case despite an absurd argument:

“Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor? If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit!” he shouted to the jury.

Here are two other cases that show popular culture making its way into law:

• The Matrix defense: Three defendants claimed insanity from being convinced they committed the crimes in a Matrix-like virtual reality. Two were found not guilty, but Joshua Cooke, accused of murdering his parents in February 2003, ended up pleading guilty later that year.

• The Twinkie defense: Dan White, a former San Francisco city supervisor, claimed that junk food diminished his mental capacity, resulting in the murder of city mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. White’s lawyer successfully argued the case and the sentence was reduced to manslaughter.

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