Silver Trial Headed For Closing Arguments Monday

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Updated: December 9, 2015

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The federal criminal trial of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is expected to enter the closing arguments stage on Monday, with his defense team opting to call no witnesses. They did grab headlines with a motion asking the judge to dismiss the case – which is actually a routine step in such trials. While a criminal trial, the Silver case is being closely watched by the civil trial bar, in part because lots of the case rests on his referral arrangement with an asbestos litigation firm.

That firm has said that Silver was “of counsel” for many years but performed no legal work while receiving more than $3 million in referral fees. The government contends that the then-Speaker steered government contracts to a clinic that helped with the referrals.

See a good Wall Street Journal recap here: Defense Won’t Call Any Witnesses in Trial of Sheldon Silver

U.S. Family Detention Centers: Still There, Still Debated

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Posted: November 18, 2015

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As events in Paris rivet the U.S. media on the massive immigration crisis in Europe, it’s worth noting that we still have

Photo from LA Times Report, 10/23/15, "Immigrant family detention centers are prison-like, critics say, despite order to improve"

Photo from LA Times Report, 10/23/15, “Immigrant family detention centers are prison-like, critics say, despite order to improve”

450,000 pending cases in the United States immigration court system and our “family detention” centers have been ruled illegal by a federal judge, who has ordered them closed. The federal government has responded by trying to license them through state agencies.

The Los Angeles Times reminds us that “… this summer, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles castigated federal officials, finding they had failed to meet conditions for detaining immigrant children established by a 1997 court settlement, Flores vs. Meese. The judge prohibited the administration from holding children at centers not licensed to care for them and from holding families unless they posed a flight risk or a threat to national security…”
Find the rest of that story and related reporting about the situation here:

Florida Bar President Says Legal Representation Is A ‘Crisis’

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Updated: December 9, 2015

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The recent economic downturn and increased housing evictions are a couple of the reasons that Florida Bar President Ray Abadin says the inability of the majority of Floridians to afford legal representation is at “crisis proportions.” In a Tampa Tribune story, she says that “… not having professional legal representation can have dramatic adverse consequences in any situation. It can be devastating to one person; it can have life implications for families. Not having a lawyer can be a very serious thing.”

The Tribune notes that Abadin sits on the Florida Commission for Access to Civil Justice, “… which recently submitted its first report to the state Supreme Court offering suggestions for addressing the need, including a possible way to fund legal services.” Senior Judge Emerson R. Thompson Jr., the immediate past president of the state Bar Foundation, explains in the Trib’s report that “… the foundation’s main source of funds to pay for legal aid, interest on attorney trust accounts, sank from $22 million to $5 million. At the same time, thousands of Floridians faced foreclosure proceedings, threatened with losing their houses and needing legal representation.

New York Corruption Trial Said To Be Moving Quickly

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Posted: November 14, 2015

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The New York Times is reporting that the high-profile criminal trial of former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver is running quickly, with prosecutors indicating they might wrap up their case by mid-week. This week the highlight of the case was revelation of a letter that prosecutors contend prove Silver received “kickbacks” via a law firm.
The Times reported that “… in the scheme described in court on Thursday, prosecutors say Mr. Silver received about $700,000 in kickbacks through the Goldberg law firm — secret compensation for Mr. Silver’s having referred it tax business from Glenwood and a second developer. In return, as the government said in the trial’s opening statement, Mr. Silver took official action that benefited the developers, like meeting with Glenwood’s lobbyists and signing off on critical real estate legislation that Glenwood supported.”
(Editor’s Note: This site usually focuses on civil, not criminal, cases. We do update the Silver trial because it focuses on referral payments for civil cases.)

Obama Immigration Case Has Implications For Presidential Race

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Updated: November 12, 2015

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The Christian Science Monitor, or a we call it around here “the other Monitor,” has an excellent analysis of how President Obama’s executive action case might influence the 2016 presidential race. You may have noted that a federal court sided with a lower court that the president over-reached in his actions that effected about 5 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented folks in the United States.

The CSM notes the timing: “If the Supreme Court opts to hear the case, it would likely issue a decision next June – just as the 2016 presidential race is heading into the home stretch. And the implications for the Latino vote could be big, not only for the top of the ticket but also in key Senate races in states with large Latino populations, such as Nevada, Florida, Colorado, and Illinois.”

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