Special Judge Gersten Holiday Edition of 3d DCA Watch!

In honor of Judge Gersten's retirement, we bring you a special Fourth of July holiday edition of 3d DCA watch:

Whipple v. D&D Tree Farms:

I'm sure it's entirely coincidental that on Judge Gersten's retirement the Court has elected to issue an opinion on the "undertaker's doctrine."

Oh well, let's read on:

Whipple admits that the defendants did not have a duty to erect a fence, but he argues that according to the undertaker’s doctrine, once the fence was built, the defendants had a duty to use reasonable care to maintain that fence. We agree.

Shh, don't tell Glenn Garvin but this is called a "tort" which is an ancient concept rooted in the fundamental duty of care that one person owes to somebody else.

It's part of the glue that binds us together as a civilized society, and Glenn doesn't even have to understand or agree with the system of interlocking obligations we owe to each other to be a beneficiary.

BTW, good luck with the Mexican fireworks!

Your Monday Morning Glenn Garvin Sift.

Hi folks, do you know which summer camp to take your kids to this morning?

I don't know about you, but I can feel the summer exodus beginning, as the work load slows down, lawyers arrive later at work, judges cancel their hearings, and Joe Zumpano reflects on the value of humility.

Ahh, the rhythm of the seasons.

Comparing Glenn Garvin's review of Hot Coffee with the NYT's review is like, well, comparing the Miami Herald to the New York Times.

Hey, look at how nice the Washington Times is to Miami labor lawyer Patricia Ireland, who "infested" DC with NOW and their feminist claptrap (I'm paraphrasing):

Analysis: She gets paid to call Governor Rick Scott the devil while exploiting the proletariat. How liberal.

Wait a second -- I thought that's what I did.

Finally, congratulations to Justin Sayfie, now try to reign in the bald one please.

See?

Your Tuesday Morning Bullcrap Club.

Let's see, so if the President's Afghanistan plan works perfectly (always the case there) and the President does not cave in or compromise (he never does!), then we can expect to target the "hand over" of Afghanistan to Afghan forces sometime in 2014, with US troops expected to remain there well in 2015 or beyond.

This turns out to be a great campaign re-election slogan:

FOUR MORE YEARS!  FOUR MORE YEARS!

Basically I blame the President to forcing me to agree with Glenn Garvin.

Even worse, Glenn Garvin now appears to agree with Glenn Greenwald.

Worser yet, Obama loyalists now find themselves agreeing with this esteemed crew:

“The United States must see this effort in Libya through to its conclusion,” reads the letter, signed by conservatives including Liz Cheney, William Kristol, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and R. James Woolsey Jr. 

Obama partisans, Liz Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz(!) -- bet you didn't see that coming way back in 2008.

In other news, Justice Scalia is a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

(But this we already knew.)

GT to Be Honored for Overturning Gay Adoption Ban.

It's an old legal truism that every person and issue deserves an attorney, but not everyone deserves you.

With that in mind I see that Save Dade is honoring GT for their pro bono and historic work overturning Florida's ban on gay adoption:

For the past 33 years, the state of Florida banned gays and lesbians from adopting.  In September of 2010, the ACLU of Florida victoriously struck down this ban. The ACLU of Florida has fought for the rights of children to have a "forever home," and this victory continues to prove their commitment to the fight for LGBT equality and rightfully earns them the 2011 Champions of Equality Award., stated CJ Ortuno, Executive Director of SAVE Dade.

The ACLU of Florida’s victory, however, was not its alone.  Greenberg Traurig LLP, a for-profit law firm, stepped up to defend , pro bono, the rights of the two children who have now been legally adopted by Martin Gill.

Greenberg Traurig has publicly stated that this case was the “most meaningful” for its team. Its willingness to go above and beyond to­ protect the interests of these children earns it the 2011 Champions of Equality Award.

As Glenn Garvin noted in his review of last night's excellent American Experience, dealing with the heroic efforts by visionary, forward-thinking activists to strike down Jim Crow in the South:

The immediate and profound reaction to each — even among viewers who lived through the 1960s: “That was America? It’s a testament to how stunningly and totally the civil-rights movement eventually triumphed that these images seem so utterly alien, as if they were drawn from a world long ago and far away. Could we really have lived in a country in which water fountains were marked white and colored? Where a public park could have a sign out front reading, whites only? Where a young white woman could smile sunnily into a TV camera and explain that three kids shot to death for registering black voters were asking for it? Where federal troops could be seen lining the streets of a state capital, grimly mounting bayonets onto their rifles in preparation for the day’s work?

It's always good to be on the right side of history, at least once in your life, on at least one issue of consequence.

The reception will be on 5/20 at the Ice Palace in downtown Miami.

Your Tuesday Morning Round Up.

Hi kids, big news -- Gwynne Young wins the Florida Bar run off!

Oh I'm kidding, the big news down here, broke by David,  is Gene Stearns convincing Judge Ungaro to grant his 50(b) motion and throw out the jury's verdict against BankAtlantic.

Guess it really was the worst trial Gene's ever seen.

Does this vindicate the overall approach to the litigation by the defendant (which just posted a $22.9 million loss this quarter)?

Hard to say as we're somewhat in uncharted territory, though it's a major concession by the Judge that things could have/would have/should have proceeded differently.

In other news, Glenn Garvin thinks NYT readers are deviant liberals who love big black c*%k.

Hey, I just report this stuff!

(I'm joking, he just randomly selected a few books to highlight the average content of the NYT Sunday book reviews.)

Prominent Lawyers Get Special Treatment at Joe's -- All is Well With the World!

My Herald gag reflex usually doesn't kick in until Tuesdays (for obvious reasons), but it came a day early this week.

Let's see -- we're now in the middle of three wars and there is an unprecedented nuclear crisis in Japan, in addition to thousands lost and many more suffering from the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Not to mention unemployment, gas prices, global warming yada yada yada.

And all the President wants to do is work on his bracket!

But do not fear, my childrens, because Akerman's Mike Abrams has his very own gold plaque and table at Joe's:

Don’t see his name on it? Look to the right, on the wall, where there’s a gold plaque – the only one like it in the place – that reads very clearly, “Reserved for MIKE ABRAMS.”

A gold plaque?

In my view that's quite humble and modest -- remember, it could have been platinum.

Ok, I'm all for Joe's and lunch there frequently.  The food's great, the atmosphere is very New York busy, and you do see tons of people you know.

However, if I ever wind up in an article like this, regaling the special treatment accorded to prominent attorneys who lunch there and schmooze with Anthony and my buddy Steve, you have my absolute permission not only to note that I have "jumped the shark" but to just shoot me dead.

Let's round up the usual suspects:

For example, on a recent Tuesday, KnoxSeaton senior principal George Knox sat on the inner left side, declaring deadpan, “I’m not a power player and I’m not a regular.” Too bad he was belied by Sawitz, who seated him prominently at a table he later declared (while grinning) had been reserved for Legal Legends, a distinction Knox had received in 2010 from the 11{+t}{+h} Judicial Circuit Historical Society. Knox was lunching with general litigation attorney Pamela Chavies, hoping she’d agree to help plan a scholarship component of the 2012 convention for Sigma Pi Phi, an 8,000-member organization of African-American professionals.
“It’s a social luncheon around a business topic,” says Knox.

Just behind him, construction king Bobby Castellano sat with Victoria Palacios, the vice president of sales for his new (and still confidential) conservation business, discussing with her and insurance exec John Lander a $25 million policy for a key man in the company.

One table over was banker-turned-University of Miami chairman Leonard Abess Jr., sitting with UM board member, beverage and automotive executive Manny Kadre. Also there: Weiss Serota Helfman managing partner Michael Popok eating with Katz Barron partner John Squitero; novelty manufacturer Sam Hollander celebrating his birthday with Gordon Miller and Isaac Serure; and research associate professor of biomedical engineering, radiology and family medicine at University of Miami, Dr. Edward Dauer with his daughter, Allison Dauer, a nurse at Bascom Palmer’s pediatric ENT clinic.

Other Joe’s regulars include: Best Buddies International founder, Anthony Shriver; Miami Beach Community leader Stu Blumberg; former Miami Beach mayor and Akerman Senterfitt partner Neisen Kasdin; Judge Rosa Rodriguez; trial lawyer Aaron Podhurst; commercial property negotiator Lyle Stern; actress and activist Sharon Gless; and real estate lawyer Steve Helfman.

(Yawn)

Wait a minute -- Sharon Gless??

Are you s&^*ing me?

Beautiful and enchanting veteran 70s TV star, who appeared in such memorable fare as the Eddie Albert/Robert Wagner crime caper series Switch, or as the replacement for Lynn Redgrave in the TV version of the Walter Matthau film House Calls?

Well then, I take everything back.

(Note -- I recently asked Sharon to sign the above Switch fan photo last week at Joe's.  Sure, my lunch partner Aaron Podhurst was a bit unsure how to handle it when I took the photo and pen from my jacket and went running over for an autograph, I mean it was kind of a big scene and they had to call security and I never did get to finish my Key Lime pie, but what can I say -- the heart wants what the heart wants).

Glenn Garvin + Peter Tosh = BFF!

Can any serious policy maker defend the failed drug war on economic, moral, or practical grounds?

Is there anyone who doubts its disproportionate effects on the poor and minorities?

Or the "status-like" nature of a stop that predictably turns into a drug bust?

Even the contrarian bearded one, holed up in his college dorm with crappy seed-filled weed and a dog-eared copy of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale -- while the hippies outside met all the cute girls and had all the fun -- sees the wisdom in at least trying some kind of change:

But the cold fact is that U.S. drug-enforcement policy overwhelmingly targets not drug lords but the people to whom they sell. FBI statistics for 2007 show that more than 80 percent of U.S. drug arrests that year were for possession rather than sale, and that there were nearly twice as many arrests for marijuana as for heroin and cocaine combined.

When he was a military policeman, Vogt thought arresting people for using marijuana was weird: ``If we were called to a domestic dispute or a hostage situation, we worried about alcohol, not marijuana, because it's alcohol that makes people crazy.'' But it wasn't until after he left the military and opened a construction business in Port St. Lucie that he turned into an active opponent of marijuana laws.

``My son was arrested after a cop saw him smoking a joint in a parked car,'' Vogt said. ``He had to pay a fine of a couple of hundred dollars, which is not such a big deal, at least not for us. But college scholarships? Forget it. My son can't even get a simple job. He goes online to fill out an application to work at a hamburger chain, and he gets to that little box that says, `Have you ever been arrested?' And when he clicks yes, the next thing he sees on the screen is, SESSION ENDED.''

The worst, Vogt fears, is yet to come. He looks south across the border to Mexico, now the most murderous country in the world as a result of warfare between drug cartels competing for the U.S. market, and sees a grim vision of America's future.

``Prohibition creates crime and violence in our society that need not exist, except for the policy of prohibition itself,'' he said, shaking his head. ``We tried this with alcohol, and we had gangsters, just like Mexico does. And when we replaced Prohibition with a system of regulation and control, we got rid of the gangsters. You don't see Coors and Budweiser doing drive-by shootings or planting car bombs to increase their market share.''

Garvin, there's hope for you yet my friend.

$400 an Hour for Foreclosure Defense? (and Glenn Garvin).

Remember when Glenn Garvin laughably contended that the only people in foreclosure trouble were those who deserved it?

This was his particularly ill-informed contention:

For all their frothing fulmination, neither the lawyers nor politicians nor journalists have been able to come up with any credible stories of people losing their homes despite faithfully paying their mortgages. They couldn't even find stories about people losing their homes despite being just a couple of payments behind.

That's because there aren't any.

So it's not particularly surprising that Glenn Garvin's own newspaper once again proves him dead wrong, in this harrowing tale of a foreclosure nightmare gone from bad to worse.

But I found this part pretty outrageous:

Hall paid her first lawyer, Alan Soven, more than $10,000 to fight the foreclosure. At one point Judge Friedman rebuked the Miami lawyer for subpar legal work, and the Florida Bar ordered him to refund $2,000 in legal fees to Hall in a mediation settlement. With a $400 hourly rate, he charged Hall nearly $3,000 for the 7.2 hours he spent trying to get legal approval to quit the case, court records show.

Soven declined to comment on the case.

Hall's next lawyer, Johnny Kincaide of The Kincaide Law Group in Weston, routinely skipped crucial court hearings and failed to file a response to a court ruling, causing the judge to penalize Hall with an order of default. Kincaide's firm is being investigated by Attorney General Bill McCollum after several homeowners said he promised to help them get a mortgage modification and then disappeared after taking their initial deposits. He did not return calls seeking comment.

I don't know whether the allegations of legal malpractice or incompetence are true, but there's really no good reason to charge $400 an hour to handle the defense of any foreclosure action, let alone to charge the client to withdraw from the case.

Good thing there are "no credible stories" of people getting screwed over in the foreclosure morass for Glenn to write about.

Miami Herald: Less Is More.

So the Miami Herald decided to scrap the business section and collapse it as an occasional part of the already-dwindling local section, thereby continuing the reductions in coverage, staffing and resources that have plagued the Herald specifically and the newspaper business as a whole for at least a decade.

That's fine if economic necessity requires it.

But why try to put lipstick on a pig (remember that insanely asinine fake media controversy from 2008)?

Just look at the facacta way the Herald describes what is a pretty simple concept -- we're eliminating the business section entirely and collapsing a piece of it into the local section twice a week, without adding any pages to the newly combined local/business section:

Here's how to find business news:  Flip the B section over.  The Business section front you're accustomed to appears on the back, and stories jump back into the B section.  Stock tables appear intact on the inside back page.

What late night bunch of potheads dreamed this one up?

(OK Garvin, fess up!)

This is the other method they suggest:

Here's the other way to find business news:  grab a pair of gravity boots.  Hanging upside down, turn to the "back" of the B section.  DO NOT FLIP THE B SECTION OVER.  This is now the "front" of the Business section.  As blood drains to your head, you will slowly lose consciousness and think this is a perfectly acceptable way to get all the latest stock updates!

BTW, congrats to new Exec Editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez.  I truly hope you can right the ship and take the Herald in a positive, successful direction.

We're rooting for you.

Glenn Garvin Doesn't Read His Own Newspaper!

It's very hard to keep with with our local curmudgeonly TV critic cum 60s "silent majority" libertarian philosopher at large.


First he was handling the entire Herald newsroom.

Then he was apparently editing the New York Times.

Now it appears he stopped reading his own paper:

For all their frothing fulmination, neither the lawyers nor politicians nor journalists have been able to come up with any credible stories of people losing their homes despite faithfully paying their mortgages. They couldn't even find stories about people losing their homes despite being just a couple of payments behind.

That's because there aren't any.

Except the one that occupies the entire front page of today's newspaper!

Other than the fact that Glenn is completely wrong, he's totally right.

Is Glenn Garvin Now Editing the New York Times?

We've seen what happens when Glenn Garvin takes over an entire newspaper.

But Garvin's appetite, not sated, has apparently led him to edit stories for the Grey Lady herself.

How else to explain this whopper from an otherwise superlative article on the foreclosure mills that infest our state:

In an interview last month, Mr. Stern, the Florida lawyer, accused Mr. McCollum, who is standing for re-election as attorney general, of political motives in opening the inquiry into his firm and others.

Come home Glenn, we're sorry, you were right about Nixon and the Half Hour New Hour, just come on home.....