Fantasy Football anyone?

Having won last year, I'm retiring. But Miguel de la O needs a title and the league needs one more team before tomorrow night. First come, first serve. Here's the info for joining

League ID#: 552661
League Name: SDFLA Fantasy Football
Password: markusquit
Custom League URL: http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/sdfla

Draft Type: Live Standard Draft
Draft Time: Wed Aug 31 10:30pm EDT

Back to work...

Hope everyone had a nice new year. It's good to be back. A quick look at what was missed the last week:

1. The Cuban Spies strike back... against their lawyers. From the Miami Herald:

In his appeal, Hernandez, 45, contends that his trial attorney, Paul McKenna, mishandled his defense at a 2001 Miami federal trial by focusing so much on the shoot-down location.

That strategy overshadowed evidence that Hernandez purportedly did not know in advance about the deadly Cuban plot over the Florida Straits, the appeal asserts. Evidence of his advance knowledge was crucial to proving his role in the murder conspiracy.

"In short, Hernandez's lawyer was his worst enemy in the courtroom," his appellate attorneys wrote in a habeas corpus petition filed in Miami federal court.

2. Judge Carnes vs. Judge Tjoflat in Floride Norelus v. Denny's Inc.

Both SFL and Kosher Meatball cover this 2-1 case about sanctions against the Amlongs for a 63-page errata sheet. From Judge Carnes' intro:

No one’s memory is perfect. People forget things or get confused, and anyone can make an innocent misstatement or two. Or maybe even three or four. But not 868 of them. In this case, the plaintiff’s attorneys, William and Karen Amlong, filed a sixty-three page errata sheet containing 868 attempted changes to their client’s deposition testimony, which was the sole source of evidentiary support for their client’s claims. The district court exercised its authority under 28 U.S.C. § 1927 to sanction the Amlongs. This is their appeal, or more specifically their second appeal.

But what struck me was not so much Judge Carnes' colorful way of writing about the case (agree with his decisions or not, he makes reading them fun), but instead how he engages Judge Tjoflat (the concurring judge, District Judge Bowen, did not join in any of these remarks):

• As the magistrate judge found and no one (with the possible exception of the
  dissenting judge on this panel) seriously contests, the improper submission of the
  massive errata document rendered the eight days spent on Norelus’ deposition a
  waste of time and money to say nothing of the time the attorneys were forced to
  spend on the issues created by the document itself.
• Up to this point, we have addressed the issues related to the errata document
  and the award of sanctions as those issues have been raised and defined since that
  document was submitted fourteen years ago. Our dissenting colleague, by contrast, has hatched a brand new theory—a theory that was never raised by the parties, never considered by the district court, and never argued to this Court. The theory
  that he has conjured up is that the errata sheet was really nothing more than a
  “letter” from Karen Amlong to defense counsel. It was not, he insists, an errata
  sheet because he thinks it was never presented to the court reporter or affixed to
  Norelus’ deposition as, he thinks, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30 requires. Dissenting Op. at 1. He is wrong on his premises and wrong in his conclusion.
• Instead of recognizing the obvious import of Norelus’ own certification or following our precedent about who has the burden on appeal where there are any ambiguities, the dissenting judge would remake the case entirely along different factual lines, lines that only he sees.
• From its inception, the errata document has been understood by all, except our dissenting colleague, to be a Rule 30 errata sheet.
• That certification itself and its use to assert “exceptions” to the deposition belies the dissent’s far-fetched assertion that the errata sheet was nothing more than a letter from one attorney to another. And there is more.
• The Amlongs, the defendants, the magistrate judge, the district court judge, all three judges of this Court in Amlong I, everyone in the district court after the remand, and both parties in briefing and arguing the present appeal have understood that. Everyone has understood it—except for our dissenting colleague.
• Now, after almost a decade-and-a-half of litigation, he has been able to discern what everyone else has overlooked: that the Rule 30 errata sheet is not really a Rule 30 errata sheet, but it is instead “a document, although entitled ‘errata sheet,’ [which] had no more legal efficacy than a letter.” Dissenting Op. at 22. During a period of almost fifteen years of looking at the document, no one else has ever thought it was just a letter. And no wonder. Treating the errata sheet as nothing more than a letter is like arguing after Gettysburg that the warring sides had been mistaken all along about the bombardment of Fort Sumter, that it was actually nothing more than a diplomatic overture.
• And the dissenting judge’s extraordinary perception does not end there. He
  is even able to perceive that everyone else’s inability to see that the errata sheet isnot really an errata sheet is not the fault of the Amlongs, who designated it an
  errata sheet and have been arguing for almost a decade and a half that is what it is, and not the fault of all the judges who have consistently treated it as an errata sheet, but instead is the fault of—who else is left? Defense counsel, of course. See Dissenting Op. at 2, 19–20, 22–23.
• Even beyond the facts, there is another problem with the dissent’s attempt to inject the not-an-errata-sheet-but-just-a-letter issue into the case at this point. The issue has been defaulted about as many times and in about as many ways as any issue can be.

Sorry for all the bullets, but wow. Is it me, or was that opinion something more than a "diplomatic overture"?

3. SFL won the blog fantasy football league this year. Well done!

4. Mona and I won the Above the Law fantasy football league.

5. I beat Rumpole in the regular season head-to-head football challenge, but we will continue it into the playoffs. It was a fun battle, especially because watching the Dolphins was torture.

6. Tom Goldstein of ScotusBlog is leaving Akin Gump and is going back out on his own. (Via ATL)

Tuesday morning notes

Here's some fun to get your week started:



In other news:

1. SFL covers political law clerks.

2. Curt Anderson has this interesting piece on the lawsuit to recover for pre-WWII German bonds

3. The blog draft was yesterday. Here's your winning squad:

Phillip Rivers
Reggie Wayne
Miles Austin
Michael Crabtree
Ray Rice
Knowshon Moreno
Jason Witten
Justin Forsett
Donald Driver
Michael Bush
Kevin Kolb
Willis McGahee
Louis Murphy
Joshua Cribbs
Roy Williams
Fred Taylor
James Jones
James Davis
New Orleans Defense
Mason Crosby

More on Ben Kuehne

This weekend Jay Weaver had an interesting article about the oral argument in Ben Kuehne's case. Background here. Jay asks whether DOJ has targeted Fabio Ochoa's lawyers because they actually had the nerve to go to trial. And Joe DeMaria, the recent quote-master, is at it again:

"This is the Scopes Monkey trial of money laundering cases,'' said former federal prosecutor Joseph DeMaria, referring to the historic 1925 test case in Tennessee over the teaching of evolution in school.**
"If the government wins a conviction against somebody like Ben Kuehne, it will send the defense bar into a deep freeze,'' said DeMaria, who has represented several white-collar defendants in civil forfeiture cases. "This isn't just about drug dealing; it affects the entire spectrum of law enforcement.''

Read the whole article... Good stuff.

Sitting here watching MNF right now. It was a long weekend for Miami sports. Dolphins, Canes, Pennington.... Ugh. At least we got off the board in the blog fantasy league.

**I like how Jay has to explain to the Herald readers what the Scopes Monkey trial is all about...

1-0

C-A-N-E-S

Okay, now that that's off my chest, back to business.

The Chief has formed a committee to look at building a new Broward courthouse. From the DBR:

With its maze-like corridors, dead ends and multi-level pools, the Fort Lauderdale federal courthouse is outdated in the post 9/11 world. The chief judge says it's high time for a replacement. Chief U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said the courthouse fails to meet the upcoming — and even the current needs — of the Southern District. There are security issues, the courtrooms are small and undignified, and there is a lot of unused space on the tiered floors. But most importantly, Moreno said there is a need to expand. The district’s caseload is shifting north from Miami, and the next federal judge in South Florida will sit in Fort Lauderdale. Moreno has appointed a 16-member committee including judges, magistrates, mayors and a number of high-profile law firm partners, and they plan to hold their first meeting Sept. 15.

Lots of pithy quotes in the article...

George Platt, a Shutts & Bowen partner in Fort Lauderdale, is the committee chairman. He said the current courthouse was built in the mid-1970s. The front entrance features a sun-worshipping tiered staircase, pools and fountains edged with palm trees. But for security reasons, the public must enter through a narrow, dark rear door walled off by a chain-link fence around a ramp. “I would describe it as sort of going into a gulag. It’s a very unpleasant experience,” Platt said. “I guess it was a wonderful idea in someone’s imagination when it was created originally, but once we got into a situation where a courthouse had to be more secure and more efficient, this building has been a disaster.” In recent years, the most prominent feature at the front of the building, the fountain pools, were drained and left empty.

I agree that the building is a disaster, but the actual courtrooms aren't that bad. I like trying cases there: you are close to the jury and to the judge (unlike the Ferguson building). And the acoustics aren't awful like they are in the Tower building in Miami.

For those that are interested, we had the blog Fantasy Football draft last night. I got saddled with the first pick. Here's my (championship) roster:

Philip Rivers
Anquan Boldin
Brandon Marshall
DeSean Jackson
Adrian Peterson
Steve Slaton
Jeremy Shockey
Willie Parker
Knowshon Moreno
Matt Schaub
Chris Henry
Chris Chambers
James Davis
Justin Gage
Kevin Boss
Patrick Crayton
Darrius Heyward-Bey
Mason Crosby
Tennessee Defense
New York Jets Defense

SDFLA Fantasy Football League?

Miguel de la O wants to start a fantasy football league for the Southern District of Florida. Winner gets bragging rights. If there is enough interest, the league will start. Email Miguel at delao13@gmail.com if you are interested. Spots are reserved for Rumpole and SFLawyers if they are interested.