News & Notes

1.  Gang members arrested in Broward, via Paula McMahon.

2.  @_FloridaMan is the subject of this fun NY Times article by Lizette Alvarez.  A bunch of other Florida men are quoted -- Billy Corben, Roy Black, Dave Berry, and Carl Hiaasen:

California’s kumbaya vibe is absent here, and so is Texas’ ideological fervor. With so many transplants, allegiances lie elsewhere. New arrivals are often shocked to find that South Florida is segregated, cliquish, brazenly rude and typically indifferent to most annoyances, including its maniacal drivers.

“That’s the most common misconception about Florida — that we are a melting pot,” said Billy Corben, who has made several Florida-esque documentaries, including “Cocaine Cowboys,” about the rise of cocaine violence and capitalism here in the 1970s and 1980s. “We are more akin to a TV dinner, where sometimes the peas spill over into the mashed potatoes.”

“As long as the Champagne is flowing and the checks are clearing,” he added, “nobody asks a lot of questions here about anything.”

Drugs and the weather are also culprits. The steaminess adds to the seaminess. And outdoor living makes for easy viewing and recording. As Mr. Barry put it, people do drugs and act erratically elsewhere. “But it’s not warm outside all the time everywhere,” he said. “In Ohio, they stay indoors.”

Here, reinvention remains the national pastime, which is why hucksters and criminals do quite nicely.

“As they say,” Mr. Corben remarked, “Los Angeles is where you go when you want to be somebody. New York is where you go when you are somebody. Miami is where you go when you want to be somebody else.”

3.  The Steve Chaykin ethics seminar is this Friday at U.M.  Looks to be a good conference in spite of the fact that yours truly will be speaking on social media.  

4.  Bernie Roman is out as the Miccosukee's lawyer.  Via the DBR:

"We have been notified this morning … that we no longer represent the Miccosukee tribe and that I am no longer their tribal attorney," Roman said, according to a transcript of Thursday's hearing.

Salomon Melgen denied bail

 From the Palm Beach Post:

Despite claims by Melgen’s attorneys that he had no intention of fleeing to his native Dominican Republic, U.S. Magistrate James Hopkins denied their request to allow the 60-year-old doctor to post a sizable bond, secured by property worth millions, so he can help them prepare for his trial, now scheduled for Feb. 22.
“There are no combination of conditions that will reasonably assure the appearance of the defendant,” Hopkins ruled. “I will order that he be detained as a risk of flight.”
Not only does Melgen face a possible life sentence if convicted of 76 charges of health-care fraud but he, along with his longtime friend Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., is charged in New Jersey with operating a bribery scheme, Hopkins noted.
Further, he said, an extradition treaty between the U.S. and the Dominican may not cover health-care fraud. If Melgen decides to flee to his island homeland — where he has luxury homes, bank accounts and links to top government officials — prosecutors may never be able to bring him back to stand trial, he said.
Melgen, who federal prosecutors said earned $1 million a month treating patients at clinics in West Palm Beach, Wellington, Delray Beach and Port St. Lucie, smiled weakly at his wife, son and daughter as he was led from the courtroom in shackles. His wife, Flor, collapsed against the couple’s daughter Melissa in tears.

Seems hard to imagine that Melgen should be detained.  He's a 60-year old doctor with no criminal history.  I would expect that he gets bail from the district judge, especially since he already got bond in New Jersey where the judge found that he was not a risk of flight. 

Lindsay MacDonald selected for Stuart A. Markus award

Friends and readers of the blog know that my family set up an award in my Dad's name at the University of Miami School of Law.  The Stuart A. Markus Award recognizes an individual student each year for outstanding work in one of the School of Law’s in-house clinics. The winner is selected by vote of the in-house, live-client clinic directors.  The first award went to Bethany Bandstra.

This year the Markus Award went to Lindsay MacDonald, a student in Rebecca Sharpless’ immigration clinic. Highlights of her clinical work include: litigating a habeas petition in U.S. District Court for a transgender Haitian woman that challenged the legality of her prolonged immigration detention; writing the Eleventh Circuit briefs in the same woman’s asylum case; working on a motion to suppress in immigration court in a case where immigration agents profiled our client in violation of the Fourth Amendment; preparing two cancellation of removal cases in immigration court and litigating one to an adversarial merits hearing; litigating a legally and factually complex dependency case in Broward for an unaccompanied border child that required a deposition of her father as well as numerous court appearances over the course of many months; and authoring the Eleventh Circuit brief in a multi-issue case that is the most complex the Clinic has handled to date. Lindsay was scheduled this April to do the Eleventh Circuit oral argument in the transgender client’s case, but the court rescheduled the case until June. Lindsay has earned no fewer than 10 Dean’s Certificates/CALI awards or their equivalents in her classes and is third in her class of 412.

 

Stuart A. Markus (BED ’54, J.D. ‘57) practiced law in Miami for over 50 years.  Throughout his career, Stuart fought hard for his clients in every area of the law.  He never turned away a person in need, and helped countless people with practical, hands-on advice and representation that went far above and beyond the norm.  The Markus Award is given annually to a student who shares that caring spirit, and who has made a meaningful difference in someone’s life – which is something Stuart did every day.

Congratulations to Lindsay!

Appellate happenings

So everyone is talking about the Second Circuit opinion today which held that the Patriot Act did not authorize NSA to snoop on all of our phone call records.

In the meantime, everyone missed this D.C. Circuit case, which starts out with a Friends reference:

In an episode of the iconic 1990s television show Friends, Joey Tribbiani tries to dissuade Rachel Green from moving to Paris. Joey asks Rachel to flip a coin. If he wins the coin flip, she must agree to stay. Rachel flips the coin; Joey loses. When later recounting the story to Ross Gellar, a befuddled Joey says, “[w]ho loses fifty-seven coin tosses in a row?” Friends: The One with Rachel’s Going Away Party (NBC television broadcast Apr. 29, 2004). Before Ross can answer, Joey explains Rachel’s rules: “Heads, she wins; tails, I lose.” Id.

"There is no support for the assertion that Watkins had a First Amendment right to sing any sort of song in the post office lobby while standing in the service line."

That's the conclusion in this 11th Circuit unpublished decision, which starts out:

This case ensued after plaintiff-appellant Eric Watkins was asked to leave a post office and was denied service because he refused to stop singing. Watkins brought suit against defendant-appellee Jackie White, the postal employee who asked Watkins to leave and did not allow Watkins to purchase a post office box after he disregarded her instruction to stop singing. Proceeding pro se, Watkins appeals the district court’s order granting White’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, averring that White violated his right to free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
On appeal, Watkins argues that he established a cognizable First Amendment claim because White retaliated against him for his exercise of free speech by ordering him to leave the post office and not permitting him to buy a mailbox while singing. Watkins contends that the lyrics to the song he was singing were “antigay” and that White restricted his speech based on its content. He further avers that White did not have the authority to restrict his speech. However, upon review of the record and consideration of the parties’ briefs, we find that the restriction on Watkins’s speech was reasonable and that White is entitled to qualified immunity. Thus, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of the case.