By Joseph Schuman

Patient non-disclosure agreement comes back to bite dentist

12/1/11

Manhattan dentist Stacy Makhnevich has been putting a muzzle on her patients, but one of them is biting anyway, in court.

Makhnevich has been forcing her patients to sign agreements promising not to criticize her online, according to the New York Daily News. And former patient Robert Lee signed such an agreement before Makhnevich fixed his sore tooth. But when Lee received a bill for $4,000 more than he expected, he went on Yelp to complain anyway, according to his court claim. "Avoid at all cost!" he wrote on the user review site. "Scamming their customers!"

Makhnevich accused him of breaching the "Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy" he signed, and started billing him $100 a day as long as the post stayed on Yelp.

So Lee has gone to court, arguing the agreement infringes on his First Amendment right to free speech, and that it's also a violation of dental ethics. "This is using these contracts to suppress the other side and deprives the consumer of valuable information," Lee's lawyer, Paul Levy of Public Citizen, tells the News. Other reviews of Makhhnevich's work on Yelp carry five stars, he adds.

Lee, who claims to have been in bad pain when he signed the form, tells the paper he has "to wonder what this dentist's other patients have said to make her feel it was necessary to go to this extreme."

Subterranean seizure nabs a record marijuana haul

12/1/11

Summary Judgments has a new favorite law enforcement agency: The San Diego Tunnel Task Force. This week it uncovered an underground drug-smuggling passageway so elaborately constructed that it could have been built by Donald Trump. And along with six suspects, it netted a record 32-ton marijuana seizure.

The task force includes representatives from the Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the California Bureau of Narcotics, and has been hunting down tunnel smugglers since 2003.

For the past six months, task force investigators have been working a case that led them Tuesday to the most sophisticated tunnel found on the U.S.-Mexican border in years, the DEA says. The 612-yard passageway connects a warehouse in an industrial park in the Otay Mesa section of San Diego with a similar one in Tijuana, and is equipped with elevators, electric rail cars, reinforced walls and electric lights.

Confirmation of the tunnel's existence came when detectives observed a tractor trailer truck leaving the Otay Mesa Warehouse Monday night.

The dirver parked it near the Miramar Marine Corp airbase, where a second man picked it up the next morning. Agents aware of the operation let the truck pass through a customs checkpoint on the way to Los Angeles, where the driver and another man were arrested as they began to unload the 11 tons of marijuana in the truck. When agents busted into the warehouse down in San Diego they found nearly 20 tons of marijuana wrapped in plastic and stacked neatly on pallets, and another ton piled in bundles at the entrance of the tunnel. All told, the marijuana seized in the operation has what the DEA estimates to be a street value of $30 million to $35 million.

Grand jury examines possible improper payment by Richardson's 2008 campaign

12/1/11

The seamy side of politics may sometimes blight the face of democracy, but it sure generates revenue for lawyers and the media. Case in point: the sex scandals that seem to mark each presidential campaign, the current cycle included. Yet the latest example involves a Democrat from the 2008 presidential cycle -- and the matter could soon be headed to court.

People familiar with a federal inquiry of former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson tell the Wall Street Journal a grand jury is investigating allegations that he violated campaign-finance laws by having supporters pay a woman who planned to say the two carried out an extramarital affair. The alleged payment is said to have taken place when Richardson was seeking the Democratic nomination four years ago.

And the inquiry appears to have progressed far enough for some of Richardson's close associates to be granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.

Contacted by the Journal, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Albuquerque neither confirmed nor denied a grand-jury probe was taking place. Richardson's currently out of the country at an environmental conference in Nigeria, and his office wouldn't identify his lawyers. But a senior finance adviser to his presidential campaign, Jennifer Poersch, tells the Journal she knows of no inappropriate fund raising or other wrongdoing. Still, the Journal's sources say that indictments could come within weeks. But they also say it's possible no charges will be brought.

Survey paints stark portrait of courts' budget cutting

12/1/11

Summary Judgments recently looked at the toll budget cutting has taken on state courts, via a story in the New York Times. Now we get hard numbers released this week by the nonprofit National Center for State Courts, which surveyed court officials around the country. The broad reduction in services portrayed in the report is bound to frustrate citizen litigants and the lawyers who represent them.

Forty-two states have considerably reduced their judicial budgets, 39 aren't filling clerkship vacancies and 23 state systems have cut back court operating hours, limiting public access to justice as courtrooms close their doors. The Center says this is restricting courts' ability to handle divorce and child custody cases, foreclosures, bankruptcy, personal injury suits and more.

For a state-by-state chart to see what measures affect you, specific year-to-year budget changes and narratives about the financial pickles of all 50 states, click here.

Corruption is widespread, global index shows

12/1/11

Corruption is one of the fastest growing areas of the legal business, and business is good. Since advice about -- and defense against -- the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a burgeoning source of new income for U.S. law firms, Summary Judgments thought it might be a good idea to look at where in the world corruption poses much of a threat. Turns out, it's almost everywhere.

Transparency International, a global network of nongovernmental groups that deals with the issue, released its annual Corruptions Perceptions Index today. The vast majority of countries scored under 5 on a scale where 0 is highly corrupt and 10 is very clean. New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Singapore and Norway, the cleanest countries in that order, were the only states to rate a 9 or higher. Germany and Japan were among those scoring 8 or higher, while Britain got a 7.8 and the United States -- ranked 24th -- was given a 7.1.

Somalia and North Korea were at the bottom with a score of 1. But among low-scoring countries more likely to welcome foreign business executives, the former Soviet republics of central Asia, many African countries and states in the once war-torn Southeast Asia all fared poorly. Central American countries had pretty high perceptions of corruption, and in Europe, Russia ranked 143 with a rating of 2.4, and Greece came in eightieth, with a score of 3.4.

China was ranked 75 with a score of 3.6, not much better than 69th-ranked Italy at 3.9.

TI looks at perceptions because corruption is usually hidden and thus hard to measure itself. The group compiles its index from opinion surveys conducted by independent organizations. "This year we have seen corruption on protestors' banners be they rich or poor," says TI Chair Huguette Labelle. "Whether in a Europe hit by debt crisis or an Arab world starting a new political era, leaders must heed the demands for better government."

Jesse Eisenberg says film promoters are misusing his image

12/1/11

The actor Jesse Eisenberg is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg as the Facebook founder who endured depositions and a host of legal travails in "The Social Network."Now Eisenberg is launching his own, real-life lawsuit, against studios that exaggerated his five-minute cameo in a horror movie to promote the picture.

Eisenberg is suing Lionsgate and Grindstone Entertainment, which put his face on the cover of the DVD for "Camp Hell," as well as his name above the title when the DVD was released in August, the Hollywood Reporter recounts. Eisenberg only did one day of work on the film in 2007 with payment of just $3,000, as a favor to the friends who were directing and producing the flick. That was before he was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Zuckerberg.

Now, he is seeking damages of $3 million -- more than was spent to make the movie -- for misuse of his name and image in a complaint that begins, "No good deed goes unpunished." But Eisenberg's complaint says the dispute isn't about the money. "Eisenberg is bringing this lawsuit in order to warn his fans and the public that, contrary to the manner in which Defendants are advertising the film, Eisenberg is not the star of and does not appear in a prominent role in Camp Hell," it says. In fact, the Reporter says the lawsuit sounds more like a consumer class action than a fight over publicity rights, with Eisenberg accusing the studios of "continuing to perpetrate a fraud on the public."

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