By Carlyn Kolker
Philipine faceoff?
3/6/12
Last week, we told you about an impeachment trial of the
chief justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, Renato Corona,
whom prosecutors have accused of illegally enriching himself
while in office. When prosecutors rested their case on Feb. 28,
they had had a rough go of their presentation, we noted, citing
the New York Times. If the government's case crumbles, the Times
reports on Tuesday, the presidency of Benigno S. Aquino III
could suffer. Aquino has made rooting out corruption in the
island nation a priority; "analysts warn that if the chief
justice survives the impeachment process, Mr. Aquino will face a
die-hard enemy at the top of the judiciary that could deadlock
government and possibly derail the government's program for
change," the Times writes. The impeachment trial is expected to
last until mid-April. Summary Judgments will be sure to post
more updates.
DUIs out the window?
3/6/12
About 1,000 drunk-driving convictions in San Francisco are
in jeopardy because the police might not have consistently
checked the accuracy of the alcohol screening devices, the San
Francisco Chronicle reports. The devices must be checked after
every 150 tests to make sure they have accurate levels. But in
January, several public defenders observed that police logs
noted that all canister readings were always accurate - a
statistical impossibility, according to the public defender's
office. The problems with the checks likely started in about
2006, according to the San Fran public defender. District
Attorney George Gascon said at a press conference that the
evidence suggests there was "negligence as opposed to criminal
conduct," the Chronicle reports.
Limited calling plan
3/6/12
Call it call-in-show remorse. Dallas lawyer Thomas Corea,
who hosted a live TV call-in show called "Ask the Lawyer with
Tom Corea," is suing CBS KTVT for thwarting his business
opportunities. According to Corea, the station stopped
transferring all of the callers from the show, which spelled
$1.4 million in lost business opportunities for him, according to Hollywood Reporter. The lawyer has sued for breach of
contract, unjust enrichment, fraud, deceit, and yes, other
charges, according to Hollywood Reporter. Summary Judgments
reached out to CBS for comment but didn't immediately hear back.
Getting small in LA
3/6/12
The Los Angeles County court system will be down 300
employees and have 50 fewer open courtrooms come June, according to Courthouse News Service. The county court system is the
biggest in the United States, Courthouse News says, and it's
been plagued by both budget cuts and an ongoing battle over
control of the court system.(Summary Judgments has also chronicled the Los Angeles County courthouse woes.) "These
changes will affect every judicial officer and staff member - as
well as the millions of attorneys and litigants who depend upon
our courts to deliver justice," the court's presiding judge Lee
Edmon wrote in a memo.
Twisted facts?
3/6/12
There are lies, damn lies, free speech. Where is the line?
Summary Judgments last month addressed this issue in a round-up
of stories previewing a case before the Supreme Court over a
U.S. law called the "Stolen Valor Act," a 2006 law that made it
a crime to make false claims about military honors.
The New York Times's Adam Liptak further explores this fuzzy
line in a column aptly titled "Was That Twitter Blast False, or
Just Honest Hyperbole," zeroing in on an Ohio case in which a
man named Mark Miller, a mechanical engineer, has been
prosecuted under an Ohio law that prohibits false statements in
political campaigns. (He sent a Twitter message opposing a
streetcar project in Cincinnati; prosecutors said he twisted the
facts in his message). Miller sued, saying the Ohio law violates
his First Amendment rights, and the case is winding its way
through federal court in Cincinnati. Summary Judgments' favorite
fact from Liptak's story: while the Ohio attorney general's
staff is representing the Ohio Election Commission in defending
the law, the Ohio attorney general himself, Mike DeWine, has
actually filed a brief opposing the stance of his office. "In my
opinion, the law as it is applied and as it is written is
blatantly unconstitutional," DeWine said, according to the
Times.
Outer space on the block
3/6/12
Start your engines - and your bids. On March 29, the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center is going to auction off a slew of
patents for satellite systems, robotics, software development,
telecommunications, cyber security and wireless network
technology, CIO magazine reports. The use of a patent auction is
a "relatively new approach" for a U.S. government agency, CIO
writes, citing a NASA official, who says that licensing patents
can create a "greater return on investment for taxpayers." The
auction will be run by ICAP Patent Brokerage.
The world of patent auctions fascinates Summary Judgments,
mostly because the word "auction" tends to conjure up images of
finely-clad art mavens bidding on the most provocative modern
paintings, or farmers at the county fair shelling out for the
best heifers. As Steve Lohr wrote in a must-read New York Times story in 2009 about the market for IP auctions, "patents, after
all, are ideas." At the time, Lohr listed about a half-dozen
brokers and banks that had begun running patent marketplaces,
and noted that the lucrative practice of brokering patents was
attracting interest from venture capital and private equity
firms, too.
The auction of some of NASA's patents will take place at a conference on IP strategy in Palos Verdes, California.
(Reporting by Carlyn Kolker)
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