On Thursday the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered that Chancery Judge Talmadge Littlejohn of New Albany be publicly reprimanded and fined $100 for jailing Oxford lawyer Danny Lampley for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance in his courtroom. Here is the Clarion-Ledger article on the case. Here is the Supreme Court’s opinion. Chief Justice Waller wrote the Court’s unanimous opinion.

I previously wrote about the incident here, here and here.

The Court accepted the recommendation of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance. The Commission found that Judge Littlejohn violated several Canons of the Mississippi Code of Judicial Conduct. The Court found that Judge Littlejohn’s actions injured the integrity and independence of the judiciary and damaged public perception of the judiciary.

To his credit, Judge Littlejohn admitted his misconduct and cooperated with the Commission.

My Take:

The Commission and Supreme Court handled this matter very well. I hope that Judge Littlejohn was just having a bad day and that this incident does not reflect his judicial temperament.

Back when this happened people were debating what would happen if a spectator refused to stand when a judge entered the courtroom. I saw this happen in December in a federal court trial on the Coast before Judge Guirola. After it happened a couple of times, Judge Guirola insisted that spectators stand as a show of respect to the court and the judge’s position. He said that spectators didn’t have to personally respect him, but they did have to respect the Court and the position.

I thougt that Judge Guirola handled the matter very well, but it was un-comfortable.

The worst thing about it was that the spectator—who was not connected to the parties or attorneys—sat behind my counsel table. Tim Holleman of Gulfport was one of the opposing attorneys. I did about the only thing I could in that situation: asked the lady to please move and sit behind Tim.

Union Carbide wants Smith County Circuit Judge Eddie Bowen to recuse himself from hearing further proceedings in the inexplicably massive asbestos verdict rendered last month. Here is Union Carbide’s motion.

Union Carbide points to the fact that Judge Bowen’s father settled an asbestos case with Union Carbide 20 years ago. Union Carbide figured this out after the trial based on an investigation instigated by Judge Bowen’s comments about his father during trial.

According to Union Carbide, this creates a blatant conflict of interest that requires Judge Bowen to recuse himself. Significantly, during voir dire Judge Bowen struck for cause all panel members who themselves or their immediate family members had ever asserted an asbestos claim.

My Take:

It’s a well-written motion. Perhaps a little heavy on the use of text in the footnotes, but that is a matter of personal preference. I use more footnotes than most lawyers. But I mostly use them for citations. Legal writing guru Brian Garner contends that citations in the body make pleadings and briefs harder to read.

I can see Union Carbide’s point. But the fact that the settlement was 20 years ago and Judge Bowen allowed nine days of voir dire weigh against recusal.

The motion goes slightly over the top at times. Using professional wrestling terminology, the motion’s reference to the elder Bowen’s case being filed by “the law firm of ‘Dickie Scruggs, P.A’.” invokes ‘cheap heat.’ It would be like the ‘villain’ in a wrestling show in Oxford taking the mike and saying Ole Miss sucks and Miss. State is the best school in Mississippi. That would be cheap heat.

There was no such thing as “Dickie Scruggs, P.A.” Scruggs didn’t refer to himself as “Dickie” and a review of the Secretary of State’s corporate records confirms there was no entity by that name. It’s my understanding that ‘Dickie’ was a nickname for Scruggs used by some of his closest friends and people who didn’t know him at all. I guess saying “Richard F. Scruggs P.A.” just didn’t have the same ring to it.

Apparently, we’re in a period of Scruggs cheap heat references. Like in the Madison County Journal article that I discussed in this post. These references to Scruggs appear forced and a bit silly.

Strategically, Union Carbide is in an interesting position. Do they really want another judge assigned to the case who is more likely to order a new trial? Does Union Carbide really want a new trial in Smith County before its appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court? I don’t think I would.

What Union Carbide could be doing is trying to knock Judge Bowen out from hearing its other cases in Bowen’s circuit and any re-trial of the Smith County case after an appeal.

Reports from Claiborne County are that the water is rising fast. The plaintiff lives in Vicksburg and had trouble getting to Port Gibson today because Highway 61 is closed.

As a result, Judge Pickard is pressing to get the ongoing silica trial to verdict today. The parties argued jury instructions last night after the jury left for the day. It’s expected that closing arguments will be today. Perhaps even before lunch. If they don’t finish soon they’re going to need some canoes.

Reports are that the plaintiff’s Closer Dennis Sweet is participating in the trial. It will be interesting to see how plaintiff counsel splits closing.

Reports from Port Gibson are that the plaintiff in the Claiborne County silica trial went to the bullpen yesterday and called in……Dennis Sweet of Jackson.

Yep. The big right-hander entered the ballgame courtroom Wednesday afternoon representing the plaintiff. I didn’t know that Sweet was coming out of the pen.

My earlier post on the ongoing silica trial is here.

There is a silica trial taking place this week in Claiborne County. The plaintiff claims that he was exposed to silica at the Grand Gulf Power Plant.

I understand that there are concerns that there could be a mistrial ordered due to the Mississippi River flooding in Claiborne County. Apparently, water is at Hwy 61 near the courthouse and on the rise.

Tim Porter and Johnny Givens of Porter & Malouf in Ridgeland represent the plaintiff.

Chip Wilbanks with Wells Moore in Jackson and Karen Maston with Sedgwick out of Houston represent the defendant MSA. Luther Munford with Phelps Dunbar in Jackson is assisting the defense—presumably for appeal purposes. Munford is an appellate specialist.

Judge Lamar Pickard is the trial judge.

Monday’s post on discovery gamesmanship cases proved to be one of the most criticized posts in the history of this blog.

On Tuesday Chancery Court Judge Larry Primeaux of Meridian gave his thoughts on how to handle discovery gamesmanship in this post on his blog.

The prevailing theme in Judge Primeaux’s post is that lawyers let too much slide in discovery:

In my experience, most attorneys are too accommodating when it comes to discovery. You don’t want to press too hard because “what goes around, comes around.” You call the other attorney who promises the answers “in a few days,” and that stretches into a few weeks and months. You hate to file a motion because you don’t want to be disagreeable. The common thread is that these approaches are absolutely ineffective.

The entire post is worth reading and Judge Primeaux’s blog is a great resource for chancery court practice issues.

Commentors to my Monday post thought I was overly critical of Judge Mills and too easy on the City of Jackson. The sense that I get from the comments is that emotions are running high within the bar on the issue of gamesmanship in discovery.

On Friday I discussed the Miss. Court of Appeals’ affirmance of a default judgment against the City of Jackson for not producing a document in discovery. Over the weekend I compared the Court’s decision to the Mississippi Supreme Court’s 2007 opinion in the Ford Motor Co. v. Tennin case and Judge Mills’ 2010 decisions in the Northern District case involving Harrah’s Casino’s discovery abuses. I discussed the Harrah’s case here and here.

Here is a chart that compares the cases:

It appears that the City of Jackson case had the least bad conduct and the harshest sanctions. Harrah’s conduct was clearly the worst. It looks sort of like the City got the death penalty for shop-lifting and Harrah’s got probation for murder. Granted some people say that if you read between the lines Harrah’s got hammered. My response is that you shouldn’t have to read between the lines to see that Harrah’s got hammered for what it did.

We’ve got a big problem in Mississippi with gamesmanship in discovery. Many lawyers believe that the main part of their job is to conceal relevant evidence. And for the most part, courts aren’t doing anything to address the problem. The problem is likely worse elsewhere based on my experiences with out-of-state lawyers.

Here’s an example. In many cases the opposing side objects to 80% plus of written discovery requests. What this means is that you have no idea if you are getting complete responses.

I would like to see courts do something to try to prevent this gamesmanship instead of making inconsistent rulings in cases where discovery disputes blow up. There should be model interrogatories and requests for production that are per se non-objectionable. If a party does object to one of the model instructions, it must be a specific objection supported by an affidavit.

Judges also need to understand that under the rules of civil procedure the burden is on the party resisting discovery. Many judges get it backwards.

A few years ago I was involved in a case with a discovery dispute where Magistrate Judge Jerry Davis presided over discovery. The opposing side objected to 90% of our discovery and claimed the sky would fall if they had to produce the documents that we requested. We had a hearing and Judge Davis told the other side that he always hears that the sky is falling, but it never does. He struck their objections and ordered production of everything we asked for.

The opposing party produced the documents, which were very helpful to our case. This led to the settlement of the case. Unfortunately, many judges are afraid to take the stance that Judge Davis did in that case. But if they did, there would be much less gamesmanship in discovery.

Last month in this post I quoted an email from a “Tatworth Electronics” that appeared to be a lawyer email scam. Since that post there have been a lot of visitors to this site from people who found the site through a google search for “Tatworth Electronics.”

For people researching Tatworth I encourage you to do the following:

1. go to google maps;
2. insert Tatworth’s address: 29 Pine Dr., Great Neck, New York.
3. go to the street view.

What did you see? The offices of an international security company? Or the end of a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood?

Don’t be a sucker.

As the ABA Journal reports of new scams hitting Texas law firms, I continue to receive emails that look like scams.

Without exception, the scam emails are generic, like this email received today:

Dear Counselor
My Company is currently in need of a commercial litigation lawyer, there is an urgent matter. If you can help with our legal need kindly get back to me immediately for more details.
Mr. Eric Bahir
Sales Manager
Tatworth Electronics
29 Pine Drive
Great Neck NY 11021
Tel 516 589 5281
Fax 516-706-2571
Toll Free 1-800-951-6484
ericbahir@aol.com
ericba@tatworth.com
www.tatworth.com

That’s how every company I’ve ever represented gets its lawyers. Generic spam emails.

Imagine our happiness when I was at Baker Donelson and we received an email from Ford Motor Company to defend it in products cases: “Dear Counselor, our company is currently in need of a products litigation lawyer. Kindly get back to me immediately for more details.”

Isn’t this how you’ve gotten all your corporate clients?

If you’re going to go to the trouble to find my email address and send me an email, why not write “Dear Phil” or “Mr. Thomas” or something personalized? They never do.

If you’re going to claim to be in New York, why not write the email like English is your native language? “Kindly get back to me”? If this guy is really from New York he would say something like: “give me a call, jackass.”

Or why not have my email address in the “to” line? In the “to” line of this email was the email address for a lawyer at a large Mississippi law firm. A lawyer who does not identify commercial litigation as his practice area.

Of course, this guy did go to the trouble of setting up a website for the bogus looking company Tatworth Electronics. Google “Tatworth Electronics” and see how many results you get for this “international” company. I got four hits. All directed at Tatworth’s website. By comparison, the local restaurant Soulshine Pizza generates over 30 pages of search results on Google.

The scary thing is that people must still be falling for these scams. Otherwise, they would not still be trying it.

For prior posts on lawyer email scams, see here and here.

As the ABA Journal reports of new scams hitting Texas law firms, I continue to receive emails that look like scams.

Without exception, the scam emails are generic, like this email received today:

Dear Counselor
My Company is currently in need of a commercial litigation lawyer, there is an urgent matter. If you can help with our legal need kindly get back to me immediately for more details.
Mr. Eric Bahir
Sales Manager
Tatworth Electronics
29 Pine Drive
Great Neck NY 11021
Tel 516 589 5281
Fax 516-706-2571
Toll Free 1-800-951-6484
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.tatworth.com

That’s how every company I’ve ever represented gets its lawyers. Generic spam emails.

Imagine our happiness when I was at Baker Donelson and we received an email from Ford Motor Company to defend it in products cases: “Dear Counselor, our company is currently in need of a products litigation lawyer. Kindly get back to me immediately for more details.”

Isn’t this how you’ve gotten all your corporate clients?

If you’re going to go to the trouble to find my email address and send me an email, why not write “Dear Phil” or “Mr. Thomas” or something personalized? They never do.

If you’re going to claim to be in New York, why not write the email like English is your native language? “Kindly get back to me”? If this guy is really from New York he would say something like: “give me a call, jackass.”

Or why not have my email address in the “to” line? In the “to” line of this email was the email address for a lawyer at a large Mississippi law firm. A lawyer who does not identify commercial litigation as his practice area.

Of course, this guy did go to the trouble of setting up a website for the bogus looking company Tatworth Electronics. Google “Tatworth Electronics” and see how many results you get for this “international” company. I got four hits. All directed at Tatworth’s website. By comparison, the local restaurant Soulshine Pizza generates over 30 pages of search results on Google.

The scary thing is that people must still be falling for these scams. Otherwise, they would not still be trying it.

For prior posts on lawyer email scams, see here and here.