law.com - New York

Pataki Proposes Higher Fees to Fund Raise in 18-B Rates
New York Law Journal

Gov. George E. Pataki proposed raising assigned counsel rates largely by imposing new fees on attorneys and their clients. If approved by the Legislature, which is by no means a certainty, Pataki's budget proposal would take effect as of Jan. 1, 2004, for the first time since 1986 and address a burgeoning crisis that has confronted the courts for several years.

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Court Debates Rules on Police Surveillance
New York Law Journal

City attorneys and civil liberties advocates squared off in federal court Wednesday over rules that limit police surveillance of political groups in New York City. At an afternoon hearing before Southern District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr., the debate centered on whether the police had asked for a change in current practices so severe that it would be unacceptable under federal law, and whether the police should have the same, or perhaps even greater, powers than the FBI to investigate terrorism.

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No Free Speech Violation Found in Law Clerk's Firing
New York Law Journal

A judge's decision to fire a law clerk who accused him of corruption doesn't violate the First Amendment, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. In upholding summary judgment for the judge, the 2nd Circuit said the "potential disruptiveness" to the chambers of former Queens, N.Y., Supreme Court Justice Leon Beerman "outweighed whatever value there was" in the speech of the clerk, who called Beerman a "corrupt son of a bitch."

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Verizon Wins Ruling Against Local Regulation Under 1996 Telecom Act
New York Law Journal

An upstate city's attempt to exert control over Verizon's use of public streets and rights-of-way has fallen to the long reach of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996. In the latest ruling on the scope of the statute, Northern District Judge David N. Hurd said the act is so broad that the City of Rome lacks a basis to renegotiate a franchise agreement that expired more than three years ago.

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Digital Copyright Internet Service Provider May Be Forced to Shut Down
New York Law Journal

In the long-running comic book series, The Thing is a Fantastic Four superhero with a rock body and amazing strength who can defeat any menace at hand. In its modern incarnation, The Thing is a New York City-based independent Internet service provider. And in its current guise, The Thing may have met its match in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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Divided 9th Circuit Panel Mulls Issue of Ineffective Counsel
The Recorder

In an attempt to check the growth of a controversial body of law, four 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges argued Tuesday that a California inmate's conviction should not be overturned because his lawyer was ineffective. Their dissent from a decision not to rehear the case en banc has no precedential value, but it strikes at the heart of a 9th Circuit trend of overturning state court decisions, often because of ineffective counsel claims.

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Indictment Quashed in First Case Under N.J. Porn Law
New Jersey Law Journal

A judge has dismissed, on First Amendment grounds, the first indictment brought under a 1995 New Jersey law that criminalizes running a sexually oriented business next to a residential area. The judge ruled that the state failed to sustain its burden of showing that other outlets for adult material are available nearby, as the New Jersey Supreme Court required in a 1997 decision.

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Cancer Test Misreading Yields $15M Verdict
The National Law Journal

A Long Island, N.Y., jury has awarded more than $15 million to the family of a woman whose Pap smear was misread, which allowed an undiagnosed cervical cancer to spread and eventually kill her. In 1996, Karen Pedone sued her gynecologist for malpractice and the lab, Metpath, for its failure to spot the abnormalities in the test. The jury unanimously found the lab culpable for Pedone's death.

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ProBusiness Creates Escape Hatch
The Deal

ProBusiness Services has devised an escape hatch in its $500 million acquisition by Automatic Data Processing, one of the biggest third-party providers of payroll services. Included in the merger agreement is an unusual provision permitting ProBusiness' board to void the deal if regulators threaten to stop the transaction and directors have a "good faith" belief that the government is "reasonably likely" to prevail in court.

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Virtual Connections
Fulton County Daily Report

Videoconferencing has come a long way technologically, but according to an American Bar Association technology survey, its usage among attorneys has actually dropped slightly over the last couple of years. Attorneys familiar with videoconferencing say it's great -- as long as you invest the time and money to buy the right system and, more importantly, use it in the right situations.

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