Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics

  |PRATLAW| broadcasts: Apparently there will be very few if any repercussions over the collusion and fraud that caused the financial meltdown year before last. The media strangely seem completely uninterested in the unraveling the story and exposing the crooked world of Wall Street. I would venture to say that that world is populated by friends and family of the talking heads, producers, and executives that control mainstream media. So we have to rely on rags like Rolling Stone to light a dim candle. The same kind of back room back scratching went on at our local banks. If you got hurt don't let the statute of limitations, 2 years, run before you talk to a lawyer about it. Here's the link to the article that started this tirade: Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics

WEIRD CASES| What do Jurors think?

Breach of fiduciary duty cases illustrate what damages are all about. Sexual relations between consenting adults are probably not great damages cases and rely heavily on the victim's ability to communicate and the way they do it in front of an audience. Just how vulnerable was the victim is also a critical issue. My damages professor always illustrated the dilemma a jury has to confront by asking us to consider a bad facial injury to a hobo who spends his life down by the train terminal warming his hands over a burn barrel and the same injury to a famous fashion model ~ then he asked us to debate "do you really think a jury of twelve intelligent citizens are going to give the bum the same amount of pain and suffering they give the model?"

Law.com: Prior Suit May Signal Fate of Cases Against Ga. Megachurch Pastor

Report gives stimulus package high marks

The TARP bail out of the Financial Industry has apparently been a huge success. I didn't need the Washington Post to tell me that, however. A quick review of my meager stock portfolio which has more than doubled since TARP wen into effect [and the President took office]. Had the President been a more effective leader there is no telling where it might have skyrocketed. The President is, however, learning a hug job on the job. At this point I have him graded a solid C and he is working on a B- in my book. I have come to the opinion in my old age that perhaps we should give him another term rather than elect another person who will learn on the job too ... unless the Republicans can bring forth an unknown that has experience ... and that just is not going to happen. President Obama appears to be pro business. Now if he can just decide to put on the big boy pants of being President of the United States and stop doing a black impression of Jimmy Carter, traveling around prefacing every speech with a Mea Cupla on behalf of our country ... and instead project a vision for the future and lead he would get a solid A in my book. I am keeping my figures crossed but not holding my breath.

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Washington Post Link:  Report gives stimulus package high marks

Peachtree City Legal News

Oral contracts can be upheld even for large sums of money: $281M verdict upheld against Turner - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

DEBT COLLECTION| The Old English System

HERE IS A LINK to the FTC site on what is lawful: FTC LINK

In Merry Old England once could spend an entire life in Debtors Prison [mercifully not very long thanks to the poor food and hygiene]. Who founded the United States but the English and interestingly they brought over a lot of bad Pavlovian beliefs, like hounding debtors to death. One of the most famous was Samuel Chase one of the first Justices of the United States Supreme Court who it is said died in a flop house in New Orleans after moving from town to town trying to escape his debt collectors. Any student of history will tell you that no one less than Thomas Jefferson himself was hounded by debt collectors and had it been available would have declared bankruptcy. Today we have protections in debt collection and bankruptcy. Almost everyone wants to pay their creditors|very few creditors want to give anyone a break; and of course the irony today is that we as taxpayers have given many creditors huge breaks and even money to stay afloat!

Here is a recent case overview of a Court getting tough with a debt collecting firm: 2010 Court sanction against a debt collection firm

NEWNAN PRATLAW|| 14th amendment essay

The Supreme Court is reviewing a Chicago gun ban statute this term. The case is McDonald v. Chicago. Mr. McDonald, an elderly man, was upset that on 3 different occasions "Utes" came to his home to "visit", would not leave when he asked, demanded that they vacate his property and then stole everything he owned that was valuable. Mr. McDonald decided to purchase a gun to help him persuade the "Utes" the next time they came to visit that they should leave his home without looting it. Mr. McDonald's acts were apparently illegal according to Chicago's handgun ban. Legally, the case poses the prospect of the Supreme Court finally issuing a decision as to the extent of the scope of the 14th amendment and if they take on that topic the case could be one of the most important cases in our lifetime. It is more likely that the Court will just strike down the handgun ban and limit its decision to the specific statute. I posted the link on my blog at HOT LEGAL TOPICS [Click it to go there]. Hope you find the topic relevant enough to follow and keep up with the Court's decision.

MAKES COPIES OF DOCUMENTS THAT WILL BE EVIDENCE...

...when it comes to documents.

Over the past 23 years I have come to appreciate the fact that Judges as a whole do not like being given documents with highlighted passages or handwritten notes beside the part of the document you think is important. Doing that is really close to a demand that the Court become a participant in the blind men and the elephant philosophical exercise about the scope of perception: The Blind Men And The Elephant Fable and they do not like the Socratic Method to the extreme of banality, i.e., rain is rain you cannot assert you do not understand it until someone explains it to you and you "feel" it. What all this means in plain English is: (a) The Judge controls his or her court room and no one else has any right to control it. So make a copy of any document you feel the urge to write on, so your lawyer can present the 'clean' one to the Judge and draw the Judge's attention to the passage you have highlighted in your 'dirty' copy by asking the Court's permission to draw its attention to that passage; (b) A testifier's inability to grasp easy questions and evasive answers soon turns a Judge off [and a Jury Too]. Do not engage in Tabula Rasa Socratic Responses [inane question answers to straightforward questions], and; always remember: Neither Judge nor Jury need to be hit over the head with information they can clearly see or hear. They really can be trusted to figure it out.