Author: TSA Press

Zororo Makamba was one of the two people who tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday.

He was admitted to hospital in the capital Harare after exhibiting flu-like symptoms last Thursday, the health ministry said in a statement.

Makamba contracted the disease while he was in New York and was in isolation at Wilkins hospital, Harare’s only isolation facility.

TV personality and executive producer, Vimbai Muthinhiri said Makamba was like a brother to her and their families were close growing up.

“Zororo embodied what comes to mind when we talk about Africa’s next generation being our hope,” Muthinhiri said.

“He was Zo, our little brother and ever happy friend who always saw a silver lining in every situation. It’s so difficult to accept that someone who was so full of life will no longer call to check in again,” she added.

Makamba as a high school student where he frequently won awards and trophies, his friend Vimbai Muthinhiri said.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, said she received the news with “extreme sadness and deep sense of shock.”

Makamba had traveled to New York on February 29 and returned to his home in Harare on March 9.

He began to exhibit mild flu-like symptoms a few days later on March 12. He then contacted his doctor a week later and he was advised to self isolate, the Health Minister Obadiah Moyo said in the statement.

On arrival at hospital, Makamba developed severe respiratory distress and was kept in isolation under supervision from health practitioners.

Authorities are now tracing people who came into contact with him.

Mutsvangwa urged the nation to take precautions against Covid-19 after Zimbabwe confirmed its first case late last week.

“As we mourn him the whole nation should take the threat of COVID 1 very seriously. Let’s all follow due medical precautions as announced by the Ministry of Health and by the World Health Organization,” Mutsvangwa said.

Meanwhile, in an address to the nation on Monday night, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced the closure of all borders except for returning residents and cargo effective immediately.

Mnangagwa also announced that all gatherings over 50 people will be banned and bars, nightclubs, gyms and swimming pools will be closed in an effort to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Columbus Mavhunga contributed to this report from Harare, Zimbabwe.

David Green, CEO of the crafting behemoth Hobby Lobby, has always run his business according to strict Christian principles.  That’s why he sued the federal government to overturn the ACA’s contraceptive mandate, because what’s the purpose of religious freedom if you can’t use it to stop your employees getting birth control? So naturally, the CEO consulted the man upstairs on how best to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. And after much prayerful reflection, Green has decided that, until the Health Department or Jesus Christ himself shut them down, all 900-plus Hobby Lobbys are staying open.

“In my family, [my wife] Barbara is the prayer warrior,” Green allegedly wrote to his 32,000 employees, who were doubtless reassured that Mrs. Green’s prayers are shielding them like an impenetrable veil of holy Purell.

He continued:

In her quiet prayer time this past week, the Lord put on Barbara’s heart three profound words to remind us that He’s in control. Guide, Guard, and Groom. We serve a God who will Guide us through this storm, who will Guard us as we travel to places never seen before, and who, as a result of this experience, will Groom us to be better than we could have ever thought possible before now.

Then Green, whose net worth is $6 billion, warned that “we may all have to ‘tighten our belts’ over the near future” to maintain the company’s low debt ratio.

And you thought your managing partner was dysfunctional!

Now, to be fair, this memo has not been authenticated by Hobby Lobby’s corporate offices. But neither has it been denied, and today Business Insider reached out to a Hobby Lobby regional manager, who confirmed that the company intends to stay open come H-E-double-hockey-sticks or high water.

“Our management has doubled down on the work stance, and the district manager has said that our stores will remain open until the National Guard comes in and physically shuts the buildings down,” the source told BI. Idle hands — and cash registers — are the devil’s playground after all, so it’s essential to the health of the nation that customers can browse for Mod Podge in a national emergency,.

The source also authenticated a March 23 all-employee memo from Randy Betts, Senior VP of Store Operations detailing plans for stores closed by local ordinance which recently surfaced online.

If stores are shuttered by local authorities, employees will be forced to exhaust “all available paid time-off benefits (e.g., Vacation Pay, Personal Time Off, Personal/Sick Pay),” after which they’ll be eligible for “75% of their regular rate of pay for two weeks following the exhaustion of all available paid time off benefits.” Two whole weeks, how very X-tian!

After the two weeks, employees will be cast out into the wilderness, where they are “encouraged to contact their local unemployment offices to determine whether they are eligible for unemployment benefits.”

Employees who are sick or who come into contact with a sick person “should request time off, a leave of absence, or an accommodation related to COVID-19.” None of those words sound like paid sick leave. In fact, they sound like a strong disincentive for hourly workers, dependent on Hobby Lobby for their income and health insurance, to STFU and keep coming to work if they’ve been exposed to a person with a COVID-19 diagnosis.

No doubt, these employees on “unpaid leave of absence until further notice” will take comfort in the sermonizing of their billionaire overlord, who writes, “My and Barbara’s confidence, and comfort, comes in large part from knowing that you are a part of our Hobby Lobby family.”

Does Hobby Lobby sell a needle with an eye big enough for a rich man to get into heaven after firing employees who are exposed to a highly contagious virus at work when “an employee or customer reports that he/she has been diagnosed with COVID-19?” Asking for a well known American craft tycoon!

In a leaked memo, Hobby Lobby refuses to give workers paid sick leave during the coronavirus pandemic [Business Insider]

In light of the health crisis cause by the coronavirus, the members of the Supreme Court have stopped the “judicial handshake” that the justices do before going on the bench and at the start of private conferences. The tradition dates back to the tenure of which Chief Justice?

Hint: He reportedly started the practice to remind justices of their harmony of purpose — despite whatever disagreements they may have.

See the answer on the next page.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the legal profession writ large, with law firms going remote, layoffs getting started, law school classes convening online, and commencements canceled. With all of this going on, we wondered if the July 2020 administration of the bar exam would be postponed due to the risk of test takers becoming infected with COVID-19.

Now, New York is about to decide whether it will be possible to administer the bar exam at all, let alone postpone it.

The New York State Bar Association’s (NYSBA) Task Force on the New York State Bar Examination will convene on an emergency basis to determine the fate of this summer’s would-be test takers. From the NYSBA’s press release:

“COVID-19 has profoundly impacted all aspects of the practice of law. Depending on the duration of the crisis, it may not be possible to hold the bar exam this July,” said Henry M. Greenberg, president of the New York State Bar Association. “That judgment needs to be made soon, as graduating law school students are understandably anxious to take their place in this profession and need to know when and how best to prepare for the bar exam. So, we look to the task force to expeditiously give us its best thinking and judgment on this important issue.”

“The task force’s mission requires a great deal of thought, but we must act quickly and decisively,” [task force chair Alan Scheinkman, the presiding justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department] said. “It’s clear now that rising law school students may not be able to take this exam together in New York in July. We must find ways for them to prove their ability to join the profession even if it’s on a provisional basis.”

Recommendations from the task force will be presented during a virtual meeting of the bar association’s House of Delegates on April 4. A decision on the state of the July 2020 bar exam will be announced “as quickly as possible.”

As if law students really needed another thing to worry about right now.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Mike Bloomberg’s $900M+ presidential campaign never made much sense. The only merit to the entire endeavor was allowing Elizabeth Warren to drop anvils on him for two hours like the luxury brand Elmer Fudd he is. From the beginning, the whole campaign felt like a cruel trick played by opportunistic consultants separating a fool from his money with laser precision. Remember in 2016 when his people leaked these preposterous maps they were teasing him with — showing him in prime position to win a three-way race? Good times.

Now he’s out, but not before giving the Democratic Party one last look at his dyed-in-the-wool liberal bona fides: he told his staff they all probably have coronavirus and then fired them and took them off their health care.

Anyone hear the slogan, “Mike Will Get It Done“? Well, his staffers are pretty sure the “it” was “screwing them over.” By the way, I lived in this city for 12 years and never once heard that phrase but this chump ran his campaign like that was his political calling card for decades. Where did that even come from and why wasn’t it “Tippecanoe and Terminals too” or “The Cross of Big Gulps”?

Alas, before that whole “firing coronavirus patients” maneuver wends its way to the courthouse, Mayor Mike has a class-action suit waiting for him in the Southern District of New York. Shavitz Law Group and Outten & Golden filed a putative class action on behalf of exempt-classified Campaign Field Organizers for Bloomberg’s beautiful, doomed quest seeking unpaid overtime pursuant to FLSA as well as fraudulent inducement and breach of contract after allegedly promising continued employment through November 2020 — whether or not he won the nomination.

The latter claim stems from Bloomberg’s decision to enter the race late and allegedly promising the moon to any seasoned hand willing to bolt on their existing job to help him out. The complaint says the promise to pay through the end of the cycle was the carrot held out to get staffers to commit to the team. Needless to say, after Democrats kicked him to the curb, Bloomberg is not paying staffers through November.

Employees reasonably relied on Bloomberg’s representations, to their economic peril, in leaving their jobs and working for Bloomberg. In addition based on Bloomberg’s fraudulent representations about their length of employment, employees are left with potentially no healthcare in the face of a worldwide pandemic.

It’s hard to feel bad for the high-ranking folks grifting off Bloomberg’s ego. They goaded him into the race with patently ridiculous lies about his viability and cashed huge checks for their time and effort. But the rank-and-file workers didn’t slide right back to their K Street consultancies. These are folks who do the dirty work of waging a campaign. They’re people who gave up other opportunities for this. People like to think of campaign workers as idealistic true believers but at a certain level of the campaign, it’s more of an organizational project management gig rather than a holy crusade. These folks deserve to get paid because they’re highly skilled professionals.

And to borrow from Animal House, their only error was in trusting Mike.

(Check out the complaint on the next page.)

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Trampoline. It turns out that as I work from home, with my entire family by my side –- my husband, two elementary school girls, and my mom –- I will be conquering COVID-19 with a trampoline.

Allow me to explain.

A few years ago, I realized that I don’t have time to go to the gym. So, I set up a well-equipped gym in my garage.

My gym has been the subject of many family jokes.

“How many kettlebell weights does Olga need?” my husband would periodically ask. Occasionally, he would finish it with “The good news: Olga’s fascination with kettlebell weights is not as great as Olga’s fascination with startups.”

“Oh, we don’t park the car in the garage because mommy needs a place to store her trampoline, yoga mat, and bouncy balls,” my kids would explain to our neighbors. And I would sheepishly elaborate that working for startups is all-consuming. It is!

The humble, well-equipped gym dutifully kept me in tip-top shape moving from one startup to another. It kept me in shape through numerous adventures in law as I worked on an IPO, countless international expansions, occasional economic contractions, numerous M&As, and occasional regulatory discussions all over the world.

My home gym is now helping me and my family to stay productive as we all work and learn at home, together.

Being A Working Parent Is No Joke, Get Yourself A Trampoline

So, the trampoline …

It turns out that if I must work eight hours or more per day in the same house as my daughters because we are under shelter-in-place orders, and schools are canceled, having a trampoline is a must. It is an endless source of fun and activities for the girls, especially when combined with music. That is how I can still get on calls and be professional. Who knew that in a legal world trampoline would become a must-have tool!

Yes, occasionally my girls will enter and exit our video call. If that happens, please either pretend you don’t notice or tell me that they are cute (they are in fact very cute!). Timing their trampoline experience and our calls works 90% of the time. It is a mix of art and science. I get it right almost every time.

But sometimes we just must have a call with children laughing and dogs barking in the background. And, that is a new normal. I can think of much worse background noises. Can’t you?!

Being Camera Shy Is So 2019, Get Over Yourself

Speaking of video calls, I find it useful to leave my camera on for video calls. No, I won’t be wearing a suit, not even my signature colorful sheath dress. And I most certainly am not wearing my high heels. Who wears that stuff at home?!

To manage your expectations, you will most likely get me in a T-shirt or a hoodie. Why? Because remember, my day is structured around two elementary school children and their trampoline schedules.

In the age of shelter-in-place and social distancing, seeing someone’s face is refreshing. It allows for a much more satisfying interaction and deeper connection. In the end, it leads to more productive conversations.

“What if I have a bad hair day?” or “What if I am camera shy?” folks protest when I explain that it is hard to build relationship or trust with a black video box. It is! Black boxes are impersonal and create a void of emotional connection. They are, well, black boxes!

What happened before COVID-19 when you had to go to work and had a bad hair day? I bet you that most of us got over ourselves, did the best we could, and went to work. And, that is what I recommend doing with video –- with some minor exceptions, get over yourself, do the best you can, smile, and turn on the video. Your calls will be much more productive and satisfying.

Sharing Workspaces With A Spouse Challenge –- A Pink Elephant No One Talks About

Then there is the part of my day where my law school sweetheart, now husband, and I have a deep discussion about sharing what used to be my office. You can only imagine the depth and breadth of our conversations when we timeshare my quiet office versus the noisy kitchen table.

That is what happens when two lawyers share a workspace for weeks at a time: to make a fair decision, we weigh all kinds of equities!

Somewhere during our two weeks of working from home, my spouse discovered my kettlebells -– that have been the subject of so much family ridicule -– in my humble, well-equipped home gym, where everyone now congregates.

“Olga, it turns out that kettlebells are a great exercise,” he tells me. It only took him forever and a global epidemic to discover this, I thought.

Soon after, I also realized that the answer to “How many kettlebells does Olga need?” is “As many as I can trade with my husband for a quiet office space.”

All jokes aside, working from home when everyone is there is hard and takes effort, creativity, and yes, some sense of humor. On the bright side, I get an unprecedented opportunity to spend more time with my family.

“I kind of like this coronavirus,” my 10-year-old told me as I was putting her to bed the other night. She explained, “It is like a weekend that does not end. We still do schoolwork and work. But everyone is home and we are having fun!”

Take that CVOID-19!

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology.  Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

Don’t fake your résumé. Don’t fudge a few details; don’t be tempted to embellish just a smidge, I don’t care how cute Second Act was. The consequences, particularly for lawyers, can be quite severe if (when) you’re caught. Just ask Seth Asher Nadler.

Nadler has received a one-year suspension from the New Jersey Supreme Court over an inflated résumé and a falsified transcript that he submitted to Williams & Connolly. The highlights of his grade inflation include bumping up his GPA to 3.825 from 3.269, claiming he received honors in legal writing when the class was pass/fail (he got a P), and listing an article that he researched and wrote with three other people only without listing his co-authors. As the Disciplinary Review Board notes, his deception was quite extensive. In addition to the résumé boosting he did, Nadler admitted to a whopping 26 misrepresentations on the unofficial transcript that he submitted to Williams & Connolly. Yikes.

Williams & Connolly become hip to Nadler’s scheme when an alumnus of his law school — University of Minnesota — suspected something was amiss:

Sanjiv Laud, Esquire, a Williams & Connolly attorney and alumnus of the law school, reviewed respondent’s employment application. In August 2015, Laud contacted Erin Keyes, the [University of Minnesota] law school’s assistant dean of students, and expressed concern about respondent’s unofficial transcript. Keyes compared the unofficial and official transcripts, and confirmed that there were significant discrepancies. After Keyes contacted the law school’s career center, she concluded that inaccuracies existed between the résumé and unofficial transcripts that had been uploaded to the career center’s program and those that respondent had sent to Williams & Connolly.

Nadler reportedly says he had a justification for some of his résumé entries:

Nadler maintained that his legal writing professor told him that he could truthfully represent that he received honors in legal writing because of his arguments in the appellate advocacy section of the course. He also said he was told that he could cite the article without reference to the co-authors.

But the majority of the disciplinary review board did not cotton to the excuses:

The degree and scope of respondent’s deception, his steadfast commitment to demonstrably false claims, and his attempt to place blame on someone else, demonstrate a disturbing pattern of dishonesty, a refusal to admit wrongdoing, and an arrogant lack of contrition that cannot be countenanced. Moreover, nothing in the record serves to mitigate his misconduct, including his alleged depression, which is undiagnosed and untreated, other than a weekly conversation with someone at the NJLAP. Moreover, although respondent was an inexperienced attorney at the time of these events, one need not have experience to know that one should not lie. Inexperience may serve as mitigation for some shortcomings, but not for engaging in repeated acts of dishonesty, deception, and fabrication of documents.

That opinion pulls no punches. After reading that, you might think Nadler had the book thrown at him. But, though a majority of the disciplinary review board recommended a two-year suspension, the New Jersey Supreme Court settled on a one-year suspension. Let’s hope he’s learned a valuable lesson about embellishing your résumé.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Everyone is more forgiving about background noise on conference calls. I used to have a quick trigger finger for the mute button, and that seems a lot less necessary now. Clients have been tremendously patient about hearing my 2-year-old in the background.

—  Michael Williams, a litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis, commenting on his unique work-from-home situation during the coronavirus outbreak. Williams has 11 children, ages 2 to 20, and they all do work together around the same dining room table. “The silver lining of the COVID-19 shutdown is that we eat three meals a day together now,” he says.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.