Author: TSA Press

Former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eli Karl Cherkasky is learning the hard way you can’t choke a woman out in a bar and it have no impact on your legal career. The former prosecutor found out earlier this week his law license would be suspended for a period of two months as a result of the 2015 assault.

The penalty for Cherkasky’s behavior imposed by the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Judicial Department was more severe than what was recommended by the sanctions hearing referee. The referee had only recommended a private sanction, as reported by Bloomberg Law:

A sanctions hearing referee had recommended a private sanction. While the referee said he thought Cherkasky hadn’t issued a sincere apology to the woman, he added that he believed that Cherkasky wouldn’t have assaulted her if he hadn’t been drunk. The referee also found that he had “turned his life around by stopping drinking and taking upon the burden of raising a family,” the court said.

But in lowering the boom on Cherkasky, the appeals court noted the “seriousness of respondent’s assault,” and that he’d been convicted of “criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation and assault in the third degree and harassment in the second degree.”  And the description of the incident sounds pretty intense:

He had been “drinking heavily for many hours” when he got into a verbal altercation with a woman that ended up getting physical, it said.

According to Cherkasky, the woman hit him in the eye with her arm and then threw a beer at him.

The parties’ joint stipulation of facts said that Cherkasky then knocked the woman “against a railing, tackled her to the floor, kneeled on top of her, grabbed her neck and struck her in the face.”

The court also recognized that Cherkasky has no prior history of disciplinary proceedings and that the incident, though severe in nature, was “aberrational in nature.” However, even “when taking into account the mitigating circumstances, a period of suspension for such an assault is warranted in order to maintain the honor and integrity of the profession and deter others from committing similar misconduct.”

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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).

Recently added to the ever-growing list of “things that are the lawyer’s fault”: the coronavirus. At least as reported by CNN regarding the spread within New York. What relevance his profession has to the public health crisis is beyond me.

In the modern news cycle, it can be hard sometimes to tell where facts end, and where fiction or false alarms begin. But the evolving story of the coronavirus is a compelling one that seems to be gaining momentum by the second. On Friday evening last week, our firm spoke about the Western District of Washington’s cancellation of jury trials and wondered if similar measures would affect any of the firm’s upcoming trials. By this week’s end, we had our answer by way of an adjournment.

Stories from Chinese expats of days and even weeks spent indoors seemed, to me, far away a week ago. Today — with news of the NBA suspending its season, MLB cancelling spring training, and the NCAA canceling March Madness altogether — there seems to be a real possibility that our work norms will change in response to the pandemic in the coming weeks and months. With this acknowledgement in mind, now would be as good a time as any to remember what we can do personally, and professionally, to weather the storm.

What We Can Do Personally

I do not hold myself out to be an expert in public health. As such, I’m not in a position to be giving advice about how we should respond to a pandemic. Professor Kenji Shibuya, Director of the Institute for Population Health at King’s College in London, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of expert whose advice we should be feverishly seeking and following as decrees from a higher being. Shibuya, along with Yoshiro Hayashi, entrusted designer Takashi Tokuma to communicate straightforward, accurate guidelines to prevent the further spread of the virus.

Such measures are outlined in a disarming bilingual infographic and include: sleep well, wash your hands, don’t touch your face, exercise, eat well, cover your nose and mouth, use your nondominant hand, and stay home when you’re sick. So basically, the appropriate response to avoid the further spread of the coronavirus is to live your best life. Notably missing from these measures is avoid large public gatherings, but perhaps that goes without being said?

What We Can Do Professionally

Our firm employs a chief of staff who has stayed on top of coronavirus developments over the past few weeks, and so we had some warning a week or two ago that our modus operandi could be disrupted in the near future. Anticipating the worst, every employee has verified that they are able to remotely log in to their workspaces, so that in the event of a mandatory lockdown, our work will not simply grind to a halt.

Connectivity is a double-edged sword to the modern professional. On the one hand, it can create the expectation of constant contact and make it hard to “unplug” from work. On the other hand, in times of crisis, it’s a huge convenience to be able to remotely work and access all the necessary information from anywhere at any time.

Uncertain times are ahead for us all. We simply do not know to what extent the coronavirus will affect public health, as well as the economy. We will have to do a certain amount of “wait and see.” That said, whatever measures you decide to take, be sure to communicate them to your clients.

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Timothy M. Lupinek is an attorney at Balestriere Fariello who represents companies and individuals in state, appellate, and administrative courts of Maryland. He focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation with thousands of hours of civil, criminal, and regulatory trial experience. You can reach Timothy at timothy.m.lupinek @balestrierefariello.com.

Seyfarth’s now infamous U.S. Soccer Federation brief explaining why female soccer players deserve less money because they have nicer fans and the audacity to get pregnant managed to cross another threshold on the way to the litigation Hall of Fame: it got the client fired.

U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro stepped down yesterday after the organization’s brief started making the rounds. As a reminder, this is a brief that attempted to justify the wage gap between men and women by dissing the women’s game and hyping the “materially higher level of speed and strength required to perform the job of an [men’s] player.” It was a filing so monumentally flawed and stupid that it takes a real deep dive to fully appreciate how bonkers it was.

It was a legal misstep so intense that all the money behind the organization went out of the way to back the players. It’s sad to think that if the sponsors didn’t revolt, this guy would probably still be calling the shots, but they did so let’s close our eyes and pretend this would have happened no matter what.

U.S. Soccer president resigns in fallout of misogynistic legal filing against USWNT [Yahoo]
On Equal Pay, U.S. Soccer’s Scorched Earth, Sexist Legal Strategy should fail

Earlier: U.S. Soccer HAS To Pay Men More, Because Playing For A Crowd Of Hooligans Is A Big ‘Responsibility’

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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.

America’s least valuable renewable resource is school resource officers. At some point, we — as a nation — apparently agreed school disciplinary issues should be turned over to law enforcement officers. To be sure, this decision was made without our input, for the most part. Most people agree it’s ridiculous to turn rote violations of school policy over to men and women trained in the apprehension and investigation of actual, real crimes like homicide, drug distribution, and any number of day-to-day activities carried out while black.

What have we received in return for being forced to part with our souls in exchange for the rare occasions where serious criminal acts occur on school grounds? An endless supply of outrage and disgust, which is the renewable resource no one asked for. What is our take-home from this involuntary exchange?

I don’t know.

Do you love a parade? Because this is one of the most horrible:

The saga continues. Schools are giving police the power to arrest students for doing things that used to be handled with in-school suspensions, direct conversations with parents, and other school disciplinary processes.

It’s not getting better/
It’s not getting better, man/
It’s just getting old.

Kaia Rolle was sitting, listening to a school employee read her a story when two officers came in the room to arrest her.

“What are those for?” the 6-year-old girl asked the Orlando police officers.

“They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner said about the zip ties, before another officer tightened them around her wrists. Kaia immediately began weeping.

CUT TO: Officer Dennis Turner lifts his “Children’s Tears” mug to the camera, owning every lib in sight. School employees stand by idly, watching this six-year-old criminal being slung into the back seat Officer Turner’s cruiser and into the wheels of justice.

Sickeningly, Officer Turner is pretty OK with arresting kids. It’s all part of the job.

He told them he had arrested 6,000 people in his career — the youngest, to that point, was 7. When school employees told him Kaia was 6, not 8 like he thought, he did not seem concerned.

“Now she has broken the record,” he said.

May God have mercy on his soul. I mean, that’s what someone far more charitable than me would say. I’m more aligned with his fellow officers, who were not at all cool with seeing Officer Turner’s personal record being broken.

Orlando police Officer Sergio Ramos called his supervisor from Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy in September, to express his concerns after placing 6-year-old Kaia Rolle the back of his patrol SUV, where she sat with hands bound behind her back in zip ties.

“Sarge this girl is tiny,” he told Sgt. Douglas Andreacchi. “She looks like a baby.”

Two officers tried to prevent this student from being arrested. The only “crime” alleged was throwing a tantrum and hitting a teacher. For that, Officer Turner cuffed her and booked her. There’s some good news, though. The six-year-old is no longer facing criminal charges. (Dear god, the fact that that sentence even needs to be written…). And Turner is out of a job.

Turner was fired shortly after the arrest for not getting the approval of a watch commander to arrest someone younger than 12.

But that good news is tempered by Turner’s own statements, where he declared he had arrested students as young as seven, which would have broken the same rules that got him fired for this arrest. That means his employer — the Orlando PD — doesn’t act to enforce its own rules unless an arrest generates headlines all over the nation.

Meanwhile, in Dekalb County, Georgia, police “misidentified” an 11-year-old black girl as a grand theft auto suspect. Cops cuffed her and repeatedly ignored her mother’s offer of proof that her daughter had been home all night, rather than out trying to steal cars.

And here’s where home surveillance product purveyor Ring comes in. Cops seem to love Ring cameras and their footage… but apparently only when the footage gives them permission to do the things they wanted to do all along.

[Cynthia] Hendricks not only explained to the officers that her daughter couldn’t have been involved because she’d been home since 4 pm, she even provided the officers with video evidence from her Ring doorbell and other motion cameras from around the house as proof that London had entered the house and hadn’t left at the time of the alleged car theft attempt.For whatever reason, the proof Hendricks provided failed to dissuade the officers from handcuffing and detaining her daughter.

The cops only let her go after finding out she was only 11, instead of 16 like the suspect they were actually looking for.

Why kids?

Counterpoint: why not?

They’re smaller, easier to intimidate, and far less likely to put up resistance. Any statements made by parents and legal guardians are easier to discount because any parent would say anything to save their child.

Cops like these ones are sloppy cowards who can’t be bothered to get facts straight or access any deeply-buried well of common sense/restraint. A criminal is a criminal, even if the criminal is six and is getting arrested for doing things six-year-olds do… like throw tantrums.

When you hand over students to cops, you cannot stand by and pretend to be shocked when they treat every rule violation like a criminal violation. If you don’t want to see six-year-olds cuffed by cops, the solution is simple: DON’T CALL THE COPS. There’s plenty of blame to spread around here, but a lot of it lies with the enablers of our society who feel parents are just co-conspirators in a massive underage criminal conspiracy. As for the second story, it’s only the worst cops who ignore evidence that doesn’t match their preconceptions. And there are far too many “worst cops” working the streets.

Arrests R Us: Six-Year-Old Cuffed And Tossed Into A Cop Car For ‘Throwing A Tantrum’ At School

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Coronavirus Telecommuting To Further Highlight Shoddy US Telecom Market
Court Orders Chelsea Manning Released From Jail One Day After Suicide Attempt: Testimony ‘No Longer Needed’
Bizarre: Democrats In Congress Agree To Give Trump More Of The Spying Powers He Complains Were Abused Against Him

Stocks have taken quite a roller coaster ride this week, mostly coasting downward. On Thursday, the Dow Jones had its worst day since the October 1987 crash, falling 2,352 points, or 10%, when markets closed, as indices like the Nasdaq and S&P 500 entered bear territory for the first time since 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported. That, along with news of layoffs in some industries, canceled conferences and reduced business activity, has triggered fears that a recession may be on the way.

Central to the gloom is Covid-19, which the World Health Organization formally declared a pandemic on Wednesday. Several companies – including biotech and pharmaceutical firms as well as those involved in diagnostics – have announced efforts to develop drugs or vaccines against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2. Nevertheless the market’s troubles have mostly not spared any of those firms.

Here is a list of companies that have been in the news in relation to the coronavirus pandemic and how they fared when markets closed Thursday.

Quest Diagnostics

• Ticker: DGX (NYSE)
• Headquarters: Secaucus, New Jersey
• Thursday closing price: $90.43 (-9.39%)

Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest lab-testing companies in the country, said earlier this month that it would begin to provide testing services for coronavirus. The service is being provided under an emergency use authorization that the company said it would submit within 15 days after it started testing.

LabCorp

• Ticker: LH (NYSE)
• Headquarters: Burlington, North Carolina
• Thursday closing price: $136.89 (-13.91%)

LabCorp, Quest’s biggest competitor, also said earlier this month that it would begin offering lab-testing services for coronavirus. In a series of tweets, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote that “in some respects, our fate rests” on companies with the ability to ramp up testing nationwide, like Quest and LabCorp to fill in the void left by insufficient testing by government agencies and academic institutions.

Thermo Fisher Scientific

• Ticker: TMO (NYSE)
• Headquarters: Carlsbad, California
• Thursday closing price: $284.32 (-1.77%)

One of the largest companies involved in making scientific instruments, Thermo Fisher Scientific announced an $11.5 billion deal to acquire Qiagen, a Netherlands-based firm that has been developing diagnostics equipment to test for coronavirus and has been selling testing kits for the Chinese market.

Gilead Sciences

• Ticker: GILD (Nasdaq)
• Headquarters: Foster City, California
• Thursday closing price: $68.58 (-6.08%)

A drug that Gilead Sciences developed to treat Ebola virus, remdesivir, is in Phase II clinical trials in China and the U.S. as a potential treatment for Covid-19, based on preclinical data showing it to be potentially efficacious against coronaviruses and the case study of a patient in Washington state who mostly recovered after receiving it.

Moderna

• Ticker: MRNA (Nasdaq)
• Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Thursday closing price: $22.30 (-5.55%)

Moderna has a vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, in Phase I development, under a partnership with the National Institutes of Health. However, it has been reported that the vaccine is being tested in people before it has been fully tested in animals, leading to potential concerns about safety.

Vir Biotechnology

• Ticker: VIR (Nasdaq)
• Headquarters: San Francisco
• Thursday closing price: $37.60 (+11.34%)

Vir Biotechnology stands out among the companies on this list as being the only one whose stock price has actually risen, thanks to a partnership with Biogen to develop monoclonal antibodies against the virus announced on Thursday. The company said in February that it had identified potential antibodies against the virus from patients who had survived the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic.

Biogen

• Ticker: BIIB (Nasdaq)
• Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Thursday closing price: $268.88 (-8.62%)

Nothwithstanding the aforementioned announcement by Vir – whose CEO led Biogen from 2010 until 2016 – the main reason Biogen made this list was because of the large outbreak of the virus that it suffered in connection with a management meeting that took place in Boston two weeks ago. As of Wednesday, that outbreak accounted for 70 of the 92 total cases in the state of Massachusetts. The 175 people who attended the meeting have been ordered to self-quarantine.

Photo: BRYAN SMITH, AFP, via Getty Images

As America steps up its offense in the war against the coronavirus pandemic, Biglaw firms are now taking the threat of infection more seriously, offering employees a way to stay safe from harm through work-from-home policies. First came Quinn Emanuel, which shuttered its New York office after one of the firm’s partners tested positive for coronavirus, implementing a work-from-home period for all personnel. A day later, Faegre Drinker closed its offices worldwide, offering remote work access, if only for a short time, due to a coronavirus scare. Next, Weil Gotshal informed all of its employees that the firm had enacted mandatory work-from-home sessions on alternating weeks.

Now, we’ve received word about a firm that’s gone all in when it comes to protecting its lawyers and staff. Which firm truly cares about employee health and safety?

Reed Smith has instituted a mandatory work-from-home plan for all personnel in its U.S. and Europe & Middle East offices. Here’s an excerpt from the memo:

The Senior Management Team is directing that lawyers and professional staff across all of our US and EME offices work remotely starting Friday, March 13, 2020, and until further updates. Personnel are not to be in the office absent compelling and essential business need. If you believe such a need exists, please contact your Office Managing Partner, or his or her designee, to seek approval and to schedule and plan for that need. We will have in each location a team of essential employees available to assist with key business needs.

Obviously, containment is a critical component in stopping the spread of the virus, and this preventative step is intended for that purposes. This is a rapidly changing environment, and we anticipate that we will be operating under this remote-work policy for at least the next several weeks – and perhaps longer.

Kudos to Reed Smith for taking real steps to protect each and every one of its employees during these uncertain times. If only more firms were willing to offer absolute work-from-home accommodations, lawyers and staff wouldn’t have to worry about potentially getting infected with COVID-19.

(Flip to the next page to see Reed Smith’s coronavirus WFH policy.)

What is your firm doing to protect lawyers and staff from coronavirus? Please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “Coronavirus Response”). Stay safe.

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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.

* The feds are accusing a North Carolina tax lawyer of being a chronic tax cheat. If anyone can argue his way out of that pickle, it’s the accused tax lawyer. [Charlotte Observer]

* A prominent lawyer who was with Jeffrey Epstein days before his death does not believe Epstein committed suicide. [Fox News]

* The Vermont Attorney General is suing a facial recognition company over privacy concerns. [Hill]

* An Oregon man has been sentenced to 15 years for the 2009 killing of a federal public defender. [Oregonian]

* The New York Attorney General has asked Alex Jones to stop selling toothpaste he claims can fight coronavirus. [New York Post]

* Tesla is facing a lawsuit alleging that Model 3s didn’t have the advertised self-driving computer. These cars are so expensive, they ought to have a computer like Knight Rider. [Electrek]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

One year after Cyclone Idai devastated parts of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, tens of thousands of people are still trapped in appalling conditions with inadequate shelter or sanitation, Amnesty International said today.

The organization said inadequate and dwindling financial support for recovery programs from the international community, and the slow pace of government rebuilding efforts across the three countries has left people stranded in makeshift accommodation, at risk of diseases like cholera and in some cases unable to access roads.

“A year after Cyclone Idai tore through Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, many of the people affected are experiencing the worst face of the climate crisis. They are barely surviving,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East and Southern Africa.

“Tens of thousands of people are still homeless, with some living in UN provided shelters, and others in makeshift structures, unable to access basic sanitation, and at risk of cholera and other opportunistic diseases. Children are out of school and healthcare facilities are yet to be fully rebuilt. Given the dire situation in the countries and the responsibilities for the climate crisis, wealthier states and multilateral donors need to pledge more than they have done and ensure money reaches those who need it.”

Underfunded response

A year since Cyclone Idai hit the region, less than half of the $450 million USD needed for relief and recovery assistance to communities affected by the cyclone in Zimbabwe and Mozambique has been secured, with just over $40,000 committed in the first quarter of 2020. Mozambique, the hardest hit of the three southern African nations, hosted a pledging conference in May 2019 to secure support for reconstruction and long-term resilience building. The conference raised $1.2-billion USD – less than a third of requirements.

Slow rebuilding efforts

Most schools which were damaged by the cyclone in Mozambique have not yet been rebuilt and hundreds of thousands of children have had their education interrupted. While most children are now back at school, teachers are struggling to provide pupils with a decent education due to lack of infrastructure and other materials.

One of the hardest hit areas in Mozambique was Sofala Province. Access to roads is still blocked, leaving people trapped in communal shelters and relying on humanitarian assistance from UN agencies and others. The government must prioritise the reconstruction of critical infrastructure to facilitate the rebuilding of livelihoods for the people.

In Beira, the provincial capital, there have been outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and malaria and thousands of people were infected. While the World Health Organization has provided emergency health relief for thousands, including vaccinations against cholera, Mozambican authorities must build a fit for purpose healthcare infrastructure post the cyclone to better respond in future. The main hospital in Beira has been rebuilt but many people are struggling to access healthcare.

In Zimbabwe, the second hardest hit country, many affected people are still living in makeshift tents in camps set up by the UN Refugee Agency.

At a regional climate change dialogue in Mutare last week, organised by Amnesty International and its partners, survivors from all three affected countries told Amnesty that they had lost their livelihoods and were continuing to rely on aid for survival.

Communities in the affected areas urged their governments to help rebuild their lives. They also raised concern about the lack of effective communication of climate information and coordination between government agencies and the grassroots in managing risk and responding to disasters when they occur given these are becoming an increasing occurrence due to the climate crisis. Community representatives called for better sharing of weather information, including through community bulletin boards and radio.

Need for an international mechanism on “loss and damage”

“In the wake of this catastrophic natural disaster, it is clear that the governments of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe cannot afford to shoulder the cost of the loss and damage caused by cyclone Idai and undertake the massive reconstruction and rebuilding of people’s lives alone. This situation shows why it is so important that states agree on an adequate international mechanism on loss and damage, with dedicated finances, to support people whose rights have been affected by the climate crisis,” said Tigere Chagutah.

“In the meantime, one year on from the Cyclone, affected governments, and international partners, should renew their commitment, step up reconstruction and ensure that these efforts are done in a way that truly delivers human rights.”

Background

Cyclone Idai hit Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique between 14 and 16 March 2019. The cyclone, which was one of the southern hemisphere’s worst ever natural disasters, killed more than 1,000 people and left 3 million more without food, water, shelter and critical infrastructure.

Post published in: Featured

Even having one of the world’s highest central-bank interest rates hasn’t helped to curb exchange-rate volatility amid weak economic growth and triple-digit inflation.

The currency team will be jointly run by the finance ministry and the central bank, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told reporters in the capital, Harare, on Wednesday. It will also include members from the bank’s monetary policy committee and the presidential advisory council.

“The task force will meet at least once a week to review the conditions in the markets, monitor the behavior of key variables such as the exchange rate and inflation,” said Ncube, who will be its chairman.

An electronic foreign-exchange system that was also unveiled Wednesday, will start operating on Monday, according to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

It was due to start immediately, but banks had requested more time “and we still have to formally adopt the rules for the market and the bureaus,” Eddie Cross, a member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee, said in a text message. Fifteen lenders have indicated they will use the platform, Cross said.

The gap between the currency’s official and black-market rates has widened more than twofold. The Zimbabwe dollar slid to 41.5 per U.S. dollar on the black market Thursday, according to marketwatch.co.zw, a local website, while the official exchange rate is 18.3. The central bank kept its key rate unchanged at 35% last month, and annual inflation is estimated at more than 500%.