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In the tort law classic Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Company, where was Palsgraf trying to travel that day? It is, in fact, in the first sentence of Cardozo’s legendary opinion.

Hint: The title alludes to the fact that this location is the subject of a punk standard.

See the answer on the next page.

The Trump defense team has made some inspired casting choices. They trotted out Ken Starr, a guy whose own ethics advisor resigned in 1998 saying he’d “violated [his] obligations under the independent counsel statute and [had] unlawfully intruded on the power of impeachment” to tut-tut at Democrats for using impeachment “too frequently.”

They hired Milhouse van Houten to wield his considerable charisma (cough) to emphasize the importance of executive privilege, something Donald Trump’s counsel alluded to but never once actually invoked in his blanket order that no member of the executive branch should cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry.

And they invited former Florida Attorney General and sometime Fox News host Pam Bondi to give an impassioned speech about Donald Trump’s abiding antipathy for corruption (don’t laugh!), which made it absolutely necessary for him to establish a back channel to Ukraine through his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a couple of low-rent, Soviet-born sycophants, and also to secretly withhold congressionally allocated defense funds until the Ukrainian president announced an investigation of his chief electoral rival Joe Biden.

In what Jeffrey Toobin described as a “parade of lies,” Bondi painted an entirely false picture of Joe Biden corruptly forcing out an honest Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son Hunter Biden’s business interests, rather than delivering an anti-corruption ultimatum that was the consensus demand of the IMF, the EU, the entire Obama executive branch, and congressional Republicans.

And while her description of Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian business as sleazy is certainly accurate, she may not be the ideal person to deliver this message. Bondi personally solicited a $25,000 campaign donation from Donald Trump in 2013, as her office was investigating Trump University for fraud. Days after receiving the donation, she dropped the case. Moreover, her campaign appears to have been somewhat less than scrupulous in scrutinizing its donors. The campaign happily deposited a check from Trump’s charitable foundation, clearly an excluded donor. Later, that foundation was shut down for making illegal donations, one of which went to Bondi’s campaign.

Bondi’s description of Hunter Biden’s $50,000 per month payout to sit on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian company as something wildly out of the ordinary in DC beggars belief. Before joining the White House legal team, Bondi herself was getting paid $115,000 every month to “provide consulting and advocacy services regarding matters involving anti-human trafficking” to the government of Qatar. Because when you’re in the presidential orbit, sometimes people just throw money at you!

A lecture on nepotism from a White House which allows Jared and Ivanka Kushner access to every foreign leader on the planet, not to mention paying Rudy Giuliani’s large adult son $95,000 in taxpayer money to act as a “liaison to the sports community,” was always going to be … a stretch. But sending Pam Bondi out to deliver it was an act of contortion worthy of Cirque de Soleil.

Fact check: 4 things Trump’s attorney left out of her arguments about Biden and Burisma [CNN]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Several years ago, Judge Edith Jones faced an ethics complaint after she went to a University of Pennsylvania Federalist Society event and, according to affidavits submitted by multiple witnesses, said “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime,” and that the crimes they commit are more likely violent and more “heinous” than members of other ethnic groups. However, there was no recording of the event and Judge Jones was cleared of any wrongdoing saying that she “did not say such things because I have never believed them and have never said them.”

Just keep that complaint top of mind in light of a recent oral argument where Judge Jones offered a little hypothetical.

In Brackeen et al. v. Bernhardt, 18-11479, the Fifth Circuit heard argument en banc in a dispute over the scope of the Indian Child Welfare Act. How far can the United States federal government, acting pursuant to its obligations to Native nations, infringe upon states. It’s an interesting question wrapped up in overlapping sovereignties. In a case like this, it’s entirely fair to ask what powers a state holds over a Native American acting outside federally recognized “Indian Country.”

On the other hand, Judge Jones asked this (around the 1:22:10 mark):

Because suppose Congress decided that because there’s this understanding — and this is purely hypothetical, not, not, not pejorative — that suppose Congress decided that, uh, Native Americans were particularly subject to alcohol abuse and that when they were off the reservation they got into an excessive number of DUI cases and they were treated excessively harshly.  Could Congress enact a law that established a new sentencing regime for, uh, uh, (quote) Indians defined similar to this who get into DUIs?

At 70, you wouldn’t think Judge Jones needs a free life lesson, but whenever a statement is prefaced with “this is purely hypothetical… not pejorative” the next thing you’re about to say is absolutely pejorative. To recap, Judge Jones is making critical decisions based on some Lone Ranger serials she once heard about “fire water.”

Cool.

Yeah, it’s hard to imagine why people thought she might have made statements in the past about the genetic predispositions of minority groups.

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.

Frank McClellan, professor emeritus at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, has been ordered to pay a $156,436 judgment.

Middlesex County, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas McCloskey issued the order after finding that McClellan accepted a referral fee in a medical malpractice case which contravened New Jersey ethics rules, which only allow payment of referral fees by a certified trial attorney. Additionally, the judge found that McClellan’s actions in the case amounted to the unauthorized practice of law, which trebled the damages.

Cindy Johnson, the plaintiff in the underlying case, sought advice from McClellan about the med mal case and was referred to Aaron Freiwald, a Philadelphia lawyer who was practicing pro hac vice in New Jersey. McClellan received the $52,145 referral fee when there was a $500,000 settlement in the Johnson case. However, Johnson later found out certain parties weren’t included in her case, so she brought a malpractice suit against McClellan, Freiwald and others.

And, as reported by Law.com, this led to the benchslap:

“Clearly, as established by the motion record, Mr. McClellan was interloping in the underlying medical malpractice matter and, as a consequence, was improperly compensated by Freiwald for doing so—without disclosure of the arrangement to the Plaintiff and her written consent to the same—to the detriment and loss to the Plaintiff’s Estate,” McCloskey said when he entered the judgment against McClellan.

William Gold, Johnson’s attorney in the malpractice case, is less than impressed with McClellan’s ability to navigate the NJ Legal system:

McClellan “doesn’t understand the laws of New Jersey with respect to a medical malpractice case, doesn’t understand he’s practicing law in New Jersey and doesn’t understand he was illegally, criminally practicing law in New Jersey, and doesn’t understand he doesn’t have the right to a fee,” Gold said.

So far, McClellan has resisted the attempts to collect on the judgment, and as a result Johnson’s lawyer has filed a motion to find McClellan in contempt of court. But McClellan’s attorney say they are appealing the judgment.

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).

“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli and the company he once led were sued Monday over allegations that they deliberately sought to prevent generic competition to a drug whose list price skyrocketed and that became a poster child for high drug prices.

The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it and New York’s state attorney general had filed charges against Vyera Pharmaceuticals – which operated under the name Turing Pharmaceuticals until 2017 – concerning the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim (pyrimethamine). Shkreli and Turing became notorious in 2015 when the company increased the list price of Daraprim from less than $20 to more than $700 per tablet, despite the fact that it had been on the market for several decades. The drug is considered a standard of care for toxoplasmosis, a potentially fatal protozoan brain infection that affects patients with HIV/AIDS, cancers and who are receiving organ transplants.

The charges filed Monday allege that, anticipating that the price increase would invite generic competition, formed distribution agreements that would prevent generic drugmakers from obtaining the samples they would need to develop them, while also preventing them from obtaining ingredients. The deals, signed with distributors, also prevented them from selling sales data, which generic drugmakers use to determine the viability of developing a drug.

In a statement, Vyera said the allegations were “without merit” and not supported by the facts and that it would defend itself in court.

“Daraprim is a lifesaving drug for vulnerable patients,” said FTC Bureau of Competition Deputy Director Gail Levine, in a statement. “Vyera kept the price of Daraprim astronomically high by illegally boxing out the competition.”

Shkreli was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in August 2017 after bilking investors out of $10 million and sentenced in 2018 to seven years in prison in connection with another one of his companies, Retrophin. But that didn’t stop him from trying to stay in the pharmaceutical business. In March of last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that he had been using a contraband cell phone to run a new drug company, Phoenixus, out of prison, in violation of prison regulations. Forbes reported that Shkreli had been placed in solitary confinement following the Wall Street Journal report.

Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images

There are lots of lists out there about the bad habits that law students adopt while in law school. Those blogs get posted, and immediately there is someone out there tweeting “I did that bad habit and I got an A!” It’s really fun when you get that tweet about your advice for statistics students, because correlation/causation is still a thing.

Today, I offer my observation as to what law student habits I wish I could change. I think about this in terms of not only observing students in the classroom, but my own behavior as a law student.  But mostly, I think of law school as a process that can change you, and not always for the better.

1. “Reading” cases doesn’t really mean you know what the case is about.  Sometimes reading a case once isn’t enough. And yes, there is advice against “rereading cases” because it can be a time-management issue.  Cases should be actively read (at least once). There’s a story to be gleaned from the case. A rule of law perhaps, perhaps policy, perhaps historical perspective. But that case links to a larger universe of cases. It is a piece, and your professor thought it an important enough piece to assign. That means that reading requires a bit more care in how you read.
   I understand that can be difficult, especially if you have a professor who assigns a hundred pages of reading at a time. But you’re here in law school to learn. That’s the point of this endeavor, isn’t it?
2. Someone else’s outline doesn’t give you the answers. Having someone’s outline doesn’t mean you know the material in the outline. Yes, it might help you answer some of your professor’s questions in class, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got a grasp of the subject. Reading someone’s outline is like reading a “how to” book about swinging a golf club. You’ll never hit a ball like Tiger Woods reading a “how to golf” book. Yes, you still might get an “A,” if that is all that matters to you. But it might be quite accidental. Once again, if your goal is to learn, you’ve basically just shortchanged yourself.
3. Mistakenly sacrificing things in life in order to study often means you are sacrificing things that can make studying (and life) easier. I remember spending some late evenings cramming, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, falling asleep at my desk. What I didn’t understand is that I was creating my own little stress chamber. By depriving myself of sleep, sunlight, food, time with friends, and peace of mind, I was creating conditions that would make it more difficult to study. “I’ll never understand this!” I would say as my heart was racing from my fifth double espresso of the night. I was right: I wasn’t priming myself to allow information to enter my head. I was doing what others were doing, and what I thought was expected of me. But I wasn’t learning.
4. Habits you start in law school stay with you after law school if you aren’t careful. Procrastination is the one that comes most often to mind. Putting off until the last minute can often be the recipe for disaster, as some who have had printer issues can attest to. But procrastination isn’t the only one. Avoidance is another. Often, students avoid some opportunities for fear of failure or rejection. Many times, that which we carry into law school in terms of emotional baggage gets carried out with us, because we have not taken time to care for our own mental health. That is a terrible way to start a stressful career.
5. You can lose yourself in law school. Often, students seek to fit in to what their perception is of the law school community. That can be an anxiety-laden, cut-throat, and competitive world. The intense pressure can change us. We can become things that we loathe. We can turn from being compassionate, generous, and human into petty, selfish, and amoral tools.  That transition comes at the cost of your soul. As you become lawyers, it is all too easy to sacrifice your morals for the sake of the firm’s profits.
6. Mistakes (even on exams) are as important for learning as studying. I’m not saying we should all go out and make a bunch of deliberate mistakes. I’m suggesting that mistakes we make teach us valuable lessons, if we let them. As I’ve written before, making mistakes makes “you human. They make you grow. They make you learn. And, they make you humble.”
   Query: An “A” student and a “C” student on an exam: Which one mastered the subject matter? Trick question, as I didn’t tell you how long ago the exam was. Both have the opportunity to improve and learn. When law professors say “you are not your grades,” this is what we mean. A grade is a measure of how you did one day. Learning from mistakes can actually make you a better lawyer. And an “A” exam is never perfect.
7. If you don’t have a strong center, law school can crush you against the rocks. I didn’t realize in law school how much law school can change you. All of the anxiety, stress, pressure, peer pressure, competition, one-upmanship, expectations, and grades are a constant stream of pressure that can play hell with your ego, if you let it. It is hard to stay centered with the tornado of all of that unease is around you. But you’ll be better off if you have yourself centered.

You might notice that the list starts out with seemingly small things, and builds. My point is that everything can turn out to be a big thing over time. So it is good to be deliberate in how you learn, how you study, and how you live in law school.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

Earlier this month Brant Bishop left his practice at Wilkinson Walsh. The litigator, who also spent 18 years as a partner at Kirkland, is not leaving for another lateral opportunity, but just because he want to spend more time with his family — he has a wife and five kids — saying, “I didn’t leave to go anywhere else except to go home.”

As Bishop told Law.com, even when he was on vacation or otherwise away from the office, the demands of his practice — and the constant stream of emails — continued.

“Someone once said the law is a jealous mistress, and I think there’s some truth to that when you’re practicing at a very high level,” Bishop said.

There wasn’t any particular bad experience that prompted Bishop’s decision. It was just the constant grind of elite legal work that made him hit pause on his career:

Bishop said there wasn’t a particular case or client or management responsibility—or a point in his personal life—that prompted his departure. Instead, he chalked up his decision to the inability to stop his work from encroaching on his personal time with his family, as well as the “nature of what we do.”

“It was very difficult to truly be away from the demands of running the firm, doing the management of the firm and doing cases,” Bishop said.

Bishop, who is 50 years old, says he might consider a reentry into the legal field someday:

“I may be too young to be permanently retired, so I don’t know if I’m retired in the sense that I’m not going to find something else to do at some point,” said the 50-year-old Bishop. “But for now the plan is to not really have much of a plan other than to spend time with family and keep my eyes open.”

But right now his focus is on family trips to Europe and Africa. And unlike family time when he was a big time partner, he won’t be constantly checking his email during the trip.

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).

The solar farm will be located at Sable Chemicals’ site outside Kwekwe, in the central part of the country, and will generate power for its ammonium nitrate manufacturing facility.

40MW of the electricity generated from the project will contribute to the national grid at Sherwood Substation, 5km away from the solar plant.

Chipfumbu said “The project will see the construction of a 1 km 88kV power line from the site to interconnect into the redundant 88kV power line connecting Sable Chemicals Substation to Sherwood substation.”

“Evacuating in the national grid will go a long way as, currently the country is in desperate need of new power generation capacity and solar offers a cheap scalable solution,” he added.

The companies have also expressed hopes that the capacity of the solar plant will later be expanded to more than 150 MW. As the project feasibility study is ongoing, its construction is expected to be completed in August 2021.

The news comes at a time when the country has experienced severe power shortages highly influenced by Eksom, the South African energy company, also running out of power due to critically constrained generation capacity.

For the past 20 years, Zimbabwe has struggled to generate enough electricity to meet demands, and has had to turn to countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia to top up supplies.

The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority’s generation capacity last measured in 2016 showed that the country produced only 845 MW, against a projected national demand of 2,200 MW and an installed capacity of approximately 1,940 MW, and there is hope that the new solar facility will help ease these pressures.

The existing power issue is prompting countries in the area towards new kinds of power generation.

Post published in: Featured