Category: News Feeds

Daisy Soderberg-Rivkin, who used to work at Google as an in-house content moderator, has written a fascinating piece for the Washington Times, explaining just what a disaster Josh Hawley’s anti-Section 230 bill would be for the internet. As we’ve discussed, Hawley’s bill would require large internet companies to beg the FTC every two years to get a “certificate” granting them Section 230 protections — and they’d only get it if they could convince 4 out of 5 of the FTC Commissioners that their content moderation efforts were “politically neutral.”

Soderberg-Rivkin points out how that will stifle the kind of “clean up” efforts that most everyone — especially folks like Senator Josh Hawley — often claim they want when they complain about all the “bad stuff” on social media. Remember, just before introducing this bill, Hawley was whining about all the bad and dangerous content on social media. Except, under his own damn bill, social media sites would be forced to keep that content up:

Under the Hawley bill, the FTC would audit major platforms’ moderation practices every two years to determine whether those practices were “biased against a political party, political candidate or political viewpoint.” In practice, this would look something like this: A few FTC auditors would walk into a technology company and declare the beginning of the audit. They would comb through tens thousands of removals decisions, looking for those that are “politically biased” — a process that could take, at minimum, weeks to complete.

In the meantime, content moderators would hold back on their take down procedures because no one could really tell them how “politically biased” is interpreted. In other words, disinformation, Nazi propaganda and white supremacist videos would fester on the Internet. If a moderator fails this test, not only would they be fired, but thousands of lawsuits and fines would come tumbling down on the company.

At my former job, I tried to keep in mind that while I had to look at horrific content, thanks to my efforts, many others would not have to. Yet in a world where this bill passes, I would sit down at my same desk, take a deep breath and prepare myself to look at terrorist executions, aftermaths of mass shootings and hatred-motivated violence — but this time, with full knowledge that I had absolutely no control over its distribution.

To some extent, this gets at the weird mental pretzel logic Senators like Hawley keep twisting themselves into. They complain about all the bad stuff online… and think that the way to deal with that is to remove the one law that makes it possible for companies to design plans to moderate away that bad stuff.

Former Content Moderator Explains How Josh Hawley’s Bill Would Grant Government Control Over Online Speech

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Drug Prices Are So Insane That The NY Times Is Recommending The US Gov’t Just ‘Seize The Patents’
FBI, ICE Are Running Facial Recognition Searches Against State Drivers’ Databases
Idaho Magistrate Judge Shoots Down Another Government Request For Compelled Fingerprint Production

The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt, is a memoir published in 2016 detailing a mother and son’s relationship and includes reflections on their individual and familial successes and failures. In the book, Vanderbilt states, “Death is the price you paid for being born.” This has come true for Vanderbilt, who died on June 17, 2019, at the age of 95.

In addition to CNN correspondent Cooper, Vanderbilt was also survived by sons Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski and Christopher Stokowski. A fourth son, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, predeceased her in 1988. New York State Surrogate’s Court filings have revealed that Vanderbilt left her Manhattan apartment to son, Leopold, and the remainder of her estate to Anderson. Christopher Stokowski, with whom she was reportedly estranged, was not included in the last will and testament.

Vanderbilt’s death and the disposition of her assets is interesting by the nature of the life she led and the monies she and her family held. At the time of her death, she was estimated to have been worth $200 million.  Vanderbilt was the great-great-granddaughter of financier and railroad scion Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1925, when she was less than two years old, her father died, leaving her a trust fund worth approximately $5 million (about $73 million today). As a girl, she was the subject of a custody battle between her mother and aunt which included control of her trust fund. Notably, Vanderbilt made her own fortune in the fashion industry transforming dungarees into designer jeans in the 1970s and 1980s, amongst other fashion items and cosmetics.

The memoir and Anderson Cooper himself, discuss the importance of earning one’s own money, regardless of a family’s wealth. In a 2014 Howard Stern interview, Anderson Cooper stated, “My mom’s made clear to me that there’s no trust fund. There’s none of that.” He further added that he did not believe in inheriting money and that had he felt a “pot of gold” was waiting for him, he would not have been so motivated to succeed. Anderson Cooper is estimated to have a net worth of $100 million.

Court filings seem to reveal that Cooper will inherit the great majority of the Estate although the number reported in the court is around $1.5 million. The court filings, however, may not present the entire picture. It is possible that Vanderbilt executed non-probate documents such as trusts which distribute monies to a host of other individuals or charities. The only assets that will pass via Vanderbilt’s last will and testament are those held in her individual name. Trust funds, accounts with named beneficiaries, life insurance policies, and joint accounts will all transfer upon death to the joint owner, remainderman, or a named beneficiary.

Anderson Cooper is accomplished, respected, and wealthy in his own right. Should his success bar him from enjoying his family’s monetary legacy? Or is it that Anderson’s success is Vanderbilt’s greatest asset, worth more than any piece of property or bank account? If the latter, then Anderson Cooper’s role as beneficiary is his ultimate reward for doing as his mother advised.

---

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com. 

A rule issued by the Internal Revenue Service opens up the ability for high deductible health plans (HDHP) to cover preventive services and medications prior to meeting the plan deductible.

The move was made in response to an executive order signed last month that was meant to inject more flexibility into how health savings account eligible high deductible health plans could pay for health services critical to management of chronic diseases.

The new rule from IRS changes the classification of many health services and medications meant to treat and manage chronic conditions as preventive care.

These products and services include insulin, ACE inhibitors, inhaled corticosteroids, retinopathy screenings, glucometers, statins and SSRIs. A full list of covered items can be found here.

As healthcare costs have continued to rise many plan sponsors have turned to high deductible health plans as a way to make members most conscious of their health spending.

These are often coupled with a health savings account (HSA), which allows pretax dollars to be saves to be pay for healthcare costs.

By changing the classification of medications and services that manage chronic disease, patients can use their HSA to pay for them, which was previously barred under the tax code.

Between 2007 and 2017, the proportion of employer-based health coverage members with HDHPs with an HSA grew from 4.2 percent to 18.9 percent, according to data from the CDC.

For 2019, the IRS defines a HDHP as one where the deductible is at least $1,350 for an individual or $2,700 for a family. Those numbers go up next year to $1,400 and $2,800, respectively.

The benchmarks can lead to difficult fiscal decisions for patients who are forced to pay high out-of-pocket costs for services or products that may have large clinical impact and downstream cost savings.

Research has repeatedly shown that high deductibles lead patients to forgo high value preventive health services, especially among those who are low-income or have chronic diseases.

“For the first time health savings accounts qualified high deductible health plans will be able to cover essential services that I beg my patients to do,” said Dr. Mark Fendrick, the director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Value Based Insurance Design.

“These include diagnostic tests and high value drugs such as those which treat diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.”

Photo: adventtr, Getty Images

How are lawyers in small firms leveraging technology to compete — and win — in today’s rapidly changing legal landscape?

Although the legal profession is now vastly different from what it once was, there will continue to be a place for the agile and innovative small firm practitioner. The playing field has been leveled thanks to technology and for those who have an open mind, opportunity abounds.  This eBook is brought to you by our friends at Clio, the practice management platform which has become practically synonymous with cutting-edge and tech-savvy small firm practice.

I had the relatively rare opportunity of working on two mediations over the past two months which could not have been more different. The first, a fraud case, resulted in a settlement while the second — an intellectual property case — continued on and has since grown even more contentious after the parties failed to settle. While the different outcomes could have been due to an infinite number of factors, the most striking differences between the two mediations had nothing to do with the legal strengths and weaknesses of the respective parties’ positions, nor any typos or blue booking errors in the parties’ mediation statements. Rather, the most striking differences, which proved to be pivotal to the outcome of the mediations, had everything to do with the following factors: (i) the negotiation strategies of the opposing parties’ counsel, and (ii) the abilities of the mediator.

DON’T NEGOTIATE AGAINST YOURSELF, BUT TAKE COUNTER-OFFERS SERIOUSLY

While I won’t attempt to provide an overarching guide to negotiation strategies — as there are entire books on the topic — one crucial point is to not negotiate against yourself, but to not take that truism too far. Both parties at each mediation had clearly internalized the rule not to negotiate against themselves, as no party was willing to make a lower offer if their adversary had failed to accept a prior without a making a counteroffer. The difference between the successful and unsuccessful strategies: one party was willing to consider reasonable counteroffers while the other was not. The party unwilling to move broke the momentum of the mediation, and ultimately led to its termination. While it is ultimately the mediator’s job to convince the parties to move from their respective positions, the parties should be willing to consider reasonable counteroffers in order to make the mediation worthwhile and prevent a waste of everyone’s time and money.

FIND THE RIGHT MEDIATOR FOR EACH CASE

Stating the obvious, a skilled mediator is crucial to a successful mediation. However, choosing the right mediator before the mediation happens is more complicated. Having a mediator who is experienced with the subject matter is important as it lowers the learning curve necessary to be fluent in the subject matter of the mediation, and to perform one of the primary functions of a mediator — explaining the parties’ respective strengths and weaknesses in order to convince the parties to move.

The mediator at the first mediation had honed this skill over many years, and was able to get through to the parties in order to haggle them down from their opening demands and prevent a walkout. In contrast, the mediator presiding over the second mediation was not as close to the facts, and was not able not able to quickly respond when the parties dug in to their respective positions.

All in all, the parties must remember the reasons they came to mediation in the first place — to arrive at a speedy and reasonable resolution of the action, even if that means that neither party walks away completely happy.

---

David Forrest is an attorney for Balestriere Fariello. He graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in June 2018. David works on all aspects of complex commercial litigation and arbitration from pre-filing investigations to trial and appeals. You can reach him by email at david.a.forrest@balestrierefariello.com.

Over the past decade, Lateral Link has become the prominent player in the legal recruiting industry.

Our Success

Lateral Link has made thousands of placements with almost every Am Law 200 law firm in the nation. Not only do we have personal relationships with decision-makers at the biggest and best firms in the nation, but our exclusives with and insider information about some of the most desirable law firms separates us from ALL of our competitors in the field.  We are a market mover, not a follower.

Highest Compensation in Our Industry

We understand that hiring and retaining the best legal recruiters requires spreading the wealth.  Not only do you deserve it, but you should demand it.  Lateral Link’s recruiters earn 50-85 percent ABOVE the market.  Also, our Principals partake in real profit sharing.  If you are earning a typical 50 percent without any real upside, you should reconsider your options.

Teamwork & Culture

If you have to define the legal recruiting industry, you would probably say it is a “dog eat dog world.” At Lateral Link, our recruiters find working together and collaborating on searches gives us an edge over our regional or national competition.  If you don’t have access to decision-makers and your brand isn’t opening the door in a meaningful way, why are you bringing more to a platform than what you are giving?  We encourage you to look at the contributions you make.  Is your platform really helping you?

Many Perks

We know the business aspect is important, but we also like to have a bit of fun at Lateral Link. We believe it is important to bring all of our colleagues together, from across the nation, annually at our company retreats.

Last month, we highlighted Why Legal Recruiting is the Right Career Choice, and today, we are here to tell you why Lateral Link is the right company for you.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Mainspring Legal’s team of expert contributors. Sarkis Adajian manages marketing and business development for Lateral Link.

---

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.

It’s not every day that you allegedly catch a judge wring her hands around a courthouse employee’s neck on camera, but when that day comes, you can be sure that the judge in question is going to see her career choked out by the proper disciplinary authorities.

On June 11, Broward Circuit Judge Vegina “Gina” Hawkins was filmed while she allegedly physically assaulted an employee because her afternoon docket wasn’t completed when she expected it that morning. An investigative panel of the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission has recommended that Hawkins be suspended for her “exceptionally inappropriate” behavior. Hawkins claims that she was acting in “jest,” but surveillance footage and witness testimony suggest otherwise.

“After being informed that the papers would be provided to her shortly, Judge Hawkins sought out the employee who was working in another judge’s courtroom,” the filing said. “Entering the courtroom through a secure hallway, Judge Hawkins motioned for the employee to come outside into the hallway. As the employee walks through the doorway, Judge Hawkins placed her hands around his neck and shook him back and forth.”

The video shows Hawkins have a “brief but intense” conversation with the employee after the encounter, the JQC said. …

“The employee involved did not describe the judge’s demeanor that morning as friendly or joking, but described her as ‘extremely upset,’” the filing said. “Another employee who interacted with Judge Hawkins shortly after the incident says Judge Hawkins remarked about the encounter and demonstrated what she did by making a choking motion in the air. This employee described Judge Hawkins’ overall behavior as ‘unnecessarily unprofessional and unpredictable.’”

Hawkins has objected to the JQC’s recommendation of suspension, claiming she wasn’t sure if she actually touched the courthouse employee, but later conceded she had, admitting that “whether she touched him or not, her actions were inappropriate.”

Going so far as to state the incredibly obvious, the JQC noted: “Within the judicial branch, as in civilian life, it is never appropriate for a person in a supervisory position to put their hands around the neck of an employee or subordinate and shake them.”

The JQC has recommended that Hawkins be suspended indefinitely without pay until the investigation into her alleged misconduct is complete.

Video Shows Broward Judge Grabbing Court Employee by Neck [Daily Business Review]

---

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.

In response to what many, including myself would call racist rhetoric, the president and his supporters have generally reacted with some combination of denying the president’s comments were racist or maintaining that it is in defense against or an attack upon socialists.

In discussing this current reality, I want to focus on how the misunderstood and irrelevant fear of socialism factors into the continued support of this president. However, by focusing on the irrational hysteria surrounding socialism I would rightfully expect a response from liberals that I am dismissing, setting aside, or ignoring the issue of the president’s racist statements. It takes very little effort however, to defend the argument that the president’s statements fit the very definition of a racist “trope.” And by “trope,” I mean a common saying so associated with racism that unless said in the context of some clear and unambiguous attempt at satire, the general expected reaction from the American public is that the person making the trope is a racist. Speaking of racist tropes, I also believe Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the person who the president was directing his racist trope at just the other night during one of his disturbing and racist cult rallies, has also uttered statements that what would fit my definition of a racist “trope.” The vast and meaningful difference between the two, however, is that only one, Congresswoman Omar, has apologized for or admitted ignorance to such “tropes,” and thereafter consistently publicly denounced the racism attributed to the trope.

That all said, I would rather focus on how the misguided fear of socialism plays into all this because I think this is where we can extrapolate salvation from the god-level nightmare of discussing the current president’s continual use of racist tropes against members of Congress. Startling claim maybe, but I am not asking for any great shift in human thinking — just that we keep looking to the stars for our salvation as humanity has always done since ancient times. Utilizing the basic tenets of American capitalism, the guarantees in our United States Constitution, and most importantly, by exploiting access to near Earth resources, assures that human conflicts such as the struggle over limited resources that have plagued our species from the beginning aredefinitively over. These factors also guarantee that the fear of socialism has already been rendered meaningless in a 21st Century economy. In order to understand how socialism is rendered meaningless by the factors I have outlined however, we have to get into some necessary background of what socialism actually is.

Kevin Williamson at National Review has offered what I think is one of the most nuanced and accurate definitions of socialism that could be fit for the 20th Century. My only critique of his piece is that although he sets out to establish a useful definition for the future, the market basics that form the basis of his definition of socialism remain applicable only to the 20th Century.

To illustrate, in his 2011 piece, Williamson argues that the “old” 18th Century definition of socialism should be updated to includestate “ownership or control” rather than depending on “ownership and control.” Furthermore, Williamson defines “public goods” as “goods which are non-rivalrous in their consumption and non-excludable in their distribution.” In defining what a rivalrous or non-rivalrous good is Williamson states:

A rivalrous good is one for which my consumption of one unit of the good leaves one unit less for your consumption. A mango is rivalrous in consumption: Every mango I eat is a mango you cannot eat. But some goods are non-rivalrous: a highway, for instance. If I drive down a mile of highway, that does not leave one less mile for you to drive down.

As to the meaning of non-excludable goods:

But some goods are non-excludable: for instance, a big fireworks display. You could sell tickets to a fireworks display, but people on the periphery would still be able to see the show.

Based on these definitions, to Williamson, government control, i.e., socialism, includes every instance even at a trivial level, where government engages “in the public provision of non-public good.” The problem I have with this definition being apt for a 21st Century American market, is that in the rapidly near future the distinction between a non-public good or public good will be nonexistent. This is because all goods will eventually become non-rivalrous in their consumption and non-excludable in their distribution in the very near future, if not already. To be clear, this is not to say that capitalism is now rendered meaningless and that a state run economy is preferable. In fact, I mean to say the exact opposite. History has shown that an American capitalist economy is preferable to any state run economy by virtually every human metric.

American capitalism has the proven ability to spawn more innovation, lift more people out of poverty, and create more resources/goods than any other human economic system. Unleashed into the limitless markets that can be found in just near-Earth space, I would argue capitalism is our best–known vehicle to bring humanity into the inevitable limitless goods and resources reality. In fact, the only danger I see is that some humans will want to deny this inevitable limitless reality to others out of some sort of racial, religious, or nationalist spite. Despite the fact that human poverty or exploitation would no longer make even any harsh or cruel economic sense givenrobots are cheaper and more efficient than human’s are in working in space. The larger point I am trying to make is, because the struggle over limited resources is already over, and human exploitation will no longer make any economic sense means that the harmful offsets from traditional human struggles and exploitation, such as racism, will also be made more illogical and irrelevant to society than they are even today.  

To be clear, I am no naïve optimist. I can only repeat that given over a 100,000 people have been escaping extreme poverty every day, for a quarter of a century steady, it is only logical to expect that human growth can or should continue until human poverty is entirely eliminated and a limitless era is achieved in the very near future, indeed well within my lifetime. Moreover, by utilizing near-Earth resources the growth out of human poverty will not depend upon finite Earth resources or be limited by the available abundance of any resource humans currently or could ever possibly value.

Neither do technological limitations bind us. Very soon, if not already, we will possess the ability to “design the machine that can build the machine that can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials.” But again, and I cannot stress this enough, with access to near-Earth resources, the cost of raw materials will be made nonexistent. It may seem absurd for you to imagine, but in the relatively near future, human drudgery, intellectual or physical, will be rendered meaningless or at least circumscribed to human leisure, as all goods will be readily obtainable at the fingertips of every human, being regardless of whether they deserve it or not. In other words, in the very near future, every single human being can be guaranteed a life similar to what those who are born only to the super rich today can experience. And like being born intovirtually limitless wealth today, deserving will have nothing to do with it.  

Perhaps most importantly to those like Williamson, in a limitless era, civil liberty and the freedom to engage in self-regarding acts unrestrained by state run collective “plans” is only made more valuable and possible. Nevertheless, given the value of information to human beings generally, we will continue human advancement regardless of any state plan. The “train is already out of the station” so to speak, “and there’s no brake to pull.” Most important to me however, is acknowledging that because exploitation of human labor or finite Earth resources no longer makes any economic, much less any logical, sense, I ask, why should any of us, including the people who support or criticize it, really give a shit about 20th Century socialism?

---

Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

Late one afternoon in March 2018, I had just left work to meet a friend in Brooklyn when cops stopped me on the street. I had just graduated from law school, so I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. I invoked my rights, but it didn’t matter. They still tried to get me to admit to something I didn’t do.

After seven long hours in the precinct, they told me I could leave without charging me with anything. I had a big test coming up the next morning—the MPRE, the professional ethics portion of the bar exam. By the time I returned home from the precinct around 2 a.m., I couldn’t sleep. I was still going on adrenaline.

Still, I showed up and took the exam. And I passed. But when I got home, that’s when it all hit. That’s when I started crying and thinking about how, even at this point in my life, despite everything I have accomplished, this is still happening to me.

— David Ourlicht, a 2017 graduate of CUNY School of Law, recounting the details of a recent stop-and-frisk incident. Ourlicht served as one of the lead plaintiffs in Floyd v. City of New York, a class-action suit challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices. Ourlicht won that case, and stop-and-frisk was branded unconstitutional. Ourlicht currently works as a public defender with the Legal Aid Society in New York City.

---

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.

Supreme Court watchers know that there’s been an assault on legal precedent recently — that’s a big part of what makes anti-choice laws like Alabama’s so scary. It turns out some Supreme Court justices are also concerned about this disturbing trend.

Elena Kagan spoke at at Georgetown University Law Center yesterday, and she had a lot to say about some of her Supreme Court colleagues’ penchant for overturning precedent. (As you may recall, four cases were granted cert this Term where the petitioner advocated for overruling settled law, and in two of those cases, the petitioner was successful. Kagan voted to maintain the precedent in all four cases.) Indeed, as reported by Law360, Justice Kagan called their willingness to overturn cases “a little bit immodest.”

She went on to wax about the importance of settled law:

[T]he “worst thing people could think about our legal system” is that the law changes drastically depending on the “preferences or predilections” of who is on the Supreme Court, “so you can never count on anything and you can never understand law as a stable continuing presence in people’s lives.”

“I think also the doctrine of precedent is one of humility,” she said. “And that means not thinking that, ‘Uh, here I am. And I just look at this case differently than the way many, many judges have looked at it in the past. And my opinion is better than theirs, so I’m just going to reverse what they say.’”

Of course, Justice Kagan does leave room for cases to be overturned, where the caselaw has become an outlier to changing standards or is “morally repugnant”:

But while she said that adhering to precedent should be a “heavy presumption,” Justice Kagan also said there were reasons to depart from past decisions of the court. In some cases, she said, society has evolved to the point where the precedent is “morally repugnant.” More often, however, “the particular case has become a real outlier, that the legal rules and doctrines have changed all around it, leaving it a kind of weirdness in the law.”

And what what kind of a case might Justice Kagan be speaking about? Funny you should ask, because she has some thoughts about this Term’s case on political gerrymandering:

“There’s no part of me that’s ever going to become accepting of the decision made,” saying the majority was “abysmally wrong” in deciding that there’s no manageable standard to ferret out unconstitutional gerrymanders.

I don’t think she’s alone in her disappointment that the Supreme Court decided to give political gerrymandering a pass.

---

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).