The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

DOJ Report Criticizes Hiring Practices in Management Division

A group of employees in the U.S. Justice Department's management and operations office are under fire for their roles in improper hiring practices that included seeking employment for relatives, according to an internal report published today.

The DOJ Inspector General Office report found eight current or former employees in the department's Justice Management Division violated statutes and regulations that cover the hiring of relatives and conflicts of interest and employee ethics.

The investigation marked the third probe of hiring practices at the management division office in the past eight years. Two earlier reports criticized officials in the office for the alleged manipulation of the competitive hiring process to favor certain candidates.

"The report clearly established that inappropriate hiring occurred regarding relatives of JMD employees," Lee Lofthus, assistant attorney general for administration, said in a letter to Michael Horowitz, the DOJ inspector general. "While it was a small number of JMD staff and individuals implicated in the investigation, the report was particularly troubling as it identified hiring improprieties for the third time in eight years."

Superior Court Chief Judge Appointed for a Second Term

District of Columbia Superior Court Chief Judge Lee Satterfield will serve a second four-year term as head of the city's local trial court, according to a release (PDF) today from the District of Columbia Judicial Nomination Commission.

Satterfield, who was appointed chief judge in 2008, was unchallenged in his bid for a second term. In a written statement released this morning, he said that he is "gratified that the Commission has shown its continued confidence in my skills and leadership as chief judge."

"This job is not an easy one, but it is incredibly rewarding to be able to improve the administration of justice and the services and programs we offer the residents of my hometown,” he said. “With the incredibly talented judiciary and court managers at the Superior Court, I am confident that we can continue to make improvements to a court that is already one of the best in the country.”

The Morning Wrap

Opening: Voting rights advocates in Pennsylvania yesterday told a state judge the state's new voter identification law violates the constitution, The Washington Post reports. Proponents of the law contend the measure's needed to fight voter fraud. The Legal Intelligencer has coverage of the opening salvos here.

Cleared: A federal appeals court has cleared the Church of Scientology in a dispute over human trafficking, The National Law Journal reports. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said two former ministers of the church could have left the organization at any time. The couple had claimed church officials required manual labor that included cleaning up dried human excrement.

14 Point: The Michigan state Supreme Court is studying typography in a dispute over whether the typeface on a petition to gather signatures was written in the type size specified by state law. "While the arguments at times sounded like a typography seminar, the underlying dispute isn't academic," a report in The Wall Street Journal said. "It involves a power struggle between the Republican-dominated state government and business leaders on one side, and public-employee unions and city officials on the other."

Seyfarth Shaw Study Shows Increase in Wage and Hour Labor Suits

During the past five years there has been a steady increase in the number of lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to research by Seyfarth Shaw.

Using data confirmed by the Federal Judicial Center, the firm counted 7,064 cases during the 12 months ending on March 12 of this year. Since 2008, there has been a steady increase in the number of cases filed per year.

Richard Alfred, Seyfarth partner and chair of the firm's national wage and hour litigation practice group, attributes the recent spike in cases over the past few years partially to a slumping economy. People who lost their jobs during the economic downturn, Alfred said, explored their legal options.

"Whether or not they had a wrongful termination case, they went to seek legal advice on that subject," Alfred said. He said some plaintiffs lawyers will often steer potential clients away from a wrongful termination suit in favor of a wage and hour suit because the law is often difficult to interpret. He added that these were generally not intentional violations on the part of employers.

Guatemala Enlists Sandler Travis to Lobby on Trade Agreement

Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg for the first time has registered with the U.S. Justice Department to lobby for a foreign country.

The Guatemala Ministry of the Economy has enlisted the international trade and customs law firm to help it in Washington with the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a free trade agreement the United States signed with it, as well as other Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act paperwork filed with DOJ last week. Sandler's work for the ministry concerns a request by the United States to create an arbitration panel under the agreement.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk last year called for the panel's establishment to review whether Guatemala is enforcing its labor laws, including statutes concerning work conditions, the right of association and the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. But Guatemala economy minister Sergio de la Torre told Reuters last month that the United States has decided to put the panel on hold in an effort to informally resolve concerns about the country's enforcement of labor laws.

DOJ Builds Criminal Case Against Blackwater Security Guards

Prosecutors in Washington are building a new criminal case against a group of former Blackwater private security guards whom the government believes wrongly killed more than dozen Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad shootout in 2007.

A federal judge in December 2009 dismissed the government's high-profile, controversial manslaughter case, saying that the prosecution was unlawfully built on protected statements that the guards made after the shooting. The prosecution, Urbina concluded, was tainted with information that the prosecutors should never have used.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year revived the prosecution, and the U.S. Supreme Court in June declined to review the case. The appeals court concluded the trial judge, Ricardo Urbina, who has since retired from the bench, didn't apply the right law in dismissing the indictment.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Anthony Asuncion, John Han and T. Patrick Martin have taken over the manslaughter prosecution from another crew of federal prosecutors. Asuncion said today at a status hearing that the government is moving forward to obtain a superseding indictment. He did not discuss potential new charges.

O'Connor Faults Supreme Court Critics with a 'Lack of Understanding'

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor called the heated criticism of the Court over the recent decisions involving the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act "unfortunate," telling a Senate committee today that it shows a need for more civics education.

O'Connor testified that comments labeling Chief Justice John Roberts a "traitor" or that he betrayed former president George W. Bush "demonstrate only too well the lack of understanding some of our citizens have about the role of the judicial branch."

O'Connor appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss how to ensure judicial independence through education, speaking about her support of iCivics, a nonprofit group she founded to teach students through free games about how government works and how they can become involved.

The Morning Wrap

Murder by Numbers: The homicide rate in the United States has been cut in half in the last 20 years - but there has been no corresponding decline in mass murders, the Washington Post reports.

NYPD Spies: Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the New York City Police Department, with training and guidance from the CIA, has monitored the activities of Muslims in New York and far beyond - activity that was revealed when a building superintendent in New Brunswick stumbled on a NYPD safe house, the Associated Press reports.

Overhaul: Attorney General Eric Holder led federal and local officials Tuesday in announcing a massive overhaul of the New Orleans Police Department, which has been plagued for years by corruption, excessive use of force, illegal searches and widespread racial discrimination, CNN reports.

Verizon Deputy GC Joins Kellogg Huber After 24 Years In-House

After 24 years in-house, Verizon deputy general counsel John Thorne has joined Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel as partner.

Thorne, who began work at his new job yesterday, is widely known for his antitrust work on behalf of the telecom giant, including litigating three successful U.S. Supreme Court cases, as well as his role as head of Verizon's intellectual property group. Global Counsel Awards named him the best in-house competition lawyer in the world in 2009.

The lawyers at Kellogg Huber are old friends, Thorne said – he’s co-authored five books, including Federal Telecommunications Law, with name partners Michael Kellogg and Peter Huber – and he's turned to the firm as outside counsel for years.

Judge Orders New Trial on D.C. Liability for Inmate Stabbing

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras today ordered (PDF) a new trial in a lawsuit against the District of Columbia filed by Antoine Wilkins, a former inmate who was attacked by another prisoner. Wilkins sued the city for negligence after he was stabbed at the District of Columbia Jail in 2005.

Contreras reversed a ruling by now-retired U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. granting the District judgment. He found that Kennedy's ruling was based on incorrect arguments from both sides about the standard for finding the city liable for a third-party's criminal acts in jail.

In most cases where a defendant is facing charges of liability for a third-party's criminal actions, there's a "heightened foreseeability standard," Contreras wrote, noting that this standard was the basis for the city's arguments that it couldn't be held liable in Wilkins' case. But he found that in cases involving a jailhouse attack, the city faces a lower "ordinary negligence standard" because it already has a responsibility for security in what is widely-acknowledged to be a high-risk environment.