The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Awaiting Senate Confirmation, D.C. Judicial Nominee Appointed as Magistrate

Updated at 8:21 p.m.

With the odds of confirmation increasingly unlikely, pending District of Columbia Superior Court judicial nominee Rainey Brandt was appointed this week as a Superior Court magistrate judge.

Brandt, special counsel to the chief judge of Superior Court, was nominated for a judgeship by the White House in March and appeared before a U.S. Senate committee this summer. The Senate has since failed to act on her nomination, which will expire at the end of the year. As previously reported by The National Law Journal, confirmations are historically rare after a presidential election.

The court announced today that Superior Court Chief Judge Lee Satterfield had appointed Brandt and Gretchen Rohr as magistrate judges. Rohr will serve as chair of the court's mental health commission.

The Morning Wrap

Donation Stalled: A candidate for governor of Montana is asking Federal Judge Charles Lovell of the District of Montana to let him spend $500,000 donation from the state's Republican Party, The Independent Record reports. A state judge temporarily stopped Rick Hill from spending the donation until she decides if it was legal, a request of Hill’s Democratic opponent, Steve Bullock.

'Wrong Church, Wrong Pew' Counted: Federal Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio ruled that all provisional ballots must be counted, including those cast in the wrong precinct or polling location, The Associated Press reports. An attorney for a union that sued over the issue said as many as 8,000 voters cast such ballots in 2008.

Drug Princess?: A woman who tried to use a fake ID to get through a port of entry has told a federal judge she is the daughter of Mexican drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, known for controlling the bulk of cocaine and marijuana smuggled into the U.S., FOX 5 San Diego reports.

Four Decades After Break-In, Watergate Investigator Talks About his Role

It's been a little more than 40 years since the Watergate break-in that led to the toppling of the presidency of Richard Nixon. For one Washington attorney, it also marked the beginning of a long career that continues today.

Bingham McCutchen partner James Hamilton started his practice at Covington & Burling after law school and did a lot of work for longtime partner Charles Horsky, who also served in the Kennedy and Johnson White House. It was Horsky who recommended Hamilton to Samuel Dash, the co-chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee alongside Fred Thompson.

"I had been doing complex litigation, and Sam thought this was going to be a document-heavy case and that I had some useful background," Hamilton said in a sit-down interview about his role in the Watergate probe. "We didn't know when we started off what we would find."

Hamilton's main assignment was the investigation of the Watergate break-in and cover-up, but he also handled all the committee's major litigation.

ABA Reports Drop in Lobbying Expenses

Updated on October 26

The American Bar Association this week reported that its most recent quarterly lobbying expenses were $230,000, the lowest sum it has spent on federal government advocacy thus far this year.

But the drop isn't unusual.

Since at least 2008, the legal society's lobbying expenditures have decreased between the second and third quarters, according to congressional records. A major component of the organization's second quarter lobbying is the ABA Day, when its members have meetings with officials on Capitol Hill.

In Wake of the JOBS Act, SEC a 'Clear Loser'

When Congress in a rare bipartisan stampede rushed to pass the JOBS Act earlier this year, it enacted modest reforms to make it easier for startup businesses to raise capital. But it also saddled the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with more rulemaking work at a time when the agency is already overwhelmed.

That was the consensus of panelists today at the American Bar Association's Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Fall Conference in Washington. "The JOBS Act has some good things, some less than laudatory," said former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt. "We can't pick the winners and losers yet, except the commission is a clear loser."

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in April, was intended to facilitate initial public offerings, relaxing certain standards for accounting and disclosures, as well as making it easier for companies to remain private longer and allowing them to advertise private offerings. Also, the act created a new exemption for "crowdfunding" – raising small amounts of money via websites like Kickstart.

DOJ Battles to Keep Trade Talk Document Secret

Updated 5:06 p.m.

For more than a decade, an environmental law group has pressed the government for access to documents that were created during trade talks among dozens of nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Now, a one-page position paper is all that remains contested in the long-running case in Washington's federal trial court.

The U.S. Justice Department says the document is classified and that releasing it will hurt foreign relations--jeopardizing the trust other countries have in the United States to keep certain information confidential.

A federal trial judge in Washington didn't buy the argument. Earlier this year, in a rare move, U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts ordered the government to disclose the document to the Center for International Environmental Law. The ruling didn't end the tiff.

DOJ is now fighting in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to protect the secrecy of the single page of information that's called "Document 1" in court papers.

Appeals Court Rules D.C. Can't Prosecute Charges Feds Already Brought

The District of Columbia can't get "multiple 'bites' at the proverbial 'apple,'" the city's highest court ruled today, finding that city lawyers couldn't pursue charges that the U.S. attorney's office had already brought and been dismissed.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has long faced questions about who prosecutes what in Washington. Under the city's unique set-up, the U.S. attorney's office serves as the city's local prosecutor in almost all cases, but the D.C. attorney general's office does have prosecutorial authority over certain misdemeanors.

In the underlying case, Jermaine Washington was charged in connection with a November 2005 police chase, in which he allegedly sped, ignored traffic signals and collided with another vehicle. According to today's opinion (PDF), the D.C. Office of the Attorney General and the U.S. attorney's office both brought charges against him, unbeknownst to each other. Two charges – reckless driving and leaving after colliding (personal injury) – were brought in both cases.

The Morning Wrap

Sentenced: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison for insider trading. Gupta tipped off a hedge fund about corporate secrets during the height of the financial crisis. The Wall Street Journal reports.

Mortgage Fraud: Bank of America faces a civil mortgage fraud lawsuit, filed yesterday in the Southern District of New York. The complaint accuses the bank and Countrywide Financial of selling thousands of residential mortgages they knew to be defective to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The New York Law Journal reports.

Libya: A series of leaked emails have renewed skepticism about what the Obama administration knew about the motives for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. The New York Times reports. 

Mourdock: Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that if the Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock wants his support, he needs to apologize for his remarks concerning rape and pregnancy. The Hill reports.

Foiled: A thief who allegedly ripped off a pharmacy in New York City was nabbed after he accidentally dropped court documents with his name and address on them as he fled the scene. The New York Daily News reports.

Giuliani Praises Tort Reform at Chamber of Commerce Conference

Rudolph Giuliani, the keynote speaker at an annual conference sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, used his experiences as mayor of New York City to talk about why he believed tort reform was necessary.

Giuliani said at the Chamber's Legal Reform Summit that almost every year he was mayor, the city's tort bill for hospitals was $300 million because of all the malpractice lawsuits. "I would have to say without even worrying about being contradicted that half of that and more was just absolutely phony claims because we have a tort system in new York that is completely unfair, completely biased," he said.  

Giuliani said this was because when jurors in New York saw the city as a defendant, they sometimes forgot that they are part of the city, which has to pick up the tab when plaintiffs win such cases.

Hill Staffers Feel Overworked, Unhappy with Office Cultures, Report Finds

Law firms looking to recruit Capitol Hill staffers might want to stress how their firms offer a better balance between work and personal life, have a good office culture and allow more time for projects, according to a new study released today.

The research report, "Life in Congress: Aligning Work and Life in the U.S. House and Senate," shows that congressional staffers feel they work longer hours than counterparts in the private sector. Two in five staffers say they would leave Congress "[t]o seek better balance between work and personal life."

One out of three staffers said they did not have enough time to get all their assignments done, including almost half of the staffers in policy/legislative/research roles, according to the study by the Congressional Management Foundation and the Society for Human Resource Management.