The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Ford & Huff Opens D.C. Office Centered on Postal Affairs

Updated 5:12 p.m.

Ford & Huff is opening a new office in Washington focused on a unique practice – postal affairs.

The practice is led by former U.S. Postal Service general counsel Harold Hughes, a senior attorney. Hughes is joined in Washington by new hires Robert Brinkman and Arthur Slacker.

"We're very excited about adding federal legislative and regulatory matters to our broad range of practice areas, and especially about starting with postal affairs," managing partner Adam Ford said in a written statement. "With Art and Bob joining Hal, we will have the deepest postal bench of any firm in the country."

In Survey, Lobbyists Complain About Effects of Open Government Law

In the aftermath of sweeping federal lobbying legislation that became law in 2007, few lobbyists are convinced that the statute made their colleagues more ethical and improved government.

These doubts about the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act are among several concerns lobbyists shared in a survey released Wednesday by The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, research firm Lobbyists.info and market research firm ORI. Not only do less than 21 percent of lobbyists say governance is better and ethical standards for lobbying have improved since 2007, but more than half say their job is more difficult. The survey included responses from 865 lobbyists.

Lobbyists had complaints about their abilities to interact with congressional aides and inform lawmakers under the statute. Most of them said the law, which came as a result of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, has made it more difficult to work with congressional staffers and has hurt Congress in its efforts to acquire the information necessary to make decisions.

Appeals Court Rules Glasses Instruction Not Prejudicial in Murder Trial

A judge's instruction to the jury on how they could weigh testimony about a defendant's possible change in appearance at trial - in this case, wearing glasses - wasn't prejudicial, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals has ruled.

A District of Columbia Superior Court jury convicted Donnell Harris in the June 2007 fatal shooting of Michael Richardson. Harris wore glasses during his trial in 2008, but the prosecutor presented witnesses who said they didn't know that Harris had worn them in the past.

At the prosecutor's request and over Harris' objection, the trial judge instructed the jury that if they decided that Harris had tried to change his appearance to avoid being identified, they could consider it as evidence of his feelings of guilt. In an October 10 per curiam opinion (PDF), the court found that the prosecutor had introduced enough evidence to support the instruction and that there was no prejudice because the glasses weren't a factor in witness identifications.

The Morning Wrap

Voter Fraud: Two weeks before what could be one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history, efforts to mislead, intimidate or pressure voters are an increasingly prominent part of the political landscape, Reuters reports.

The Matrix: Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the "disposition matrix," the Washington Post reports.

Wake Up Call: As consumption of energy drinks soars in the United States, critics say the Food and Drug Administration has allowed the drinks to languish in a regulatory gray area and does not require companies to disclose how much caffeine their products contain, The New York Times reports.

Penn State Climate Scientist Sues National Review for Libel

Scientist Michael Mann, whose work on climate change led to contentious litigation over access to his emails, filed a libel lawsuit yesterday against National Review, accusing the conservative publication of defaming him by accusing him of academic fraud.

In the complaint (PDF) filed in District of Columbia Superior Court, Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, claimed that a July 15 article not only falsely accused him of misconduct, but crossed a line by comparing him to Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football assistant coach convicted of child molestation. He also sued the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that ran a piece about Mann on its staff blog, OpenMarket.org.

Mann was one of the researchers behind the now-famous "hockey stick" graph showing a jump in global temperature at the end of the last millennium. He was a professor at the University of Virginia from 1999 to 2005, and became the subject of litigation when the Virginia attorney general's office launched an investigation into his use of government grant money. Mann and his supporters charged that the investigation was part of a politically motivated effort to discredit climate change science.

For Second Time, PhRMA and Hogan End Lobbying Ties

Updated 1:58 p.m.

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has dropped Hogan Lovells from its roster of lobbying firms. But it isn't the first time.

The PhRMA lobbying termination report Hogan filed with Congress on Monday was the second such document the firm has filed, according to congressional records that date to 1999.

Before it filed lobbying termination paperwork in 2007, the firm, then known as Hogan & Hartson, spent at least eight years advocating for the pharmaceutical industry's biggest trade group on international health and trade issues, among other matters.In 2009, Hogan started lobbying for PhRMA again on trade. That work ended in July.

D.C. Circuit Upholds Immunity Shield for Former President of Colombia

A federal appeals court in Washington today upheld a judge's ruling that Álvaro Uribe Vélez, a former president of Colombia, is protected from having to sit for a deposition as a witness in a suit against a coal mining company. The court's ruling is here.

Gregory Craig of the Washington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that Uribe, his client, should not be forced to respond to a subpoena seeking his testimony in a suit against Drummond Co., the Alabama-based coal company.

Craig told a three-judge panel this month that the U.S. Justice Department's assertion of immunity to protect Uribe leaves no role for intrusion by the appeals court. The executive branch, Craig said, decides matters of foreign policy. DOJ lawyers said, among other things, in pursuing immunity for Uribe, that the government was concerned about treatment of American officials abroad.

Terry Collingsworth, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs in the underlying suit against Drummond, argued in the appeals court that DOJ should not be allowed to decide the facts of whether Colombia, under Uribe's leadership, had improper ties with a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization.

Covington & Burling Signs 20-Year Lease at CityCenterDC

Covington & Burling has inked a 20-year lease for 420,000 square feet of space in the CityCenterDC development project.

The deal puts the 429-attorney office as the anchor tenant in the mixed-use development located northwest of Washington's Chinatown.

The firm currently is located at 1201 and 1275 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. CityCenterDC is located on New York Avenue between 10th and 11th streets N.W. Covington plans to make its move in 2014.

"We are excited to participate in the redevelopment of this historic section in the nation's capital, which will have an enormous positive impact on the city," Timothy Hester, chair of Covington's management committee, said in a written statement.

The Morning Wrap

Plan Approved: Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath in the District of Delaware rejected arguments from the IRS and approved an exit plan for Solyndra, a failed solar-panel maker that received a $535 million in a federal loan guarantee before going bankrupt, Bloomberg reports.

Blending in: Goodwin Liu might have fallen short in his bid to become a federal judge, but he has blended in easily on California's Supreme Court, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Mug Shots Down: A South Carolina lawyer wants jails to stop posting mug shots of people booked into their facilities, because the photos are then picked up by websites and spread across the Internet without any care for whether the person was guilty, The Associated Press reported.

Use of Drone Strikes Raised at Final Presidential Debate

The topic of drone strikes arose during the third and final presidential debate tonight, after years of public debate and a federal lawsuit about the use of drones to target alleged enemies of the United States in other countries, including an American citizen.

The exchange was short-lived, however. When Republican candidate Mitt Romney was asked by debate moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News, "What is your position on the use of drones?" he said he believed that America “should use any and all means necessary to take out people who pose a threat to us.”

"And it's widely reported that drones are being used in drone strikes," Romney continued, "and I support that entirely and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology and believe that we should continue to use it to continue to go after the people who represent a threat to this nation and to our friends."

But perhaps because of the two candidates' seeming agreement on the issue, at least compared with several other issues that were raised in the debate, Obama never addressed the question or Romney’s answer.