The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Court Strikes 1892 Case Law on Contracts with Mentally Ill

Replacing precedent dating back to 1892, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled today that contracts entered into with mentally incapacitated individuals will no longer be considered automatically void.

Under the new standard, those contracts will be voidable, as opposed to inherently void. According to the ruling, a contract will be binding unless the incapacitated person or someone approved to act on his or her behalf takes steps to cancel it. If an incapacitated person or the representative does want to cancel a contract, they can only do so if it would be fair to the parties involved.

Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, writing for the court, said the new standard, which is used in the majority of jurisdictions in the United States, "better comports with modern contract law and modern understandings of mental illness."

K&L Gates Lobbyists Add Asteroid Miners to Client Roster

Updated at 3:13 p.m.

K&L Gates has registered to lobby on an out-of-this-world matter: asteroid mining.

The firm notified Congress last week that it is advocating for Planetary Resources Inc. on issues related to quarrying the celestial bodies, but not on any particular legislation. The Seattle-based company says on its website it is "establishing a new paradigm for resource discovery and utilization that will bring the solar system into humanity's sphere of influence."

Former Representative Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), a K&L Gates partner, is handling the account with firm partners Daniel Ritter and R. Paul Stimers, as well as associate Stephen Roberts.

Plaintiffs to Appeal Dismissal of 'Plan Colombia' Lawsuit Against DynCorp

Lawyers for several thousand Ecuadorian citizens suing DynCorp International over alleged exposure to toxins through an aerial herbicide spraying operation are preparing to appeal a recent order dismissing the case.

In 2001, more than 2,000 Ecuadorians sued DynCorp in Washington federal court, claiming that the herbicide made them sick, hurt their animals, and ruined their land. In a February 15 opinion that was unsealed last week, U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts excluded testimony from the plaintiffs' sole expert. Without that testimony, Roberts found that the plaintiffs couldn't prove that DynCorp's actions caused their injuries and dismissed the case.

Terry Collingsworth, managing partner for Conrad & Scherer's Washington office and lead counsel for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, confirmed today that his team is "assessing which of the many possible appealable issues they will pursue in the Court of Appeals."

D.C. Forensic Sciences Department Facing Transition Challenges

For Washington's new independent forensic sciences department and laboratory, which launched in October, the honeymoon period appears to be over. Appearing before the D.C. Council last week for the agency's first-ever annual performance oversight hearing, Director Max Houck faced questions about the lab's efficiency, communication with other law enforcement agencies, and management of the transition to independent forensic testing.

The $220 million facility in Southwest Washington is home to the forensic sciences lab, public health lab, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, although only the forensic sciences and public health labs fall under the control of the newly created Department of Forensic Sciences. The department and lab were designed to make forensic testing independent of law enforcement, a key recommendation of a 2009 report on forensic science by the National Research Council of the National Academies.

During the oversight hearing on February 27, Houck said the department was making good progress in hiring and reorganizing how the city managed forensic testing. Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chair of the judiciary and public safety committee, asked about previous testimony from D.C. police Chief Cathy Lanier that some testing was taking longer to complete, pointing out that the state-of-the-art lab was built with the expectation that it would speed up investigations. Houck said that he expected turnaround times to improve as they figured out lab procedures and protocols.

Medicaid and Medicare Specialist Returns to Patton Boggs

Lu Zawistowich has returned to Patton Boggs’s Washington office as a senior public policy adviser in the firm’s health care, FDA and life sciences practice group. As a principal, Zawistowich will focus on legislative, regulatory and administrative matters involving Medicaid and Medicare.

Zawistowich was a senior policy adviser at the firm from 2004 to 2010. Previously, she  held senior leadership positions at the Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program Payment and Access Commission, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Zawistowich has experience working with Congress, relevant federal agencies, states and key stakeholders. She holds a doctorate of science degree in health policy and management from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"Patton Boggs has an extraordinary health care team, and I am delighted to rejoin my colleagues,” said Zawistowich in a statement. “It is truly an exciting time to be working on the front lines of health care policy-making. I look forward to working with clients to address the challenges and opportunities in Medicaid, Medicare, and health care reform.”

In Q&A, D.C. Forensic Sciences Chief Says Lab Moving Toward Accreditation

It's been four months since the grand opening of Washington's new forensic sciences laboratory. The $220 million facility is fully operational and District of Columbia Department of Forensic Sciences director Max Houck said they have a plan in place for moving towards accreditation and are making progress in filling vacant positions.

The 287,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art building isn't just home to new lab space, though. It is itself an experiment: Houck is guiding the city's transition to independent forensic testing, in which evidence testing and storage are no longer handled by law enforcement.

Houck sat down with Legal Times on January 25 to talk about the lab's first few months. Besides forensic sciences, the new building houses the city's public health lab, which is also under Houck's department, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which continues to manage the city's morgue. His comments have been edited for space.

Alston & Bird Welcomes Data Security Expert

Updated at 3:08 p.m.

Alston & Bird announced today that Kimberly Peretti, a former director of cyber forensics for PricewaterhouseCoopers and a former cybercrimes prosecutor, had joined the firm as a partner in the Washington office.

Peretti will co-chair the firm's security incident management and response team and also be part of the government investigations team. According to the firm, her expertise spans data breach investigations, information security, corporate compliance and cyber law.

Companies "need to fully understand the cyber threat, the losses that can occur from these data breaches," Peretti said in a phone interview today. "A decade ago, we had solo hackers attacking systems. In and out with one purpose and it was easy to detect and it was easy to respond to. Now we're just in a very different era of cybercrime."

McDermott Facing Malpractice Lawsuit in Patent Dispute

A former client of McDermott, Will & Emery is suing the firm for legal malpractice, claiming that a former partner improperly accessed confidential information related to patent applications and passed it along to family members.

The complaint (PDF), filed in District of Columbia Superior Court on December 29, is the latest development in a long-running legal saga involving former McDermott client Theranos Inc., and former firm partner John Fuisz. Fuisz didn't represent Theranos, but Theranos and its chief executive officer, Elizabeth Holmes, accused Fuisz of using his position within the firm to access information.

The complaint is against McDermott, not Fuisz, however. Theranos accused the firm of failing to take steps to stop Fuisz, who had an intellectual property practice, from accessing confidential information. Fuisz's family members obtained a patent for a system Theranos claimed it developed first.

D.C. Crime Lab Chief Outlines Strategy for Preventing Scandals

Alluding to a recent Massachusetts crime lab scandal that has called into question hundreds of convictions, the acting director of the District of Columbia’s new forensic sciences lab said Friday that putting in a checks and balances system early on would be critical to preventing similar incidents at the city’s recently completed facility.

Max Houck was appointed over the summer to lead the new $220 million lab and the department created last year by the D.C. Council to oversee it, the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences. He has served as acting director since August and appeared Friday before the judiciary committee for his confirmation hearing.

Houck referred to a controversy in Boston this year surrounding a state chemist accused of fabricating drug analysis results. He said he was considering “robust” methods for preventing such behavior, from blind case review and re-testing a certain percentage of cases to designating the forensic sciences department’s general counsel as an ombudsman to “act as a sounding board” for issues and concerns about the lab’s operations.

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.