The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Voting Begins in D.C. Bar Elections

Voting is underway in this year's D.C. Bar elections for general and sections positions. The two lawyers vying for president-elect – the precursor post to serving as president – carried a bevy of endorsements into the election, which began April 30 and ends May 24.

Steptoe & Johnson LLP partner Brigida Benitez and Jenner & Block partner Lorelie Masters are this year's candidates for the bar's top job. The winner will serve as president-elect for a year before spending a second year as president, and then will serve a third year as immediate past president.

Both candidates have made expanding pro bono work and promoting access to justice top priorities. Benitez, in an interview today, said she wants to find ways the bar can be more creative in providing services and support partnerships with the legal services community. "It's something where the bar has been a leader, but I think the need is as great as ever," she said.

Rail Companies Push to Decertify Class in Antitrust Case

Freight rail companies accused of scheming to bump up rates through "aggressive" fuel surcharges argued this morning to undo a court order certifying a class in the case, arguing the decision was based on a faulty model of injuries and that the order would unfairly force them to settle.

The class – thousands of businesses that shipped products via freight rail – sued the four largest freight railroad companies in the United States for antitrust violations in 2007. U.S. District Senior Judge Paul Friedman certified a class last summer, which pushed up the total possible damages into the billions, according to court papers in the litigation.

Sidley Austin's Carter Phillips, arguing for the rail companies, told a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel today that Friedman's order conflicted with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in March on class certification in antitrust cases. The plaintiffs' expert created a model that identified injuries to entities outside the class, he said, which under the high court's ruling in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend would bar class certification.

'Coercive' Jury Instruction Means New Trial in Murder Case

A man convicted of second-degree murder in a 2005 shooting will get a new trial after the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled today that the trial judge gave an "impermissibly coercive" instruction to the jury.

After a jury told District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Michael Rankin they couldn't reach a decision, the judge gave an instruction that crossed the line from communicating his desire for a verdict to making it seem as though the jury had to reach a verdict, the appeals court said.

Because coercion was "probable," Judge Stephen Glickman wrote for the panel, "we are unable to 'say with assurance that the jury arrived at its verdict freely and fairly.'"

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."

D.C. Chief Judges Celebrate Law Day on Twitter

Summing up courthouse policy and practices in 140 characters isn't easy, but the chief judges of Washington's local courts gave it a try this morning as part of this year's Law Day festivities.

Replying to tweets with the hashtag #AskTheCJs, Chief Judge Lee Satterfield of the D.C. Superior Court and Chief Judge Eric Washington of the D.C. Court of Appeals spent an hour collaborating on responses via Twitter. A photo posted by the court showed the two judges seated with tablets in front of a large television screen displaying the Twitter feed.

The judges fielded two questions about jury duty, tweeting that the court was making efforts to tailor the number of people summoned to meet courthouse needs. They engaged in creative abbreviating to stay within the 140-character limit.

Law Firms Raise $3.6 Million for D.C. Civil Legal Services

Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made an impassioned plea yesterday for law firms to take more responsibility for the welfare of civil legal services groups, lamenting the small percentage of the legal industry's billion-dollar revenues that go to financially-strapped providers.

Tatel spoke at an event honoring 36 law firms that contributed $3.6 million last year to local civil legal services through the D.C. Access to Justice Commission's second annual Raising the Bar in D.C. Campaign. Firms were honored based on the percentage of annual D.C. office revenues donated to legal services; the number of participating firms in 2012 was up from the 23 that participated in 2011.

Tatel praised the private bar's efforts to assist their colleagues in civil legal services, but warned the challenges facing individuals who can't afford a lawyer "is only getting worse." In the District of Columbia, for instance, he noted that more than 90 percent of litigants are unrepresented in certain types of civil cases.

D.C. Court of Appeals Chief Unopposed for Third Term

In 2012, the median time for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to resolve cases was 352 days. It was the first time in a decade that number dropped below the one-year line, and as Chief Judge Eric Washington prepares for what will likely be another tem as chief, he says he wants to do better.

Washington is unopposed in his bid for a third four-year term leading the city's highest local court. He is widely credited with making the court more efficient, but complaints about case backlogs have persisted. In his application materials, Washington wrote that "fair and timely resolution" of cases remains a top priority.

According to court statistics, the median number of days it took the court to resolve cases dropped from 10-year highs of 505 days in 2002 and 2007 to 352 days last year. The average time it took to resolve cases remained higher—a sign that certain cases are still taking much longer—although the court also reached a 10-year low of 427 days last year.

Lawyers, Judge Share Close Ties in Jesse Jackson Jr. Case

Former Illinois congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.'s embezzlement case is proving just how small Washington's legal world can be.

The first judge randomly assigned to the case in Washington's federal trial court has now recused himself. Today in court, the second judge—also randomly assigned—took extra measures to air her connections to the lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson Berman, a former white-collar criminal defense attorney at Trout Cacheris, listed her connections during the first status conference on the case since it was assigned to her April 16. President Barack Obama appointed Jackson to the bench in March 2011.

Congressman Sues House Speaker Boehner Over Censure

U.S. Representative Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) filed a lawsuit today against House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other House Republicans seeking reversal of a censure vote in 2010 and accusing them of denying him due process.

The House voted in December 2010 to censure Rangel after an ethics committee found him guilty of violations ranging from unpaid income taxes to improper solicitation of funds. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Rangel claimed he learned after the vote that several members of the committee received improper ex parte information.

The alleged misconduct "offends the view that the American system of justice requires persons sitting in the capacity of 'judges' in a quasi-judicial proceeding must not only avoid prejudice and bias, but must also avoid the appearance of prejudice and bias," he said in the complaint.

On Gideon's 50th, Lawyers Lament Lack of Access to Justice

Updated 4/22/13 at 9:04 a.m.

The District of Columbia is home to what's widely considered the gold-standard of local public defender offices, but a panel of right-to-counsel advocates today challenged the courts and the criminal justice community not to grow complacent.

"D.C. is a place where the expectations are incredibly high, and they should be," said Jonathan Rapping, a former local public defender who founded Gideon's Promise, an Atlanta-based organization that supports public defender offices in southern states. When it came to ensuring access to justice, he urged local attorneys and judges to ask among themselves, "What else can we do?"

Rapping was part of a panel today during the annual joint session of the Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia and the D.C. Bar. The theme of this year's bench-bar conference was access to counsel, in light of the 50th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that secured the right to counsel for criminal defendants.