Many erroneously believe that Alabama is a relatively sweet home state and Minnesota is thought to be the home of bitterness (bitter cold, that is). With all due respect to Lynyrd Skynyrd and the great state of Alabama, this is simply wrong. In fact, it is demonstrably false. (I can only conclude that Lynyrd Skynyrd might […]
As we start our work week, it is fitting to give some thought to those among us who are fabulously wealthy and who do not have to work. Populists decry the redistribution of wealth in our society over the past several decades in which the rich have gotten a lot richer and the rest of our […]
Update (May 10, 2014): The Emperor of Minnesota Ethics lays out the issues here. Mr. Wernz does not take a position and gives an express disclaimer to that effect. Nature abhors a vacuum so a fool will rush in where a wiser man would not tread: in my view Conniving & Burling’s conduct should not be […]
It seems we have a way to go before we figure out the public nature of our justice system, the implications and the obligations.
Some citizens, most often associated with right-wing ideology, view governments (state or federal) as bloated, inefficient, mired in bureaucracy, mediocrity, cronyism, patronage, choking under the weight of red-tape, as agile as an aircraft carrier and as inefficient as a Hummer H3X. There might be some truth to some or to all of that in particular organizations […]
I just came upon some short videos by Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking Fast and Slow. The book is daunting (over 450 pages) but the videos are not. The videos are a short introduction to some of his thinking. Kahneman is a noted cognitive scientist. One of his main premises is that we have […]
Minnesota Lawyers Mutual, the chosen professional malpractice insurance company for many Minnesota lawyers (including me), sponsors continuing legal education programs from time to time. Think of it as preventative health care or a wellness visit? In a recent webcast, widely known malpractice defense lawyers Phil Cole and Richard Thomas mentioned that a hotbed of legal malpractice claims […]
Update (May 7, 2014): Settlement Conference held before Magistrate Judge Jeffrey J. Keyes held on 5/6/2014. No settlement reached. Who is surprised? Previous post (April 22 2014): I predicted this case might go to trial in September, 2012. (Self-supplied cynical rejoinder: predicting that a lawsuit “might” go to trial is like predicting that a political candidate “might” […]
May 6, 2014 Update: Orono’s Jay Nygard’s lawsuit against Dennis Walsh, discussed in this post below, was thrown out of court, failing to survive a motion to dismiss based on Minnesota’s “anti strategic litigation against public participation” (“anti-SLAPP”) statute. The trial court’s decision was affirmed by the Minnesota Court of Appeals this past February (linked […]