Don’t Hit Your SO
BigLaw partner loses his job, and family, after being charged with assault. During a dispute with his Significant Other, King and Spaulding lawyer Steven Guynn, forgot the basic concepts of alternative dispute resolution, and allegedly resorted to hitting.
Reading the news today (and any day since you were three years old) a lawyer, especially a 59-year-old corporate lawyer, should know that hitting girls is not an effective means of winning a dispute.
He is no longer listed on the BigLaw firm’s website, and they will not answer questions about him.
These things never lead to good outcomes, Guynn’s wife has now filed for dissolution of the marriage. The wife was not the hittee, that was his mistress (to use an old-fashioned term, which 59-year-old lawyers can do). Several bad decisions rolled into one situation.
Too bad the generals are not reading this blog.
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The Voters have Spoken
Judge Cynthia Brim shoved a Chicago courts deputy last March, and was charged with Battery. She was also barred from the courthouse without a court approved escort, by the presiding panel of judges. Suspended from the job, and charged with a crime, she still sought judicial retention while also pleading temporary insanity for her act of Battery.
With a retention vote of 67.5%, she gets to keep her job, or at least her paycheck.
She returned to Court the day after the election, but it was to answer to the misdemeanor Battery charges. At that hearing she submitted her insanity defense to the charge. The court appointed psychiatrist agrees she was suffering from bi-polar disorder at the time of the crime, but while properly medicated can stand trial, and could return to work.
The Chicago Bar Association had recommended that Judge Brim lose her position, but the Cook County Democratic Party endorsed her retention. The voters retained Judge Brim. No report that the judicial panel has said if she can return to her courtroom yet.
As a supporter of merit selection with retention ballots, I must admit that the system is not perfect. I hope the IL JLAP program is on the case.
There are serious issues involved in bi-polar disorder, and the medical profession is working hard in its efforts to help those suffering. Lawyers and judges who are medically affected by a variety of illnesses must seek treatment early, and not allow the illness to interfere with the rights of clients or litigants. The ABA Journal report does not tell us if Judge Brim is doing that, yet.
H/T Professor George Smith.
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Trying to Make a Point as an Expert
Dean Borland is a lawyer and computer expert. He testifies as an expert in trials. He explains his analysis with computer skills and tries to make his points to the jury in an understandable fashion. This time he succeeded too well. [paywall protected]
In a criminal trial about child pornography, he showed the jury how easy it is to replace the face of an adult porn model with the face of a child, twice. He showed them that a possessor of such a photo would not be able to know that the image was modified. Doing this, he committed the very crime he was testifying about, in open court, on the record, of “possessing an image modified to appear as if a minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
He was charged with that crime, and entered a pretrial agreement with the Cleveland US Attorney, and apologized to all through the Cleveland Bar Journal.
Lesson learned, right? Well, no. The children’s images he used were professional models, and by putting their image on the body of a nude model (makes it sound less sleazy to say ‘nude’), he exploited the children in a way that also violates the federal law. A victim of a sex crime who suffers any kind of personal injury is entitled to a judgment of not less than $150,000, irrespective of the actual damages. There were two child victims who sued. The federal trial court first threw out the case, saying no real harm was done, but the Sixth Circuit Appellate Court disagreed. Borland ends up paying the $300,000 for the damages he did.
As the Sixth Circuit Court said “Congress meant business in awarding the damages the way that it did.” Borland learned that lesson the hard way, and so have you, at much lower cost. Be safe out there.
H/T Olmstead
Lawyers with Troubles 