http://www.npr.org/2013/12/05/248968150/beyond-good-cop-bad-cop-a-look-at-real-life-interrogations

This blog is a great discussion of the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights.  I think I want some of these rights too.

http://popehat.com/2015/04/29/cops-we-need-rights-more-than-you-citizen/

This blog is a big discussion of men’s problems with erectile dysfunction and impotence. The best solution to this problem, according to reviews, is cheap viagra, which can be bought on this website.

http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2015/05/04/how-justice-jackson-became-the-chief-prosecutor-at-nuremberg/

I’ve said it over and over again: Don’t Talk To The Police. But…

If you don’t talk to the police, and you are not white, is this what happens?

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/29/st_paul_cops_tase_and_arrest_black_man_for_waiting_to_pick_his_kids_up_from_preschool/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/27/sitting-while-black-in-minnesota-cops-tase-man-for-not-stating-his-name/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWH578nAasM

From what I can see, this gentleman refused to talk to the police, which was his right. And he walked away. As was his right. And he was tazed and arrested. Now, granted, the charges were dropped but is this what his right to be left alone by the police amounts to? Zilch?

Worse, did anyone read the op-ed in the Washington Post by Sunil Dutta. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/19/im-a-cop-if-you-dont-want-to-get-hurt-dont-challenge-me/

So if I stand on my rights he’s gonna taze me? Or shoot me? If I refuse to talk to him he’s going to beat me and charge me? Attitudes like this, coupled with the events that the black community is undergoing make me wonder about my advice. Don’t Talk To The Cops is good advice so long as cops like Dutta aren’t allowed to transform that into grounds for a beating and arrest. Dutta isn’t fit to “serve and protect.” But Dutta is a professor of homeland security at Colorado Tech U. I wonder what he is teaching. Sure as anything he’s not teaching his students to obey the law.

I’ve written several times about how to deal with the police. I’ve raised the issue and flogged it until I’m hoarse. But I want to thank Sunil Dutta who wrote the Opinion in Sunday’s Washington Post. He makes my points clear: “Don’t even think about challenging me. Just do what I tell you or I’m gonna hurt you” is his message. Crap! Total garbage. Wrong! Just do what I tell you? O yeah.

What about “open the door & let me in”? No. Got a search warrant? O, really, you wanna get hurt? Open the door! Are you defying me? No I just want my rights.

What about: You don’t mind if I look in your briefcase/purse/wallet/ do you? Yes I do. Get a search warrant and I’ll cooperate. Got one? Then goodbye.

Stop! You! O officer? Are you talking to me? Yeah. What are you doing? I’m walking. Where are you going? Officer I want to leave now. Am I under arrest? Are you defying me? Are you challenging me? Do you want me to hurt you.

Nuts. Officer Dutta is a wonderful example of what’s wrong with the police. Know your rights. Stand up for them. You don’t have to curse or scream but you don’t have to do what he tells you to do either. Just go on your way.

By the way, nothing can stop cops who will beat on you and then charge you with destruction of public property for bleeding on their car or uniform. But you sure don’t have to help them by being sheep.

I. The Corporate Veil issue

Normally, a corporation is an independent entity, separate and distinct from its owners. This has been recognized for (literally) centuries as the point of creating a corporation. [By the way, corporations are a fairly recent form of business, dating back only to the middle of the 17th Century and are solely and completely the creation of the State.] Normally, if the corporation fails and/or goes bankrupt its debtors cannot collect from the owners they are protected by the “corporate veil” over the business. That’s the whole point of the corporate form of doing business.

But, and there is a big BUT here, it is possible on some occasions to pierce the “corporate veil.” I won’t go into all the different ways it can be done, but the key principle is that the “corporation” is seen as just another arm of the owners, that the owners did not maintain a proper distinction between corporate interests (usually financial but not always) and their personal interests.

Now, after Hobby Lobby, there is a fissure in the corporate veil. Closely held corporations and others attempting to take advantage of Hobby Lobby would do well to consider whether they are leaving themselves open to having their corporate veil pierced and becoming personally liable for all the debts of the corporation.

I predict serious litigation over this issue because it has not been addressed yet.

II. The religious issue

I don’t want to diminish anybody’s personal faith. But one thing about the Hobby Lobby take on religion bothers me. If I understand the beliefs of the Hobby Lobby owners, they are saying that not only are they personally forbidden from taking any steps or actions that might sin or lead to sin, they are forbidden to take any steps, even remote ones like buying insurance, which could lead other people to sin. This applies even more explicitly in Wheaton College, where the Supreme Court just granted the college an injunction last Thursday. (Wheaton College has announced that it cannot sign the government form affirming its religious beliefs so that a 3rd party insurer can step forward. The gravamen of Wheaton’s objection is that signing the form enables others to take actions Wheaton believes are sinful and therefore is equivalent to Wheaton sinning.)

Ummm. I think I have a problem with this. You see, I believe that I am the sole caretaker of myself. I neither want to permit others to determine what “sin” is for me and do not accept others’ definition of “sin.” Thus, I do not permit Orthodox Jews to tell me when I can or cannot drive. They believe it is a sin for them to drive on the Sabbath but they cannot stop me. If they see me walking to my car carrying my car keys, obviously intent on driving on the Sabbath, and try to stop me (so that they do not enable my sin) by, say, taking away my car keys I am entitled to, and will, resist. The “butterfly effect” of sin ought not be extended and empowered by the law—it can never end.

Now, let’s extend the Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College logic to something beyond health care. I sincerely believe that unmarried men and unmarried women should never be alone together in the same room. It is a sin and could lead to mortal sin, i.e., touching and moral corruption (sex). So, in the corporation I own and control, I do not permit my employees of the opposite sex to take their breaks in the same lunch room or to use any joint facility. I even insist that they enter through different doors so there is no accidental touching. In furtherance of my religious beliefs, I create separate but equal facilities for both sexes and strictly enforce their separation.

Is this discrimination? If so, do I get an exemption from the law because of my heartfelt belief which I am implementing through my corporation? What gives me, the owner of the corporation, to control my employees to the extent that I dictate who they may not sit with, not eat with, not socialize with? Where are the employees’ rights? Why do my religious rights as employer trump my employees’ rights? Remember, this is a corporationbusiness, not my private home or a church.

By the way, although I am not a religious man, I understand that most religions believe that humans have free will and the right of an individual to make mistakes. How does that right square with the “butterfly effect” of my obligation not to enable you to sin?

I predict that there will be more litigation over this issue too.

Or maybe it is an anniversary. I’m not sure. Whatever it is though, it’s special to me. No, it is not my birthday as most think of it. It’s the day after my birthday when, after 3 years of talking, begging and pleading, my parents allowed me to start studying Judo and Karate. Will wonders never cease? In 1964 nice Jewish boys did not study fighting – at least not if you didn’t live in Israel. (I can’t speak for that experience.) But it was different for me. I needed to study judo and karate – needed it with a passion that can only be appreciated now, 50 years later. That’s right: 50 years I’ve been studying, training, reading, thinking about the martial arts, what they mean, how to do better at them.

Fifty years! That’s over nineteen thousand days. Over that time I’ve probably worked out, studied, strained and pushed myself on over 8,000 days. Maybe even 9,000 days. I don’t think it’s been 10,000 days yet. And my workouts averaged at least 2 hours. There were years when I would work out 6 days a week, 3-4 hours a day. I truly have no idea how much time I’ve spent in the dojo or watching tape or reading and studying the martial arts. But it must be 15,000 – 20,000 hours. Maybe more.

So on this date, at this time, I thought I should mention just a few of the people who inspired me, trained me and encouraged me:

• Sensei Yamagushi, my first sensei, in Mexico City, who taught me Judo and Shotokan karate;
• Tatsumo Makeda who taught me Ishen -ryu karate;
• Mr. Roberts, my GrandMaster, who taught me for almost 30 years, Mu Duk Kwon Tang Su Do and Myu Sim Ryu weapons;
• the 3 hermanos Goldfarb in Mexico City who taught me never to back down,
• Trooper and
• Sherman.

There are also you others (you know who you are), whose names are left unsaid but not forgotten who also taught by example and inspiration.

It’s funny how when you are 16 you don’t realize what you are getting yourself into. Funny how, when you are 66, you look back at the journey and marvel, not at what you’ve done but at how much more there is to do. And then I wonder whether there will be time to do it. I hope so.

No lawyer is. We can help. We can sometimes solve problems. But none of us can do the impossible.

1. I can’t make the case go faster just because you want me to.

2. You rented your investment condo/house to a deadbeat. I can’t collect money from a turnip.

3. The Defendant will take the full amount of time you allowed him to come up with the settlement money. Your current need has nothing to do with what you promised her/him in writing and no matter how many times you call or email me nothing will change.

4. I cannot control what others do. That includes your ex-partner. This means that if you don’t have a written agreement, I cannot force them to

a. Sell you their share of the company for the price you want;
b. Let you control the company; or
c. pay you the salary you think you should get.

To try and solve these problems we have to go to court and you have to pay me to do that.

5. It is not my fault that you wouldn’t listen to me during the deposition when I told you on the break that you were talking too much. If you pretty much screwed up your case on your own please do not blame me.

6. It is not my fault that your first lawyer didn’t get you everything you wanted.

7. It is not my fault that some other lawyer told you wrong and you don’t like that what I am telling you is the law.

8. It is not my fault that they “do it differently” from .

9. It’s not my fault that you lied to your attorney, and your lies came out during a witness’s deposition, and at the 11th hour before trial/arbitration, and so you got nothing, and probably lost some things in the process, and could have saved yourself the expense of having to pay your attorney if you’d only told the truth from the get go.

10. It’s not my fault that you failed to file a tax return for 10 years and finally got caught. I’m just trying to fix the problem and if it takes longer than you wish or costs too much please remember who got you into this fix.

A man decides to cross North America in a hot air balloon. However, not planning real well and going way too high, he soon becomes lost.  He lets some hot air out of the balloon, which slowly descended below the clouds, but he still cannot tell where he is. Far below, he sees a woman on the ground. The man lowered the balloon, to ask the woman his location.

Hot Air Balloon (Photo credit: Eric Lim Photography)

When he was low enough, the man called down to the woman, “Hey, can you tell me where I am?”

The woman on the ground yelled back, “You are in a balloon, about 100 feet up in the air.”

The man called down to the woman, “You must be a lawyer.”

She answered “Yes, but how can you tell?”

The man answered, “Because the advice you gave me is 100% accurate, and totally useless.”

“Well,” the woman replied, “you do not know where you are, or where you are going. You got into your predicament through a lack of planning, and could have avoided it by asking for help before you acted. You expect me to provide an instant remedy. And the fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.”

Today’s game is called:  rush the witness.  Fact:  the other side wants to take your client’s deposition before turning over the documents it is obligated to turn over in normal discovery.  What can you, the lawyer do?  After all, the other side is entitled to take your client’s deposition and can do that whenever it wishes to schedule it.  Even before turning over documents responsive to your discovery requests.  There are 2 possible answers:

1. Rush to court for a protective order arguing that your client cannot properly respond to deposition questions without first seeing and reviewing the documents and asking the court to postpone the deposition until after the documents have been turned over to you.
2. Prepping the witness to clearly state that s/he is only guessing and that her/his memory is not certain.  Then say that there are documents which might refresh her/his memory and that the answers might change after reviewing the documents.  If you do this, the other side must either postpone the deposition until after you have received and reviewed the documents or turn the documents over right then for you and your client to review.  (And any answers after the quick review might still change upon further consideration.)

Now, at trial, the other side has a major problem if trial testimony is significantly different from deposition testimony. Why?  Because, when asked why the testimony is different the answer is “You, Mr. Lawyer, did not give me the documents to review (or time to review the documents properly).  Now I have properly reviewed them so I don’t have to guess or make approximations and can testify exactly to what happened.”  Oops!  The jury will love you, the client, and think the lawyer was trying to pull a fast one on you and on them.  Juries hate that.  Heh Heh heh