The Nevada Supreme Court reversed Judge Joe Hardy’s ruling regarding marijuana’s inclusion on the schedule 1 drug list. [RJ; Fox5Vegas]
City makes first payments on massive Badlands legal tab, now approaching $236M. [KTNV]
U.S. Attorney General visits Southern Nevada law enforcement officials. [RJ]
A battle over solar farms and water on Nye-Clark County line. [RJ]
Rural sheriff probes potential hate crime after Black man says he was racially harassed. [TNI]
Backyard breeding laws lack teeth, say Clark County commissioners. [Nevada Current]
Driver identified in Jeep, Tesla crash on Mt. Charleston facing multiple charges. [News3LV]
As some of you are passionately aware in recent comments, the Nevada Supreme Court is seeking public comment regarding administration of the Nevada bar exam. [NV courts]
The Jeep/Tesla story is not a story. It is a non-injury traffic accident with civil traffic infractions and a misdemeanor traffic citation for leaving the scene of an accident where the Tesla appeared to intentionally ram the Jeep and then flee. It is a nothing story of which a reporter just cannot let go.
IDK, man. A $100k – 470hp Jeep Wrangler 392 speeding too fast around a corner and leaving the scene in a hit and run. I still think that its newsworthy and it did go viral, which makes it moreso.
The Tesla repeatedly rammed the Jeep and then drove away. No offense but traffic offenses occur every day. There are not “multiple charges”. 2 civil traffic tickets and a charge of leaving the scene that will be dropped. Channel 3 created a story for Channel 3. And it went viral because the Tesla guy claimed that the car drove itself and has now recanted that.
I just checked out the driver of the Wrangler, Asya Hovhannisyan, on Attorney Corner. Asya Hovhannisyan was represented by Legal Aid of Southern Nevada in her Divorce in case D-20-616157-D. It was a Default. Asya Hovhannisyan received said Jeep as her sole and separate property. Riddle me this, how does someone with a $100k vehicle qualify for Legal Aid? This is why our firm does NOT accept Pro Bono cases from Legal Aid anymore. Too many grifters in the community and Legal Aid does a poor job of vetting prospective clients.
2018 Jeep Wrangler has a KBB of around $20,000. Decree states that they had a $10,000 loan. Not sure where all of these estimates of a $100,000 vehicle are coming from.
From me. Clearly she could not have been driving her 2018 in this accident.
I have watched the video (several times) and she was driving a 2024 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 (Hemi, 470bhp). Base price is $93,440. You can do the math from there.
I disagree, LACSN does a great job of vetting cases. No system is perfect and there may be grifters. If there is something wrong with the case let LACSN know and they will fix it. Why let a few bad apples stop you from giving back to the community. There are also a number of well deserving people you could help with just a few hours of your brilliant attorney mind.
“Why let a few bad apples stop you from giving back to the community.”
Exactly. LASCN isn’t perfect. Doesn’t matter.
One of my biggest gripes in life are people who point out how those doing charity work could do it better. We all have work, let no one shirk, put your shoulder to the wheel!
Tesla driver originally said it was an auto malfunction but now admits that he might have been continually pushing the accelerator pedal
Guest
Anonymous
August 7, 2024 9:42 am
It’s been more than a month since the last published appellate opinion. What cool issues do you have up for determination that are gathering dust and for how long?
Yes. the term published is key. See NRAP 36. https://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/NRAP.html. Published opinions are binding authority, and unpublished opinions are not. So it is useful, or at least interesting, to understand what cool issues that should be resolved to create precedent are languishing and for how long. Especially since the Court was putting out a decent volume of published opinions until July hit, when Carson City apparently joined the EU.
Don’t want to name names of those poor souls victimized by bar counsel but it’s well know the NSC sits on reinstatements, discipline, etc. adding months out of what? Spite?
This is not new. The Nevada Supreme Court routinely takes July off from oral arguments and published opinions. It’s a good way of catching up on work and scheduling vacations. And it’s not unlike the US Supreme Court, which takes off 3 months every summer.
They’ve cleared my personal backlog through unpublished orders the last two months, except for one case that was argued pretty recently so probably won’t be decided for a couple months at least.
They handed down several unpublished ones this week some huge – one $200,000,000
Guest
Anonymous
August 7, 2024 11:49 am
Looking at Robert Telles’ witness list. It’s just some cops, former employees of the Public Administrators office and his private investigator. Telles has previously said he was framed. If that’s really what Draskovich is going to argue, wouldn’t they need more/different witnesses? I’m trying to understand what the strategy is here.
Also, trial is set to begin Monday, but the RJ won’t deliver docs from German’s devices until Monday? Is that for real? Is that normal in criminal proceedings. In a civil matter, if I tried to pull that, the judge would bench slap me, exclude the evidence and may make an adverse inference.
You could never understand as his legal theories are more complex than the unification of string theory. You must wait for his genius like the rest of us.
He could, but after he gets a Badlands like judgment against the DA for malicious prosecution, he won’t need to spend another day of his life working if he doesn’t want to.
You fool, do you simply not understand the genius being employed by Robert Telles? Such legal genius has never before been seen. If you actually think this will end in a guilty verdict, you haven’t been paying attention. Robert Telles is going to bankrupt Clark County with his judgment against the DA.
I understand your argument. Thats not how it works. If Telles were to be convicted, he would be disbarred. Under SCR 111(10), if he wins on appeal, he would be automatically reinstated pending further discipline proceedings. The retest requirement under SCR 116 would not come into play.
I know Rob, although I haven’t spoken with him since he was arrested, obviously. Still, I feel confident speculating on this. There are two things going on in Rob’s mind. (1) Rob is supremely confident that he can beat this through some combination of pointing out procedural errors and/or that he was framed; (2) in his mind, he has completely walled off any memory or acknowledgment of what he (allegedly) did. I know that sounds really weird. But, just like George Costanza was a marine biologist, Rob really believes he is innocent. Rob isn’t going to take any deals, no matter what the terms are. I predict a mental breakdown in court when the jury convicts.
Anybody see the reprimand of Susana Santana in the Bar Counsel Report? I am so confused. From the short recitation of facts, it seems like she did what any neighbor would do. But she ended with with a conviction for theft (even though she returned the supplements). Does anyone have any insights on this story. It seems crazy that she was convicted and got a reprimand, but I don’t know her and I assume there is more to the story than the reprimand provides.
It was commented on in this blog a couple of days ago.
Short answer: neighbors did not get along, Santana could have been nicer. Should never have been prosecuted by Henderson City attorney. When Muni complaint filed, should have been fine with stip and stay. Over zealous prosecution. Makes one wonder if there was not personal animus in the prosecution.
It was more than that, she took the box, stole the supplements, threw the box away, thing blew up, tried to return the stuff, neighbor wouldn’t accept it, then sent it back to the company. So basically, she was being an ass, it blew up, she tried to fix it, but it was too late.
Not exactly. As I understand it, there were two boxes, the shipping box and the product box inside the shipping box. Santana opened the shipping box. The neighbor would not accept the unopened inner product box. The product was then shipped back to the sender. And yes, I got the sense that Santana was bitchy about it.
That’s not true. If you read the trial transcript in the appeal her husband and her landlord testified that she had opened the product box too and was wiping down the bottles as part of her covid routine or something. She tried to put them back in the product box and re-deliver them to the neighbor after they were found out. But at that point the neighbor didn’t want them and couldn’t verify the bottles hadn’t been opened. The real question is when she saw the box was not addressed to her why open the product box too? Why throw away the delivery box after denying receiving it? They tried to steal some meaningless MLM nutrition bullshit and thought they wouldn’t be held accountable because it was delivered to their house. Then when they got found out they desperately tried to cover it up and get out of it, but it was too late. The disciplinary letter is vague, but the trial testimony is clear. Her excuses that sometimes her sister (also an attorney) has stuff delivered to her house is weak… given the box wasn’t addressed to her sister and didn’t have her address on it and her sister never told her to keep an eye out for the package… but whatever.
Yeah, shes an attorney and her husband is a med student. The whole thing screams “we can get away with this…” Still think the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, but They aren’t very innocent in all this.
Just the amount of effort to force everyone to bend to their version of events, all the way through to a writ and petition for review, all denied – there is something fundamentally wrong with the mentality of these people.
Guest
Anonymous
August 7, 2024 2:37 pm
Yesterday’s discussion on the Bar Exam touched on three main points: changing the bar exam, updating legal education, and the poor quality of teaching at Boyd.
Let’s talk about Boyd: Boyd isn’t really set up for actual practical learning but for ranking students. It’s basically an expensive sorting system funded by student tuition, but it’s about as reliable as a divining rod. There were guys at the bottom of my class who are killing it both as practicing lawyers and on the business side of things. And there were guys at the top of my class who it turns out aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. (I ranked high there, so this isn’t a personal gripe.)
The problem starts with the quality of the classes. There’s a split between adjunct profs who teach practical courses like trial advocacy and pre-trial lit, and full-time, tenure-track profs, who teach all the first-year classes, legal writing, and clinical practice. The full-time profs, who rank students and control the curriculum, have only a few years of practice experience, and not usually in the subjects they teach. Many of these profs didn’t want to or couldn’t continue practicing law but managed to get published in student-run law reviews usually through personal connections and later by having “Professor” next to their names. But it doesn’t matter—their classes aren’t better than a Barbri video. Memorize the law and apply the facts – but not until the end of the semester and only for 3 hours.
Then there are the clinical profs at Boyd who didn’t practice law in their supposed areas of expertise before teaching in the clinic. They pass student cases off to local lawyers because they can’t handle the work themselves or they rely on newly licensed attorneys who do the work. These same profs spend only a quarter of their time actually practicing law while claiming they’re training the next generation of lawyers.
Despite high praise for Boyd’s legal writing classes (of course Boyd is one of the few schools offering them), the classes are pretty weak. The profs try to make legal writing classes like doctrinal ones, assigning just one big paper at the end of the semester with no real feedback.
No wonder students aren’t prepared for real-world practice. But, yeah, the Bar exam probably needs to be updated too.
Those who can’t do . . . . teach. I remember an adage given to us by one of our more based and less “academic” professors (in the early 90s, well before Boyd existed).
The law student hierarchy:
The “A” students teach;
The “B” Students become judges; and
The “C” students make all the money.
Certainly this isn’t true in practice today., But, when I came out, I think it was mostly on point.
“In 1985, the average public school tuition was $2,006 (1985 dollars) for residents, which would have cost a student $5,934 in 2023. Instead, average tuition was $30,554 (2023 dollars) for residents. In other words, public school was 5.15 times as expensive in 2023 as it was in 1985 after adjusting for inflation.” Law School in the 90s before the internet must have been a blast. Now law school is just a a high price scam.
What is the curve at Boyd nowadays? It was a B-minus (2.7) when I went there, which seemed pretty low even back then; especially coming off of undergrad and high school & looking at other public schools in the Western U.S. A decent number of 1Ls (myself included) quickly realized that a 3.5-4.0 GPA’s was never a realistic expectation in law school. Getting the occasional A or A-minus was the true goal/victory.
That’s well written. And accurate insofaras this is correct “ Notably, most of these proposals reinforce law schools’ role in the process (as supervisor of clinical programs, for example) while failing to address how any standard at all will actually exist as to the quality of the ‘diverse’ experiences purportedly standing in for the bar exam or who will enforce it.” I don’t have the answers to what the bar exam should be in the 21st century. I do know that law schools only look after their own interests, and under the proposals in Nevada, Boyd would gain significantly without any accountability or evidence that the reforms are helpful.
The Jeep/Tesla story is not a story. It is a non-injury traffic accident with civil traffic infractions and a misdemeanor traffic citation for leaving the scene of an accident where the Tesla appeared to intentionally ram the Jeep and then flee. It is a nothing story of which a reporter just cannot let go.
IDK, man. A $100k – 470hp Jeep Wrangler 392 speeding too fast around a corner and leaving the scene in a hit and run. I still think that its newsworthy and it did go viral, which makes it moreso.
The Tesla repeatedly rammed the Jeep and then drove away. No offense but traffic offenses occur every day. There are not “multiple charges”. 2 civil traffic tickets and a charge of leaving the scene that will be dropped. Channel 3 created a story for Channel 3. And it went viral because the Tesla guy claimed that the car drove itself and has now recanted that.
His and the wife’s demeanor on the video was suss. But I still think it’s of interest. Perhaps its just because I own both a Jeep and a Tesla.
Don’t confuse “viral” with “newsworthy”.
I just checked out the driver of the Wrangler, Asya Hovhannisyan, on Attorney Corner. Asya Hovhannisyan was represented by Legal Aid of Southern Nevada in her Divorce in case D-20-616157-D. It was a Default. Asya Hovhannisyan received said Jeep as her sole and separate property. Riddle me this, how does someone with a $100k vehicle qualify for Legal Aid? This is why our firm does NOT accept Pro Bono cases from Legal Aid anymore. Too many grifters in the community and Legal Aid does a poor job of vetting prospective clients.
Best comment of the century!!! I wish I had time to tell our stories.
Wish we could share a beer.
Me too!
2018 Jeep Wrangler has a KBB of around $20,000. Decree states that they had a $10,000 loan. Not sure where all of these estimates of a $100,000 vehicle are coming from.
From me. Clearly she could not have been driving her 2018 in this accident.
I have watched the video (several times) and she was driving a 2024 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 (Hemi, 470bhp). Base price is $93,440. You can do the math from there.
That was not the vehicle in her Decree of Divorce.
Clearly.
Tell me you’re not really into Jeeps without ah never mind…..
I disagree, LACSN does a great job of vetting cases. No system is perfect and there may be grifters. If there is something wrong with the case let LACSN know and they will fix it. Why let a few bad apples stop you from giving back to the community. There are also a number of well deserving people you could help with just a few hours of your brilliant attorney mind.
“Why let a few bad apples stop you from giving back to the community.”
Exactly. LASCN isn’t perfect. Doesn’t matter.
One of my biggest gripes in life are people who point out how those doing charity work could do it better. We all have work, let no one shirk, put your shoulder to the wheel!
Why did the Tesla smash back into the Jeep after first collision?
Tesla driver originally said it was an auto malfunction but now admits that he might have been continually pushing the accelerator pedal
It’s been more than a month since the last published appellate opinion. What cool issues do you have up for determination that are gathering dust and for how long?
The key term there is a published. We have gotten decisions in the past month
Yes. the term published is key. See NRAP 36. https://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/NRAP.html. Published opinions are binding authority, and unpublished opinions are not. So it is useful, or at least interesting, to understand what cool issues that should be resolved to create precedent are languishing and for how long. Especially since the Court was putting out a decent volume of published opinions until July hit, when Carson City apparently joined the EU.
Don’t want to name names of those poor souls victimized by bar counsel but it’s well know the NSC sits on reinstatements, discipline, etc. adding months out of what? Spite?
Absolutely true. A temporary suspension order will issue and it may be 2 years before you get a hearing.
This is not new. The Nevada Supreme Court routinely takes July off from oral arguments and published opinions. It’s a good way of catching up on work and scheduling vacations. And it’s not unlike the US Supreme Court, which takes off 3 months every summer.
They’ve cleared my personal backlog through unpublished orders the last two months, except for one case that was argued pretty recently so probably won’t be decided for a couple months at least.
They handed down several unpublished ones this week some huge – one $200,000,000
Looking at Robert Telles’ witness list. It’s just some cops, former employees of the Public Administrators office and his private investigator. Telles has previously said he was framed. If that’s really what Draskovich is going to argue, wouldn’t they need more/different witnesses? I’m trying to understand what the strategy is here.
Also, trial is set to begin Monday, but the RJ won’t deliver docs from German’s devices until Monday? Is that for real? Is that normal in criminal proceedings. In a civil matter, if I tried to pull that, the judge would bench slap me, exclude the evidence and may make an adverse inference.
You could never understand as his legal theories are more complex than the unification of string theory. You must wait for his genius like the rest of us.
If it is anything better than pocket sand I will be very, very surprised.
He will be teaching legal seminars across the United States after the masterful performance he puts forth
He will be the Jordan Belfort of self improvement for lawyers.
He could, but after he gets a Badlands like judgment against the DA for malicious prosecution, he won’t need to spend another day of his life working if he doesn’t want to.
I am pretty sure he will not spend another day in his life working a job that pays more than $0.26 an hour.
You fool, do you simply not understand the genius being employed by Robert Telles? Such legal genius has never before been seen. If you actually think this will end in a guilty verdict, you haven’t been paying attention. Robert Telles is going to bankrupt Clark County with his judgment against the DA.
Stay woke everyone!
@12:45
Tenured professor at Boyd. Will fit the profile for the NextGen training classes.
Which will be awesome for him because after he beats this on appeal, he will have been suspended for over 5 years, requiring a retest.
I understand your argument. Thats not how it works. If Telles were to be convicted, he would be disbarred. Under SCR 111(10), if he wins on appeal, he would be automatically reinstated pending further discipline proceedings. The retest requirement under SCR 116 would not come into play.
Gotta’ imagine whatever DA is offering him as a plea deal would be better than the smackdown he’s going to get after the trial circus and conviction.
I know Rob, although I haven’t spoken with him since he was arrested, obviously. Still, I feel confident speculating on this. There are two things going on in Rob’s mind. (1) Rob is supremely confident that he can beat this through some combination of pointing out procedural errors and/or that he was framed; (2) in his mind, he has completely walled off any memory or acknowledgment of what he (allegedly) did. I know that sounds really weird. But, just like George Costanza was a marine biologist, Rob really believes he is innocent. Rob isn’t going to take any deals, no matter what the terms are. I predict a mental breakdown in court when the jury convicts.
I heard that the DAs are trying to offer him a simple “disturbing the peace” plea deal because they’re so afraid of embarrassment at trial.
Rumor has it they’re so desperate that Wolfson personally is offering him his position as DA
“It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
-G. Costanza
Draskovich has a fool proof plan: surprise witnesses, each more surprising than the last. I tell you, the judge won’t know what hit him!
Her. But Draskovich is just the mouthpiece. The real genius belongs to Telles and we all know it. Break out the Popcorn.
Love the Lionel Hutz Simpson’s reference…Excellent.
Except the judge is a her.
It’s a quote from the Simpsons
Anybody see the reprimand of Susana Santana in the Bar Counsel Report? I am so confused. From the short recitation of facts, it seems like she did what any neighbor would do. But she ended with with a conviction for theft (even though she returned the supplements). Does anyone have any insights on this story. It seems crazy that she was convicted and got a reprimand, but I don’t know her and I assume there is more to the story than the reprimand provides.
Link?
It was commented on in this blog a couple of days ago.
Short answer: neighbors did not get along, Santana could have been nicer. Should never have been prosecuted by Henderson City attorney. When Muni complaint filed, should have been fine with stip and stay. Over zealous prosecution. Makes one wonder if there was not personal animus in the prosecution.
I wasn’t there but I heard she refused some diversion deal and forced it to trial
She apparently moved a package that belonged to her neighbor and instead of taking some nothing plea she took it to trial and lost.
It was more than that, she took the box, stole the supplements, threw the box away, thing blew up, tried to return the stuff, neighbor wouldn’t accept it, then sent it back to the company. So basically, she was being an ass, it blew up, she tried to fix it, but it was too late.
Not exactly. As I understand it, there were two boxes, the shipping box and the product box inside the shipping box. Santana opened the shipping box. The neighbor would not accept the unopened inner product box. The product was then shipped back to the sender. And yes, I got the sense that Santana was bitchy about it.
That’s not true. If you read the trial transcript in the appeal her husband and her landlord testified that she had opened the product box too and was wiping down the bottles as part of her covid routine or something. She tried to put them back in the product box and re-deliver them to the neighbor after they were found out. But at that point the neighbor didn’t want them and couldn’t verify the bottles hadn’t been opened. The real question is when she saw the box was not addressed to her why open the product box too? Why throw away the delivery box after denying receiving it? They tried to steal some meaningless MLM nutrition bullshit and thought they wouldn’t be held accountable because it was delivered to their house. Then when they got found out they desperately tried to cover it up and get out of it, but it was too late. The disciplinary letter is vague, but the trial testimony is clear. Her excuses that sometimes her sister (also an attorney) has stuff delivered to her house is weak… given the box wasn’t addressed to her sister and didn’t have her address on it and her sister never told her to keep an eye out for the package… but whatever.
Yeah, shes an attorney and her husband is a med student. The whole thing screams “we can get away with this…” Still think the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, but They aren’t very innocent in all this.
Just the amount of effort to force everyone to bend to their version of events, all the way through to a writ and petition for review, all denied – there is something fundamentally wrong with the mentality of these people.
Yesterday’s discussion on the Bar Exam touched on three main points: changing the bar exam, updating legal education, and the poor quality of teaching at Boyd.
Let’s talk about Boyd: Boyd isn’t really set up for actual practical learning but for ranking students. It’s basically an expensive sorting system funded by student tuition, but it’s about as reliable as a divining rod. There were guys at the bottom of my class who are killing it both as practicing lawyers and on the business side of things. And there were guys at the top of my class who it turns out aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. (I ranked high there, so this isn’t a personal gripe.)
The problem starts with the quality of the classes. There’s a split between adjunct profs who teach practical courses like trial advocacy and pre-trial lit, and full-time, tenure-track profs, who teach all the first-year classes, legal writing, and clinical practice. The full-time profs, who rank students and control the curriculum, have only a few years of practice experience, and not usually in the subjects they teach. Many of these profs didn’t want to or couldn’t continue practicing law but managed to get published in student-run law reviews usually through personal connections and later by having “Professor” next to their names. But it doesn’t matter—their classes aren’t better than a Barbri video. Memorize the law and apply the facts – but not until the end of the semester and only for 3 hours.
Then there are the clinical profs at Boyd who didn’t practice law in their supposed areas of expertise before teaching in the clinic. They pass student cases off to local lawyers because they can’t handle the work themselves or they rely on newly licensed attorneys who do the work. These same profs spend only a quarter of their time actually practicing law while claiming they’re training the next generation of lawyers.
Despite high praise for Boyd’s legal writing classes (of course Boyd is one of the few schools offering them), the classes are pretty weak. The profs try to make legal writing classes like doctrinal ones, assigning just one big paper at the end of the semester with no real feedback.
No wonder students aren’t prepared for real-world practice. But, yeah, the Bar exam probably needs to be updated too.
Those who can’t do . . . . teach. I remember an adage given to us by one of our more based and less “academic” professors (in the early 90s, well before Boyd existed).
The law student hierarchy:
The “A” students teach;
The “B” Students become judges; and
The “C” students make all the money.
Certainly this isn’t true in practice today., But, when I came out, I think it was mostly on point.
“In 1985, the average public school tuition was $2,006 (1985 dollars) for residents, which would have cost a student $5,934 in 2023. Instead, average tuition was $30,554 (2023 dollars) for residents. In other words, public school was 5.15 times as expensive in 2023 as it was in 1985 after adjusting for inflation.” Law School in the 90s before the internet must have been a blast. Now law school is just a a high price scam.
https://www.lawhub.org/trends/tuition
What is the curve at Boyd nowadays? It was a B-minus (2.7) when I went there, which seemed pretty low even back then; especially coming off of undergrad and high school & looking at other public schools in the Western U.S. A decent number of 1Ls (myself included) quickly realized that a 3.5-4.0 GPA’s was never a realistic expectation in law school. Getting the occasional A or A-minus was the true goal/victory.
I’ve got no ties to Boyd, but I’m constantly impressed with how much Boyd grads like to complain about new Boyd grads.
Might be the worst alumni network in the country.
Not to say I disagree with anything negative that’s been said. You don’t have to convince me your school is bad.
I still think our legal community has a lot of good young attorneys. I’m sorry if other people haven’t had a chance to see that.
Boyd grads are great despite the poor teaching quality.
https://www.michbar.org/journal/Details/Wither-law-school-and-the-bar-exam?ArticleID=4912
That’s well written. And accurate insofaras this is correct “ Notably, most of these proposals reinforce law schools’ role in the process (as supervisor of clinical programs, for example) while failing to address how any standard at all will actually exist as to the quality of the ‘diverse’ experiences purportedly standing in for the bar exam or who will enforce it.” I don’t have the answers to what the bar exam should be in the 21st century. I do know that law schools only look after their own interests, and under the proposals in Nevada, Boyd would gain significantly without any accountability or evidence that the reforms are helpful.
There’s a lot of talk on Twitter about making law an undergraduate degree.