Incorporated By Reference

  • Law
  • CCSD approves $250K buyout of Superintendent Jara’s contract. [TNI]
  • Sec. of State Cisco Aguilar apologizes for voter record glitch. [TNI]
  • “The end of the evil real estate empire”: lawsuit targets artificially inflated fees. [RJ]
  • Ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov arrested again in Las Vegas. [RJ]
  • Judge Erika Ballou faces a new ethics charge for saying a Black man had good reason to run from police. [8NewsNow]
  • Not Vegas, but a big law partner gets scolded by court for using “incorporated by reference” in a way that arguably exceeded word count limits. [ABA Journal]
administrator
27 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 10:57 am

I’ve had cases where Judge Ballou ruled in my favor but couldn’t keep her mount shut and created an appeal issue by oversharing.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 1:06 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Freudian slip?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 11:18 am

I certainly have my issues with Judge Ballou. But she is not wrong on the issue. The question of the reasonableness of a person’s fear of police and police overaggression is a question in many cases. I may not have the same level of fear but that does not mean that a reasonable person would not.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 11:21 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Apparently “impartiality” means that one must be pro-LVMPD.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 11:55 am
Reply to  Anonymous

I’m all for being able to file valid complaints against judges, but these are so specifically targeted and vendetta-based that it doesn’t even give the appearance of being a valid complaint.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 11:55 am
Reply to  Anonymous

I’m all for being able to file valid complaints against judges, but these are so specifically targeted and vendetta-based that it doesn’t even give the appearance of being a valid complaint.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 1:42 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Just one lawyer’s opinion here, but Ballou is dead wrong. The color of a defendant’s skin alone does not create a blanket excuse to flee from law enforcement. That precedent is not only ridiculous, but dangerous.

Anon Please
Guest
Anon Please
February 23, 2024 1:54 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

You must not be a black male.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 2:02 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

The precedent needs to be that fleeing from law enforcement does not create reasonable suspicion that crime is afoot, Illinois v. Wardlow be damned. Anyone who can do it, should do it, regardless of skin color. There is no such thing as unprovoked flight when people with the means to kill you show up. Don’t want to be subject to unlawful detainment? Flee. Want to avoid illegal search and seizure? Flee. Want to be safe from a cop being struck by a falling acorn? Flee.

Last edited 7 months ago by Anonymous
Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 4:33 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

This is the absolutely dumb. The role of police, and the obligation of persons, is to obey lawful orders. Even a first grader understands the need for rules.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 4:46 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

And when the orders and use of force exceed legal boundaries, then what?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 8:23 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I agree. The role of police is to obey lawful orders. Once they start obeying their orders (“Don’t violate the law while upholding the law”) I’ll be more inclined to stick around to hear their lawful orders. Until then, I choose to have no consensual encounters.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 26, 2024 11:08 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Show me a single instance where a perp was killed while completely complying with a lawful order from law enforcement officers.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 26, 2024 1:42 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Philando Castile. Johnny Hollman. Aderrien Murry (fortunately not dead, but only because 11 year olds are resilient). Santos Rodriguez, 12, was not so lucky. You want more?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 1:49 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Yeah…she’s not wrong. This is some BS witch hunt. There are a lot of people in our community who do not look like me who are justified in their fear of the police.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 1:59 pm

I know many of the blog readers are not privy to what goes on in Family Court and a lot of things are being said and done behind closed doors, but it is so funny what’s going on right now. The Falconi writs have freaked out the family law bench and bar. They are scrambling to figure out how they’re going to deal with it. When I was a bright eyed undergrad I used to say if you’re ashamed of what you do, stop doing it. If the denizens of family court are so scared of the media publicizing what they are doing, makes one wonder what they’ve been up to? What are they so worried about? What are they hiding?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 2:19 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I understand the sunshine thing. But I also understand the position that spreading the most intimate details of a child’s life for public view can be incredibly harmful to all involved.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 3:34 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

This is the argument used by abusers. Orders granting media requests can be tailored. Go online and look at what ONJ has already posted. Judge Gibson even allowed them to film a CPS hearing. The names/faces were blurred and the camera was focused on the court activities, the judge, and the attorneys – not the personal, identifying details of the families involved. It is more harmful for abusers, corrupt judges, and out of control attorneys to be able to operate in secret. Too many people do not know how dysfunctional and dangerous this family court is for children until it’s too late and they’re already stuck in the system. And it’s not a system you can just walk away from. They will take your children away from you. And it is not a system that’s one and done like criminal (get your sentence, do your time, be done.) Your abuser/ex can take you back to court over and over and over again.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 3:18 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Yawn. Who exactly is “freaking out”? Family practitioner here. As far as I can tell, no one cares.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 3:35 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

@3:18 you must not have any friends then. I too practice family law and my phone and email have been blowing up.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 4:50 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Holy buckets. That judge better be certain that he is right. Chesnoff better be certain that Judge Wright is wrong.

“It has come to this Court’s attention that counsel for defendant has sought an emergency hearing in the District of Nevada to arrange the release of Defendant Smirnov, likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States,” Wright wrote.

Wright has scheduled a detention hearing for Smirnov in his Los Angeles courtroom for Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Smirnov’s attorneys have appealed his current detention to a higher court, saying that their client has a right to have a hearing in Nevada before being transferred to California, and that Wright overstepped his authority by signing a new arrest warrant without a hearing.

“This is a case of national importance. As a result, the public should have confidence that it will be conducted consistent with the rule of law,” Smirnov’s attorneys wrote. “In this case, the Court has prejudged the detention issue.”

Smirnov’s attorneys declined to comment on Wright’s order.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 26, 2024 11:13 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Its a lot of hullaballoo. Lying to a federal agent carries with it a 5 year max. Every single case that I have seen, for this nonsense white collar crime, results in a year and a day sentence or less, often much less. For reference, Martha Stewart was convicted of this.

Seems overly abusive and more abuse by the DOJ for political purposes.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 23, 2024 9:36 pm

Say it with me: making your brief longer makes it weaker. The fact that lawyers regularly try to either cheat the word limit or just barely make it under always amazes me. Unless your client is going to die if you lose, cut out weak arguments, streamline your reasoning and try to come down at half the word limit or less. Then the judge might be willing to actually read what you wrote instead of skimming it.

(Capital habeas lawyers could probably stand to lose some words too, but I don’t deal with such high-stakes matters so I’m not going to tell them how to do their job.)

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 25, 2024 8:59 am
Reply to  Anonymous

The only time i ever have had real difficulty on the issue is discovery motions where one is required to have word for word the discovery questions copied and pasted in.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 25, 2024 5:01 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Your conclusion is well-reasoned, intuitively obvious, and false. (At least for appellate briefs.) For evidence, check out Morrison and Darby’s law review article “Testing — and mostly rejecting — the folk wisdom of the effective appellate brief.”

Dosing your brief with a dump-truck of weak issues and doing an end run around the word limits by deleting surplusage like articles (e.g., “Next hearing, defendant told court he wanted new attorney”) at the expense of making the brief a chore to read, nevertheless gets results.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
February 25, 2024 4:56 pm

Anyone use this site? http://www.therobingroom.com/