Author: Jack Marshall

Stupid Lawyer Tricks…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This really happened, based on the reliability of the lawyer who reported it to me.

In one of those petty organizational battles over control of a book club or something of similar weight, one faction tried to kick a member of the other faction off the organization’s board without any authority to do so. The other faction quickly insisted that the member be put back on the board, and is trying to oust the offending faction from the group entirely. The fight has erupted on social media, mostly on the club’s Facebook page, in angry and ugly posts.

The ejected faction has hired a lawyer who sent a Cease and Desist and Demand letter to the rest of the membership, threatening a defamation suit. The Demand Letter ended with the following:

THIS LETTER IS A CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL COMMUNICATION AND IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION. ANY PUBLICATION, DISSEMINATION OR BROADCAST OF THIS LETTER OR ANY PORTION OF IT THEREOF, WILL CONSTITUTE, INTER ALIA, A VIOLATION OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT. YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO PUBLISH THE LETTER IN WHOLE OR IN PART.

Well..

1. The letter is obviously not confidential client communication as it has been communicated to non-clients.

2. Sure it’s technically copyrighted like anything you write is, but fair use of such a letter makes the implied threat deceitful. The recipients don’t need authorization to re-publish the letter, and neither do I.

3. Where do lawyers like this get their law degrees from, Bazooka gum comics? “Draw Skippy” ads?

4. My immediate suspicion upon receiving a demand letter like this would be that someone is engaging in the unauthorized practice law or using a dumb AI bot.

Port script: I’m trying to find a standard graphic for this topic. I’m considering using Michael Cohen, Trump’s perjurous, disbarred former fixer. You know, this guy…

What do you think?

A Trump Derangement Test: Show This Story To Your Friends and Relatives and Note Which Ones Believe The President’s Secret “Daughter”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Necla Ozmen, 55, who lives in Ankara, Turkey, has filed a paternity lawsuit claiming the President is her biological father and is demanding a DNA test to prove it. Her filing was immediately dismissed by the Turkish court, and she’s appealing.

Necla says she was born in 1970 and is officially registered as the daughter of Sati and Dursun Ozmen, the couple who raised her.  However, she claims she later learned she had been adopted. Her mother told her that she gave birth to a stillborn baby and that another woman giving birth at the same time, a US citizen Necla identifies only as Sophia, handed over her newborn to be raised and registered by the Ozmen family.

This resembles the plot of “The Omen.” Was Sophia a jackal, by any chance? If so, that means Necla is the Anti-Christ and Trump is The Beast! I knew it!

“Sophia,” Necla says, said that she was the result of an elicit relationship with Trump. The President’s alleged “daughter” wants the judges to establish her paternity and order genetic testing.  Necla has no idea how Trump and Sophia met. “I don’t want to cause him any trouble. I just want to know the truth,” she tells interviewers. “I just want to know whether he is my father. I would like him to speak with me. I can prove through a DNA test that he is my father, if he agrees. I believe he is a good father. I believe he will not turn me away either.” She has also sent petitions to the U.S. Embassy and to courts in the US.

Several of the news reports I have read say that the woman has an “uncanny” resemblance to Trump. Wow. They’re almost twins.

Hey…you know one of you reading out there might be Trump’s kid too. Can’t hurt to check it out! And if he’s not the father, why would Trump oppose a blood test?

I’m guessing that at least 30% of your Trump Deranged acquaintances will instantly accept this Turkish woman’s account as plausible, with a similar number calling it hypocrisy if you don’t after criticizing Hunter Biden’s denial of paternity of one of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.

What are the odds, now, of some Trump-hating judge in the U.S. granting Necla’s request? I’d say strong, and that’s why her lawyers are not unethical to press her claims.

As the wicket Witch of the West memorably said, “What a world, what a world…”

From Maryland, A “When Ethics Fails, The Law Steps In” Verdict

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I recently re-watched “Runaway Jury,” the ethically and legally repugnant film adaptation of a John Grisham legal thriller. It’s one of the most unethical movies extant, and before the last couple of years I would have said such egregious lawyer conduct as depicted in the film was unlikely to the point of impossible (as in most of Grisham’s books). The novel and movie involved a high-profile civil suit: the widow of a man murdered when a fired employee “goes postal” seeks to hold the manufacturer of the gun used by the killer liable for millions in damages. A pair of anti-gun zealots conspire to both rig the jury verdict and ruin the evil jury consultant (Gene Hackman) who helped defeat their home town in a similar case years before. In the end the “good guys” win (that is, Hollywood’s idea of “good”); I have mentioned the film before in the context irresponsible films and TV shows that actively misinform the public about a lawyer’s ethical responsibilities. Now comes a jury verdict from Maryland where a jury delivered a multi-million dollar verdict against Walmart for allowing an employee to buy a shotgun before he used it to blow his head off.

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Ethics (and Blogging) Hero: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

My late wife might say of this post, “If you like Ann Althouse so much, why don’t you marry her?” (Ann-like tangent: my favorite use of that line was when Homer Simpson was in a TV debate with Rev. Lovejoy over gay marriage, and after the Springfield cleric cited the Bible, Homer retorted, “If you like the Bible so much, why don’t you marry it? Here, I’ll do it for you…”)

Ann is the all-time Ethics Alarms leader in “Ethics Quotes” of the month and week; she’s also been an Ethics Dunce here several times. I even suspended her from any mention in my posts after a particularly miserable performance. Her fascinating EA dosser is here.

I know I just posted about Ann’s recent four slam-bang post run, but her defenestration of Anti-Trump New Yorker hack Susan B. Glasser was masterful, and I bow down in awe and wonder. When the ex-University of Wisconsin law professor is on her game, nobody is better, and attention must be paid.

Glasser issued “It’s Time to Talk About Donald Trump’s Logorrhea/How many polite ways are there to ask whether the President of the United States is losing it?” , jumping on the “Let’s try the 25th Amendment!” Trump removal plan a Golden Oldie among the many that the Axis was pushing in his first term. That any journalist who sat idly by refusing to point out that Joe Biden’s brain was falling out of his ears in chunks has the gall now to make such a claim about Trump (literally all of my Trump-Deranged Facebook Friends keep returning to it) is disqualifying, but Ann doesn’t even need that low-hanging fruit to show us how Glasser cheated to please the Atlantic’s biased readers.

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Pre-Blizzard Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This weekend will be a good time to work on those guest posts you’ve been meaning to write for Ethics Alarms while you’re snowed in. Or, if you don’t live in the storm zone, or are not snow-phobic like everyone in the D.C. area but me, it will still a good time to work on those guest posts you’ve been meaning to write for Ethics Alarms.

I have to go to a funeral of a good friend at Arlington this morning, and don’t know when I’ll return. It’s a bad day for that, as I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, but as Yogi Berra sagely said, “You gotta go to your friends’ funerals. If you don’t go to theirs, they won’t come to yours.”

One more note on the previous post: while drinking my first cup of coffee, I saw the Two Guys on the Couch with a Blonde in the Middle on Fox News talking about one reporter at the Australian Open who was asking the American tennis players, “How does it feel representing the United States right now?’ If the athlete answered with an obviously pre-set, “I am always proud to represent my country,” the guy pressed on with, “I mean, you know, considering everything that’s happening,” fishing for an anti-Trump statement.

The Blonde in the Middle made the right point: it’s too bad one of the tennis pros wasn’t prepared to answer, “Oh, you mean Trump’s first year? Yeah, wasn’t that awesome? He finally got rid of public funding for NPR and PBS, the Education Department is toast, so maybe our kids will be educated instead of indoctrinated, inflation is down, the White House really needed a ballroom, we’re getting illegals off the streets, and even the tariffs are working!”

OK, gotta go. I’m going to visit Mom and Dad while I’m at the cemetery. It’s been a while.

It Happened Again…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I have mentioned before that I find it remarkable that if you can string three sentences together and appear relatively affluent and educated, people assume that you hate the President and believe that “everything is terrible.”

Today I was waiting in an inexcusably long line because Harris Teeter’s had only one check-out station open even though it had to know that the snow-phobic Northern Virginians would be stocking up for the weekend snow storm. I found myself behind a chatty and pleasant woman close to my age. She struck up a conversation, and, as usual, I was not at a loss for words. We talked about movies and history, National Parks, the Tunnel Tree, and Theodore Roosevelt.

She said she wished it were a longer line because she enjoyed the conversation so much, and out of the blue said that if we weren’t going to be so snow-bound, she would join a protest somewhere, because there is so much to protest. She said it as if she didn’t think there was a chance in a million that I wasn’t in complete agreement. After all, I was friendly, polite and articulate: surely I must be terrified by the threat to democracy that all decent people—all her friends and social media pals and those smart pundits on MSNBC—see.

I saw no point in challenging her. In my experience, when I ask, “What exactly do you think is so terrible?” the answers that come back are vague, evasive, non-substantive or factually wrong. She seemed happy and was enjoying my company. Why break the mood? I’ll probably never see the old bat again. I did not want to prompt an imitation of that woman in “The Birds.”

I was dying to point out, I must confess, that her disdain for Donald trump was at odds with her stated admiration of Teddy Roosevelt, since Trump’s view of his office is more Rooseveltian than any POTUS since TR, with the exception of his cousin Franklin. I’m pretty sure Trump had Teddy in mind when he reacted with defiance after being shot: Roosevelt pulled the same stunt in 1912.

It is remarkable that everyone around here just assumes you are a member of their progressive club, or cult, or delusion. Never have I had anyone make the opposite assumption, that I am one of them, the evil people who think this President is doing many things that desperately need to be done, and that he deserves more support and respect for having the guts to do them.

Why is that?

Don Lemon Was Never A Real Journalist, and He Can’t Claim to Have Been One When He Invaded That Church

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Not to say I told you so, but I told you so: Ethics Alarms flagged Don Lemon as an unethical, biased, arrogant, preening disgrace as a journalist long before he was finally canned by CNN, and he has done nothing but live up to my assessment, indeed, show how restrained it was, since. See? I’m smart!

Over the weekend an anti-ICE mob stormed a church in St. Paul on the theory that one of the pastors was an ICE agent. I know, that makes no sense to me, either. They interrupted the service, chanting Renee Good’s name, “Hands up, don’t shoot” and other nonsense that had nothing to do with the service was shut down. Lemon was part of the mob.

The administration has been investigating the disruption at the church as a violation of the Face Act, a law that makes it a crime to physically obstruct or use threats of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking to participate in a service at a house of worship. It seems pretty clear that this is what the mob did, and that Lemon is as guilty and any of the thugs who did this.

Lemon filmed the event and claimed he was just there as a journalist. No, he’s an ex-journalist, as am I: I was on the staff of my high school newspaper. Lemon made his claim of being at the illegal intrusion as a reporter rather than a participant is weak, and made weaker by his comments on the podcast “I’ve Had It” with Jennifer Welch. “And there’s a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are, you know, in the religious groups like that,” Lemon said. “It’s not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they’re entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, white supremacy, and they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country, when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It’s religious freedom, but only if you’re a Christian and only if you’re a white male, pretty much.”

Doesn’t sound like he was in that church as an objective observer to me. Lemon is such an idiot. Listen to him in the clip above, implying that there is a Constitutional right to burst into a church, stop a service, and protest something that has nothing to do with the service or the parishioners at all.

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What Virginia Democrats Consider “Moderate”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Virginia was told by the local news media that Democrat Abigail Spanberger was a “moderate Democrat,” and enough suckers believed that spin that she was easily elected Governor over GOP candidate Winsome Sears. On the way to her “moderate” rule, Spanberger refused to condemn the Democratic candidate for Attorney General when text messages came to light in which he appeared to condone violence and murder as legitimate political tools. (He was elected too.)

Spanberger is only moderate in a political world where the middle-of-the-road Democrat cheers the death of Charlie Kirk, wants the Second Amendment repealed, thinks illegal immigrants are the salt of the earth, want men to be able to slaughter women in athletic contests by waking up one morning and deciding they are women, and think “hate speech” should be prohibited by law. Thus it is that the now Democrat-dominated Virginia legislature has filed bills that will likely reach her desk and that…

  • Bans future attempts to clean up voter rolls (HB111)
  • Makes it illegal for state agencies distributing federal dollars to NGOs to investigate whether they’re engaged in fraud (HB1369)
  • Makes it illegal to hand-count ballots (HB968)
  • Allows mail-in ballots to be counted one week after election day (HB773)
  • Allows for absentee ballots to be received and counted for three days after election day (HB82)
  • Eliminates the requirement that large last-minute campaign contributions have to be publicly reported at least 24 hours before election day (HB1348)
  • Removes the State Board of Elections’ ability to dispatch law enforcement officers to collect vote tallies from a locality that refuses to publish them (HB1321)
  • Joins the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for allocating Virginia’s electoral college votes in presidential elections (HB965)
  • Automatic restoration of voting rights for felons after they’re released from prison
  • Allows for votes to be cast “electronically through the internet” (HB493)
  • Creates public funding of political campaigns at the local level (HB162)
  • Abolishes all mandatory minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter, assaulting a law enforcement officer, possession and distribution of child pornography, and all repeat violent felonies (HB863)
  • Makes it harder for judges to deny bail, even in the case of things like aggravated assault, armed robbery, and drug trafficking (HB357)
  • Gives convicted murderers, rapists, and terrorists a chance to get out of prison early (HB853)
  • Drastically reduces the criminal penalty for robbery (HB244)
  • Bars prosecutors from mentioning a criminal’s prior convictions during the guilt phase of a trial, even if it’s for the same crime (HB1070)
  • Transfers the Department of Juvenile Justice from the Secretary of Public Safety’s purview to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (SB21)
  • Reduces the amount of time that the Commonwealth can compel a convicted criminal to pay court fees from 60 years to 10 (SB180)
  • Taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries (HB1245)
  • Bans most discretionary state contracting under $100K from going to businesses owned by White men and allows state agencies to award contracts to women or minority-owned firms that are 5% more expensive than a bid from a business owned by a White man (HB61)
  • Punishes VMI for adopting an anti-DEI stance (HB1374 & HB22)
  • Abolishes all Confederate-themed license plates (HB1344)
  • Eliminates the tax-exempt status for all Confederate history groups (HB167)
  • Renames Columbus Day to “Indigenous Peoples Day.” (HB858)
  • Makes it illegal to approach within 8ft of somebody within 40 feet of an abortion clinic (SB137)
  • Enshrines the Axis narrative about January 6 and teaches it in public schools (HB333)
  • Allows localities to adopt rent control measures (HB1177)
  • Increases the sales tax in Northern Virginia, adds an additional sales tax for home deliveries, raises the car tax for electric vehicles, and imposes new sales taxes for streaming services, concerts, gym memberships, nail salons, barber shops, tanning beds, tattoo parlors, dry cleaners, shoe repairs, carpentry, painting, plumbing, electrical, HVAC.

But wait! There’s more!

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Pssst! Prof. Attiah (“The Ethicist”)! Check Out That Golden Rule Thingy…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

A particularly clueless inquirer to “The Ethicist” advice column in the New York Times asked Prof. Appiah, a real ethicist or so we are assured, “Was it wrong to exclude one person from our family reunion?” The woman explains that her large extended family has frequent reunions, but “when plans began for our latest event, an agreement was reached to delete a particular woman from all invitations.”

Oh, the decision “was reached,” was it? Just sort of happened…

The inquirer goes on to explain that the Shunned has become estranged from many people in her life, including her daughter, and the family chose the daughter over the mother. Now the mother is distraught and threatening suicide. “Is it wrong to exclude one (or more) members who would bring pain and anguish rather than joy?,” the shunner asks “The Ethicist.”

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From Uvalde, The Message Is “Don’t Criminalize Incompetence and Cowardice”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A deranged gunman massacred 21 people at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary three years ago. The murderer is dead and someone must be held accountable, so a former school police officer was tried for abandoning or endangering children. Adrian Gonzales (above, checking his phone like he probably did as the kids were being shot), the first officer to arrive at the school, faced 29 counts of abandoning or endangering children, 19 for the dead and 10 more for survivors. A jury found him not guilty yesterday. Soon the pretty clearly incompetent school former school police chief Pete Arredondo will face trial later on similar charges, and we should expect the same result.

One of Ethics Alarms’ encomiums is that when ethics fail, the law steps in and usually makes a mess of things. If people won’t do the right thing because it’s the right thing, making them do what the state says is the right thing because they’re afraid of being punished is a very poor substitute. Those following the law may not have any concept of what the right thing to do is.

The Uvalde prosecutions arise out of anger and frustration, and reasonably so. Emotions, however, are not reliable motives for law enforcement. The school’s police pretty clearly failed the children of Robb Elementary because Gonzales and Arredondo choked when an unexpected crisis required them to place themselves in harm’s way. As much as we find it disheartening, lack of courage in a crisis cannot be criminalized. These officers thought they had accepted a relatively low-stress job in a quiet community. They hadn’t dealt with a gun-wielding madman before. Sure, we’d like to know that a Dirty Harry is ready to let an active shooter “make his day,” but in the real world—and, I will say without more than my own assessment, increasingly a nation of weenies—that is probably not going to happen. Gonzales had received active shooter training and was also a co-instructor in such a course, but training, however, is one thing, and the a real gun-wielding killer is another.

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