Our mission is to expose and remedy corruption in the Probate Court of Cook County, Illinois. We assist, educate and enlighten families of the dead, the dying, the disabled and the aged to better understand their rights in order to protect themselves from the excesses of the Probate Court of Cook County. ProbateSharks.com is dedicated to networking the human element of people to people. We join together in reforming the corrupt Cook County Probate Court system.
Editor's note: Judge Kawamoto in the Probate Court of Cook County never was this lenient to Alice Gore's daughter after the daughter was denied visitation for months. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Lawyers ask for court continuances all the time, and sometimes their reasons are more legitimate than others (a death in the family versus something sports-related, like this Alabama football BCS Championship motion, this New Orleans Saints Super Bowl motion, or this LSU football BCS Championship motion).
Late last week, a Pennsylvania lawyer filed the mother of all continuance requests. Marc Daffner, who practices out of Pittsburgh, requested that one of his client’s preliminary hearings be postponed so that he’d be able to avoid his own imminent death.
Daffner’s wife, Randi, had just gone into labor, and he knew that she’d murder him if he was in court instead of by her side. Here’s the motion that Daffner submitted to the court:
(Photo via Adam Brandolph/Tribune-Review)
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Daffner’s motion for a continuance was granted because it was a “significant emergency.” Here’s more from the Trib:
“They say you need to be truthful to the court. I didn’t have a legal reason for the continuance, but that was the truth,” Daffner said as he drove from the hospital in Oakland to his Green Tree home to pick up clothing for his wife. “I got a new date, and the DA signed off on it.”
Parenting can be an extremely difficult task, but an even more difficult task is proper helicopter parenting. It’s got to be an intense job to keep an eye on your child’s every move, day and night, wherever he may roam. In fact, some people have started to call these people lawnmower parents — after all, why choose to hover overhead when you can destructively mow down all obstacles that you perceive to be in your child’s way on the road to success?
Today, we’ve got a story about an attractive California couple who stand accused of being textbook examples of the worst kind of lawnmower parents, and they just so happen to both be lawyers. Daddy is (or was) a securities litigation partner at a midsize firm, and Mommy is a graduate of top law school. Trust us when we say that you do not want to mess with their kid, because you may wind up facing drug charges….
Please note the UPDATE at the end of this post.
Kent and Jill Easter, parents of an elementary-school student, allegedly conspired to get Kelli Peters, a parent volunteer at their son’s school, arrested in order to “teach her a lesson.” The couple stands accused of planting drugs on the volunteer whom mommy dearest asserts was guilty of failing to “properly supervis[e]” their child. That definitely had to be the worst Easter basket ever. UPDATE (2:42 p.m.): Kent Easter apparently sued Peters in 2010 on behalf of his son, alleging false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress on Peters’s part. Easter alleged that Peters locked his son out of the school building after a tennis class in an “intentional and malicious” fashion. The case was ultimately dismissed, but you can access the full complaint here.
The prestigious couple: Jillianne B. Easter and Kent W. Easter
Kent W. Easter, a 1998 graduate of UCLA Law and former associate at Wilson Sonsini, is a securities litigation partner at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, a midsize California firm, where he serves as the chairman of the firm’s Recruiting and Summer Associates Committee. But as we noted in Morning Docket, the only thing that Easter seems to be straddling now is jail time.
Have the allegations against Kent Easter resulted in his departure from the firm? Stradley Yocca has made every effort to wipe its website clean of his now-sullied name (Google cache can only do so much; see what’s left of his former bio here). We’ve provided Easter’s full LinkedIn profile on the following page.
His wife, Jillianne B. Easter, is a 1998 graduate of Boalt Hall, but she allowed her bar membership to lapse. (And with an email address like “licensetojill,” perhaps her husband should have known he was in for some trouble.) According to her bio on her former firm’s website, Easter & DeLeon, L.L.P., she also served as an associate at Wilson Sonsini, where she presumably met her husband.
The Orange County Register has the scoop on this alleged Bonnie-and-Clyde duo:
A husband and wife were arrested Tuesday and charged with planting drugs in the car of an unsuspecting school volunteer who the wife thought was not properly supervising their son, according to prosecutors.
Kent Wycliffe Easter, 38, and Jill Bjorkholm Easter, 38, were arrested by Irvine police and are charged with conspiracy to procure the false arrest of the elementary-school parent volunteer, false imprisonment and conspiracy to falsely report a crime.
According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Kent Easter allegedly drove to Peters’s home on February 16, 2011, and placed a potpourri of drugs and drug paraphernalia — including Vicodin, Percocet, and marijuana — behind the driver’s seat of her unlocked vehicle. He then called the police and used a fake name to report Peters, claiming that he had seen her stash a bag of drugs in the car.
After detaining Peters for two hours and conducting an investigation that yielded no no evidence to support drug use or possession, detectives began to search for other leads:
Irvine detectives investigated the possibility that someone planted the drugs in the woman’s car and discovered that the call that alerted them was placed by Kent Easter from a phone in a business center of a Newport Beach hotel, according to prosecutors. The hotel’s surveillance cameras captured images of him at the time the call was placed, prosecutors said.
Ahh, the things a man will allegedly do for a lovely and intelligent trophy wife. The Easters are free on $20,000 bail each, and they’re scheduled to be arraigned on July 17 in Orange County. Talk about some bad eggs.
Flip to the next page to see Kent Easter’s LinkedIn profile, various news clippings on the couple’s arrest, and some video coverage…. UPDATE (06/25/13): The criminal charges against the Easters are ongoing, with a trial scheduled for October 28, 2013, but they are now suing several parties for defamation. Click here for additional coverage.
This story starts as a sperm bank horror story. A lesbian couple wanted to have a baby, and decided artificial insemination was the way to go. They pored over donor profiles, discussed with family and friends, and finally picked one specimen of biological material that was right for their family.
But the sperm bank sent over the wrong specimen, and didn’t figure out the mistake until the woman, Jennifer Cramblett, was well into her pregnancy. Terrible, right? The sperm bank apologized and gave her a refund, which probably doesn’t even scratch their legal liability. But the woman carried the baby to term and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.
Now, two years later, Cramblett wants to sue. The sperm donor mixup really should be enough to support her claims for wrongful birth and breach of warranty. But Cramblett has added a surprising twist to her protestations of harm. It turns out that the incorrect donor was black. Cramblett now claims emotional distress because her family and town are too racially intolerant for her to raise a mixed-race daughter in their midst…
The Chicago Tribune reports on Cramblett’s “fears” and “anxieties” about raising her daughter:
Cramblett was raised around people with stereotypical attitudes about nonwhites, the lawsuit states, and did not know African-Americans until she attended college at the University of Akron…
She fears that her “all white and unconsciously insensitive family,” which has never been able to fully embrace Jennifer’s homosexuality, could have a negative effect on her daughter, according to the lawsuit.
“Though compelled to repress her individuality amongst family members, Payton’s differences are irrepressible, and Jennifer does not want Payton to feel stigmatized or unrecognized due simply to the circumstances of her birth,” the lawsuit states. “Jennifer’s stress and anxiety intensify when she envisions Payton entering an all-white school.”
Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.. WELCOME TO THE SUCK, JENNIFER CRAMBLETT!!! It’s confusing, ain’t it, trying to figure out how to raise a non-white baby around all these crazy-ass white people. It is… EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSING!
Sorry, sorry, it’s just, you have to try to see it from my perspective. This woman is suing people because she’s being forced to live the life of every black parent in this country. This woman couldn’t last two years in the shoes that millions of African-Americans walk every day before crying uncle. A suit like this illustrates how completely freaking clueless some white people are about what it’s like to be black in America.
Let me highlight just one part of her complaint that is just a small window into how the other 14% live:
24. As just one example, getting a young daughter’s hair cut is not particularly stressful for most mothers, but to Jennifer it is not a routine matter, because Payton has hair typical of an African American girl. To get a decent cut, Jennifer must travel to a black neighborhood, far from where she lives, where she is obviously different in appearance, and not overtly welcome.
No, getting a young daughter’s hair cut is INCREDIBLY STRESSFUL for most mothers… most African-American mothers, at least. Go watch Chris Rock’s movie Good Hair to get just a glimpse of the contradictory and frustrating social messaging black women and their daughters have to deal with. When do you relax your young daughter’s hair, if at all? You know if you do it too young, the chemicals can damage the still fusing skull. And that’s living in a world where you are constantly worried that somebody is going to call your daughter “ugly” or “nappy” because her hair doesn’t come out of Norse myth.
And this lady is bitching about having to drive across town and have black people look at her.
Cramblett says that she used to live in a racially diverse town, Akron, but moved to someplace called Uniontown, which is not diverse because it had better schools. Now, her psychologist suggests that she move to a different town. The complaint also states: “Jennifer is well aware of the child psychology research and literature correlating intolerance and racism with reduced academic and psychological well-being of biracial children.”
YES. Sometimes, black parents have to make a whole different set of life choices just to avoid raising their kids in all-white communities. Do you know how long I looked for a racially diverse elementary school that also didn’t suck in an area I could borrow enough money to get into? WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT if racism were unacceptable in certain communities instead of having the mixed-race children be unacceptable!
Cramblett thinks her problem is the racial mismatch between her and her daughter. But her complaints are not really about the issues of raising a baby that doesn’t immediately look like the same race of the parent (a “problem” that every mixed-race couple has to overcome). Her issues are those that every parent of a non-white child has to deal with, regardless of the race of the parent. Diverse communities, good schools, racial antipathy from others, that’s just the world of raising a non-white baby.
Remember, this baby is still hers. It might be a shade darker than she anticipated, but genetically this baby is half hers and half some guy’s that she doesn’t know. She doesn’t have to raise the baby any differently than a “100% white” baby, but for the racism of those around her.
In essence, Cramblett isn’t suing because the sperm bank gave her the wrong sperm. She’s not even suing because she doesn’t like black babies. Cramblett is suing because the sperm bank turned her into a black person. They made her have to think and worry and stress like any other parent of a non-white child. The sperm bank took from her the white privilege that she thought was her birthright. Cramblett knows, just as well as I do, that her baby will be treated differently than a white baby. She just didn’t think she’d ever have to deal with it.
And, of course the sperm bank should pay for that. I hope they pay. Again, I’m inclined to think that simply mixing up donors would be enough to win this lawsuit; but since she brought race into it, I want to know what, precisely, we think it’s worth to go from being a parent of a white kid to being a parent of a non-white kid. How much economic loss are we willing to ring up for that? TELL ME. Then pay her. Then open up the f**king treasury and pay ever black mother the same goddamn price.
There’s a line in Remember the Titans (a great, saccharine, historically inaccurate movie) where the white guy is bitching at Denzel because his daughter was visiting when somebody threw a brick through Denzel’s window. Denzel tells the man that maybe he just got a glimpse into what his black daughters have to go through every day.
That’s how I feel about Jennifer Cramblett. I’m sorry for her distress, but welcome to the club. Lawsuit: Wrong sperm delivered to lesbian couple [Chicago Tribune]
Editor's note: Your ProbateShark believes "Family-Friendly" in this article relates to employees of these law firms. This Shark would appreciate the term "Family-Friendly" to also extend the definition to the kindly treatment of families in the Family and Probate Courts. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Women continue to have a hard time in the law. Whether they’re being told not to show cleavage, dress like “ignorant sluts,” or wear hooker heels, they just can’t the respect they deserve. In an environment like this, where women are perceived as lesser beings and one is expected to bring baked goods to the office just because she happens to have breasts, achieving a sense of work/life balance seems like an incredibly lofty goal.
The Yale Law Women just came out with their annual list of the top ten family friendly firms. We cover this list every year (see our posts from 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008). This year’s list changed very dramatically from last year’s: only three of the firms have returned.
Which firms made the cut? Which firms had the best options available to both women and men? Let’s take a look at the latest ranking for the most family-friendly firms…
Here’s the list of the most family-friendly firms according to Yale Law Women (in alphabetical order):
In 2014, the following firms were booted from the list: Fulbright & Jaworski, Goodwin Procter, Perkins Coie (previously honored for four years in a row; so much for the diaper-changing table in the men’s bathroom), Reed Smith (previously honored for two years in a row), Sherman & Sterling, Sidley Austin, and Squire Sanders. Curiously missing in action yet again was WilmerHale. The Boston-based firm used to be a staple on the YLW list (from 2009 to 2012). Does anyone have any specific info on what happened here?
The three returning firms are Arnold & Porter (an institution on this list; it’s been recognized every year since we began our coverage), Hunton & Williams, and Orrick (both honored for the third year in a row). These three are now joined by Baker Botts, HoLove, K&E, MoFo, Munger Tolles, Paul Weiss, and V&E. Congratulations to all of these firms for their many accomplishments in “developing and implementing family friendly practices and policies.”
Perhaps an even greater accomplishment, however, is being named in not one but two rankings lists for the best firms in terms of flex-time opportunities. In 2013, Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers released the list of the 50 Best Law Firms for Women, which included the U.S. outpost of Hogan Lovells, Hunton & Williams, Kirkland & Ellis, Orrick, and Vinson & Elkins. Very nice work.
Vivia Chen of The Careerist has a round-up of useful information about some of the YLW study’s findings:
• Work/life balance is a hot subject at firms. The report finds that an astonishing 83 percent have committees devoted to the issue.
• Part-time and flex-time work are allowed in most firms. But part-time is definitely a women’s thing: They make up 80.5 percent of those who take advantage of the program.
• Firms offer generous paid leaves. Sixteen weeks to primary caregivers, and 5.6 weeks to secondary caregivers. But only about 50 percent of men take the maximum parental leave, while 90 percent of women do so.
That’s really good and well that all of these Biglaw firms are paying greater attention to the family needs of their employees, but we’d love to know what taking advantage of these opportunities does to one’s professional career track. Considering the YLW report says that “[a]lumni expressed skepticism about the likelihood of remaining partner-eligible after taking advantage of alternative schedules,” we obviously have our doubts as to the firms’ sincere intent to offer genuine work/life balance opportunities.
According to the surveys taken by the Yale Law Women, things are supposedly getting better. “[A]bout 40 percent of attorneys perceived their firms to be more family friendly now compared to last year,” says Luci Yang, the group’s chair. We’ll buy into that when legal professionals — women especially — aren’t being penalized for attempting to attain a sense of work/life balance.
P.S. Take this with a shaker of salt: the workaholic cult of Wachtell Lipton somehow has one of the highest percentages of associates working on part-time schedules. 2014 Top Ten Family Friendly Firms List [Yale Law Women] Wachtell Lipton Is Family Friendly? [The Careerist] Only Women and Wimps Work Part-Time [The Careerist] Earlier: The Top Ten Family-Friendly Law Firms (2013)
A story that we thought couldn’t get uglier just did. Edward De Sear, a former partner at several top law firms who stood accused of child pornography distribution, pleaded guilty to four counts of distribution of child pornography and to sex trafficking of a child.
One could argue that federal sentences for mere possession or even distribution of child pornography are too high. As noted in a 2012 article in USA Today, in some cases “offenders who possess and distribute child pornography can go to prison for longer than those who actually rape or sexually abuse a child.”
But if you possess child pornography, distribute child pornography, and sexually abuse children in real life, you deserve to go away for a very long time. What kind of sentence did Edward De Sear receive?
A prominent Bergen County corporate lawyer has pleaded guilty to the sex trafficking of a six-year-old boy across Europe, while separately admitting that he had distributed hundreds of graphic images and videos of child porn, some of which depicted small children being raped.
Edward M. De Sear, 67, of Saddle River, was sentenced in Newark federal court on Thursday to 17.5 years in prison, and was ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution to his victims, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said Thursday. He pleaded guilty to one count of sex trafficking of a child and four counts of distribution of child pornography.
That’s a hefty sentence. But given the gravity of his crimes, even an “affluenza” defense wouldn’t have helped the wealthy lawyer. And he’s not as wealthy as he once was: right after the sentencing, his lawyers turned over checks totaling $1.2 million, with $1.1 million going to the abused boy and $100,000 going to the victims whose images De Sear distributed.
I feel uncomfortably close to this story. I grew up in Saddle River, where my parents still live, and I served as an AUSA in the office that prosecuted De Sear (where I was colleagues with De Sear’s defense lawyer, John Vazquez, a former federal and state prosecutor who’s now at Critchley Kinum and Vazquez).
But many other people in the legal profession have crossed paths with De Sear. The UVA Law graduate practiced at a plethora of leading law firms, including Allen & Overy, Bingham McCutchen, McKee Nelson, Orrick, and Milbank Tweed.
Here are the awful details about Edward De Sear’s sex trafficking:
According to federal prosecutors, De Sear, who was formerly a partner at New York firm Allen & Overy, paid a man cash in June of 2011 to travel with his six-year-old son from Paris to Brussels, Belgium, where he sexually abused the boy.
One has to wonder what kind of parents would sell their six-year-old son to a sex trafficker. And note that this transaction took place in Paris, not the developing world. (But such crimes can happen anywhere; France was the setting for the film Taken.) UPDATE (3:45 p.m.): More about those parents, from the Bergen Record:
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Faye Schwartz told the judge that the government could prove that DeSear facilitated the child’s international travel by, among other things, paying cash to the boy’s fathers, a same-sex couple who were sentenced in Indiana earlier this year to 30 and 40 years in prison. The couple, Mark J. Newton and Peter Truong, both citizens of Australia, bought the infant from his Russian mother for $8,000 in 2005, took him to various countries where they allowed other men to abuse him, and made hardcore videos that were distributed across a global pedophile network known as the Boy Lovers network, according to authorities.
(A stock photo of a teen driver — not actually Ethan Couch.)
I’m sure that by now you’ve all heard the story about the wealthy white teenager who killed four people while drunk driving. As we mentioned in yesterday’s Non-Sequiturs, 16-year-old Ethan Couch got off — sentenced to therapy — because the judge agreed that the kid was a victim of “affluenza”: his parents gave him everything he wanted, and he believed that being rich meant that he wouldn’t have to face consequences for his actions.
The kid’s not wrong; the fact that he’s not facing incarceration for killing four people kind of proves the point. A poor white kid would be in jail right now. A rich black kid would be in jail right now. A poor black kid would be picking out items for his last supper right now. Anybody who thinks that this kind of lenience would be given to anybody other than a wealthy white dauphin is wrong and stupid (and probably racist). The rich kid isn’t in jail because rich people don’t suffer the full force of consequences for their actions.
That said… the judge isn’t wrong either. When you have a jerk-off prick of a 16-year-old, as this kid appears to be, it’s probably not his fault. Not really. My outrage isn’t that Couch is getting off, it’s that so many other teens and young people are being incarcerated without this kind of compassion.
Not that there aren’t people who deserve jail time behind this. It’s just that those people are Couch’s parents…. Continue reading “In Defense Of The Rich White Boy Who Killed Four People And Got Away With It”
On Monday, a jury convicted Larry Williams of first-degree manslaughter and his wife Carri of both manslaughter and homicide by abuse. Both now face possible life in prison.
Larry and Carri Williams were typical suburban parents who approached every parenting decision by asking, “WWJD?”
Except Larry and Carri were convinced that what Jesus would do is mercilessly beat and ultimately kill a defenseless girl.
While, obviously, the actual scripture is open to interpretation, what I take away from it is that Jesus would actually not do any of these things.
Unfortunately, Larry and Carri are not alone in their screwball religious interpretation, and while the media (to the extent it has covered the case at all) is focused on the verdict and looming sentence, the unasked legal question this case raises is how people like this are allowed to adopt children in the first place…
The details of the death of Hana Williams paint a disturbing picture of cruelty and neglect:
Hana Williams died in May 2011 in the backyard of the couple’s home, where she was forced to stay as part of a strict system of child-rearing outlined in a Christian parenting book.
An autopsy showed that Hana died of hypothermia that was aggravated by chronic gastritis and malnutrition.
Her bone-thin body was covered in bruises, including a lump on her shaved head, and red bloody markings on her hips, elbows and face.
Defense lawyers argued that questionable parenting practices don’t necessarily amount to a crime.
They were represented by the firm of Uphill & Battle.
The Christian parenting book in question is To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl (this is NOT an affiliate link because I have no interest in encouraging the sale of this book).
The book has a small but committed following among some fundamentalist Christians. The general thrust of the book is that children should be seen and not heard… and then beaten. And lest you think I’m exaggerating:
In the book, the couple advises “switching” a seven-month old baby for crying and clenching his fists for not getting his own way.
They suggest using tools instead of hands for hitting children, suggesting willow-branch for babies and a quarter-inch plumbing supply line for older children, which Michael Pearl says is “too light to cause damage to the muscle or the bone”.
According to kirotv.com, one witness in the Williams trial told how the book instructed parents to give unruly children cold baths, withhold food and force children outside in cold weather as punishment.
Seven months. Here’s the Google image search for seven month old to refresh your recollection.
The Pearls point out that the book also contains passages warning against “abuse” — obviously they never advocate murder — but at the point you’re talking about whipping babies with sticks, it’s hard to figure out what over-the-line “abuse” means.
Sadly, this is not the first death attributed to the lessons of this book:
Seven-year-old Liberian-born Lydia Schatz was also killed by her adoptive parents in 2010 after they used To Train Up a Child.
She was hit with a plastic tube for hours at their home in California for allegedly mispronouncing a word and died in hospital a day later from her injuries. Parents Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz were both found guilty of causing her death.
And here’s the element of this case that the coverage is largely glossing over. Like Lydia, Hana, Ethiopian by birth, was adopted. There’s a troubling dual mandate at work, to both have large families — often including adopted children — and to raise them in ways that most would characterize as cruel and unusual.
The system turned a blind eye to protecting these kids until it was too late. Hana was adopted through a Washington State licensed agency called Adoption Advocates International. AAI is accredited by all the customary international adoption sanctioning bodies. There is nothing to suggest AAI acted in bad faith, nor is there any evidence to suggest that other adoptions brokered by AAI have gone awry. Most adoptive parents, after all, are good people.
But as a matter of domestic and international mandate, there are far too few protections for children like Hana and Lydia (as well as Hana’s younger, also adopted brother, who suffered from starvation and physical abuse before Hana’s death prompted the state to intervene). As one expert on the international adoption process, both as a parent and as a former employee in the international adoption business, put it:
The home study process is a critical element of the adoption journey. Here is a link to the detailed requirements of the home study. I have no idea what the home study looked like for Larry and Carri Williams. The US State Department provides a handy tip sheet with lots of examples of what a good home study should look like, so maybe it followed this formula. By the way, to say that the home study process needs overhaul is an epic understatement.
It’s absurd and shameful that the international treaty governing adoption, the Hague Convention, mandates an abysmally small number of hours for adoption preparation: ten. And parents can take the classes on-line.
Pop quiz, hotshot. A federal judge issues an order to show cause that you should be “sanctioned for repeated failure to prosecute cases” and “barred from practicing in this District.” What do you do? What do you do?
The correct answer begins with “responding,” obviously. And when you’re in trouble over “failure to prosecute,” maybe that should light a fire under you to respond thoroughly and on time.
Yeah… this guy didn’t. Instead he provided a detailed, if legally irrelevant, explanation of how he was just too busy to worry about responding on time. Think of this as “Prelude to a Benchslap”…
Two weeks ago, Judge Ronald Leighton of the Western District of Washington issued an order to show cause aimed at attorney Robert J. Penfield. Judge Leighton observed that defendants in the case at hand reported that Penfield was entirely MIA on the case, having skipped out on initial disclosures and the 26(f) conference. Judge Leighton also noticed other cases in the district where Penfield followed a similar pattern:
This Court’s cursory review of the CM-ECF filings in this District disclosed two additional cases following the same script: file a case on behalf of a client facing foreclosure, do nothing else, and have the case dismissed for failure to prosecute.
In the aftermath of the housing crisis, attorneys offering a lifeline to victims of foreclosure and then pocketing their cash and walking away is a lucrative — if awful — business model. Judge Leighton had reason, based on the record, to fear that Penfield had taken a stroll down the Dark Side, so he issued the order to show cause threatening to disbar Penfield from the District.
Penfield had one week to respond.
Penfield did not respond by the deadline.
But at least he got close. He only blew the deadline by seven and a half hours:
1. First, I apologize to the Court for this response being 7 and one half hours late. My day yesterday was booked solid from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. with business-related meetings, and I was unable to meet my obligation to find an hour to sit quietly and type this response. Monday the was similar in schedule, as were May 15 – 17. My weekend is my only time with my 5 year old Daughter Paige, since being freshly divorce from her Mother on April 29, 2013, and Saturday and Sunday were booked solid with 5-year-old girl-related things, which is how I keep my heart from exploding from too much work and too little time with my three kids. No disrespect is intended to the Court personally or professionally by this failure.
Oh. Well, if no disrespect was intended, I’m sure Judge Leighton will forgive and forget. Except going on about how every other meeting on your agenda was more pressing than responding to a federal judge is kind of per se disrespect. Never mind that the first paragraph in response to charges that he accepts cases and fails to prosecute is “I had lots of meetings with other/new clients so I couldn’t respond to a looming deadline in a case involving AN EXISTING CLIENT.” He writes this unironically.
Penfield and his daughter while he blew off his professional obligations?
I’d love more color on what constitutes being “booked solid with 5-year-old girl-related things.” I’m assuming tea parties with Polly Prissy Pants. Look, I feel for the guy wanting to devote time to his family. The problem is he also admits that it took him only an hour to draft his response. And let me tell you something about five-year-olds: they do this thing called “go to sleep.” Usually relatively early. Does Penfield expect Judge Leighton to believe that he couldn’t be bothered to take an hour after his daughter went to bed to pen a response that could implicate his very career?
Penfield later explained that he missed the hearing that resulted in this Order to Show Cause because he misjudged his family obligations:
On May 14, 2013, I was asked by my ex-wife the night before to pick up our three children and deliver them to their school, and believed that I could do so and still make it to the hearing. I was wrong. I did attempt to call counsel opposite and advise him that I would be late for the hearing, and my failure to appear was not intentional. I spoke with him shortly after the hearing, and will comply with Your Honor’s case schedule hereafter.
Not to sound jaded, but Alec Baldwin’s speech in Glengarry Glen Ross is relevant here: “Good father? F**k you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here — close!”
It’s not wrong to want to be a good father. It’s actually great. But if your conception of good fathering could jeopardize the trust that clients (who are financially and psychologically depending on you, too) are putting in a lawyer to zealously prosecute their case, then you probably should be cutting back.
And the end of his marriage is unfortunate, but it sounds like he might be better off:
After enduring my ex-wife Jacki’s daily screeching that I should get out of the house and open a public office from the day after we married in 2006, I finally decided to do so on January 1, 2012.
Gratuitously describing the ex-wife to a federal judge as “screeching.” Awesome. All kidding aside, divorce is difficult, but also probably a reason Penfield shouldn’t have taken on 85 clients by himself.
And Penfield does have some complaints of his own. He explains his woes dealing with the independent contractors that he relies upon to prosecute his cases.
As a solo-practice law-firm, it sometimes occurs that checks for independent contractors are paid not on the dates I intend to pay them, which in my case was the 7th and 22nd of each calendar month. On October 7, 2012, I did not have enough cash to pay my contractors, all of whom were laboring under the incorrect impression that they were employees rather than independent contractors, and when I advised them they would be paid on October 9, 2012, I began to receive threatening e-mails and texts from several of them, which of course resulted in their contracts being immediately terminated.
Well they might be a little melodramatic, but again, he admits that he did fail to pay them in a timely fashion basically because he was overworked. You can blame them for their reactions, but admitting that the firm can’t pay its experts is kind of conceding that the Penfield has trouble effectively representing the clients he takes on right now.
That’s why even if Penfield’s narrative is 100% true, he needs to get a grip on his professional obligations and start, at the very least, shipping some clients off to other counsel. Something that Penfield, to his great credit, seems to understand by the end of his response:
With respect to the Court, I do not feel the above shows good cause for my banning from practice in this District, though such a banning might result in a well-deserved rest. This last comment containing no sarcasm whatsoever, but merely a statement of exhausted fact. Your Honor is respectfully requested to utilize the Wisdom of Solomon and considerable Mercy in making this decision.
Whatever the result, let’s hope Penfield takes his own advice and considers some rest. (Penfield’s response, in all its glory, appears on the next page.)
Pedophobia, the fear of children, is not something that makes the news very much. It’s not like anybody who suffers from pedophobia gets to have a Facebook account unless they want to be bombarded with terrifying images of other people’s children.
Since we know that pedophilia is a real thing, I totally believe that pedophobia is a real thing. That makes sense.
But, just as I don’t want pedophiles teaching in schools, I’m not sure that a middle school is the best place for a pedophobe.
An Ohio teacher suffering from pedophobia agrees. She’s suing her former school district for failing to accommodate her disability by moving her from a high school to a middle school.
If she doesn’t win her employment discrimination case, maybe she’ll have a claim under the Eighth Amendment….
It’s easy to ridicule this lawsuit. Maria Waltherr-Willard is a school teacher who is clinically afraid of children. The somewhat obvious response is “don’t work IN A SCHOOL lady.”
But when you dig in a little bit, you see that Walterr-Willard is alleging that her former school district retaliated against her by moving her from a high school to a middle school. Yes, the teacher is saying essentially that her punishment was having to be around children… which is even more ridicu-funny. From the Huffington Post:
Waltherr-Willard, 61, claims in her lawsuit against the Mariemont school district that for 35 years, she taught Spanish and French to high school students in the system. But when she helped fight the district’s decision to cut French class in favor of an online course, officials retaliated by reassigning her to younger students at a middle school in 2009, ignoring her hypertension, specific phobia and general anxiety disorder, Waltherr-Willard says, according to Cincinnati.com…
Working with younger children at the middle school “adversely affected [Waltherr-Willard's] health, due to her disability,” the lawsuit claims, according to ABC News. Although she reportedly helped the younger students succeed in their foreign language endeavors, the move still increased her blood pressure to levels that placed her at risk for a stroke.
Finally, a teacher who can say “these kids are trying to kill me” who isn’t exaggerating.
Look, I sympathize with Waltherr-Willard, I really do. If she can prove that the school “retaliated” against her, then I hope she prevails. It’s not like the school district would be allowed to start putting frogs in the French teacher’s desk in order to get back at her for opposing a change in curriculum. But retaliation is hard to prove. And I’m not even sure that Waltherr-Willard has the strongest case here against the school district.
If I were a parent of a child at this middle school, and I found out that the district put a teacher who is clinically afraid of children in my child’s class, I’d be pretty pissed off. Honestly, who puts a hypertense person with an anxiety disorder in charge of a room full of screaming urchins? What if she flips out in the middle of the day and starts smacking the kids around? Or worse? Isn’t that a foreseeable outcome of putting a pedophobe in a kids’ classroom?
Maybe the best thing for everybody would have been to keep the lady who hates kids locked away in the high school. Maria Waltherr-Willard Pedophobia: Ohio Teacher Sues School District For Discriminating Against Her Fear Of Children [Huffington Post]
Editor's note: The demand for copies of the Florida estate case, The Estate of Irving (Fisk) Faskowitz has overwhelmed this Shark's capacity to copy. Your ProbateShark will be scanning the complete file which will soon be available in the Shark Public Drop Box at no charge. Details to follow. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Jerry Sandusky’s Lawyer Has A Late-Night Heart-to-Heart with Several Penn State Students — Over Beer and Taco Bell
By Christopher Danzig
Karl Rominger
In the hours before Jerry Sandusky’s sentencing on Tuesday, one of his attorneys, Karl Rominger, was giving new meaning to the phrase, “Don’t sweat the small, medium, or large stuff.”
Was Rominger reviewing notes? Meditating? Naaah. He was out drinking with Penn State students! Specifically, he was on the prowl for some ladies.
A couple reporters from school publications were there to catch the action and some choice soundbites from Sandusky’s lawyer. Oh, and of course there are photos.
Giggedy… giggedy?
Although Sandusky’s legal team blamed the media and lack of prep time for Sandusky’s 30-to-60-year sentence, that didn’t stop Rominger from having a 25th Hour-style night out on the town. Yahoo! Sports gives us the scoop:
Sandusky’s co-counsel, Karl Rominger, sent out a tweet Monday evening offering to buy alcohol at Zeno’s Bar in State College and added “Coeds appreciated.”
Rominger got a few takers, many from the independent student online news site, Onward State, and a reporter from the Daily Collegian, the student newspaper, who happened to be female and was there to get a story, not booze and was quickly rebuffed by Rominger.
What ensued with some of the reporters from Onward State was a night of drinks paid for by Rominger, or Sandusky if you want to get technical, the exchange of information about the trial and Rominger trying to get some tail.
According to one student reporter present (and accepting drinks on Rominger’s dime), the attorney said his only remaining task was a little morning prayer. The student, for his part, may want to pray his journalism professors don’t annihilate him for receiving free stuff from a source involved in a major story he’s covering, but that’s neither here nor there.
Eventually the crew wound up at Taco Bell, where Rominger made some more interesting statements, according to Kevin Horne, another student editor:
We sat there and shot the [expletive] for a half an hour, 45 minutes or so. Rominger told us to put our phones away at one point when we were talking. He said he didn’t expect to get paid for the case — he was doing it for publicity for his firm and that’s why he took it.
Okay then! Who knows, maybe the booze and chalupas made him a little loopy, but this doesn’t seem like the best conversation to have with a bunch of college reporters the day before your infamous client is sentenced to life in prison for raping children. If you want to feel even more uneasy, you can see photos of the weirdly jovial group in Yahoo’s article.
We’ll see how all this might affect Sandusky’s appeals. But then again, maybe it won’t, because Rominger also told the students Sandusky only has a 50-50 chance of winning his appeal, and “wasn’t going to last long in prison” anyway.
Wow, that’s some plain-speaking.
Hours before Sandusky’s sentencing, his lawyer was drinking with Penn State students [Yahoo! Sports]
Earlier: Jerry Sandusky Receives His Sentence — What’ll It Be?
Lawyers ask for court continuances all the time, and sometimes their reasons are more legitimate than others (a death in the family versus something sports-related, like this Alabama football BCS Championship motion, this New Orleans Saints Super Bowl motion, or this LSU football BCS Championship motion). 
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On Monday, a jury convicted Larry Williams of first-degree manslaughter and his wife Carri of both manslaughter and homicide by abuse. Both now face possible life in prison.
Pop quiz, hotshot. A federal judge issues an order to show cause that you should be “sanctioned for repeated failure to prosecute cases” and “barred from practicing in this District.” What do you do? What do you do?
