Month: December 2010

Slabbed’s greatest hits of 2010….

Here is the list of our top 10 posts in terms of page views for 2010:

  1. Katrina’s “who dat Judge Martin Feldman” now dabbling in oil!
  2. “Who Dat” Judge Martin Feldman – the 5th Circuit’s Opinion in Versai v Clarendon
  3. Jefferson Parish Corruption the way Daddy still does it. Dumpster dived Jimmy Lawson and the ‘Heebe’-Jeebies. A look back at Steimle & Associates v Camp Dresser McKee.
  4. Not what you see but what you don’t…the post-Katrina coast (2008) Continue reading “Slabbed’s greatest hits of 2010….”

That damn Diamondhead Incorporation will be the death of me…..

Those that oppose incorporation have a good legal team but those guys have a problem as Dwayne Bremer at the PPP reports:

Dickinson ordered that Kulick and his co-council, David McCarthy (sic), Chuck McRae, Oliver Diaz Jr., and Will Bardwell each file a memorandum setting forth all the facts and circumstances surrounding the lost court file.

One thing for certain folks, Tort Reform hasn’t hurt business for the skilled trial lawyers listed above. Justice Dickinson is a shoe shine boy for big business and he has quite the history on the court, including when he re-wrote hundreds of years of case law to invalidate a jury verdict in a wrongful death case that originally went against his big business friends.  I’m frankly surprised the can’t shoot straight gang at the MSSC came close to getting it right in Corban.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

sop

How about some hometown news: Team Insurance wins one it should have

I’m going do to something strange for Slabbed and link the hometown bi weekly paper, the Seacoast Echo, which the locals here affectionately know as the Poo-Poo Periodical.  While you can’t trust their reporting on the City of Waveland as it is hidden agenda driven IMHO you can trust the reporting from Circuit Court in Bay St Louis where Judge Roger Clark quickly dispatched what appears to be a borderline frivolous lawsuit against local insurance agent David Treutel. Former Sun Herald reporter JR Welsh has the skinny for the PPP:

The lawsuit was originally filed in Chancery Court in December 2005, and was later moved to Circuit Court. Trial began Tuesday and concluded late Thursday morning when Judge Roger Clark issued a directed verdict in favor of Treutel.

A jury of five men and seven women was impaneled, but jurors didn’t spend much time in the courtroom listening to testimony from Jolynne Trapani and Treutel. Jurors were sent to the jury room for much of the trial, while attorneys made motions and argued points of law and insurance. Continue reading “How about some hometown news: Team Insurance wins one it should have”

Jim Brown

December 30, 2010
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

NEW YEAR THOUGHTS FROM THE BAYOU STATE

(Jim Brown repeats this week his annual New Year’s column that he has posted annually for many years. It is still quite relevant today.)

Did you make a New Year’s resolution yet? I always do. Hope and foreboding are at the top of my list and have been these past few years. The New Year always brings a promise of uncertainty. More so for most of us in the coming year. I would rather be absorbed with the more mundane things in life. But that won’t happen in the busy lives that most of us lead.

One resolution I make each year is to maintain my curiosity. It does not matter how limited your perspective or the scope of your surroundings, there is (or should be) something to wet your interest and strike your fancy. I discovered early on that there are two kinds of people; those who are curious about the world around them, and those whose shallow attentions are generally limited to those things that pertain to their own personal well-being. I just hope all those I care about fall into the former category. Continue reading “Jim Brown”

I would submit the east coast sports media has an unhealthy man crush on NFC East teams.

With the Saints-Falcon Monday night game in the record books fitting nicely with last year’s Monday night viewing record coupled with the Eagles crushing loss to the lowly Vikings makes me ask that the guys on ESPN please shut up about NFC East teams for once. (Pat Yasinskas and his excellent NFC South blog excepted.) I think most everyone with half a football brain has figured out by now that real football in the NFC is played here down south.

I had to get that off my chest.

sop

A Perky Dump: Let’s review

The staff over at The Jefferson Report have compiled a nice synopsis of the River Birch saga where they copiously link us among other media sources and add some intrigue via some commonalities between Team River Birch and the John Young campaign. Jeremy Alford follows that up with a report on the taxpayer-funded perks accorded former Parish Prezs Tim Coulon and Aaron Broussard which should wear well with time given the long rumored public corruption indictments of both men.  IMHO we should be setting the alarms for news each Thursday beginning on 1/6 though a plea deal could be announced any day.

FBI fully reinstates Agent Hal Neilson

Patsy Brumfield reports the good news on NEMS360.com:

Hal Neilson, former resident agent for the FBI’s Oxford office, has been “fully reinstated,” his attorney says.

Neilson, 50, a 20-year-plus FBI employee, was acquitted Nov. 20 of two federal charges that he lied about his financial interests in the University Avenue building where he worked.

A few days later, prosecutors dismissed three other counts when the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict against him.

They said that they were doing so because they could no longer prove their case “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Neilson “picks up his badge and gun on Monday in Jackson,” his attorney, Christi R. McCoy, noted Tuesday.

So, will Neilson retire?

Neilson was indicted Jan. 13 and suspended from active duty with the FBI soon after, but he had been under a legal cloud for even longer because of a federal investigation about his business dealings.

Moments after all charges were gone against him, he indicated he was likely to retire around the end of the year.

Neilson also has a lawsuit pending against Tom Dawson of Oxford, a former assistant U.S. attorney, and Jackson blogger Alan Lange, whom Neilson claims libeled him in a book they co-wrote about the Scruggs judicial bribery scandal. Continue reading “FBI fully reinstates Agent Hal Neilson”

In this episode of Magnum JD: It’s balls in a vice time as Magnum’s former partners invite him to court.

“This is an outstanding law firm that has enjoyed an impeccable reputation both across the state and across the nation…My office retained Gauthier, Houghtaling & Williams to represent Louisiana in the Multi-Billion dollar subrogation claim for the Road Home Program.”

The Louisiana Attorney General
2004 – 2008

Several of our commenters such as Mr. NAAS have mentioned a possible conflict of interest involving the State of Louisiana and the Gauthier Houghtaling and Williams law firm as the above client testimonial from former AG Charlie Foti illustrates.  Now AG Caldwell is suing BP, (including hiring Steve Theriot and his daughter Wanda at taxpayer expense) while GHW is doing business with BP.  One wonders if waivers have been obtained.  This brings to mind several questions that are unanswered today such as did BP know of GHW’s representation of the State of Louisiana when they hired GHW and what has been done on Buddy Caldwell’s end to resolve this potential conflict of interest.

In other news ol’ Mags has until the 31st to answer the suit filed Continue reading “In this episode of Magnum JD: It’s balls in a vice time as Magnum’s former partners invite him to court.”