Day: December 22, 2010

From the SLABBED Archives: “Trip down memory lane connects Road Home with Duval’s ruling in Louisana antitrust case (Corrected)”

A look back into the SLABBED Archives (August 2008) before we move forward with “surprising” information from reader Not At All Surprised.

Louisiana Federal District Judge Stanwood Duval issued an attention grabbing ruling in an attention grabbing Katrina insurance case filed by former Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti on his way out the door after losing his bid for re-election last year. The Sun Herald has the story.

A judge has asked a state official to review the validity of private attorneys’ contracts to represent Louisiana’s attorney general in a case over the state’s Road Home hurricane recovery program.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval said insurance company attorneys “persuasively” raised questions Wednesday about whether former Attorney General Charles Foti followed state law when he hired the lawyers.

He gave the commissioner of administration 45 days to decide whether the contracts were valid. If the commissioner finds them faulty, the judge said, he will remove the lawyers from the case… Continue reading “From the SLABBED Archives: “Trip down memory lane connects Road Home with Duval’s ruling in Louisana antitrust case (Corrected)””

Hey, Ashton, “The truth will set you free”

My all time favorite example of a backhanded compliment –  “she’s got freckles on her but she’s pretty just the same”  – was one-upped today by James Gill’s  “Disbarred attorney not as crazy as he seems”:

A federal appeals court ruling last week leads inescapably to the conclusion that New Orleans’ most famous disbarred attorney, Ashton O’Dwyer, may not be entirely crazy after all.

He still comes close, but the court handed him a small measure of vindication in throwing out a Katrina class-action settlement that he has always denounced as a lawyers’ scam to stiff the plaintiffs…[and]…he certainly was wronged by the cops who arrested him a few weeks after the storm, when he was attracting nationwide media attention for what he termed his “Robinson Crusoe” existence on St. Charles Avenue and his furious attacks on inept government.

He spent 16 hours at a makeshift jail at the Union Passenger Terminal, where he was locked in a portable metal cage, repeatedly pepper-sprayed and shot several times with beanbag pellets. He was never prosecuted, but nobody has been held to account for the maltreatment, for which he has produced ample photographic evidence.

Understandably, someone subjected to such might get a little crazy when no one is held accountable; but, let’s not go there today.

Today we celebrate – Merry Christmas, Ashton!