Day: February 23, 2011

USA can’t sell tickets – River Birch ordered to turn over surveillance video (way to go, Judge Berrigan!)

The only shorter Order would have been “do it” – and somehow I think that might be how this translates:

IT IS ORDERED that by 10:00 a.m. on February 23, 2011, Plaintiffs’ shall provide the Government a copy of the surveillance video that was submitted to the Court on February 22, 2011.

The order was issued yesterday and entered on the docket today. Yesterday, Judge Berrigan also granted the Heebe-Ward-River Birch Plaintiffs’ motion to submit the supplemental reply brief . That Order, too, was entered on the docket today.

The legal argument of the Heebe-Ward-River Birch plaintiffs (see Mirror, Mirror Camera, camera on the wall) was dwarfed by fact and common sense.

According to the Plaintiffs, the Government posed a “new found argument” when it pointed out the broad scope of the search.

Judge Berrigan, however, is not “Dopey” and she knows the Government didn’t claim the warrant “contemplated the search of all seven businesses located at 2000 Belle Chasse…” as the plaintiffs’ brief alleged.

Likewise, she knows what the Government did claim; i.e., “the agents obtained a search warrant for the premises of 2000 Belle Chasse Highway, Gretna, Louisiana, 70056′” and “further described the property as ‘The offices of River Birch Landfill'”.

If there is one piece of advice I’d give to the newest members of the NOLA blogging community….

It would be to carefully consider the lessons in the following video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqhlXnKIbHw]

A hale and hearty Slabbed welcome to Lawrence Chehardy and Team River Birch as they set up blogs to get their message out.

sop

Several bites of news – Girl Scouts cookies, Adams & Reese, Baldwin v Costner

First, a bite of Girl Scout cookie news – Dispute about Thin Mints gets physical from the newly redesigned Clarion Ledger website:

Police say a brawl between roommates over Girl Scout cookies led to assault charges against one of them. According to the Naples Daily News, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office reports that 31-year-old Hersha Howard woke up her roommate early Sunday and accused her of eating her Thin Mints. They argued and deputies say that it turned physical with Howard chasing her roommate with scissors and hitting her repeatedly with a board and then a sign.

A fight over Thin Mints is newsworthy to cookie lovers but a reader sent a news bite about an entirely different legal matter involving Adams & Reese, a familiar name to those who followed the SLABBED coverage of USA v Perdiago.

Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson and Adams & Reese are being sued for at least $300 million in damages for legal advice to accused Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford. The class action suit was filed last week by attorneys representing a group of Stanford investors in U.S. District Court in Dallas…The suit says Stanford hired Adams and Reese after Jones Walker issued a legal opinion in 2001 raising questions about using onshore trust offices to sell Stanford certificates of deposits to IRAs…(complaint below the jump)

The cake-taking news, however, comes from Baldwin v Costner – check the size of Magnum J.D.’s slice: Continue reading “Several bites of news – Girl Scouts cookies, Adams & Reese, Baldwin v Costner”

Mirror, Mirror Camera, camera on the wall – USA wants to see the video

Three new docket entries have followed since SLABBED reported Mirror, mirror on the wall server, was it one enterprise office after all?  With a hearing on the USA’s Motion for Reconsideration set for tomorrow, there’s no time to compose commentary – the USA’s motion and supporting memorandum are below in Scribd format.  Also below is the Heebe-River Birch Plaintiffs’ supplemental opposition to the USA’s motion for reconsideration and, for your convenience in comparing the two positions, a repeat of the Government’s response.

[scribd id=49359436 key=key-1vmwx4ccut9sh03r69su mode=list] Continue reading “Mirror, Mirror Camera, camera on the wall – USA wants to see the video”

We have more dead baby Dolphins washing up on the beach.

And this is why I’d be very careful about swimming in the sound and completely steer clear of locally caught oysters.  I think right now it pays to be very selective about locally caught seafood as there is so much we still do not know about the damage being done by the submerged oil from the BP/Transocean blowout, oil that would have been skimmed in other locales but some buttheads at Teams Obama and BP made the decision to mix the oil with Corexit at the well head so it would sink to the sea bottom, effectively concealing the true extent of the oil released.

Meantime Karen Nelson at the Sun Herald checks in with 4 more dead baby dolphins on Horn Island plus another in Alabama. In advance of Lawn Mower Fumes Bryant and Boss Hogg along with their stooge Bill Walker at DMR downplaying the deaths, Nelson puts things in perspective:

Four baby dolphins lay dead in the sand on the south side of Horn Island and one on Ono Island off Orange Beach, Ala., Tuesday.

That’s more dolphins dead in one day than all the dolphins, of any age, found dead in Alabama in 2008.

My mind is open to the possibility Teams Obama and BP have endangered the lives of the public by trying to conceal how much oil spilled from the blowout so the fines BP will pay under the Oil Pollution Act are minimized. To the extent Boss Hogg and Lawn Mower Fumes Bryant have constantly downplayed the impacts of the oil they too are complicit in this IMHO.

sop