JUDGE ADVOCATE 
The Second Circuit has tossed a man’s conviction in a gun possession case because the judge, the Eastern District’s Edward Korman, allowed the introduction of new evidence during jury deliberations. The New York Law Journal has the story. Believing that prosecutors had “overlooked” securing a trace report on a gun found in the bag of the defendant, who fled while being questioned by police, Korman allowed a government agent to testify before the jury that the gun, while made in Spain, could be traced to a Maryland purchaser. “They [defense counsel] picked up on it and I don't know why it can’t be corrected,” Korman said. “It’s one thing to put the government to its burden of proof. It’s another to play games here.” But the Second Circuit disagreed. Judge J. Clifford Wallace said, “The government does not get a free pass merely because the district judge participates,” and while it “never formally moved to reopen, the government took an active role in advocating, shaping and ultimately exploiting that decision for its benefit.” 

"PARTY TO A SHAM" 
From The Wall Street Journal’s legal blog comes word of a decision by Southern District Judge Jed Rakoff to reject a proposed co-lead plaintiff in a securities fraud class action because the plaintiff knew too little about the case. Saying he would “not be party to a sham,” Rakoff rejected the Steamship Trade Association Longshoremen’s Pension Fund from serving as the co-lead plaintiff for the Monster Worldwide securities fraud class action. Wrote Rakoff, “To be sure, the requirement is modest: class representative status may be denied only ‘where the class representatives have so little knowledge of and involvement in the class action that they would be unable or unwilling to protect the interests of the class against the possibly competing interests of the attorneys.’ Here, as part of class certification discovery, defendants deposed STA-ILA witness Horace Alston, Co-Chairman of the fund, who testified that he was the person at STA-ILA most knowledgeable about the lawsuit. . . . However, Mr. Alston then testified that he did not know the name of the stock at issue in this case, did not know the name of either individual defendant, did not know whether STA-ILA ever owned Monster stock, did not know if an amended complaint had been filed, did not know whether he had ever seen any complaint in the action, did not know that defendant McKelvey had moved to dismiss the complaint, and did not know that STA-ILA had moved for pre-discovery summary judgment.”

FATHER AND SON 
The Staten Island Advance reports on the arrest of Renauld Gregg, 29, the son of retired administrative law judge Ronald Gregg. Gregg the younger is accused of impersonating an attorney in order to sell a woman’s home, then keeping the $156,877 and leaving his victim in foreclosure. “Unfortunately for this victim, Mr. Gregg was not an attorney and never handed over the proceeds of the sale,” said District Attorney Daniel Donovan. “Nothing other than bits and pieces, speaking with people in the district attorney’s office, who wanted to speak with him regarding a transaction,” said Ronald Gregg. “But the allegation that he was representing himself as a lawyer, I had not heard that.”

GOODMAN AND SILVER 
The Daily News ponders whether the harsh words Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman had recently for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his role in sex case involving his former lead counsel implicates the judicial pay raise standoff. Goodman, the article notes, has both written and been extensively quoted on the pay raise issue. “This Court finds all of the underlying Facts and circumstances and conduct on the part of any lawyer, and specifically, a lawyer in the employ of and on the payroll of the State of New York, as counsel to the excessively powerful Speaker of the Assembly, and the cavalier conduct of said Speaker as alleged, outrageous and a disgrace,” Goodman wrote, while ruling that Silver was not financially responsible for the state's settlement in the sex case.