Judicial Reports: LexPress: Driving Conditions

By Lily Henning

Posted 11-09-08

How politics runs over the law, when bar leaders must fight for privilege, what the FDA is obliged to reveal, and why the Knicks' coach is like everybody else.

CONTROLLING POLITICAL AUTHORITY
Voters nationwide might have said Tuesday that their chief concern was “corruption” but New Yorkers do things their own way. Case in point: state Controller Alan Hevesi handily won a second term (the constant barrage of front-page Daily News and the Post scandal photos notwithstanding.) But voters might ultimately not decide whether he winds up back in his old office in Albany. The state Senate can try Hevesi for his use of a state-paid driver to chauffeur his ailing wife, but there’s a wait now to see what rules of evidence the Senate must use. Nobody, it seems, quite knows what to say. You can’t dare criticize the voters. Eliot Spitzer said it wouldn’t be “proper” for him to comment. And Mayor Michael Bloomerg told reporters: “You can make the case that the public has spoken.” We’re still waiting to see whether Albany County District Attorney David Soares will bring criminal charges against Hevesi over the ethics lapses.

THE NEXT WAIVE
The National Law Journal reports on state bar associations’ efforts to protect attorney-client privilege in the face of a Department of Justice directive that instructs prosecutors in cases involving corporate defendants to offer leniency in return for attorney-client privilege waivers. Some states, including the New York Bar Association, are considering changing their own professional conduct rules to sidestep the waiver. But state bar President Mark Alcott tells the NLJ that he’s unsure such a rule would work in practice, since the client ultimately has the right to waive and could succumb to pressure from the government.

 

REPRODUCING EVIDENCE
A reproductive rights group can subpoena White House documents regarding over-the-counter sale of the Plan B contraceptive pill, Brooklyn federal Magistrate Judge Viktor Pohorelsky ruled yesterday. The Center for Reproductive Rights is suing the Food and Drug Administration, claiming the White House has been putting pressure on the agency to keep conservative voters happy, the Post reports. In August the FDA approved the morning after pill for over the counter sale to women 18 and over. They key issue for the Center (and conservatives) is whether the pill can go to girls under 18. Pohorelsky said the FDA demonstrated “bad faith” in its decision-making concerning the drug and also said the group could question the director of the FDA’s Office of New Drugs about her knowledge of the review process. The pill goes into New York drug stores this week.

EQUALITY BEFORE . . . THE BENCH
Just because you’re famous and rich, you can’t take an eternity to question your witnesses. Manhattan federal Judge Gerard Lynch denied a request by New York Knicks coach Isaiah Thomas’s lawyers to depose the woman who is suing him on sexual harassment claims for three days straight. “The wealth and celebrity of some of the parties to this case does not make the case any more complex than other discrimination cases,” Lynch wrote in an order made public yesterday. He said that the pre-trial testimony normally takes just seven hours, the Post reports — but is allowing the legal team to ask questions of former team executive Anucha Browne Sanders for two days. Browne Sanders sued Thomas and Madison Square Garden Chairman James Dolan, accusing Thomas of making sexual advances and then firing her when she complained. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a determination in her favor in September.

Posted by Dirk on November 9, 2006 09:08 AM to Judicial Reports