This is a new one.  I received an unsolicited robocall (is there any other kind).  The recorded voice asked if I had been in an accident and wanted to talk to a lawyer.  If I wanted to, I was to press 3.  I did.  There was a screener who began asking questions I could not honestly answer.  It was a lapse of judgment not to make something up and see if I could get through.*  Unfortunately I was caught off guard and reluctant to make up a story.  

I hate to be such an old fuddy duddy, but I think this might run slightly afoul of Rule Arkansas Rule of Professional Conduct 7.3.  I understand there is a constitutional question whether the rules against direct solicitation can properly be applied to robocalls, but I'll leave that defense up to the guilty culprit responsible for this unseemly method of marketing.  

Unfortunately, I don't know if there's any way to catch the lawyer responsible (if indeed there is one).  Research on the Internet shows that the number is used by a generic telemarketer who does more than just sell legal services.

There are plenty of legitimate avenues for advertising.  Telemarketing is not one of them.  If you are solicited by a telemarketer please beware!  

Gerry

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* something like: I was killed in an accident with a drunken Penthouse Magazine delivery truck driver who got out of his truck in nothing but a scraggly beard and high heels, laughed at my corpse, poured his beer on it, and then got in a fistfight with the investigating officer.

Anyone who wants to help me collaborate on this website, just let me know.  In the meantime, I'm just using this to experiment with all the tools available to us.

Of course, we're still on summer break, so nothing much is going on.  If I can just keep adding a little here and a little there, though, we'll have a good start on a blog.

In the meantime, here's another attempt to show a typical advance sheet meeting agenda.  This is the one that contains a fake case done as a prank.  The Aliluyeva v. Dzhugashvili case was a joke that one of the members played on another.

As mentioned earlier, these memos are put together very hastily and tend to contain a lot of typographical and other errors.  We discuss cases decided Wednesday and Thursday on Friday mornings at 7:30.  That doesn't give us much time to digest them properly, although frankly, I think we do a pretty good job.

The schedule for our advance sheets group is fairly tight. The Arkansas Court of Appeals issues its decisions on Wednesdays. The Supreme Court issues its decisions on Thursdays. The decisions are usually available on the court's website by 10:30 or 11 o'clock in the morning.  We meet at 730 in the morning on Friday.

We take turns being responsible for reading all of the cases and reporting on them. We have different ways of doing this. Some members simply annotate the cases and bring the cases with them.  Others prepare short summaries.

Because of the time frame, there is little time to write the summaries and even less time to proofread them. The summaries are sometimes full of typographical errors. Occasionally the errors are hilarious.

Some of the summaries have been posted. They can be found on the "Bananaberry Phlogiston" website.  That website is used for continuing legal education purposes by one of our members, Gerry Schulze.  If you want to know what we do, you can check one or two of them out.  Or, if you'd rather avoid the horrible color patterns on the Bananaberry Phlogiston website, try a look at these.  

Remember, they are full of typographical errors.  They were put together quickly.  They may have major flaws.  As a practical matter, several other participants have read some or all of the cases and can help clarify the issues.

November 20, 2009
February 4, 2010
September 9, 2011
November 4, 2011
January 20, 2012
March 9, 2012
April 13, 2012.

Q:  Gerry, I have been putting Plaintiff/Appellant on the cover page of the briefs, and saw it in 4 or 5 appeal briefs, but I cannot find the authority. I noted in your Appendix cover page that you also listed on the cover , Plaintiffs/Appellants and Defendants/ Appellees

What is the authority as to why we do so?'


A:  I don't know.  I probably picked it up from a form on the first brief I ever did and just kept doing it that way.  The only rule I know of is FRAP 32(a) Form of Briefs which reads in pertinent part:


(2) Cover
The cover of the appellant’s brief must be blue; the
appellee’s, red; an intervenor’s or amicus curiae’s, green;
reply brief, gray and any supplemental, tan. The front
cover of a brief must contain:
(A) the number of the case centered at the top;
(B) the name of the court;
(C) the title of the case;
(D) the nature of the proceeding and the name of the
court, agency, or board below;
(E) the title of the brief, identifying the party or parties for
whom the brief is filed; and
(F) the name, office address, and telephone number of
counsel representing the party for whom the brief is
filed.



 Technically, you could probably restrict it to the role you play on appeal (Appellee or Appellant), completely leaving out the role you played below, and give adequate information.  Still, it seems to be the standard to recite the party's position in the Court below.   See e.g.

http://www.patentlyo.com/Briefs/WarnerBrosAppelleeBrf.pdf  
http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/briefs/wilsonamicus.pdf 
http://www.recordpress.com/pdf/USCA%208th%20cir.pdf (see sample cover).

There may be a rule.  There may not be.  Maybe there's a case. Maybe there's an en banc case (8 to 7) with a vigorous dissent holding that you should not identify the role of the litigant in the court below on the cover because it's a spoiler.  Maybe there's a split between the circuits that for some incomprehensible reason the Supreme Court has not seen fit to resolve.  I'm not going to comb the rules and case law to see if I can find it.  Nobody in St. Louis is going to pitch your brief because you put too much information on the cover.

Gerry

We hope to have some blog entries when the Arkansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals are back in session.