Q: next best thing to visiting The Gates in person in Central Park?A: send your twin brother with a camera and then borrow haiku from George Swede!Click the links with each black & white image to see the original photo– by Arthur J. Giacalone (all rights reserved; to enlarge, click the button in the lower righthand corner of each photo). [update: find three Giacalone haiga (pictures with linked haiku) using photos from The Gates at Simply Haiku Journal, Modern Haiga, Vol. 5 no. 1 (Spring 2007)]original in full colorThe old wind chimes
in the basement for winter
tinkle from my sigh
original in full color
coldest day of the yearthe lone skater lapshis breath
original in full color
traffic tie-up
a fisherman on the bridge
casts a long line“the old wind chimes” & “traffic tie-up” from The Heron’s Nest“coldest day of the year” from Almost Unseen
saffron flagsabove and below the bridge —duck feet au courantoriginal in full color
the runner’s vestblends in —through The Gates of central park[March 4, 2005]original in full color
potluckThe guys at Legal Ethics Forum have it right: BigLaw partners have
a lot to learn from Generation Y’s values and priorities. Sure hope the NYC Y’ers gotto see The Gates (more than once). (see Law.com article) Maybe Prof. Schiltz’s Sermonis working.I’m just mad about Saffron
Saffron’s mad about me
I’m just mad about Saffron
She’s just mad about me
p.s. Don’t miss Monica Bay’s ode to orange.
original in full color
March 4, 2005
just mad about saffron
poll taxed
The online poll by the Kingston [NY] Freeman that we described yesterday received over 41,000 responses,
and not the usual 500 to 2000 votes from the paper’s readers. The poll asked whether readers believe Rep.
Maurice Hinchey’s claim that Karl Rove was behind the phony documents given to CBS concerning Pres.
Bush’s military record. The result of the Hinchey/Rove poll: 59.5 percent agreed with the Democratic
congressman’s theory while 40.5 percent did not.
A Freeman article today (March 4, 2005) says:
Political insiders believe the unusually high number of responses was the result of voting by
operative bloggers from both the left and right.
Freeman Publisher Ira Fusfeld said that, in the past, local readers generally have participated
honestly in the polls and enabled the system to gauge public opinion accurately. . . .
Fusfeld said the level of participation in the Hinchey poll is telling. “What’s sad is that in
today’s political climate, even a poll as relatively benign as this one became the subject of a
tug of war between the left and right, both of which thought this was so important that they
couldn’t let the other side ‘win,'” Fusfeld said.
Hinchey’s aide Dan Ahouse wrote to several webloggers asking them to get the word out to join the poll. In Ahouse’s letter, he asserts “this weekend, the right-wing
bloggers began to flood the poll and now the results are vastly one-sided,” and concludes:
“I’m writing to ask for your help in stopping this manipulation of public
opinion about our Congressman. Please forward this information to
anyone interested in standing up to the right-wing distortion and ask
they they register their opinion in the poll.”
In response, “mdmc” posted the Ahouse letter at DemocraticUnderground, with comments,
and it was repeated by lowbridge at freeRepublic, including “Please help the BIG MO take
on Kkkarl and the Orwellian right wing press. Please vote in this online poll.” Chicflick at MyDD
opined: “Important we show those as courageous as Hinchey that we have their backs!” Mozarky2
left a message for lowbridge saying: “I don’t know, or care whether it’s true or not, but let me
tell you, it’s been fun.” Talk about a b.s. moment.
You can only imagine how proud I am that my fellow Dems/liberals have achieved this great
victory. And very pleased to see that they have such important things on their minds.
a new year begins–
nonsense
piled on nonsense
naughty child–
instead of his chores
a snow Buddha
Kobayashi Issa translated by David G. Lanoue
clone that judge
In the spirit of ethicalEsq, let’s give a tip of the hat to Hon. Loretta A. Preska, US Dist. Ct. Judge,
SDNY, for her excellent performance cutting fees in the Bristol-Myers Squibb Securities Litigation,
Hon. Loretta A. Preska
orig. photo and bio here
In slicing a request for $22 million in fees to about $12 million (from two firms with too many names to
repeat), Judge Preska helped clarify for other judges — and maybe even for plaintiffs’ lawyers — the
factors that need to be considered when counsel want to be paid a percentage of their clients’
winnings. Here, lead counsel wanted about 7.5% of the settlement payout. In the decision, Judge
Preska told them why they hadn’t earned that much (per NYLJ), pointing out:
“[I]t is not thirty times more difficult to settle a thirty million dollar case as it is to settle a one
million dollar case,”
The case “fell along the low end of the continuum of risks” for the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
“Lead counsel merely drafted complaints setting out roughly chronologically the material
in the public record and alleging Defendant’s knowledge and scienter.”
The situation “suggests that it was the Company’s desire, prompted by the SEC, to put its
house in order that caused the settlement, not any action on the part of Lead Counsel” —
and, the attorneys benefited from the existence of an SEC action based on similar facts.
Preska joins my short list of judicial heroes willing to police unreasonable fees (which includes
NYS justice Charles E. Ramos). I nonetheless wonder what — other than self-aggrandizement and
delusions of entitlement — would make the lawyers involved here believe they deserve to take from
their clients even the lesser amount granted of $12 million.
“tinyredcheck” I also wonder whether any of the thousands of Main Street p/i lawyers who
charge a standard contingency fee to the average injured client are paying any
attention. They ignore ABA Ethics Opinion 94-389; they ignore the lip-service
given by trial lawyer associations to the requirement that contingency fees be
based on “risk, cost and effort-required;” and they even ignore the preaching
of Prof. Brickman and ethicalEsq. If only we could clone Judge Preska, and
have her reviewing contingency fee agreements across the land. A guy can
dream.
into the night
we talk of human cloning
snowflakes
winter solstice
our son reads a fairy tale
to his unborn son
Still at the edge
of its shadow—
the frog
from To Hear the Rain (Brooks Books, 2002)
Comments Off on clone that judge