Cupcake Leaves the Bakery

The ABA Journal Tells us More

Ex-Prostitute Leaves Law to Write Movie Script

Posted Sep 25, 2007, 08:42 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Lawyer Cupcake Brown, once a prostitute and a drug user, is leaving Bingham McCutchen to write the movie script for her best-selling memoir A Piece of Cake.

A four-day crack binge nearly killed Brown, who turned her life around and graduated from law school in 2001, the Recorder reports in a story republished by New York Lawyer. She wrote the book over four years while working as an associate at the law firm.

“I enjoyed the practice of law, but I want to help people,” Brown told the legal publication. “I’ve just been inundated with speaking requests, but it’s hard to do when you’ve got billable hours and lots of responsibilities.”

Chelsea Gets Daddy Involved [With a Tiny Lawsuit Threat]

Our good friend David Lat over at Abovethelaw.com found a tasty treat about Chelsea Clinton. Nice work David.

(Threatened) Lawsuit of the Day: Chelsea Clinton Sics Dad on Italian Eatery

Chelsea Clinton Osso Bucco Nino Selimaj Above the Law blog.jpg We met Chelsea Clinton at a wedding once. She wasn’t super-friendly; in fact, she was downright standoffish. She gave off this aloof, “stay away starf**kers” sort of vibe.

Chilly Chelsea couldn’t be more different from her gregarious parents, whom we’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Bill and Hillary Clinton are friendly and down-to-earth, despite being far more recognizable than even their famous daughter. (Yeah, we know, they’re politicians and she’s an ordinary citizen — but that doesn’t means she can’t be nice to people.)

Based on our firsthand experience with Chelsea Clinton — and it was an overseas wedding, so we were actually in her presence for several days — we weren’t that surprised to learn about this story. From WCBSTV:

A celebrity photo has led a former president to send a threatening letter to a Manhattan restaurant owner.President Bill Clinton has demanded that the owner of Greenwich Village restaurant Osso Buco remove a picture of his daughter Chelsea that’s been gracing the walls of the family-style Italian eatery, alongside other celebrity photographs.

Owner Nino Selimaj tells CBS 2 that the picture has been up for years and has never posed a problem until now.

What’s the big deal? Such pictures are commonplace in restaurants of a certain type, and they’re all over the place at Osso Buco — placing Chelsea on notice, when she posed for the photo, that it might be hung on the wall.

Selimaj says the daughter of the former president and current presidential candidate is just one of his many customers at Osso Buco. But Mr. Clinton says his daughter is a private citizen and he doesn’t want the photograph of her posing with Selimaj hanging in the restaurant.Mr. Clinton’s Counseler [sic], Douglas J. Band, sent a letter to Selimaj with the demands and even a threat should Selimaj choose to leave the photograph up.

Doug Band’s letter is available here. He writes that “[w]e reserve the right to exercise any and all options available to us if you refuse to comply.”

Thoughts? It strikes us as much ado about nothing — and by complaining about the photo, Chelsea has given it far more attention than it ever would have received. But would any experts on the right of publicity care to chime in?

Bill Clinton, Eatery At Odds Over Chelsea Photo [wcbstv.com]
Clinton In Restaurant Row [The Smoking Gun]

Maine’s Adoption of Primary Aggressor Doctrine in DV Arrests Will Ensnare Innocent Men

By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks
Glenn is a guest blogger for A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar… today – Thank You Glenn

LD 1039, which was recently signed by Governor Baldacci, requires law enforcement agencies to adopt a “process to evaluate and determine who is the predominant physical aggressor in a domestic violence situation.” While this sounds reasonable, in reality the predominant aggressor doctrine functions as a method of directing police officers to arrest men, not women, when responding to domestic disturbance calls.

The stakes here are high. Because Maine also has a mandatory arrest law in domestic violence cases, instituting the predominant aggressor doctrine will lead to the arrests of many innocent men. Since Maine family courts must consider evidence of domestic violence in determining child custody, an officer’s decision on who to arrest can often determine who will get custody of the couple’s children after the couple divorces or separates.

Under the predominant aggressor doctrine, when police officers respond to a domestic disturbance call, they are instructed not to focus on who attacked whom and who inflicted the injuries, but instead consider different factors which will almost always weigh against men. These factors include: comparable size; comparable strength; the person allegedly least likely to be afraid; who has access to or control of family resources (i.e., who makes more money); and others. Given these factors, it is very difficult for officers to arrest female offenders.

That women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat cannot be reasonably denied. The National Institute of Mental Health funded and oversaw two of the largest studies of domestic violence ever conducted, both of which found equal rates of abuse between husbands and wives. Professor Martin S. Fiebert of California State University, Long Beach maintains an online bibliography summarizing nearly 200 academic studies that conclude that women are as physically aggressive in their intimate relationships as men.

Women often employ the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men’s greater strength. An analysis of 552 domestic violence studies published in the Psychological Bulletin found that 38 percent of the physical injuries in heterosexual domestic assaults are suffered by men.

Crime journalist Patricia Pearson, author of When She Was Bad: Violent Women & the Myth of Innocence, explains:

“The dynamic of domestic violence is not analogous to two differently weighted boxers in a ring. There are relational strategies and psychological issues at work in an intimate relationship that negate the fact of physical strength. At the heart of the matter lies human will. Which partner–by dint of temperament, personality, life history–has the will to harm the other?”

DV policies that ignore or minimize female aggression often mean men are arrested for their wives’ or girlfriends’ violence. The highly-publicized case of former major league baseball player Scott Erickson has come to symbolize the problems with current policies.

Erickson called the police during an altercation with his girlfriend in July of 2002. According to the Associated Press, the police concluded that Erickson’s girlfriend Lisa Ortiz: initiated the fight by hurling objects; decided to come back twice after Erickson carried her out of the apartment; repeatedly kicked the apartment door; caused Erickson two minor injuries, one of them to his pitching arm; and herself suffered no injuries. Nonetheless, the police arrested Erickson. Afterwards Ortiz publicly stated that Erickson, who did not pursue her either time after carrying her out, “has never been physically abusive toward me.”

John Hamel, LCSW, author of Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse: A Comprehensive Approach, explains that under the predominant aggressor doctrine, ”Unless the officer can conduct a thorough psychosocial history on the scene, he/she is likely to make the arrest based on the potential for the man to cause greater harm…Arrests should be based on severity of assaults…without gender bias.”

LD 1039, sponsored by Representative Deborah L. Simpson (D-Auburn) and supported by the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, does have some good provisions. It mandates that the state create processes to ensure that victims can safely retrieve personal property, and that they receive notification of the defendant’s release from jail. However, the system’s reluctance to view women as anything other than victims inhibits efforts to effectively curb domestic violence. LD 1039 will aggravate this situation, further stacking the system against men.

This column appeared as part of a point/counterpoint on LD 1039 in the Lewiston Sun Journal (8/5/07).

Mike McCormick is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.

Glenn Sacks’ columns on men’s and fathers’ issues have appeared in dozens of America’s largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.

We appreciate good lawyers

Lawyer: Fake Bomb Charge an Overreaction

By RODRIQUE NGOWI

The Associated Press

September 22, 2007

The MIT student who walked into Logan International Airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweat shirt claimed it was harmless artwork. But to troopers who arrested her at gunpoint, it was a fake bomb.

Nineteen-year-old Star Simpson was charged Friday with possessing a hoax device. Her attorney described the charge as offbase and ‘almost paranoid,’ arguing at a court hearing that she did not act in a suspicious manner and had told an airport worker that the device was art.

Authorities said they were amazed that someone would wear such a device eight months after a similar scare in Boston, and six years after two of the jets hijacked in the Sept. 11 attacks took off from Logan.

‘I’m shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport,’ said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the airport’s commanding officer.

Simpson showed ‘a total disregard to understand the context of the situation she is in, which is an airport of post-9/11,’ prosecutor Wayne Margolis said at a hearing where a not guilty plea was entered for Simpson and she was released on $750 bail. Margolis had asked for $5,000 bail.

Simpson, of Lahaina, Hawaii, was arrested Friday morning outside Terminal C, home to United Airlines, Jet Blue and other carriers.

She wore the white circuit board on her chest over a black hooded sweat shirt, Pare said at a news conference. The battery-powered rectangular device had nine flashing lights, and Simpson had Play-Doh in her hands, he said.

Two phrases that looked hand-drawn _ ‘Socket to me’ and ‘Course VI’ _ were written on the back of Simpson’s sweat shirt, which authorities displayed to the media. Course VI appears to refer to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s major of electrical engineering and computer science.

‘She said that it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day,’ Pare said. ‘She claims that it was just art, and that she was proud of the art and she wanted to display it.’

There was a career fair at the university on Thursday, according to the university’s Web site.

Simpson is the secretary of MIT’s Electrical Research Society, according to her lawyer. She is a graduate of the Hawaii Preparatory Academy, a private boarding school, has won school prizes for chemistry and leadership and had received a Congressional citation for her work in robotics, said Ross Schreiber, who was appointed to represent Simpson.

He said she was not a risk to flee, cooperated with authorities and was a good student with no prior convictions. He said they would fight the charges.

‘I would characterize it as almost being paranoid at this point,’ Schreiber said of authorities’ response.

He said Simpson had gone to the airport to meet her boyfriend. ‘She was there for legitimate purposes,’ Schreiber said.

A Massachusetts Port Authority staffer manning an information booth in the terminal became suspicious when Simpson _ wearing the device _ approached to ask about an incoming flight, Pare said. Simpson then walked outside, and the staffer notified a nearby trooper.

The trooper, joined by others with submachine guns, confronted her in front of the terminal.

‘She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,’ Pare said. ‘Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force.’

He added, ‘She’s lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue.’

The terminal was not evacuated and flights were not affected, airport officials said.

Boston was the focus of a security scare Jan. 31 when dozens of battery-powered devices that featured a character making an obscene gesture with a finger were discovered in various locations. Bomb squads were deployed and some transportation links were closed temporarily. They turned out to be a promotion for the Cartoon Network. Two men were charged in that incident, but prosecutors dropped the charges after they apologized and performed community service.

Dan’s an Aviation Expert Now

Forget the lawsuit of $70M, Dan’s decided that he knows a lot about planes and says the new 787 Dreamliner is possibly unsafe.

Aaron Rowe at Wired has the story ::

By taking a cheap shot at Boeing, Dan Rather may be headed for a comeback less graceful than Britney Spears’ performance at the MTV Music Awards.

On the most recent edition of his new show, he reported on Tuesday that the new 787 Dreamliner aircraft may be unsafe. Since then, dozens of news agencies have jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them are reporting that the carbon fiber frame may not be as safe as aluminum. Few have bothered to question Rather’s claims that the composite materials are brittle, more likely to shatter on impact, and prone to emit poisonous chemicals when ignited.

I haven’t yet watched the segment, but I have read the full transcript [doc]. As a researcher trained materials engineering, I consider the written summaries that appeared in the news today to be very misleading.

While there is a lot of weight behind the argument that composite materials are not as well-studied as aircraft aluminum, the reasoning behind the flurry of recent articles may be faulty. First off, if a plane crashes, the composite frame will definitely not be the only source of toxic fumes. Second, high performance composites have been used in fighter aircraft and for years. Sports cars, race cars, and train cars made from composite materials have endured fantastic crashes. Claims that the impact toughness of carbon fiber is inadequate may be premature.

The title of Rather’s story, Plastic Planes, indicates a lack of grounding in science. High-performance carbon composites are far stronger than plastics. My main concern is how well they will hold up to water — a point that is only briefly touched on during the show. Because they are vulnerable to slow and steady degradation by moisture, the new materials may not last as long as aluminum. The report by Rather was correct to explain that testing them for wear and tear will be more difficult. That was, perhaps, his most valid point.
To get a second opinion, I contacted Cirrus Design, a company that has been making small aircraft from composite materials for years. Here is what they had to say:

Though Cirrus’ are made with different composite materials than the Dreamliner, there is no reason to believe that composites cannot be made every bit as strong as aluminum. Some would argue there is more energy absorption in composites than in aluminum structures. Also, this Dreamliner must go through FAA Certification before it is allowed on the market, like general aviation aircraft. There is no way the FAA would allow Boeing , nor would Boeing put an unsafe, loaded with people aircraft in the sky. Safety is paramount in decision making with all aircraft manufacturers.

Perhaps this is part of an attempt by Rather to make a comeback after the debacle that resulted in his departure from CBS News. The reporter also recently filed a lawsuit against his former employer for $70 million dollars.

Eddit Griffin Gets the Hook For Using The N-Word

MIAMI (AP) - A standup routine by black comedian Eddie Griffin was stopped after he repeatedly used the N-word, a magazine’s spokesman said Wednesday. Griffin, who has appeared in movies such as “Undercover Brother” and “Date Movie” and the TV show “Malcolm & Eddie,” was performing at a Black Enterprise magazine event in the Miami suburb of Doral on Friday when he was cut off after using profanities and the N-word, said Andrew Wadium, a spokesman for the publication.

“We believe that ending the performance was the appropriate action,” Wadium said.

About 1,000 people registered for the performance.

Griffin’s publicist, Jeff Abraham, didn’t immediately return an e-mail and a call seeking comment.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who attended a meeting held by the magazine in Miami but not the performance, said the crowd gave an ovation to Earl Graves, the magazine’s publisher, when he came on stage after the 39- year-old Griffin was pulled, according to a statement on the Web site of Sharpton’s National Action Network.

The statement said Sharpton “expressed gratitude that the nation’s pre-eminent magazine for African-Americans stands behind the efforts of National Action Network in getting rid of the N-word.”

Public discussion on the word’s use increased last year following a tirade by “Seinfeld” actor Michael Richards, who used it repeatedly during a Los Angeles comedy routine and later issued a public apology.

The issue about racially insensitive remarks heated up earlier this year after talk show host Don Imus described black members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” on April 4.

At its July convention in Detroit, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held a mock funeral for the word.

Black leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Sharpton, have challenged the entertainment industry and the American public to stop using the N-word and other racial slurs.