The conventional wisdom is to advise a client contemplating a defamation action against filing suit unless he is sure he can withstand the scrutiny of an angry adversary. Claiming a damaged reputation is a risky thing to do if your reputation is already questionable. Besides, merely repeating the harm one imagines done to oneself gives the world a second look at what you yourself perceive to be damaging and injurious claims.
So I read with care a new lawsuit filed in New York on behalf of a young lawyer named Joseph Rakofsky. He’s sued not just The...
May 13, 2011
I poked my head into the courtroom in which jury selection drags along, draining the state’s coffers of needed cash, in the case of State v. Komisarjevsky. The courtroom was all but empty. There were two layers on each side, all looking weary. And to the far right, taking it all in, sat Dr. William Petit, Jr. The doctor sat surveying the proceedings with an almost proprietary air. He must have these deaths, you see. And we must give them to him.
I poked my head in the chambers of a judge in the building on my way out. "I popped in on the Komisrajevsky trial," I said. "The room...
May 12, 2011
I was a little bemused to read the headline on a recent news story reflecting a debate about whether Osama bin Laden had, in fact, been murdered. If ever there were a fellow in need of killing, it was he. But the discussion is an important one, reflecting, as it does, the distinction between mere acts of power and the ability of states to kill with authority.
The manner and means of bin Laden’s death are not in dispute. His death is a homicide, the killing of one man by another. The means is by gunshot wounds. These are the basic clinical conclusions a medical examiner would...
May 8, 2011
I am not much of a son, so Mother’s Day doesn’t move me. My mother and I are estranged. We both struggled to get what we needed out of life. Her road put her in the arms of a man who despised me, and drove me from the home they built when I was still in high school. I carry a grudge about that still. But my mother is on my mind this year. That’s because of Tanya McDowell. She and my mother have a lot in common.
Ms. McDowell is accused of larceny. You see, she sent her son to the Brookside elementary school in Norwalk, Connecticut. She did so even though it appears...
May 7, 2011
May 5, 2011
I am going to miss Christopher Droney when he is confirmed as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a...
May 3, 2011
Osama bin Laden is dead. Good. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the United States boasted of the jihad he and his like-minded followers were...
May 2, 2011
Police aren’t releasing the name just yet, but another man died this weekend in Waterbury, Connecticut, after being zapped with a Taser. Of...
April 28, 2011
For those of you seduced by the notion that the world is a rational place, look no further than President Obama’s decision to release a copy of...
April 28, 2011
For those of you seduced by the notion that the world is a rational place, look no further than President Obama’s decision to release a copy of...
April 27, 2011
I was in prison yesterday, visiting clients and potential clients. Between meetings, I sat in a professional visiting room, where so-called "contact"...