New Hampshire Supreme Court Reviews Family Court Decision on Home Schooling

Custody issues are almost always best-decided by parents outside the courthouse.  Sometimes, however, a school choice dispute drives post-divorce parents into the courtroom.In a case percolating through New Hampshire, a family court judge endorsed a parenting plan between feuding parents that featured public school over home-schooling by the mother.  The case was argued before the New Hampshire Supreme Court last week with a decision expected soon.Mother, Brenda Voydatch, claims a constitutional First Amendment right to direct her daughter's education in accord with her deeply-held religious beliefs.  Father, on the other hand, petitioned the family court for an order that his daughter attend public school.  The family...

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Posted in: child custody,family court,family law,First Amendment,New Hampshire Supreme Court,religion

UM Law Grad Wins at SCOTUS in Female Prisoner Assault Case

University of Michigan Law QuadAs a young attorney back in the early-1990s, I worked for a Detroit law firm and moonlighted as an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit Mercy. The adjunct instructor gig was made possible by my willingness to teach federally mandated law courses to female prisoners at the Scott Correctional Facility in Plymouth, MI.  One of their chief complaints: sexual assaults by the guards.The abuse was so common at Scott Correctional, the inmates initiated a lawsuit back in 1996 that eventually resulted in a $15 million jury verdict in the Washtenaw County Circuit Court.  It took until 2008 for the inmates to get their verdict and their vindication.Earlier this week, UM Law graduate David Mills, a Cleveland,...

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Posted in: criminal defense,David Mills,lawyer,Michelle Ortiz,prison,Scott Correctional,summary judgment,University of Detroit Mercy,University of Michigan Law School

Adultery in the Marital Bed

Please; Not in the Marital BedAlways poor judgment, sometimes an adulterous liason makes it into the marital bed.  If the cuckholded spouse learns of the at-home trist, the ensuing divorce is very nasty.This circumstance was recently featured in the NYT.  The article is of note in this blog mostly because it quotes a well-known Michigan divorce attorney; Richard Roane of Grand Rapids. With New York finally following the rest of the states in 2009, all 50-states now have "no fault" divorce laws on the books.  Each state is different, however, as to how adultery, if and when proven, is factored into the divorce judgment.The Michigan Penal Code has long-contained a chapter on adultery, defined as, "the sexual intercourse of 2 persons,...

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Posted in: adultery,divorce,family court,family law,felony,lawyer,no fault divorce,Richard Roane

Dr. Dre Is In the House; The Michigan Supreme Courthouse

Honigman Miller's top-notch First Amendment lawyer, Herschel Fink, seems to get all the great cases; at least in my humble opinion.  Today, Fink argued on behalf of Rapper Dr. Dre before the Michigan Supreme Court while Dre's high-powered Los Angeles legal counsel was listening to Mr. Fink from the Court's well-appointed counsel's table.This case has been up and down the court system here in Michigan for ten-years.The dispute goes back to Dre's last Detroit concert in July 2000 at the Joe Louis Arena.  Dennis Archer was the Mayor, but was out of town.  Dre was on his infamous "Up in Smoke" tour along with Eminem and Snoop Dog.  The boys had cooked up a racy video deemed inappropriate by the Detroit Police for the youngsters...

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Posted in: Dennis Archer,Dr. Dre,Eminem,First Amendment,Herschel Fink,lawyer,Michigan Court of Appeals,Michigan Supreme Court,prior restraint,privacy,Snoop Dog,Wayne County Circuit Court

SCOTUS Reprise: Stripper's Estate Gets Second Oral Argument

Money isn't everything, right.  Yet here is SCOTUS, taking a close second look at the money.A case involving a Texas Billionaire's massive estate and a washed-up model turned stripper is on the SCOTUS docket for oral argument today, for the second time.  You recall this case. The estate of former Guess Jeans model whose, er, "married" name was Vickie Lynn Marshall, and who worked under the name Anna Nicole Smith, has carried on the lawsuit she filed shortly after J. Howard's death in 1995 at age 90. Plenty of eyebrows were raised and family feathers ruffled in 1994 when Mr. Marshall took Smith as his third wife.  Then he died and the lawsuits began. And these lawsuits have just not stopped, despite (and perhaps because of) the...

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Posted in: Anna Nicole Smith,bankruptcy,constitution,J. Howard Marshall,Lyle Denniston,probate court litigation,SCOTUS,trust,trustee

ABA Proposes to Drop LSAT Requirement for Law School Applicants

The dreaded LSAT scantron.From time-to-time this law blog has addressed the effects that the down economy has had on the legal profession. In doing so, we’ve alerted our readers to the collateral effects now becoming manifest for recent graduates of the nation’s 250+ law schools. We’ve often asked the question: do we really need more lawyers?The latest development in this rough chapter of the profession is the current proposal of the American Bar Association to drop the requirement that students entering law school take the LSAT.Doesn’t this sound like a good thing? Many critics have long-asserted that the only thing this test measures is one’s aptitude for taking a standardized test. Well, not so fast.The consensus among the industry professionals...

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Posted in: ABA,Cooley Law School,Great Recession,law school,lawyer

Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Brian Zahra Elevated to Supreme Court

Judge Brian ZahraJustice Maura Corrigan’s resignation last week left an important vacancy at the Michigan Supreme Court at the outset of Governor Rick Snyder’s tenure.  Justice Corrigan's seat was replaced today with the appointment of long-serving Court of Appeals Judge Brian Zahra.As this blog has noted over the past 18-months, the dissention among the liberal and conservative justices on our High Court has become public, and nasty.  While Judge Zahra is certainly a conservative judge, he has a legal scholar’s temperament and strong work ethic.  He assumes Justice Corrigan’s seat, and the balance of her term, at a time when the Court has seen some embarrassing escapades and needs a rapprochement. Judge Zahra was a...

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Posted in: Dennis Archer,Governor Rick Snyder,John Engler,Judge Brian Zahra,Justice Maura Corrigan,law review,Michigan Court of Appeals,Michigan Supreme Court,University of Detroit School of Law

Is Law School Worth the Tuition Investment?

Graphic by Peter & Maria HoeyDoes Michigan’s economy really need six law schools pumping over a thousand newly minted graduates into the service sector every year?  Unlike many job seekers, most new lawyers are heavily debt-burdened; some carrying well over $100,000 in student loans.  This can lead to desperation.  The economy is still smarting in several key sectors here in Michigan.  Both the auto and real estate sectors appear to be clawing their way back, but the jobless rate remains stubbornly high.  Most experts are saying we are in for another half-decade of “recovery”.In down-times, higher education, as an industry, does remarkably well.  People take a hard look at their employment prospects...

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Posted in: attorney,Chicago-Kent Law Review,Cooley Law School,law school,lawyer,U.S. News and World Report

Email Snooping by Spouse Results in Felony Criminal Charges

Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper has elected to prosecute a Rochester Hills man for accessing his wife’s email account. The emails were accessed from a computer that the husband purchased for family use.The criminalization of conduct involving computers and privacy has had federal and state law components. For example, in the federal realm, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was initially passed to proscribe electronic eavesdropping and was significantly expanded in 1986 from traditional “wired” forms of electronic communication, to include all forms of digital electronic communication.A few years earlier, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act outlawed electronic espionage. The federal computer crime scheme also features several...

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Posted in: criminal defense attorney,divorce,family court,Feiger Law,felony,Jessica Cooper,Oakland Circuit Judge Martha Anderson,Oakland County Prosecutor,unauthorized access computer

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan Resigns to Head DHS

Justice Maura CorriganIn the first business-day of the new year, a significant development is unfolding at the highest levels of government for the State of Michigan.  Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan is expected to resign from the Court in order to serve in newly-minted Governor Rick Snyder's cabinet; most likely as the Director of the Michigan Department of Human Services.This gives us pause on several levels.  The first consequence of Justice Corrigan's resignation is that it provides the new governor, deemed a political "moderate" along the lines of William Milliken, with his first opportunity to appoint a justice to the high court.Governor Snyder's first appointment comes at a time of acute dissension at the High...

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Posted in: Department of Human Services,DHS,Governor Rick Snyder,Great Recession,Justice Maura Corrigan,Justice Robert Young,Michigan Supreme Court,SCOTUS