Ethics Lawyers in the USA

Attorneys and Disabled Clients - What Attorneys Need to Know When Setting Up The Initial Appointment - What attorneys need to know when working with disabled clients in Nashville, Tennessee and throughout the United States: Your law office just received a phone call from a deaf or hearing-impaired potential client. The potential-client is requesting a meeting to retain your services. The potential-client has also requested that you provide an interpreter for the meeting.

The Court of Appeals has held that even where there is a contractual fee shifting provision, that the court retains discretion to limit any award to a reasonable level. Successful parties will have to be ready and able to prove that requested fees are reasonable, even where the other party has expressly agreed by contract to pay all fees.

An interesting case in Missouri has made headlines recently regarding the use of an alleged forged estate planning document resulting in first-degree murder charges. William Van Note, a 67 year-old retiree, and his long-time girlfriend, Sharon Dickson, were shot during a home invasion in 2010, killing Dickson and critically injuring Van Note, wounding him with a gunshot to the head.

Two Privileges Protecting the Husband-Wife Relationship: Confidential Communications and Refusal to Testify in Criminal Proceedings - As we pointed out in a 2008 post, there are two marital/spousal privileges in Texas: the confidential communication privilege as defined by Rule 504(a) and the privilege not to testify in a criminal trial as defined by Rule 504(b) of the Texas Rules of Evidence.

Protecting Attorney Client Relationship, Privileged Information from Government Subpoena - The attorney work-product and the attorney-client privilege are often confused with each other. Although related, insofar as they both concern the attorney client relationship, they are distinct privileges protecting different types of information for completely different rationales.

Investigation of Intentional Prosecutorial Misconduct by Williamson County DA’s Office - In the 1980s Michael Morton was wrongfully, and unjustly, convicted of the murder of his wife (here and here). To say that prosecutorial misconduct was the primary reason for Morton’s conviction would be the proverbial understatement.

Core of Defense of Third Person is What the Actor Reasonably Believes Concerning the Situation of the Third Person - It was a hectic, confusing scene in Dallas on December 2, 2007. A fight broke out between two gangs: Kirby Block and Manett Boys. It was never clearly established what, or who, precipitated the fight.

In a previous post, we outlined the case of Ernest “Randy” Comeaux, an inmate serving six life sentences for a series of rapes from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. The background of the case can be found here. In November of 1998 Lafayette Police Department Captain James Craft received an anonymous telephone call that linked Comeaux to the rapes.

Ernest “Randy” Comeaux is currently an inmate serving six life sentences, without the benefit of parole, at the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer, Louisiana. The facts of Comeaux crime were detailed by a Louisiana Court of Appeals in the matter of Smith v. Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Department on April 24, 2004:

Writing in the Pittsburgh Law Review, University of California Law Professor Edward J. Inwinkelried discussed in detail the history and legal parameters of evidentiary privileges. He opened his treatise with this observation: “From society’s perspective, the rules governing privileged communications, such as those between a client and his or her attorney are arguably the most important doctrines in evidence law.”