Last month, in what has to be one of Daniel Snyder’s stupidest moves ever, the Washington Redskins’ owner filed suit against the City Paper for an article that was critical of Snyder and his stewardship of the team. The filing prompted an avalanche of other new reports and articles rehashing the criticisms contained in the City Paper and questioning Snyder’s …
My wife heard a lot of terrible and heart-wrenching stories while interviewing Iraqi victims of the Abu Ghraib torture. She was always completely spent whenever she got back from one of her trips to the Middle East, and I swear that experience took ten years off of her life. One of the stories I liked best was one that would …
I am pretty good with faces and with names. I have always been impressed — almost flattered — by people who remembered my name after a single meeting, and at one point early in my career, I decided to make a more concerted effort to learn people’s names upon meeting them and to commit those names to memory. The problem, …
Sitting in Room 117 of D.C. Superior Court last week, I caught the tail end of a bench trial in which the defense attorney read her closing argument from a sheet of paper. I have no idea how persuasive the content of her argument was because the delivery was so poor. I had the feeling I was sitting in an …
We are having trouble with the sliding door on our mini-van. I take it back to the Toyota dealership shop a couple of times and spend a fortune to get it fixed but there still seems to be a problem with it. Finally, when I complain about having to fix it once again, the mechanic swears to me that …
Many of the rude words and gestures I know today I learned from driving with my father while growing up. I didn’t learn these things from my father, because I never once heard him utter a bad word. It wasn’t that using a curse word was in bad taste, though he clearly thought that too. It was that it was …
D.C. Fire Department Chief Kenneth Ellerbe created a minor controversy recently when he proposed changing the name of his department to Fire Emergency Medical Services (FEMS). Ellerbe suggested that, since the department also provides emergency care for the sick and injured, the new name would more accurately describe the department’s functions. In addition to causing some confusion, the major …
I took a break yesterday afternoon from losing to Norm Pattis at Words with Friends to finish up a civil protection order hearing in D.C. Many colleagues eschew any case involving a domestic dispute. The cases are messy. People tend to cry. There is lots of emotion and not much law. I, on the other hand, love these cases. I …
Earlier this week, I caught the tail-end of a DWI trial in which Michael Bruckheim was representing the defendant. Bruckheim had attended portions of my last DWI trial in D.C., and I decided to repay the favor. I wanted to see him cross examine the same police officer who had testified in my case. And, recognizing that everyone has a …
You would think that Jeff Gamso, as a criminal defense lawyer focusing on death penalty cases, might look down his nose at lawyers handling drunk driving cases. After all, the difference in stakes is enormous. You would be wrong. In the same blog entry in which he vents about listservs, Gamso criticizes the notion, often seen on listservs, that new …