Personal Injury Law

Upgrading Software Curses ? Outlook File Import

Posted on February 28, 2010
It always amazes me how unhelpful the software sites of manufacturers truly are. I was forced to upgrade to Windows 7 by an accumulation of errors in XP until my choices were only either reinstall XP or install 7. I chose the latter. Yes, I own an Apple Lap Top, so I already know [...

The Death of Arbitration ? the 4th Circuit?s Time Machine

Posted on February 24, 2010
In Raymond James Financial v Bishop, the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed a district court judgment vacating an arbitration award. While the 4th Circuit opinion depicted the arbitration award as ?incoherent,? the 4th Circuit?s opinion was little better...

The Death Penalty ? Is it in Decline?

Posted on February 18, 2010
The Death Penalty Information Center, a group opposed to the death penalty, issued their year end 2009 report at deathpenaltyinfo.org. It indicated a decline in the number of executions during the decade just concluded with an up tick in 2009. The startling thing to me about this report is the assertion that there are on [...

The AAA Coffin Nail - Arbitration Requiem?

Posted on January 09, 2010
One of the things that will hamper if not ultimately destroy the utility of arbitration is that the largest non-securities self-regulatory arbitration forum, the American Arbitration Association, has begun to behave more like a scion of capitalism than a non-profit organization advocating reform...

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Covestor & kaChing ? Will Their Kung Fu Be Stronger?

Posted on December 15, 2009
Investment News posted a story by the Associated Press reporting a trend in which the investor retreats from RIAs and traditional brokers, and then goes to an online source to learn about money managers. Next, the investor can select one or a group of professional money managers to track...

Carmelo Anthony and the Pleading Rules

Posted on December 11, 2009
Carmelo Anthony, a NBA star with an $80 million dollar five year deal, according to the regular news media, found himself in the unenviable position of suing his financial manager, Larry Harmon. The news media reporting of the basic facts of the case has been garbled...

Collegiality ? The Death of Tenure?

Posted on October 29, 2009
American society seems to have accepted that one can be ?voted off the island.? But, should that be allowed in relation to government employment that is protected by due process rights? The purpose of hedging governmental employment with due process rights is to prevent jobs from being used as patronage every time the political winds [...

Should College Football Players at State Funded Universities Lose Their First Amendment Rights?

Posted on September 28, 2009
Texas Tech University football head coach Mike Leach ?suspended indefinitely? an offensive lineman ?for violating team rules.? In the copyrighted AP story published by the Daily Oklahoman, the unattributed AP story seemed to imply that the lineman was suspended because he posted to his Twitter account a complaint that he was at a Sunday [...

FINRA Warnings: Shouldn?t There Be a Rule?

Posted on September 26, 2009
The September 24 ,2009 warning by FINRA about leveraged and inverse ETFs was a bit annoying. If FINRA has to warn about it, should not there be new suitability rulemaking to go with it aimed at these products? Even the explanation by FINRA of what these products are lacks clarity for the people FINRA is [...

FINRA Dumbs Down Arbitration

Posted on September 04, 2009
Associated persons (a/k/a “financial advisors,” stockbrokers, etc.) should be wary of FINRA’s new Rule 13806 which provides for a single arbitrator in promissory note cases. While the single arbitrator may be fine for default cases, where the associated persons plans to make no defense and files no answer, rarely are single arbitrators desirable in [...

Is Securities Industry Arbitration Dying?

Posted on August 14, 2009
The new FINRA statistics are always fascinating. While filings are up for 2008, ?82%? FINRA says, that is an 82% increase over the fourth lowest number of new case filings since 1994. The lowest since 1994 was in 2007 at 3,238. FINRA is estimating new case filings in 2009 will eventually reach [...

Financial Advisor or Manager?

Posted on July 18, 2009
In Colorado, at least, it might matter. In Dish Network v Altomari (Colo. Ct. App. June 25, 2009), the question was whether the employee that supervised some people, probably a sales staff, was in ?management.? If the employee was in management, then under the Colorado non-compete statute, a non-compete against the employee was [...

Email Insecurity

Posted on July 03, 2009
The case reported by Professor Ross Runkel issued by a New Jersey appellate court, Stengart v Loving Care Agency, held that privileged communication by the former employee with her attorney through her employer?s computer retained its privilege. The case was interesting because the employee made the same mistake many people make...

Business Heaven ? A Stifled Legal System

Posted on May 11, 2009
The federal government is prosecuting far fewer fraudulent stock schemes than eight years ago, according to Eric Lichtblau of the San Diego Union Tribune, in December. Darla Mercado of Investment News reported today that the Attorney General of Massachusetts concluded her prosecution of Goldman Sachs by an agreed fine of $60 million on a [...

Who?s Minding the Store? You?ll Never Believe The Answer!

Posted on March 25, 2009
How did Bernie Madoff, the hands-down all-time winner of the title ?world?s greatest thief,? get away for so many years with bilking so many investors out of so many billions of dollars? Madoff awaits sentencing after pleading guilty to 11 felony counts in a Ponzi scheme by which he swindled investors out of $65 billion...

Forfeitures ? Will the Commercial Bank Broker Dealers Resort to Employee Fines?

Posted on February 20, 2009
The investment banks, the wirehouses, and the large broker-dealers, which have all but ceased to exist, had a love - hate relationship with ?at will? employment law. Even the late and great Merrill Lynch, once the ?white hats? in the industry, struggled with it from time to time...

Don?t Get Mad ? Get JP Morgan

Posted on January 29, 2009
The New York Times reported on January 28, 2009 that JP Morgan conducted a ?wide ranging review? of its hedge fund exposure. JP Morgan asked Bernard L. Madoff?s funds questions and did not like the answers. JP Morgan withdrew the money it invested in 2008, prior to the implosion caused by the discovery [...

Dogs Win Over Free Speech

Posted on January 12, 2009
In Oklahoma, on a slow news day, you can be sure each local television news broadcaster will have a story about a dog complete with video footage. Movie industry executives also seem to have concluded that movies about dogs sell tickets. But, it now appears that human civil rights can be curtailed in the face [...

Will the Protocols Stand?

Posted on December 05, 2008
There is an old saw that compares lawsuits to two men armed with knives circling each other in a dark room, not knowing whether they can ever put the knives down. During the raiding wars (a/k/a recruitment wars) of the last twenty-five years, the major wirehouses, broker dealers, and investment banks tried to defend [...

The Upgrade Penalty

Posted on December 03, 2008
Lawyers are generally technology shy because of the time required to master new software. Thus, when this blogsite was the victim of some sort of mishap, it was clear from researching the plague on the web that though the cause might have been a villan roaming through cyberspace, the opportunity given freely to the [...

The BlueHippo Failure

Posted on December 02, 2008
NewsOK.com reported on December 2, 2008 about a Jackson County man ripped off by BlueHippo, a company that sold inexpensive electronics at inflated prices and then never delivered about a third of the sales, continued to dun checking accounts and generally practiced economic vampirism...

Let?s Blame the Sick People!

Posted on November 21, 2008
During the sub-prime crisis, many people started out by blaming the poor people. You know, the dead beats that could not pay their mortgages. They were the people that tricked the billion dollar banks into giving them mortgages they could never afford, especially those on floating interest rates...

Who is Afraid of Virginia Stock Market?

Posted on October 11, 2008
Selling off, even in market ?crash,? later called more accurately a ?correction,? is usually driven by switching from the investment strategy based on company fundamentals to the strategy based on market timing. The market timing approach always fails because it is based on prophecy, only without God?s help...

Why the Bailout Will Fail

Posted on October 08, 2008
I hate to be pessimistic, but the United States Senators running for the Presidency of the United States are not businessmen, and never have been, and thus, the bailout will fail. For example, during the debate Tuesday night, Senator McCain claimed he was in favor of the bailout so there could be sources of [...

The End of Wall Street

Posted on September 15, 2008
The demise of Bear Stearns and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, followed by the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, heralds the final end of the Wall Street business model. B of A?s CEO claims that for seven years he predicted the commercial banks would end up owning the investment banks...

What They Would Have Done ? An Evidentiary Quagmire

Posted on September 14, 2008
Imagine that you had a right to exercise certain stock options that you had earned. Imagine that the contract under which you were going to exercise the stock options gave you a three month window in which to do it, but that no one sent you a copy of the contract or the amendment [...

The Fort Hays State University Debacle

Posted on August 28, 2008
Fort Hays State University fired its debate coach because he allegedly mooned others attending a debate round between the Fort Hays team and Towson University according to an article posted by the Kansas City Star at their website. A debate coach from the University of Pittsburgh was somehow involved...

54 Famous Trials of the Centuries

Posted on August 07, 2008
Here?s a fascinating webpage with images of 54 famous trials, and links to hundreds of additional pages of info about each of them. One Oklahoma trial is included. Can you guess which one? (Answer below) The 54 trials start with the trial of Socrates, 399 B...

Technorati Registration

Posted on August 06, 2008
I am registering this site on Technorati. I am surprised to discover that I hadn’t done so already (after all, we’ve been writing this blog for almost three years now). Among other advantages, being registered on Technorati makes it possible for us to use their tools to track who is linking to this [...

The State of Law Blogging in Oklahoma, 2008: Part Four

Posted on August 05, 2008
? Part One ? Part Two ? Part Three Terra Extraneus happily adds seven more entries to our list of Oklahoma Law Blogs. Six are based in Tulsa, which had been poorly represented on our Oklahoma Law Blogs directory. We now list 19 blogs: 9 in OKC, 8 in Tulsa, and 1 each in Paul?s Valley [...

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