I am a frequent critic of Chronicle NFL sports columinst John McClain’s seemingly endless cheerleading for the Texans. But McClain is still capable of writing a good column on occasion, such as this recent one on the colorful fights over the year between various local coaches and players, on one hand, and local sportswriters, on the other. Why can’t he write this way about the Texans?
This earlier post wondered what was up with the apparently involuntary four month leave-of-absence of Galveston-based U.S. District Judge, Sam Kent.
Well, now we know.
The Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Friday reprimanding and admonishing Judge Kent in regard to a complaint complaint of judicial misconduct lodged against the judge on in May alleging sexual harassment toward an employee of the federal judicial system. A former case manager for Judge Kent confirmed to the Texas Lawyer and then the Chronicle that she filed the complaint against the judge, but declined further comment. The former case manager now works in the clerk’s office in the Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas.
Nevertheless, the prospect of further litigation is definitely possible. The clerk has hired prominent Houston attorney Rusty Hardin, who is always good for a quote or two. “We have been watching, with interest, the investigation,” Hardin told the Chronicle.
Meanwhile, Judge Kent appears to be putting up a fight to the charges. He has hired prominent defense attorney Maria Wyckoff Boyce of Baker & Botts to represent him. My sense is that the brevity of the Judicial Council’s order indicates that the panel expects further litigation over the allegetions.
Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Edith Jones, who is not one to take such matters lightly, signed the order and wrote that a Special Investigatory Committee appointed to investigate the complaint expanded the original complaint and investigated other “instances of alleged inappropriate behavior toward other employees of the federal judicial system.” The committee recommended a reprimand “along with the accomplishment of other remedial courses of action.” The judicial council accepted the recommendations and concluded the proceedings “because appropriate remedial action had been and will be taken, including but not limited to the Judge’s four-month leave of absence from the bench, reallocation of the Galveston/Houston docket and other measures.” The special investigatory committee’s Report, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Recommendations, and Judge Kent’s Response to the Report, are confidential and will not be disclosed.
According to the Chronicle account, one of the more interesting allegations apparently investigated by the panel was the following:
“That Kent inappropriately favored former colleagues and other favorites in his decisions and in overseeing settlement negotiations. In 2001, Kent was ordered to transfer all cases from his court that were handled by his best friend.”
H’mm. Wonder if that had any impact on this recent settlement (see background here)?
Update: Ilya Somin provides some additional background on Judge Kent.
And this Galveston Daily News article provides some additional information on the case:
The Daily News was told the judge called his case manager to his office, where physical contact occurred.
When she resisted, he told her she owed him because he had interceded in her favor in a dispute among clerkís office employees, the paper was told.
Since Kent was suspended in August, The Daily News has conducted interviews with more than a dozen members of the legal community ó lawyers, their employees and employees of the court. Some claimed first-hand knowledge of allegations of Kentís misconduct, but none agreed to be identified.
McBroom wasnít the only female employee Kent, who is more than 6 feet tall and more than 200 pounds, is alleged to have touched inappropriately, The Daily News was told. [. . .]
Those arenít the only reports that Kent engaged in inappropriate conduct.
Other sources have told The Daily News that, at a party and in the offices of a law firm, a drunken Kent cornered women and grabbed them.
An employee of a client of yours comes to you with a problem. He has been downloading child pornography on his computer in violation of child predator laws. He has not distributed it and has no information that he is under investigation. However, he is quite ashamed of himself and wants to start over. The client leaves the computer with you and asks you to destroy it. What do you do?
Well, according to this article (related NY Times article here), you better be very careful if you decide to do what your client asks:
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Federal prosecutors who charged a prominent attorney with destroying evidence in a child pornography investigation want to use his own words and actions in past cases to show he should have known better
Philip Russell was charged Feb. 16 with destroying a computer that contained child pornography at Christ Church in Greenwich. Russell, a former attorney for the church, is accused of obstructing an FBI investigation that led to the January conviction of the church’s music director, Robert Tate, for possessing child pornography.[. . .]
Russell acknowledges he destroyed the computer, but says he had no reason to believe the matter was under investigation or that it would lead to an investigation.
As the Times article notes, Russell pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of assisting the commission of a felony by failing to report it or by concealing it. Had he continued to fight the charge, he would have stood trial on two counts of obstruction of justice, which could have resulted in a far harsher sentence. Nonetheless, the charge that he pled to is a felony, so Russell still faces the possible loss or suspension of his law license.
Before the plea deal, prosecutors contended that Russell should have given the FBI his client’s computer containing child pornography instead of destroying it. Thus, they accused him of obstructing justice under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which only requires a showing that an investigation was “foreseeable” rather than pending. Russell had ìsubstantial experienceî in such cases and, thus, prosecutors are contending that he knew that a federal investigation “was foreseeable and likely.”
Russell’s lawyer, Robert Casale, contended that the prosecution’s reliance on his clientís positions in past cases to prosecute him in this case has dangerous implications to the defense of defendants’ rights in the American criminal justice system. “In a democratic society that employs an adversarial system of justice, lawyers must be free to zealously advocate their client’s interests without fear of the consequences that their words will someday be used against them personally,” he wrote.
Casale’s point sure sounds right to me.
Update: Ellen Podgor has more.
Steve Elling reports on European Tour Director George O’Grady’s idea on an effective and low-cost drug-testing procedure for the PGA and European Tours:
O’Grady estimated that drug tests will cost $1,000 per player, which makes the possibility of testing an entire European Tour field all but impossible. The PGA Tour will have that luxury, conversely, if it elects to head in that direction. Many of the particulars on testing and penalties are still in flux and financials will doubtlessly play a huge role in how much urinalysis is done on the various worldwide circuits.
“So it’s not so simple as pissing into a pot and moving on,” O’Grady said. “We cannot write off a million pounds. We don’t have that kind of money.” [. . .]
Prodded by a reporter, O’Grady also unleashed a half-serious zinger with regard to the drug testing program, which is being initiated as much to protect the sport’s reputation as it is to catch what’s assumed to be a tiny handful of cheaters, if any.
Just test Tiger Woods and be done with it.
“From what I understand, he would be the first in line to volunteer for testing,” O’Grady said. “If Tiger Woods’ test comes back negative, what does it matter what the rest of them are on?
Come to think of it, he’s got a point.
Remember at the end of the 2006 MLB regular season when the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse was the most uncomfortable place in the U.S.?
This season, the same thing is true for the New York Mets clubhouse.
The Mets recently led by 7 games with 17 to go, but they have lost four straight and 11 of their last 14 while the second-place Phillies have caught fire. After losing to the Cardinals on Thursday night, the Mets fell into a tie for first place with the Phillies in the NL East at 87-72 with three games to play. To make matters worse, the Mets may have also played their way out of the NL wildcard playoff spot if they don’t win their division — San Diego leads by a game in the wildcard race going into the final weekend of the regular season. No team has ever failed to reach the postseason after being so far ahead this close to the end of the regular season. If the Mets donít make it, this will be go down as an epic collapse, particularly by New York’s rather demanding standards.
Aggies, some other fans are sharing your pain.
By the way, this will be a fun weekend of baseball. The races in the NL East, NL West and the NL wildcard race are so close and uncertain that the Diamondbacks, the team that entered yesterday with the NL’s best record, still could miss the playoffs entirely. Meanwhile, the Cubs (83-76) are two up on the Brewers in the NL Central with three games to go and have the decidedly easier games (against the Reds) over the weekend (the Brewers host the NL West leading Padres).
For a rollicking good read, don’t miss Jeff Matthews’ post on KKR pulling out of the Harman International Industries deal last week:
Now, you might think that someone of Mr. Kravisí stature in the Private Equity business would recognize a bad decision when he saw it, honor his commitments and move on.
But no, the Journal reported: KKR not only wanted to break the Harman deal, but they apparently wanted help from the bankers in paying the termination fee.
Don’t miss the entire post. Highly entertaining.
We all got a few chuckles over the Oregon Duck mascot’s mugging of the Houston Cougar mascot during the football game between the two institutions’ teams earlier this season.
Well, the UH student newspaper provides this follow-up article on the student — Kinesiology major Matt Stolt — who mans the Cougar mascot costume. Stolt turns out to be a gentleman who handled the incident and the aftermath with admirable maturity and good nature. Bully for him!
The picture on the left appeared on a Texas A&M football message board — which is still reeling from the Aggies’ debacle last Thursday against Miami — with the following caption:
“Jovorskie Lane finish with 2 carries for 2 yards. How is this possible?”
The TV Tan Line has more.
Despite the drag that America’s highly-regulated health care finance system places on the delivery of medical services, glimmers of entrepreneurial hope still shine through occasionally:
A new kind of medical practice is flourishing nationwide that offers to go to where the patients are ó whether a home, an office or a hotel ó to treat ailments as diverse as a sprained ankle or a bad case of bronchitis. Some services may even wheel in a mobile X-ray machine or an ultrasound machine, depending on the ailment, or perhaps pull out kits to test for strep throat or to draw blood. They may dole out medication on the spot or arrange for pharmacies to deliver prescriptions.
ìWhen you call, you can speak to a doctor in five minutes, and that doctor can be there with you within the hour. Where else do you get that kind of delivery?î said Walter Krause, founder of Inn-House Doctor. The company says it has 40 physicians on call in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Washington; some of the doctors are in private practice or work in hospitals, and they make house calls during their time off.
The convenience comes at a price. Appointment fees can range from $250 to $450, with additional tests and medication extra. And payment is due at the time of the appointment.
The website for the service is here. Critics will contend that this service amounts to house calls for the rich, but it is nevertheless a good example of how medical service markets will respond to patients controlling the funds that they are willing to spend on medical services. Frankly, my bet is that that this type of service would already be available at a much lower cost but for the fact that most patients have been insulated from the true cost of medical services and the expenditure of their health care dollars for decades now.
Former Houston Oilers defensive end and local sports radio celebrity Sean Jones appears to be in a heap of trouble.
On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Jones with failing to turn over the records from his defunct “investment advisory” business.
Jones apparently told the SEC that he had discontinued the advisory business in 2004, but the business continued to maintain a Web site until mid-2007 promoting its “wealth management” programs and the fact that the company was “subject to periodic SEC examinations.”
Uh, the current SEC examination is not what I think Jones had in mind.
In June of this year, Jones and four others were indicted on charges of mortgage fraud in U.S. District Court in Houston.
According to the indictment, the defendants conspired to obtain home loans based on inflated property values on behalf of unqualified buyers, then diverted some of the loan proceeds to themselves. Between 1999 and 2001, the prosecution charged Jones and his co-defendants with 12 counts of bank fraud, each of which carries a possible prison sentence of up to 30 years imprisonment and a possible fine of up to $1 million.
Jones’ trial on the criminal charges is currently scheduled for May 12, 2008 before U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein.
Jones is represented by Tom Hagemann and Marla Poirot of Gardere Wynne’s Houston office.