Publisher’s Notebook

How many decisions have we featured over the years in which a lawyer or a law firm is forced to bring suit to collect an unpaid fee, and a judge whacks it down? Sometimes a lot. Sometimes the lawyer gets only pennies on the dollar.

That’s time out of that lawyer’s life that he or she will never be able to put to good use for another client. When all you have to sell is your time and expertise, one of those results can be a gut-punch. And you know what? Invariably, those cases are highly popular.

Out of Henrico County this week, here’s something new: A law firm sued a client for unpaid legal fees…and got every penny it asked for.

Click here to check it out.

What’s worse than a pair of high-testosterone lawyers trash-talking at each other over minutiae at a deposition?

That’s bad, for sure. A pair of college professors sniping at each other at a department meeting? (Someone once said the politics in academia were so nasty because the stakes were so low).

That’s bad, too. How about one newspaper’s response when it gets to write smack about another newspaper, especially the other paper’s editors?

Just as bad. It happened this week. Guy who is the local news editor of the Brockton (Mass.) Enterprise was pulled over by cops last Saturday with a blood alcohol content of 0.3 percent, and charged with his third DUI. A bad situation, made worse over the fact that the cops say they found an open bottle of vodka in a bag in the car. Oh, and the guy’s son, age 6, was in the back seat.

All of this was reported on the Web site of a sister paper, The Patriot Ledger, rather matter-of-factly on Monday. They identified the guy’s employer in the third paragraph. The headline: “Police: Man driving with child in car was drunk.”

The Enterprise posted the Patriot Ledger’s story on its own Web site Tuesday.

Enter the rival. The Boston Herald gets hold of the story (I’m guessing they have someone who scans the sites of competitor papers) and in a piece published Tuesday, blares the headline, “Brockton editor bagged with booze, kid in car.”

The Herald probably had their best wordsmiths working on this lead:

“With his 6-year-old son munching a burger in the back seat and a half-empty liter of cheap vodka riding shotgun up front, a Brockton Enterprise editor allegedly wasted behind the wheel didn’t even know what town he was in, police said.”

They should have used purple ink. The image of a bottle of vodka (note it was “cheap”) “riding shotgun” is pretty evocative. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen “allegedly wasted” used in a news story before.

One wonders what the Brockton Enterprise will do when/if it gets the chance to return the favor to the Herald.

Here’s a bill that will provide more time to both sides for jury research. It’s another measure that made it through the Assembly without a single “nay” vote in either house.

Senate Bill 382, as introduced, would have changed the time period for disclosure of the jury panel to counsel in a case from “48 hours” to “two full business days.” Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, carried this one for the Boyd-Graves Conference.

It passed the Senate. Over in the House, in the Courts of Justice Committee, “two” got jacked up to “five.” It passed the House as amended. The Senate okayed that change and it’s on its way to Gov. McDonnell.

Lawyers previously had to scramble to dig into the backgrounds of potential jurors. No doubt they’ll still be scrambling, just for three days longer.

It’s not often that everyone on Capitol Hill can agree on something.

But during the just-completed General Assembly session, Del. David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, secured passage for a bill that didn’t get a single vote against it as it worked its way through committee and the floor of both houses.

The bill is House Bill 747. It covers adoptions and allows a circuit judge to waive the appointment of a guardian ad litem in adoptions by stepparents or close relatives.

The measure made it through a Courts of Justice subcommittee 8-0 and the full committee 22-0. It passed the House 98-0.

On the Senate side, HB 747 sailed through Senate Courts 14-0 and the full Senate 40-0.

Undoubtedly there are other bills that made it through similarly unscathed, but this one is worth noting since (a) it makes sense and (b) it should make family practice just a little easier.

Presumably, the only people who wouldn’t like this proposal are those who serve as guardians ad litem, who now may be out of a little work. Apparently they don’t have a lobbyist working the Hill for them.

Midnight Oil is one of Australia’s best-known rock bands, putting out music for more than three decades.

For 25 years, the front man and lead singer was a 6-foot-6 bald guy named Peter Garrett (right). Watch one of their videos on YouTube and you can’t miss him.

Garrett joined the band in 1976, after responding to an advertisement the others had placed for a lead singer. At the time, he was a law student at the University of New South Wales. He left school to join the band on tour, returning and completing his degree a few years later.

The Oils, as the band is known to its diehard fans, always have displayed a keen political sensibility. Their hit, “Beds Are Burning,” addressed Aboriginal rights; “Blue Sky Mine” spoke of lack of payment for asbestos exposure. “River Run Red” blasted pollution.

So it’s no surprise that Garrett’s career path went toward politics instead of law practice. He left Midnight Oil in 2002 to concentrate on his political career, rejoining his old mates for several benefit performances in the 2000s.

He was elected as member of the House of Representatives in 2004; when the Australian Labor Party won the national election three years later, the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, named Garrett as Minister of the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. A number of problems, including a troubled program to provide free insulation to homes, prompted Rudd to demote Garrett. He remained in Rudd’s cabinet but was stripped of responsibility for energy efficiency.

And if Labor loses the election this fall, Garrett always has the band the fall back on…

Couple of notes from our gun laws desk, involving weapons both concealed and unconcealed:

Proponents of gun rights have a reason to cheer today. The House of Delegates on Tuesday overwhelmingly (72-27) passed a bill to allow concealed handguns in bars, sending the measure to Gov. Bob McDonnell, who will sign it.

A similar measure was passed and presented over the past few years to McDonnell’s predecessor, Tim Kaine, who vetoed it twice.

Read more about it here.

On the unconcealed gun front, those who watch trends will want to know those who own guns and want to carry them openly have brought a West Coast form of expression to the Old Dominion.

Starbuck’s, the coffee giant that started in Seattle, was the target in Northern California and Washington state of a campaign by gun owners who wanted to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.

In a lot of states, a gun owner has the right to carry it openly; likewise, in a lot of states, businesses have the right to say, not here, partner.

California Pizza Kitchen is one of the corporate entities that said no; gun owners moved next to Starbuck’s, figuring a hippie-dippy Left-Coast tree-hugging coffee outfit would do the same. But Starbuck’s refused the bait. The company took the position that anyone can pack a piece in their stores, if it’s legal in the state. Despite some pressure to change that view, the company is sticking to, well, its guns.

Read more about that story here.

The picture? It’s an AP photo by Elaine Thompson, taken at a anti-gun rally in Seattle today. An observer, Shannon Dunne, sips a venti while watching the action, his Ruger Vaquero handgun at his side.

Philip Morris USA, the tobacco giant owned by Richmond-based Altria Group Inc., is on the warpath against counterfeiters, according to the Associated Press.

Marlboro cigarette counterfeiters, that is. Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the old phrase, “Smokin’ O.P.s” (as in other people’s).

Philip Morris just filed federal lawsuits against eight New York and New Jersey retailers that allegedly sold counterfeit Marlboros. That brings the total of lawsuits the company has filed over fake smokes in that region to 35.

Why would cigarette smugglers look to the Big Apple?

Well, New York is potentially Fake Marlboro Country because of the high federal, state and local taxes on tobacco products.

A pack of cigarettes in New York City can cost more than 10 bucks. Might to cheaper and easier to quit…

Many people know that Patrick County Circuit Judge Martin Clark has a day job as a judge and a second job as an author.

He has published three novels – The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, Pure Heathen Mischief and The Legal Limit. The first has been optioned as a screenplay; CBS/Paramount has the third in development as a miniseries.

Clark (at right) was the guest speaker at the Richmond Bar Association monthly luncheon today, and he talked a lot about writing.

The Legal Limit was launched in Richmond, at Fountain Books, owned by a friend of Clark’s who suggested they host a signing at a nearby bar. The signing party was going pretty well, and for each reader, Clark said he said what he always says: “Thank you for buying my book and I hope you enjoy reading it.”

At the end of the night, one drunk woman made her way to the table for a signature. Clark offered his typical greeting. She said, “Oh, I’m not going to read it. I bought because I felt sorry for you.”

“So Richmond has always been good to me!” Clark said.

A few nuggets on writing:

He said he’s a believer in a “big plot.” If you’ve read any of Clark’s novels, that’s apparent. He added that there should be a beginning, a middle and an end to a story. “There should be a pay-off” to reader for getting to the conclusion, he said.

There are many writers. But there are degrees of difference. Some writers take you to the carnival and “describe the Tilt-a-Whirl.” The good writers “put you on the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

And he has found there are many people who want to be writers, even some who have a manuscript that’s been kicking around, even some who have collected a few rejection letters.

Clark said he decided he wanted to be a writer in college at Davidson. He wrote his book and when he was in law school at UVa, he thought he had found a guru, someone who might help him navigate the way to publication. He took his manuscript and a bottle of Scotch and put them in the mailbox of a celebrated local writer, then waited for a response. Several weeks later, Rita Mae Brown returned the manuscript with a note. For help getting published, that’s what agents are for, she said.

And after reading his manuscript, she suggested that he choose what he wanted to do. “You’re either going to end up a half-assed writer or a half-assed lawyer,” she said. “Literature is a full-time passion.”

For those people with a manuscript and the dream of seeing their work from the first word on paper to the printed volume, Clark counseled perseverance.

It took him 20 years to get published, he said. “Have a thick skin. It’s a long road,” he said. “Be persistent.”

Notes from the General Assembly…

And here’s one that makes you think, surely this would already be covered by some other law in the Virginia Code.

Yesterday the Senate passed House Bill 1353, which provides that anyone who “possesses or consumes an alcoholic beverage while operating a school bus” containing children is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. The chief patron of the measure is Del. Ben. Cline, R-Amherst.

Okay, even assuming that this offense is not covered elsewhere in the Code, is this a real problem that parents across the commonwealth should know about? Or did one bus driver somewhere show up with a sixpack in a bag that she tucked under the seat and that night some kid asked his mom what “Budweiser” means? 

In any event, it’s fair to say that drunk, or drinking, bus drivers are not a favored class on Capitol Hill.

HB 1353 passed the House by a vote of 98-0. It squeaked through the Senate, 40-0.

Gov. McDonnell, you’re up next.

Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday announced the winners of the annual Outstanding Faculty Awards, given by the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia.

One of the 12 recipients for 2010 is William & Mary law professor Paul Marcus (right).

Marcus has been at the College since 1992, after serving as dean at the University of Arizona and practicing in L.A. He been putting his mark on the school and the community ever since.

For the OFA, he gained the full support of Dean Davison Douglas and numerous colleagues and former students. Marcus was the first recipient of the Kelly Chair in Teaching Excellence at W&M, and in 2006, he earned the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, the College’s highest honor for service.

Among other community activities, he founded the Law and Literature program at the Central Virginia Regional Jail, and he handles numerous pro bono appointments on the side. The Williamsburg chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters tapped him as “Volunteer of the Year” in 2004.

Hats off.