140 Law - Legal Headlines for Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Here are the leading legal headlines from Wise Law on Twitter for Wednesday, August 21, 2013:

• David Miranda's lawyers threaten legal action over 'unlawful' detention
• British Newspaper Has Advantages in Battle With Government Over Secrets - NYTimes
• Bradley Manning sentence expected Wednesday
• PQ legislation would ban religious symbols from government offices, schools, hospitals
• Temporary layoff: will it always result in constructive dismissal? - Lexology
• The ‘rule of thumb’ and reasonable notice: going once, going twice, gone?
• The Ten Most Important Tips for Articling Students and New Lawyers
• BlackBerry cuts 100 more jobs in Waterloo, Ont
• Is it wrong—or a crime—to hire people because of elite connections?
• Law school applications drop nearly 18 percent, benefiting students seeking financial aid
• Glenn Greenwald to be indicted by US, UK?
• Toronto cop to appear in court on murder charge in streetcar shooting death
• Justice Scalia says Supreme Court should stop inventing ‘new minorities’
• Ted Cruz renounces Canadian citizenship in statement (CNN)
• 15 Reasons to Date a Lawyer - eHarmony Advice
• Why It Will Be Difficult to Create Secure E-Mail
• Pensioners Push Back at Detroit's Bankruptcy
• The SEC is now demanding that companies admit wrongdoing. That’s a big deal.
• The Future of the Legal Profession: Shaken? Stirred?
• A ‘pressing need’ for more female judges: MacKay
• Why lawyers don’t innovate
• ABA Softening Stance On Fee Sharing With Non-Lawyers
• Verizon security concerns raised by union

- Rachel Spence, Law Clerk

Visit our Toronto Law Office website: www.wiselaw.net

140 Law - Legal Headlines for Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Here are the leading legal headlines from Wise Law on Twitter for Tuesday, August 20, 2013:

• Court finds sale not closed if the building permit is open - Toronto Star
• WSJ: "The Legal Job Market Is So Bad, It's Good"
• Cellphones blamed as fatal collisions by 'distracted drivers' up
• Lawyer accused of secretly taping sex with client gives up his license
• Judge Judy's son in center of defamation case against local sheriff
• Toronto parking ticket hot spots: Website shows when and where you’re most likely to get nailed
• David Miranda, schedule 7 and the dangers reporters now face (Alan Rusbridger/Guardian)
• Greenwald partner David Miranda: 'They said I would be put in jail if I didn't co-operate'
• U.S. seeks to speed up hearings for five alleged 9/11 suspects
• Prosecutors: Fla teen in same-sex case contacts girl, plea deal pulled - CNN
• Changes to food safety legislation in Canada
• The duty to accommodate is not unlimited
• Employers require evidence to support restrictions on tattoos and piercings in the workplace
• Restrictive covenants in Canadian employment law
• Former Pakistan Army Chief, President Musharraf Charged in 2007 Bhutto Death
• Saying goodbye to the difficult client
• Speaker's Corner: HRTO lacks expertise to deal with racial profiling
• Judge refuses to block condom requirement for adult film actors
• How Did Law Firms Fare In The First Half of 2013?
• Illinois expands background checks to all gun purchases (Karen Pierog/Reuters)
• New Jersey Gov. Christie Signs Ban on Gay ‘Conversion Therapy’
• Secret Gitmo camp violates Geneva Conventions, lawyer says after visit
• Bradley Manning's prosecutors seek 60-year term
• Practice Pitfalls: Criminal Law
• Widow who lost $280K home over $6 tax penalty wins court hearing
• Manning’s Lawyers Urge a Lenient Sentence
• Egyptian court orders that deposed president Mubarak be released from prison (/The Hill)
• CPD basics for Ontario associates
• Robyn Urback: Who is 'good' enough to become a lawyer in Canada?
• Toronto police use-of-force policies to be reviewed by former Ass. Chief Justice Dennis O'Connor
• Why you should trademark your business name
• US Judge blocks Oklahoma ban on Plan B contraceptives
• Feds crack down on beat-the-polygraph instructors
• B.C. bar accused of racism ordered to pay $30K
• Lawmaker pulls son from class over transgender law - Times Union

- Rachel Spence, Law Clerk

Visit our Toronto Law Office website: www.wiselaw.net

Say it ain't so, Joe

The definition of a "sports lawyer," some may say, is simply an attorney who represents an athlete in whatever the capacity. Thus, enter into the fraternity Joe Tacopina, who the New York Post once called "The most hated lawyer in New York." Tacopina received such high praise by getting off certain notorious alleged rapists, cop killers, other scoundrels and low lifes the Post had already decided were guilty and thus not worthy of a real trial.

Tacopina's latest client is none other than Alex Rodriguez, the so-called "Bernie Madoff of baseball." Every time we think Joe has reached bottom, he dredges a little more from the pond.

And, of course, like any good high profile media mouthpiece, Tacopina had to enter the fray with a bang. What he has alleged, however, is far more scandalous than the offense his client is accused of committing. Tacopina has asserted that, in no less than last year's playoff series against the Tigers, the Yankees inserted an ailing A-Rod in the lineup because they wanted him to suffer a career ending injury.

In a recent article, Tacopina told the The New York Times that the Yankees "rolled him out there like an invalid and made him look like he was finished as a ballplayer."

Let's get this straight. It wasn't that the owners had a callous disregard for a player's condition but continued to play him because it was their best chance of winning. That one is old hat, having been voiced by such notables as J.R. Reed and Bill Walton. No, what Tacopina is saying is that the Yankees chose to play a position player they knew gave them less chance to win in the hope that it would rid them of having to play him next year. Bear in mind, this is the New York 27 World Championships Yankees we are talking about for whom winning it all is the only thing that is supposed to matter.

Like any good defense lawyer, Tacopina has no evidence for such a claim, at least none that he is bothering to share. If it were true, it certainly would be a more serious violation than ingesting banned performance enhancing drugs. It would be the equivalent of throwing a bout because the bosses had money on the other guy. It would make Joe Girardi the Joe Jackson of Managers.

Which brings me back to the idea of a practitioner of sports law. What separates it from other fields is both context and consequence. While the interests of the individual client remain paramount, the issues invariably resonate through the past and are sure to be heard going forward.

A-Rod claims not to have heard or read what his attorney has claimed to be facts. He should have read the playbook

140 Law - Legal Headlines for Monday, August 19, 2013

Here are the leading legal headlines from Wise Law on Twitter for Monday, August 19, 2013:

• MLB notes: Lawyer: Yankees misled A-Rod | Baseball | Sports | Toronto Sun
• Justice plans sentencing changes for non-violent criminals
• Settlement reached in Penn State-Sandusky scandal
• CBA's Map to Equal Justice
• Pistorius Is Indicted on Murder Charge
• Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation (Glenn Greenwald/Guardian)
• Conrad Black OSC battle delayed until October - Toronto Star
• First same-sex marriage in New Zealand
• Greenwald's Partner Detained at London Airport, Electronics Confiscated
• Khalid Sheikh Muhammad’s lawyers: CIA gave ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ makers more info than his defense
• UK Detains Glenn Greenwald's Partner for 9 Hours - TalkLeft: The Politics Of Crime
• Access to justice in Canada 'abysmal': new report - CTV News
• Court is asked whether a living will is effective
• Omar Khadr not a high-level threat, ombudsman argues - Politics - CBC News
• Soothing the aggressive attorney | Toronto Star
• Canada's top judge slams 'inaccessible justice' - Saskatchewan - CBC News

- Rachel Spence, Law Clerk

Visit our Toronto Law Office website: www.wiselaw.net

The Latest in the ARod Saga

The ARod saga continued this week with allegations, shared by 60 Minutes, that Rodriguez's "inner circle" acquired and shared documents with Yahoo! Sports implicating Ryan Braun, among others, in the Biogenesis scandal.

While ARod has lost the support of MLB and fans for some time, this revelation, if true, may have finally turned fellow players and union against him once for and for all.  Cheating is bad, selling out your brethren is worse.

Not surprisingly, editors of The Sports Law Blog, became "go to" sports law experts on the unfolding situation.  Michael McCann penned a piece for CNNSI evaluating the potential legal ramifications of this latest twist in the ARod story in this article yesterday.  I was interviewed on the leading sports radio show in Canada (eh!) by Bob McCown on his Prime Time Sports show on Sportsnet.  You can listen to the interview at the 28:30 mark of yesterday's 4:00 pm hour here.  [OK, I know a lead story on CNNSI is a tad more impressive than a 10 minute interview on Toronto Sports Radio but I'm trying....]

Well, I'm heading to Fenway to watch my beloved Red Sox battle the Yankees this afternoon...any recommendations on what I should put on the sign I'll be taking?

When a (Sports Law) Research Line Ends

Edward Elger recently published the Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports.  The 443 page tome was edited by Eva Marikova Leeds and Michael A. Leeds.  I contributed a chapter entitled "The Goals and Impacts of Age Restrictions in Sports."  As I was flipping through the pages, it dawned on me that the publication of my chapter marked the end of my decade-long inquiry into the legality and efficacy of minimum age rules in the sports industry.

My inquiry started as 2L, when I wrote a full length law review article examining the WTA Tour's so-called "Capriati Rule" under American antitrust law  A few years later, I penned a case note about the Toscana v. PGA Tour case.  After the NBA and NBPA agreed on a minimum age rule, I wrote a short piece about the new rule in basketball.

After a trilogy of law-focused articles, my attention turned to testing the efficacy (and effect) of such rules.  With sports labor market data largely in the public domain, I opted to statistically test both the WTA Tour rule and the NBA-NBPA policy.  The former was published in 2011 in the Journal of Labor Research.  The latter was published last year in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.  With a dozen unrelated research projects in my queue and my interests moving elsewhere, I am fairly certain that my survey piece in the handbook edited by Leeds and Leeds will be my last contribution in this area for quite some time.

If/when there is another Clarett-type lawsuit challenging a sports league's age rule, there will, undoubtedly, be another flurry of academic work in the area.  Likewise, on the empirical side, researchers will have access to larger data sets with less censored data in the years ahead.  I will be very interested to see how this "sports law analytics" research line is extended by others.

Will Pujols go through with defamation suit?

On the heels of Jack Clark's statements on a St. Louis radio program that Albert Pujols uses steroids (based, Clark said, on what Pujols' former trainer told him in 2000), Clark has been fired by the radio station and Pujols has announced his intent to sue Clark and the radio station for defamation. Pujols expressed his desire to "send a message that you cannot act in a reckless manner, like they have, and get away with it."

As I've written before, the threat of suit in the wake of cheating accusations is a two-edged sword. On one hand, the failure to sue often is taken as evidence that the allegations are true (i.e., "If the statements were false, why not sue?"). On the other hand, the threat of suit often looks like little more than posturing, an attempt to show that the accusations were false (i.e., "He wouldn't threaten to sue if the statements were true"), even if he has no real plan to go down this road.

Either way, there are reasons Pujols might not win his suit, even if Clark's statements were false. Pujols is a public figure and thus would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Clark spoke with "actual malice"--that he knew his statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for their false. Pujols' using "reckless" in his public statements is likely not accidental or coincidental. This barrier to recovery may deter him from initiating litigation in the first place. On the other hand, that legal standard may be exactly why Pujols would sue. Suing makes him look like a man fighting hard to vindicate his reputation against blatantly false and harmful statements, while the lawsuit's ultimate failure would have nothing to do with truth or falsity of the statements themselves.