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Relying on the words of others

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Within a brief in Illinois Computer Research v. Fish & Richardson (Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer) , one has the text:

This tactic of publishing defamatory material in a judicial pleading is grossly improper and is no less scandalous than if we were to file a pleading (which plaintiffs would never do) suggesting that Jenner & Block has frequently represented individuals accused of organized crime (see Michael S. Serrill, ?The Mob Lawyer ?Life Support? for Crime,? Time, March 25, 1985) and, thus, necessarily has engaged in schemes and deceptions or otherwise aided criminal conduct merely by virtue of such representation.That would be absurd. And so too is Jenner?s unsupported pleading attacking the Niro firm and its senior partner for simply representing Mr. Harris and his assignees.

One has an "employer looking at employee email" issue:

The controlling case in California is People v. Jiang, 130 Cal. App. 4 th 1512 (Cal. Ct. App. 2005). There, an employee was subject to a published policy that allowed access to password-protected email. But, as the California court found, that policy did not override the attorney-client privilege. Jiang has been cited repeatedly on this exact issue: Once an employer realizes she is poking into an employee?s private communications, the law dictates she should immediately cease. This is true even if the employer issued a policy stating that company equipmentmay be monitored at any time and that the employee should have no expectation of privacy. Michael Baroni, ?Feature: Employee Privacy in the High-Tech World,? 48 Orange County Lawyer 18, *22 (May 2006) (emphasis added). Fish and the Jenner firm not only didn?t stop looking at clearly privileged emails, they actually used and quoted them in the proposed amended complaint. For this further reason, leave to amend should bedenied.

An interesting aspect is that the law firm is citing third parties for the truth of their propositions.

As IPBiz has noted, law reviews and the like are known to contain errors, which remain uncorrected. A question which arises is how one truly proves things. Note the discussion with californiastemcellreport about the "supposed" CIRM grant to Shinya Yamanaka. When challenged about the accuracy of the existence of such grant, californiastemcellreport merely relied on the words of someone else.

See Semantic ramblings on the meaning of "accept"

Full post as published by IPBiz on March 23, 2008 (boomark / email).