Miscellaneous

Iowa Supreme Court Opinions

Posted on April 04, 2008
On Fridays, we often get the pleasure of reading new Iowa Supreme Court opinions, and we are not disappointed today. We get two opinions, one a criminal appeal based on the admission of hearsay evidence and the other a family law appeal regarding the differences between joint physical care and extraordinary visitation for the purposes [...

New Iowa Supreme Court Justice

Posted on April 04, 2008
Congrats to the Honorable David Baker, currently a judge on the Iowa Court of Appeals, who has been appointed to be the next Iowa Supreme Court Justice. He has had somewhat a meteoric rise in the ranks of judges in Iowa. He was appointed to the District Bench in Linn County in 2005, then to the [...

What work am I supposed to do?

Posted on April 03, 2008
One thing that I think a lot of modern young attorneys need to think about is delegation. Coming out of law school, most of us did our own typing, all our own research, making our own copies, basically everything. When I opened my solo practice, I was doing all of those things plus general and [...

Iowa Supreme Court Opinions

Posted on April 01, 2008
The Iowa Supreme Court last week issued opinions in three new cases. Below are the keys to remember from each. 1. Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. Adams: Depression and migraine headaches can be a mitigating factor in lawyer discipline issues, but only if the attorney suffered from them when the misconduct occurred, and only [...

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New Supreme Court Justice

Posted on March 07, 2008
Congrats to a couple of corridor lawyers who are finalists for the seat that is pening on the Iowa Supreme Court. Judge David Baker of the Iowa Court of Appeals and Connie Alt from Shuttleworth & Ingersoll are two of the three finalist. I can’t say that I personally know either of them, but I [...

Justice Streit, you disappoint me

Posted on January 25, 2008
The Iowa Supreme Court released four new opinions today. One deals with expansion of nonconforming uses under a City Ordinance, one with the admission of prior bad acts in a sexual abuse trial and two (1, 2) with tax sale/redemption procedures. I have to say, I always look forward to Justice Streit’s opinions because they, from my experience, [...

For the last time, assault is a specific intent crime?

Posted on January 18, 2008
So, the Iowa Supreme Court yet again “clarified” that assault is, in fact, a specific intent crime in Iowa. Despite a number of recent cases on the issue, the seemingly exasperated Justices released an opinion today that again ruled that assault, this time in the context of dependent adult abuse, requires that the assaulting party intend to [...

State of the Judiciary and Court of Appeals

Posted on January 16, 2008
Chief Justice Ternus gave her State of the Judiciary Speech to the state legislature today. The full text and a summary of her speech are available here. She proposed changes to the Juvenile Court system and announced additions to the State’s drug court system...

Birthdays

Posted on January 14, 2008
For some reason, my birthday often ends up being a busy, difficult day. A few years ago, when I was still in law school, I got sick on my birthday. I don’t get really sick very often, but that time I did. And my wife had to be out of town for the evening, so [...

New Supreme Court Opinions

Posted on January 11, 2008
This seems to be all I blog about anymore. I’ll have to change that. Two new opinons today. One upholding the payment of meterial witness fees of $40 per day to a person who was held in jail as a material witness for 53 days. He argued that he should have gotten the equivalent of minimum [...

New Supreme Court Opinions

Posted on January 04, 2008
The Iowa Supreme Court today released two new opinions. One is interesing for the fact that it reiterates that attorneys who contract with the State Public Defender’s Office must file their fee claims within 45 days of the final disposition of each case...

New Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Opinions

Posted on December 29, 2007
Both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals released new opinions Friday. One of the Supreme Court cases will surely give rise to a legal malpractice suit, as a personal injury lawsuit was dismissed because the original notice and petition were not served within 90 days of filing...

The Holidays

Posted on December 27, 2007
There’s nothing like getting someone out of jail for the holidays. It makes him happy, makes his wife happy, makes his kids happy. And that means they come back again. Happy Holidays everyone!

New Iowa Supreme Court Opinions Last Week

Posted on December 18, 2007
The Supreme court last week released two opinions. One concerned the dismissal of a beneficiary’s lawsuit against the trustees of his father’s trust. The other concerned a worker’s com issue. I don’t think either was particularly groundbreaking, so I won’t go into them too anymore.

Moral Client

Posted on December 13, 2007
I have a client with a tremendous moral streak. She doesn’t understand why people do things that they do and can’t get past it. It’s almost to the point where she is being unreasonable, at the expense of her children, because she can’t see the forest for the trees...

Return from Vacation

Posted on December 12, 2007
I usually have a hard time getting back into work after some time off. Today, our flight landed at 10:15 am. After the drive home, lunch, some unpacking and some ice scraping, I was on my way to the office before 2:30. Granted, I didn’t stay long, but I was there and got right back [...

Working On Vacation

Posted on December 11, 2007
I don’t think I’ve gotten the hang of this lawyer thing yet. I’m not billing nearly enough while I’m on vacation. Only 3.7 hours yesterday. I could do much better. Of course, that doesn’t include the time it took me yesterday to finish reading the latest Iowa Supreme Court cases (released Friday)...

New Office of Professional Regulation

Posted on December 05, 2007
The Supreme Court issued orders today creating the Office of Professional Regulation. According to the news release, the new office will be in charge of “the Grievance Commission, the Attorney Disciplinary Board, the Commission on Unauthorized Practice of Law, the Commission on Continuing Legal Education, the Client Security Commission, the Lawyer Trust Account Commission, and [...

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