How Appealing



Friday, September 13, 2013

“Souter decries cuts in humanities funds; Retired Supreme Court justice delivers views in State Museum speech”: This article appears today in The Times Union of Albany, New York.

Posted at 4:00 PM by Howard Bashman



“Home run king Barry Bonds obstruction conviction upheld”: Howard Mintz of The San Jose Mercury News has this update.

Henry K. Lee of The San Francisco Chronicle has a news update headlined “Court upholds Bonds’ obstruction conviction.”

Maura Dolan of The Los Angeles Times has a news update headlined “Barry Bonds’ obstruction of justice conviction upheld by appeals court.”

Jonathan Stempel of Reuters reports that “Conviction of baseball’s Barry Bonds upheld by U.S. appeals court.”

And The Associated Press reports that “Appeals court upholds slugger Bonds’ conviction.”

You can access today’s ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at this link.

Posted at 11:18 AM by Howard Bashman



“NY court considers pistol permit restriction”: The Associated Press has a report that begins, “Attorneys representing both the government and a man whose application for a pistol permit was denied asked New York’s highest court on Thursday to rule that state law does not prohibit issuing permits to people who only live in-state part time.”

Posted at 11:05 AM by Howard Bashman



“Gay and unmarried adoption battle set for Supreme Court; The health minister is set to take his fight against the extension of adoption rights to Northern Ireland’s gay and unmarried couples to the UK’s highest court”: BBC News has this report.

Posted at 10:48 AM by Howard Bashman



Meet my oral argument toddler: Attorneys may sometimes wonder what type of appeal takes two years or longer from the date of oral argument to be decided. Although I am loathe to generalize, I can now provide an example of one such case, as today marks the two-year anniversary of an oral argument that I delivered to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in a case that as of this moment remains undecided.

On the day before my oral argument of the case, I had this preview post. The briefs filed in the case can be accessed via two earlier posts, here and here. The video of that day’s Pa. Supreme Court oral arguments had been available via this link, but the videos are not working for me at this time. The Pa. Supreme Court granted review in the case on March 15, 2011, and thus in two days from now the case will have been pending on the merits before Pennsylvania’s highest court for 30 months. The case arrived on that court’s doorstep on November 1, 2010, when discretionary review was sought by means of a petition for allowance of appeal.

For what it is worth, the same case that has taken Pennsylvania’s highest court at least two years to decide took the Superior Court of Pennsylvania — an intermediate appellate court — 41 days from oral argument to decide.

As noted in my preview post, September 13, 2011 was quite a busy day for me, as I was arguing not one but two cases before Pennsylvania’s highest court that day, and another case in which I wrote the Brief for Plaintiff/Appellee was being argued in the Pa. Superior Court by plaintiff’s trial counsel. In the Superior Court case, my client achieved affirmance of the $12.4 million judgment in his favor.

Sadly, in the other case that I argued on September 13, 2011 before the Pa. Supreme Court, my client lost by a vote of 4-to-3, although the decision has spawned considerable backlash (see here, here, here, here, and here) that may result in an amendment to Pennsylvania’s Constitution intended to overrule the high court’s decision.

Posted at 10:28 AM by Howard Bashman