August 2011 Archives

In the latest issue of New York Super Lawyers -- Upstate Edition (available online, digitally, via app and in print), cover feature Ann Evanko, who practices employment law at Buffalo's Hurwitz & Fine, talks about importance of giving back to her community and helping other women learn the value of self-sufficiency.

Personal injury attorneys John G. Rusk of Rusk, Wadlin, Heppner & Martuscello, Andrew G. Finkelstein of Finkelstein & Partners and John E. Ballow of The Ballow Law Firm look back on how they helped victims of 9/11, one decade later.

Also featured is a Q&A with Bruce J. Wagner, a shareholder at McNamee, Lochner, Titus & Williams who chairs the firm's Matrimonial and Family Law Department and maintains an appellate law practice. (We included an excerpt, with exclusive material, previously on the blog).

Last year we interviewed Beverly Hills entertainment attorney Eric Weissmann, of the firm Weissmann Wolff Bergman Coleman Grodin & Evall, for Southern California Super Lawyers magazine. The full Q&A, "Take Your Violin and Go Back to Vienna," can be read at the link. The first part of the unpublished excerpts can be read here. What follows is part II...

You're a non-voting member of the Motion Picture Academy?
Yes. That means I get all the privileges of being a member but I don't have to vote.

What are the privileges?
The privileges are: You get to go to the Academy screenings; you get DVDs but only [from] studios who don't seem to know you can't vote anyway. And events. And you get a chance to buy tickets to go to the Academy Awards. It's nice to be a member and not too many lawyers are members.

Do you go?
The screenings or the Academy Awards?

The Academy Awards.
Those I go to every once in a while. It depends if I'm interested or not. It's kind of an ordeal so I generally do not go.

I went when the new theater was opened. I went one time when the president of the Academy invited me. But I do go to the screenings at the Academy Theater from time to time. And during the Academy season, I can go into any movie theater, show my Academy card, and get in for free. Only for pictures that are going to be nominated, you know, not for...

... a picture starring the Rock.
Maybe not.

You're also the only lawyer who's been a recipient of "Friend of the Independent Producers."
The award, yes. It's very nice because there's a lovely pyramid of Plexiglass and inside it looks like film but it's really shoestring. I have that on my desk.

Why did they give it to you?
I gave a course, I do a lot of speaking, I gave them money. Various things. It's nice to get awards.

It's been a tough month for Donald Rumsfeld. First, a federal judge in D.C. ruled that an Army veteran may proceed with a civil suit against the former defense secretary for torture he claims he suffered when he was a translator in Iraq. A week later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7^th Circuit in Chicago upheld a lower court's ruling that two American contractors may continue their lawsuit against Rumsfeld, claiming he's personally liable for torture they endured after they blew the whistle on corrupt practices taking place at an Iraqi-owned contractor where they were employed.

Yesterday we spoke with civil rights attorney Mike Kanovitz, of Loevy & Loevy in Chicago and an Illinois Super Lawyers listee, who's representing the plaintiffs in both cases, on why he's going after Rumsfeld. Today he tells us how he's kept the cases from being dismissed.

The DOJ is arguing that Rumsfeld is immune because he was acting as a public official. How have you been able to keep your cases from being dismissed?

Immunity is definitely part of it, but his main argument is that the courts have no authority to even consider a case like this against an official at his level-that the door should never even be opened [because they were wartime decisions]. So we had to beat that back first.

That would give government freedom from any and all accountability.

And that's basically what the court was confronted with here: If we don't allow a suit like this to go forward-and that, yes, constitutional rights were violated under these circumstances-then the constitutional rights are out the window. Government officials are rarely prosecuted by their own administrations, so for people like my clients, their only chance to enforce their constitutional rights is in a post-deprivation lawsuit where they seek money damages.

Still, you're not the first to bring this type of case. All the rest have been dismissed.

All the cases that have tried so far and failed are cases brought by aliens. [My cases] involve American citizens. It doesn't change the underlying flaw-you can't torture an American, you can't torture a non-American. But the alienage issue gives courts an out that they don't have when it's an American citizen. If an American court won't hear an American citizen's case, there's no place else for them to go.

And these could ultimately lead to a jury trial?

That's where the whole thing will be headed-assuming that the Supreme Court allows this kind of case, or if cert is not granted.

And you could potentially cross-examine Rumsfeld? How will you approach that?

I'll probably ask my uncle-and partner-[Arthur Loevy] to do it. It's the sort of thing he is great at.

If the cases are allowed to go that far, what are the grander implications?

That [the court] rejects arguments that became popular during the war: that you can leave fundamental constitutional rights solely in the hands of executive officials and that the courts have no place [in determining their constitutionality]. For hundreds of years, courts have been very careful about telling the military [what it can and can't do], this case does not change that but it does make clear that there is a line when courts can step in. Simply because there's a military connection doesn't mean that a case is about military decision-making. Here, you've got Congress and the president saying "It is not the policy of the United States to use torture." So simply invoking this mantra about, "Well, it's the military..." just ain't going to cut it.