Steve Chambers Bankruptcy

Late Night TV Lawyers

I'm sure you've seen them. The ads that come on TV trolling for someone, anyone, who has been harmed in any way by a drug or product. Right now I'm thinking about BadDrug. It's from a law firm or solicitor of some sort asking for clients who may have been harmed by Xarelto.

Now Xarelto is a blood thinning drug. It's used as a stroke-prevention treatment. A stroke is when a blood clot forms and moves to your brain. By keeping blood thinner it's less likely to coagulate and form a clot. Low dose aspirin is used but people who are at high risk for stroke need more. Warfarin, sold under the trade name Coumadin, has been used for years. Warfarin is the active ingredient in rat poison. The rats bleed out internally and die.

The problem with Warfarin is that it requires constant monitoring to make sure your blood is not too thick or too thin. That means frequent trips to the doctor to have blood drawn and analyzed. Xarelto does not require monitoring.

These hucksters are looking for people who may have experienced internal bleeding due to Xarelto. One of the main side effects of any blood thinner is that you bleed easier. Someone on a heavy-duty thinner like Xarelto could be in danger from a nose bleed or a cut finger because the blood doesn't clot. In other words, the drug is doing what it was intended to do.

That brings me to the point of this post. I'm all for holding people responsible if they cause harm but in this case I'm scratching my head. Let's see, you want to find the makers of Xarelto liable because the drug thinned your blood just like it was supposed to do? You took it voluntarily because your doctor suggested that taking it might lower the risk of having a stroke and either dying or being incapacitated for the rest of your life. Wake up. There are side effects to everything. You'll starve if you don't eat but if you do you might end up obese with a host of other troubles. Nothing comes free.

When I was in law school we studied inherently dangerous activities, like demolition and blasting. Our professor asked why knives don't carry a warning that they might cut you. The answer was, because that is what knives are supposed to do. We don't have to warn about a product doing what it was intended to do.  Nearly 40 years later it appears we do have to warn people about a product doing what it was meant to do.

Dershowitz v. Cassell?

Is a lawsuit brewing between Alan Dershowitz and Paul Cassell? Who, you ask? Who are these guys?

Alan Dershowitz is one of the United States' best known civil rights lawyers. A professor at Harvard Law School, Mr. Dershowitz may be best-known as the appellate attorney for O.J. Simpson; however he called that case not one of his most important. He also represented other celebrities, among them Patty Hearst and Harry Reams, who, in the 1970s, was accused of distribution of pornography for his movie Deep Throat. In 2006 Mr. Dershowitz began to represent Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire who was accused of repeatedly soliciting sex from minors. The proceedings are tangled but the end result was a plea bargain by Epstein that resulted in his becoming a registered sex offender.

Paul Cassell is a former federal judge and professor of law at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law. Mr. Cassell is a graduate of Stanford University and served as an assistant United States Attorney after clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. In 1992 he joined the faculty at the University of Utah. In 2002 he was appointed as a federal judge in Utah. He resigned in 2007 to return to the University of Utah where he became an advocate for victims' rights.

Beginning in 2008 several civil suits were filed against Jeffrey Epstein alleging that he forced underage girls to have sex with him. Many of these were settled by Epstein's paying various sums of money. In December, 2014, Mr. Cassell and another attorney, Bradley J. Evans, filed a motion to join two other women, identified as Jane Does 3 and 4, in a lawsuit pending against Epstein in Florida. In that filing, Mr. Cassell and Mr. Evans allege that Mr. Dershowitz himself, along with Prince Andrew, engaged in sex with the underage girls. More details can be found here.  Mr. Dershowitz responded by calling for Mr. Cassell's disbarment.

What we have is two heavyweights in the legal field squaring off against each other. This should be interesting. Stay tuned.

Collection Tactics

In the past week I've gotten two new clients and learned of a third person who are having issues with a company over collection of what the company calls past-due accounts. Without going into details about the nature of the business or the claims of the company I want to show some examples of the collection tactics used by this company.

In an email to one of my clients the company wrote "hope your [sic] ready for the storm that's coming. Smells like burnt toast to me."

Another email accused my client of having violated the Utah Medical Association's standards of ethics and conduct and threatened to file a complaint with the Department of Professional Licensing (DOPL) in Utah.

A third email was full of vulgarities and accused my client of unethical conduct.

All of this is over debts that are disputed. One side says it is owed money, the other side disputes that, saying the first party breached its contract. Resolution of those types of disputes is what the court system is all about.

Where this crosses the line, in my view, is over the tactics this self-proclaimed ethical and professional company is using to collect. If these actions were undertaken by a third party (a debt collector) they would violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Unfortunately that act only applies to third parties, those who make collection of debt their primary business.

The fact that this conduct isn't illegal under that act (it might be actionable under other theories) doesn't make it any less reprehensible. If you're a business, conduct yourself professionally. Don't stoop to threats and even blackmail to collect on accounts.

How Internet Trading Began

Internet trading - how it all began...

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dorothy. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com.

And she said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou...canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?"

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, dear?"

And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. The sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent.

To prevent neighbouring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures - Hebrew To The People (HTTP).

And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. Indeed he did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.

And Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others." And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel , or eBay as it came to be known.

He said, "We need a name that reflects what we are."

And Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators."

"YAHOO," said Abraham.

And because it was Dot's idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com. Abraham's cousin,

Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot's drums to locate things around the countryside.

It soon became known as God's Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).

That is how it all began. And that's the truth. :-) 

Thanks to Chrissie Lightfoot of The Entrepreneur Lawyer for sharing this in her weekly email.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

is fear itself.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke those words during one of his fireside chats given in the midst of the Great Depression over 80 years ago.  It's as true now as it was then.  Knowledge is not only power, it is freedom from fear.  Fear of the unknown keeps a lot of people from taking action that could improve their lives.  I subscribe to a service where people post questions about various aspects of the law.  I get dozens of emails a week with copies of the questions asked.  As I read the questions it seems to me that many, if not most, could be answered by a competent attorney in about 30 minutes or less, the time most bankruptcy attorneys offer for a free consultation.  So why aren't people taking advantage of these free consultations?

The answer is fear.  They are afraid of calling a lawyer.  So they troll the Internet where they might or might not get competent advice.  They ask friends, co-workers, anyone but the people who really have the answers.  If you have a legal question, call a lawyer.  Even if they charge a nominal fee, like $30 or $50, for a consultation, isn't it worth it to get advice tailored to your specific situation?  Look at it this way: if you had a broken leg would you ask your friends or someone at work, or go to the Internet for advice on how to set it?

Estate Tax Portability

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 has an important provision that is now permanent after a two-year trial period.  It allows the $5.25 million estate tax exemption of one spouse to be carried forward to the surviving spouse.  In the past the exemption was personal and was lost upon death to the extent it hadn't already been used.  As a result, the Marital Deduction or A-B Trust came into play, whereby the decedent's estate was divided into two portions, one to take advantage of the marital deduction, the other to use the unlimited spousal exemption.

Now, with portability, if the first spouse has an estate under the cap, currently $5.25 million, he can pass that exemption to the surviving spouse, who can then add it to her own $5.25 million exemption for a total of $10.5 million that she can leave tax-free.  Any unused portion of the $5.25 million exemption can similarly be transferred to the surviving spouse.

As Deborah L. Jacobs of Forbes magazine explains in this article, even if no estate tax return is due from the first spouse, the executor must still file an estate tax return, Form 706, in order to preserve the portability.  Failure to do that results in the loss of the first exemption.