In denying the discovery request, Supreme Court Justice Karen V. Murphy in Nassau County pointed to potential violations of attorney-client privilege and questioned if the requested material was “material and necessary.”

“[T]he risks associated with the proposed fishing expedition are many, including but not limited to, the likely violation of the right to the confidentiality of attorney-client communications,” Justice Murphy (See Profile) wrote in DeRiggi v. Kirschen, 20753-2008.

Jason DeRiggi is the widower of 30-year-old Patricia DeRiggi, who died during a July 2008 out-patient procedure for lower back pain. He is seeking unspecified damages for medical malpractice, products liability and wrongful death against the doctors, their practices and the equipment’s manufacturer and distributor.

Mr. DeRiggi has accused HydroCision Inc., and New York Spinal Implants Corp. of negligent design, manufacture and distribution as well as failure to warn of the risks associated with the “Spine Jet HydroDiscectomy System” used in his wife’s procedure. HydroCision is the manufacturer. Spinal Implants is the distributor.

A discectomy is the surgical removal of a herniated disk. According to the HydroCision website, its spine jet systems “harness the power of water to cleanly remove tissue without the risk of thermal energy.”

via Plaintiff Wins Bid to Bar Hard Drive From Discovery.

Which brings us to Justice Stephen Breyer. The 72-year-old justice said in a speech at Vanderbilt Law School on Tuesday that the movie “The Social Network,” about the founding of the social network Facebook, left him a bit perplexed. According to this AP story, the precise quote went like this:

“If I’m applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there’s an Internet, and there’s Facebook, and there are movies like … ‘The Social Network,’ which I couldn’t even understand.”

via Our Tech-Savvy Supreme Court, Part II – Law Blog – WSJ.

The decision marks the first reported New York case in which a judge has ordered a relocating parent to facilitate Skyping — i.e., the use of Skype conferencing software — between her children and her ex-spouse as a condition of her move, according to a Westlaw search.

“The Petitioner, at her own cost and expense, will see to it, prior to re-location, that the Respondent, as well as the children, are provided the appropriate internet access via a Skype device which allows a real time broadcast of communications between the Respondent and his children,” Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo wrote in Baker v. Baker, 29610-2007

via Law.com – Ex-Wife Ordered to Provide Skype Access for Husband, Kids.

William James elegantly referred to it as being under “the total push and presence of the cosmos.” But even better was Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s wondrous phraseology in “The Nature of the Judicial Process:” “There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives us coherence and direction to thought and action. Justices cannot escape the current any more than other mortals… . In this mental background every problem finds its setting. We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.” A judge may be down on religion or guilt ridden in favor of the underclass, or may unalterably believe that God, if there is a God, and government should only help those who help themselves. A judge may see legislative fiat as buffoonery and presidents as political whores who will do anything for a victory.

Indeed, a president or lesser executive appoints judges, or an electorate elects them, precisely because of those subjective experiences — “their own eyes.” Judges operate from their own perspectives. A judge cannot be, any more than anyone else can be, defined or encapsulated by their ethnicity, gender, scholarly, political or legal backgrounds, nor by their answers to litmus tests on critical social or political issues by the opposition du jour during confirmation hearings.

It is a small wonder that, in the quotidian workings of the courts and in the thousands of rulings that any one judge makes every year, a judge down the hall or in a different court may come at the real stuff of the judicial process from a completely different perspective, and with a potentially starkly different result. Can we, either as members of the court or as everyday citizens who come before the court, require that the judge undress herself from her robes to tell us what she viscerally thinks because of her life experiences that so inevitably and critically impact her rulings? Certainly, and for some perhaps sadly, not!

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was recently faced with an unusual appeal in which a criminal defendant raised an intriguing question about the limits on what perspectives a judge can properly bring to bear on the bench. In United States v Bari, No. 09 1074-cr, 2010 WL 1006555 (2d Cir. Mar. 22, 2010), the 2nd Circuit considered whether then-District Judge Denny Chin (now on the 2nd Circuit bench) erred in a supervised release revocation hearing in considering information confirmed by the court's own Internet searching. In other words, can a judge confirm his own hunches by Googling?

via Law.com – When Judges Google.

Huang Songyou, the court’s former vice president, is the first judicial official of his stature to be tried and convicted on such charges, part of a continuing battle by the Communist Party against deep-seated corruption.

Formally known as the Supreme People’s Court, the body is the highest judicial panel in China with wide-ranging powers including overseeing lower courts and reviewing death sentences. The court has 13 members, with its grand justice also sitting on the party’s decision-making Central Committee.

Huang’s entire property also was confiscated as part of the ruling, according to a brief report by the official China News Service.

Huang, 52, was accused of taking 3.9 million yuan ($574,000) in bribes from a law firm in return for favorable rulings on cases between 2005 and 2008.

He was also charged with embezzling 1.2 million yuan ($176,000) in government funds while serving as president of a city level court in the southern province of Guangdong in 1997.

Huang was fired and kicked out of the party in August and went on trial last Thursday at the Langfang Municipal Intermediate Court in Hebei province just outside Beijing. Calls to the court rang unanswered on Tuesday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Huang had confessed to the charges during the investigation stage and most of the bribes and embezzled funds had been recovered.

“But as a chief justice, Huang knowingly violated the law by trading power for money and taking a hefty sum of bribes, which has produced a bad impact on the society, and should be punished severely,” Xinhua said, citing the verdict.

via Life Sentence for Former Chinese Supreme Court Justice.

The case referred to is: State v. Rivas, 121 Ohio St.3d 469, 2009-Ohio-1354. Case No. 2007-1611. Decided March 31, 2009. Majority opinion written by Justice Terrence O’Donnell.

By Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer

On January 3, 2005, Detective Alonzo Wilson, a member of the Xenia Police Division’s Internet Child-Protection Unit, logged onto an Internet chat service posing as a 14-year-old female named Molly. A man named Jose Rivas – using the screen name JRivas123 – contacted “Molly” asking for her age, gender, and photograph.

The two carried on an online conversation, and eventually Wilson e-mailed Rivas a teenage photo of a Xenia police detective. Rivas e-mailed Molly an explicit photo which, he claimed, was of him. He then propositioned her and offered her $200 to engage in sexual activity with him. Rivas eventually arranged to meet Molly at a hotel. After police observed Rivas checking in, Wilson arrested him.

Prior to trial, Rivas filed a motion to preserve the state’s electronic evidence and he sought a mirror image of the hard drive of the state’s computer used by Wilson to communicate with him. The trial court ordered the state to allow Rivas to inspect the computer, but the prosecution refused to allow the defense to retrieve a mirror image of the hard drive, citing “security reasons.” The prosecution did provide a transcript of the conversations and a compact disc containing an electronic copy of the online communications.

Rivas then filed a motion to suppress the computer-generated evidence and to compel the state to provide a mirror image of the computer hard drive. But the trial court denied the motion, concluding that Criminal Rule 16 – one of the rules that govern the proceedings of a trial – did not require the state to produce an exact copy of its computer hard drive “in the absence of allegations and some evidence that what has been provided is not accurate.”

[continued] Judge James Kimblers Blog: Computer Evidence.

At the forum, Denver attorney Gregory Kerwin of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP discussed a corporate lawsuit where obtaining e-mails of 30 people over a two-year period cost $3 million and produced 10 million pages to review. The $3 million did not cover the cost of reviewing the contents of the e-mails.

“I have heard the rule of thumb — that even with inexpensive lawyers — it is $7.50 a page. So you can start to see how it all adds up and why it is becoming a problem,” said Rebecca Love Kourlis, executive director of the institute and a former Colorado Supreme Court justice.

If a person sends an average of 50 e-mails a day and if a narrow set of search terms are not established early on in a case, the sheer volume of information to review can become overwhelming, Kerwin said.

“Weve had to go offshore to India to evaluate discovery because its cheaper,” he said. “We cant litigate our disputes because of the expense.”

via Balance sought on rising cost of gathering electronic evidence – The Denver Post.