Utah Bar Journal

by Judge Dale A. Kimball

Most litigators, particularly those handling civil cases, do not try many cases – at least I did not when I was in practice. I do not think that my experience was atypical. Some civil cases are dismissed on Motions to Dismiss. Some civil cases are ended by the granting of Motions for Summary Judgment. Many cases are settled. Still others are tried to the Court in a bench trial or to an arbitrator or arbitrators, which process is now in many respects akin to a bench trial. Occasionally, of course, lawyers try cases in front of juries. However, compare the frequency of lawyers trying jury cases with the experience of a trial judge. Judges have much more experience with juries and jurors than most lawyers. Looking back now over somewhere between 150-200 jury trials as a Judge, I can claim some expertise on the views of jurors.

by David C. Castleberry

The statute of limitations is a deadline no attorney wants to miss. Not only does missing the statute of limitations destroy a client’s ability to seek redress in a lawsuit, it also exposes an attorney to a claim for legal malpractice.

by Richard A. Kaplan

I often recall a business school (“B” school) class years ago when a visiting industrial psychologist spoke to us about taking Rorschach tests. The idea was to prepare us for interviews. That was when the then “Personnel” departments of major corporations had begun to rely heavily on psychological testing to evaluate job candidates, and we were almost certain to be asked to bloviate on ink blots and to take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and other standardized tests intended to predict job performance and personality.

by Keith A. Call

I’m an admitted Facebook sleuth. I have a Facebook profile, but you won’t learn much about me there. You won’t see a profile picture. You won’t find my high school graduation date. And you definitely won’t learn anything about my favorite movie, novel or junk food. I’m on Facebook for one reason and one reason only: to spy on my teenage daughter.

by Janise K. Macanas

It’s a good thing that Vivianne Elizabeth Api Mbaku was a track and field athlete at West High School, eight years ago here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Nowadays, Vivianne, a second year law student at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, is an energetic and enthusiastic volunteer in the migrant worker division of the Utah Legal Services, clerk at the law firm of Richards Brandt Miller Nelson, and currently serves as President of the S. J. Quinney Minority Law Caucus. Always searching for ways to broaden her involvement in programs that serve racial and ethnic communities, this twenty-three year-old law student from Layton travels to Panama, Costa Rica, and Oaxaca, Mexico to volunteer for organizations that help her stay connected to the Latin American community she has grown to love and passionately contribute to even while she is busy pursuing her higher education.

As the child of an African immigrant, Vivianne explains that she has always had a unique perspective of the world and sensitivity to the inequalities within. For that reason, Vivianne jumped at the unique opportunity this past summer to volunteer at Utah Legal Services, where Vivianne worked primarily on human trafficking cases. Vivianne, who has a dual Bachelor of Arts Degree in Politics and Latin American Studies from Scripps College, California and is fluent in Spanish, explains that she was in daily contact with recent immigrants and those that had been illegally trafficked into Utah, most of whom were from Latin America.

by Cathy Roberts

Usually a book reviewer reads a book from cover to cover, even if it’s bad. This is a review of a review of a book that I guarantee I will never read entirely.

As law students learn, The Bluebook is an essential reference book for legal citation. Its prestigious sponsors (the Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Pennsylvania law reviews), its heft, and its “first mover” advantage in its field, have made it the repository of the correct way of referencing every source of knowledge a lawyer might need since 1926. But I suspect there are numerous dust-covered copies of The Bluebook staring at attorneys from the shelf with cold disdain, as mine does, knowing that without its help we will misplace a period, use a period instead of a comma, or, heaven forbid, italicize rather than underline. Now, there is a new edition: The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation 107 (19th ed. 2010). The 16th edition was long, at 255 pages. The 19th edition is over 500 pages long.

PUBLIC REPRIMAND

On January 27, 2011, the Chair of the Ethics and Discipline Committee of the Utah Supreme Court entered an Order of Discipline: Public Reprimand against Ned P. Siegfried for violation of Rules 1.5(a) (Fees), 1.8(a) (Conflict of Interest: Current Clients: specific Rules), 1.15(d) (Safekeeping Property), 1.15(d) (Safekeeping Property), 5.1(c) (Responsibilities of Partners, Managers, and Supervisory Lawyers), and 8.4(a) (Misconduct) of the Rules of Professional Conduct.

by Tyler L. Buswell

Attorney and author Anne C. Weisberg wrote, “We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holes.”

I have a great aunt who suffered a stroke over twenty years ago and has been disabled ever since, unable to utilize much of the right side of her body. She is now in her sixties. Given her disabilities and advancing age, she requires a great deal of physical assistance because she is unable to perform even simple daily functions.