Orrick

Lawyers from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe on Wednesday succeeded in disqualifying celebrity lawyer Lisa Bloom in a wrongful termination case against Crown Media, parent of the Hallmark channel, brought by a former host.

Mark Steines, who previously co-hosted the show “Home and Family,” sued Crown Media in Los Angeles federal court, claiming that he was wrongly fired after he blew the whistle on harassment by an executive producer on the show.

“Despite the show's squeaky-clean portrayal on television, it was apparently another case behind the scenes,” wrote U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney. “The show's creator and longtime executive producer, Forrest 'Woody' Fraser, allegedly bullied, verbally abused, and harassed cast and crew members.”

Steines' counsel? Lisa Bloom, who had previously represented two of the show's female producers in a harassment suit.

But one problem. Before Steines' suit was filed (but after the one by the two women), The Bloom Firm entered into a legal consulting agreement with an executive producer and production company associated with Home & Family.

It was a sweet deal for Bloom: $50,000 for no more than five hours of services a year for three years—or $3,333 an hour.

Bloom through a spokesman declined comment.

Shortly before Steines sent a demand letter to Crown Media, Carney in his decision wrote that Bloom unilaterally terminated the consulting agreement and returned the first installment payment of $16,666.

The Orrick team—Timothy Long and Michael Wertheim—cried foul, arguing that she was conflicted out of taking the case.

The judge agreed.

“The Bloom Firm cannot now rewrite the terms of the [legal consulting agreement]. The LCA is not limited to reviewing scripts or advising on the accuracy of fictional courtroom scenes. It broadly states that The Bloom Firm will advise on 'legal situations.' This language—coupled with the fact that another paragraph in the LCA expressly creates an attorney-client relationship—indicates that the [defendants] hired The Bloom Firm to provide legal advice.”

Carney added, “A lawyer's word is her bond and The Bloom Firm promised defendants it would represent them and not others adverse to their interests.”

 

GSA Lawyers Dropped the Ball Big-Time on Trump Hotel Lease

Kris Durmer. Lennard Loewentritt. Barry Segal. Timothy Tozer. Paula DeMuth.

Those are the lawyers named in a withering new report by the inspector general of the General Services Administration, who concluded that they deliberately ignored constitutional issues raised by the Trump International Hotel's lease with the federal government.

According to IG Carol Ochoa, the agency lawyers were fully aware that the emoluments clause presented a potential issue once Trump was elected president. That is, could Trump's financial interests in the lease for the hotel, which occupies the Old Post Office building in downtown Washington, violate constitutional prohibitions on emoluments—payments or gifts from foreign and domestic governments and officials, or more broadly, an official's gains from private business activities?

“[T]hey all agreed early on that there was a possible violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clauses,” the IG found.

So how did the GSA lawyers respond?

“The attorneys decided to ignore the emoluments issues,” Ochoa wrote. “They told us that the agency generally does not deal with constitutional issues (other than issues involving land condemnation or GSA officials), and consequently, the Constitution's emoluments issues were not in GSA's purview….[The] attorneys agreed with ignoring the constitutional issue because it was bigger than GSA and the lease.”

OK, I get why the lawyers didn't think they had any particular expertise here. GSA's mission is to provide centralized procurement for the federal government and to help federal agencies build and acquire office space. It's not really the kind of work that would attract budding constitutional scholars.

But c'mon, they could at least do a little research on the question, right? Surely it'd be an interesting change of pace.

Or not.

The GSA general counsel's office “decided to ignore the constitutional issues without preparing a formal decision memorandum to document the rationale for the position they were taking. One attorney told us that the decision-making process was just talking among the lawyers. Attorneys also told us that they made this decision without conducting any research of the two Emoluments Clauses.”

Or as one lawyer put it, the agency simply decided to “punt.”

Hmmm that's not very impressive, but the GSA lawyers did say they were aware that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is chock-full of lawyers to advise on tricky constitutional questions like these. So they could ask them about it, right?

Nah.

The GSA lawyers “did not contact or request guidance from OLC” before deciding to ignore the constitutional issues, according to the IG's report. “One senior attorney told us that OLC knew about the [Trump Hotel] lease 'and it was up to them to do something.' Another attorney stated that because [GSA's Office of General Counsel] was not going to address the constitutional issues, they did not need to confer with OLC. “

Ochoa in her report doesn't opine on whether the president has actually violated the emoluments clause. A lawsuit by the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland raising the issue is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, with oral argument set for March 19. (Lawyers representing the plaintiffs include Deepak Gupta of Gupta Wessler; Joseph Sellers of Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll and Norman Eisen of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.)

In a response to the IG's report, GSA General Counsel Jack St. John argued that based on DOJ's arguments in defending that case and others, the OLC if asked would have blessed the Trump hotel lease. DOJ's court filings “cite the very OLC opinions referenced in your report to support DOJ's position that the Old Post Office lease does not violate the Emoluments Clauses,” he wrote.

Maybe so, but that doesn't excuse the lazy lawyering by GSA attorneys.

As Ochoa wrote, “As an executive agency of the United States, both GSA and its employees have an obligation to ensure that agency actions comply with the law, whether the lease incorporates the Constitution or not. Using the language some witnesses employed, the Constitution most certainly is in GSA's purview.”

 

 

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