Nota Bene

Findlaw.com reports:

The sister of a man who was suspected of being a sexual predator and killed himself as the cameras of “Dateline NBC” closed in on him sued NBC Universal Inc. on Monday for $105 million.

Patricia Conradt’s brother, Bill Conradt Jr., shot himself last November in a Dallas suburb as police knocked at his door and a camera crew for the newsmagazine waited in the street.

Conradt claims her brother, an assistant county prosecutor, shot himself after he was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy. She alleges a police officer at the scene of the shooting told a “Dateline” producer, “That’ll make good TV.”

Bill Conradt, 57, became a target of a series called “To Catch a Predator” in which NBC and the activist group Perverted Justice set up shop for four days last November in a two-story home in Murphy, Texas. Perverted Justice staff posed as boys and girls online and arranged to meet men there.

The NY Times reports:

Tony Taylor, one of the men indicted with Michael Vick last week on federal charges stemming from a suspected dog-fighting ring, pleaded guilty Monday and agreed to help prosecutors in the case.

Taylor, 34, pleaded guilty during a 9 a.m. hearing in the United States District Court here to conspiring to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and to sponsoring “a dog in an animal fighting venture.” He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Taylor signed a statement describing his involvement with Vick and the others in arranging numerous illegal dog fights over state lines and operating “Bad Newz Kennels.” The statement appears to confirm much of what the government accused Vick and the others of doing in an indictment last week, and Taylor would be expected to testify to its details if he were called as a witness.

It was widely reported earlier this month that pages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were photographed and published on the Internet in advance of the official release. The Electronic Frontier Foundation had an interesting take on this story:

Perhaps the leaker didn’t realize that the digital camera he or she used — a Canon Rebel 300D — left digital fingerprints behind in every image. We downloaded a copy of the leak and took a look at the images with the open-source ExifTool, one of dozens of programs capable of reading the industry-standard EXIF digital photo metadata format. As the press reported, the camera’s serial number is in there, along with over 100 other facts including the date and time that the photos were taken and an assortment of photo-geek details about focus and lighting conditions.

It may be, then, that the leaker can be traced; there are several ways Canon might know who owns (or used to own) this camera, including a possible warranty registration or service or repair on the camera. A retailer might also have kept relevant records when it originally sold the camera. Another prospect: if images taken with the same camera were uploaded to a photo-sharing site like Flickr, their EXIF metadata might associate use of that camera with a particular account. (Flickr and other sites usually don’t allow the public to search by EXIF tag values. But it’s possible that Flickr itself, or a third-party spider that had downloaded all of its images, could perform such a search.)

The San Jose Mercury Press reports:

A sharply divided state Supreme Court ruled today that cities can no longer seize automobiles whose drivers are arrested for allegedly buying drugs or soliciting prostitutes.

The ruling overturns the laws of more than two dozen cities from Oakland to Los Angeles that allowed police to seize an automobile immediately after the driver’s arrest.

The 4-3 ruling said only state law can mete out punishment for drug and prostitution offenses and that without authorization from the California Legislature, cities can’t pass seizure ordinances that are harsher than state and federal laws. Even drivers suspected of buying a small amount of marijuana, which is a low-level crime punishable by a $100 fine, faced seizures in many of the cities with the ordinances.

You can read the opinion in O’Connell v. Stockton (No. S135160 July 26, 2007) here.

The Daily Breeze reports:

Cameron Brown, who is accused of throwing his 4-year-old daughter off a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff, will not have famed criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos or his firm representing him at his retrial.

Instead, because the judge will not approve state payments to a set of two privately retained defense attorneys, Mr. Brown will be represented by an attorney from the Alternate Public Defender’s office.

The Legal Reader reports on a new lawsuit has been filed against an attorney in New Jersey. The attorney, in a prior medical malpractice case is accused of asking an “inhumane” question: asking a husband whether he felt his wife had played a role in the death of their infant daughter by handling the child roughly. I don’t know the law in New Jersey, but here in California, such a lawsuit would be subject to a special motion to strike under California’s anti-SLAPP law and would likely be dismissed very quickly.

What happens when four federal prisoners:

• Try to obtain copyrights on their own names,
• Demand that their warden stop violating their “copyright” by using their names on prison registers,
• Attempt to record liens against the prison warden’s property, seize the warden’s cars and change the locks on the warden’s house, and
• Demand that the warden release them from prison in exchange for a release of their “claims” against the warden?

QuizLaw has the details here. (Hint: it involves more prison time).

The Sacramento Bee reports:

A diabetic attorney who claimed his judgment was impaired by a hypoglycemic attack was acquitted of smuggling heroin and methamphetamine to his jailed client.

John Kolfschoten, 62, had been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a crime, one count of bringing drugs into a jail facility and two counts of transportation of a controlled substance.

During the weeklong trial, Kolfschoten testified he thought he was delivering family photographs to the jailed murder defendant. His dangerously low blood-sugar level at the time let the idea of inspecting the package slip his mind, the lawyer testified.

Dark Horizons reports:

T Asset has sued MGM and claim (sic) the studio is interfering with their right to negotiate for the distribution of the planned fourth installment of the highly successful series reports the trades.

T Asset is a subsiduary of Halcyon Co. who acquired the rights to produce further “Terminator” film sequels in May. Using a script by “T3″ writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris, they planned to relaunch the franchise with a big-budget sequel.

What do the judges of the Ninth Circuit think of blackberries, camera phones, lap tops and other technology used in their courtrooms? Legal Pad dishes out the survey results here.