Lawyerly yours wins first disbarment case

I received today the ruling of the Committee on Bar Discipline dismissing the charges of unethical conduct filed against me by a rich businessman who lost a case that I worked on as a junior lawyer. I hate that guy. He filed all the cases he could file against my client and when there was nothing else to file, he filed a case against me.

Of course, there was no doubt on my mind that I would win that case. But I suffered from just the thought that I was being disbarred. This time I wasn't just the lawyer for the accused -- I was the accused. Days and nights I worried about the outcome of the case. I didn't know a thing outside of my profession. What was I to do if I lost? Worse, cheapskate that I am, I was my own lawyer. My boss (who was included in the suit) reviewed my work but since he was suffering the same anxiety I was suffering, I couldn't really trust him. I remember when the deadline for writing our answer approached, I couldn't write a single word. Gone was the legendary pleading writer that I fancied myself to be. I was the lawyer who could churn out pages and pages of law in a few minutes. I was the lawyer who quoted Shakespeare in his pleadings and got away with it. But for the case that involved my career, I was mute. I didn't know a single law. Indeed, the hardest pleading to write was the pleading I wrote for myself.

I'm glad I survived that -- and how. Now, it's pay back time. I am going to sue this guy and I will make sure he suffers the same ordeal I went through. See you in court you filthy businessman. May God have mercy on your soul.

No Hope in Concepts: The Reason I Stay Away from the Stock Market

I have to credit my metaphysics teacher Rev. Fr. Roque Ferriols, S.J., who instilled in me the habit of asking "Meron ba?" In English, the nearest translation I can think of is "Is it there?" Does it exist or is it just hot air? The habit is based on the principle that there exists a reality. And human beings that we are, we nestle in reality. That's where we live. But there are a lot of non-truths out there that deceive us in to believing what is not reality.

And these non-truths are not necessarily lies or accounting scams. Non-truths can be innocent things like concepts. Concepts are products of our minds. They come out of our minds based on our experience of reality but concepts are not reality. The function of concepts is to point us to reality. If we say moon, for example, we have a concept of the moon. But the word moon itself is not reality. The real moon is up in the sky. To be fascinated with the moon, is to be fascinated with reality. That looks okay. But to be fascinated with concepts -- such as earnings per share -- is to be fascinated with nothing. That is not okay.

The stock market is one place where everything is concepts -- and not just concepts but concepts of concepts of concepts. Take the concept of debt to equity ratio for example. It looks simple. Conventional wisdom tells us that a company with a high debt to equity ratio means it has more debts than capital. This means a large part of its costs will be interest payments. A company with low equity ratio is one with less debts than capital. Interest might not be eating up its profits that much. So which one has better prospect of making more profits?

Dig deeper and see where the labyrinth of concepts bring you. Debts: What does the company owe? Well -- loans from banks, advances from stockholders, bonds, commercial papers, promissory notes, purchases on credit, etc… still with me? What is capital? Money, property, goodwill? How do you value this money? Based on inflation? How do you value property? Based on market conditions? What is the market condition? Then, we realize a lot of things are not really clear. How does one classify, for example, between a debt and equity. Preferred shares -- is that equity or debt. Convertible bonds -- is it debt or equity. What about warrants or option contracts. Then we find out that a lot of the underlying items are based on opinions and opinions no matter where they are coming from are not truths. So we ask, is it really there? Meron ba?

Just look at the moon. No matter what the people say, you are sure it is there. Unlike the stock market, the moon is not susceptible to the whims of the crowd. In the stock market, if the crowd believes there is a value, everything goes up. If the crowd believes there is no value, everything goes down. Then, creative accountants and corporate honchos with appetites for large sums of money (and everyone in the stock market has that appetite) start playing around with the concepts and masquerade losses with profits until they are caught. Then, everything crumbles. People realize all they really had was concepts -- concepts of concepts of concepts.

I never thought of playing with the stock market crowd. There are many people way ahead me who drumbeat the perceptions of this crowd. No hope it putting one over them. No hope in concepts.

So, I stay away from the stock market. The truth is hard to find there -- with or without accounting scams.

OOPS SORRY. Aceron.net is on back up mode pending re-installation by our regular service provider cyberwings.com.

If your are looking for aceron.net email please go here.
If you are looking for Jerryl's site, please come back later. It is currently off-line.
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What you're reading now is my site www.aceron.net/~marvin.I am one of the members of the Aceron Family of Oriental . Mindoro, Philippines.

LAW IS A RELIGION BUT AN INFERIOR ONE AT THAT

Just to clarify my earlier post that would seem that I am professing some sort of cult for lawyers, I believe that even if law is considered a religion it is an inferior one at that. Why? Simple -- it bears no message of hope. Law is confined to the hear and now. Law has no answer if you ask about the after life. I remember in civil law class, our eminent Prof. and former Court of Appeals Justice Hector Hofilena asked if the body of a deceased can be considered property? We were all aghast at how casually the law would classify things between property and non-property. Death means you become a corpse susceptible for appropriation. Law offers no salvation beyond the here and now.

Which brings us to the point: why do we tie our lives to the law when it has no message of hope? Why do we insist that our legal system be free from religious color when by doing so we offer our citizens nothing to look forward to but the cold concepts of classification and segregation.

It is a sad society that has nothing that binds itself but the religion of the law.

Law is a Religion



Recently, a US Federal Appeals Court ruled that the US Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of the addition of the phrase "under God" in 1954 by Congress which makes it an "endosement of religion". The full CNN story is found here..

The ruling stems from a provision of the US Bill of Rights that can also be found in the Philippine Bill of Rights which states something like "No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In layman's terms, it simply menas that the state should not favor one religion over another and neither should the state prohibit the exercise of anyone's religion. There is a history that went with the crafting of this provision. But the bottomline is the conviction that in the modern society no man should be killed for believing that the world is round.

But what is religion? My theology and philosophy teachers used to say that the word comes from the latin term "religare" which means to be tied down to something. Thus, you can say religion is what one believes he is tied down to. This involves a creed -- what one believes in. For Catholics, this is the Apostle's Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty creator of heaven and earth...
Religion has a code --the moral behavior expected from a believer of the creed --e.g., no premarital sex, practise monogamy, Thou shall not steal, etc. And religion has a cult -- the rituals that the believer goes through everyday of his life to nurture his creed and code. Go to mass. Go to confessions. Take Holy Communion, etc.

Going through this definition, law qualifies as a religion. It's creed is the constitution, the supreme law that defines the principles that society believes will make it happy. It's code is the various statutes that seek to enforce the supreme law of the land in the everyday detail of life. Law encompasses every aspect of life that there is no way to run away from it. You won't believe it, but there is even a law governing cockfighting. Law is cult -- everyday thousands go to the court room -- the church of the law -- to hear judges and lawyers preach about what the law means to ordinary people. We have ceremonies that signal the effectivity of the law, the signing of the bills, the banging of the gavel, the implementation of lethal injection. Law is a religion. Society is tied to the law.

So the joke is on this US Federal Court. By upholding the non-establishment clause of the US Constitution by prohibiting the US pledge of allegiance, it unwittingly violated the same clause by establishing, as it were, the Religion of the Law.

GOOD NEWS

It is now possible to incorporate online. Check out SEC.gov.ph. Click here.
Who needs lawyers?

BAD NEWS

It's so difficult. Not even this lawyer could do it.
People still need lawyers ( he he he)

Andersen Loses Criminal Trial



CNN.com reports that after a six-week trial and 10 days of deliberations, jurors convicted Andersen for obstructing justice when it destroyed Enron Corp. documents while on notice of a federal investigation. Andersen had claimed that the documents were destroyed as part of its housekeeping duties and not as a ruse to keep Enron documents away from the regulators. This ho-hum defense was thrown out by the jurors as they voted to convict Andersen of the crime. Thus, Andersen now faces up to 5 years probation plus a $500,000 fine. But the worse is yet to come as a class action suit is underway to compensate thousands of American investors who have suffered damages for Andersen's actions.
Full text of the news here.

Thanks to Renaissance Girl for sending some traffic to this site. Unfortunately, my current workload prevents me from making any good blog probably for the next few weeks. Check out the archives for our past blogs if you have time to kill. For useful links to legal sites on the web, refer to the list on our left margin. Happy browsing!

Teacher displays porn during exams


BBC reports that in the UK a teacher who was conducting an exam unintentionally displayed porn pictures to his students. Apparently, the invigilator, math teacher Richard Jowett, was looking at the material on his personal computer, forgetting it was linked up to the monitor that could be seen by everyone. Full text here.

JOKE FROM THE MAIL

Pinoy Hell

A Pinoy dies and goes to hell. There he finds that there is a
different hell for each country.

He goes first to the German hell and asks, "What do they do here?" He
is told, "First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they
lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes
in and whips you for the rest of the day."

The man does not like the sound of that at all, so he moves on. He
checks out the USA hell as well as the Russian hell and many more. He
discovers that they are all more or less the same as the German hell.

Then he comes to the Filipino hell and finds that there is a very
long line of people waiting to get in. Amazed he asks,"What do they do
here?"

He is told "First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then
they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the Filipino devil
comes in and whips you for the rest of the day."

"But that is exactly the same as all the other hells - why are there so
many people waiting to get in?"

"Because there is always a blackout, so the electric chair does not
work.
Somebody stole all the nails to sell it 'por kilo'. And the devil
used to be a public official, so he comes in and punches his time-card,
shakes hands with all the people waiting there and then goes back home... "

NEWS
Sixth Grader Suspended for Stick Figure Doodle


CNN reports that a Pennsylvania school suspended an 11-year-old girl for drawing two teachers with arrows through their heads, saying the stick figures were more death threat than doodle.

Becca Johnson, an honor-roll sixth-grader at Mellon Middle School, drew the picture on the back of a vocabulary test on which she had gotten a D.

"That's my way of saying I'm angry," Becca said, adding she meant no harm to the teachers.

The stick figures, on a crudely drawn gallows with arrows in their heads, had the names of Becca's teacher and a substitute teacher written underneath. Another teacher spotted the doodle in the girl's binder Tuesday and reported it, prompting the three-day suspension.

Did this Pennsylvania school go over board on this one? The answer appears very uncertain. This is an academic community where punishment is imposed not only as a form of retribution but also as a way of reforming wrongful behavior. In other words, the punishment is part of the education that children get from a school. Thus, nobody can argue against what the school believes as the right punishment because it's part of the school's academic freedom.

Yet, surely looking at the offense, one can sense a great disproportion. The punishment appears to be too much for a simple childish behavior of doodling. I once did this to a Social Science teacher in high school and all I merited was a smile from my teacher. Why should anyone be suspended if I happen to stick an arrow on the doodle?

Joke from the mails
TOP TEN REASONS WHY THERE WOULDN'T BE A FILIPINO-AMERICAN PRESIDENT

10. White House is not big enough for in-laws and the relatives.

9. Not enough parking spaces at White House for 2 Honda Civics, Toyota
Celica, 1985 Mercedes Benz Diesel, BMW (big mean wife) and MPV (My Pinoy
Van) and the jeepney owner..

8. Dignitaries generally intimidated by eating with fingers at state
dinners.

7. Too many dining rooms in the White House (Where will they put the last
supper picture?

6. White House walls not big enough to hold giant wooden spoon and fork.

5. Secret Service staff won't respond to "psssst, psssst."

4. Secret service staff uncomfortable driving presidential car with rosary
hanging on the rear view mirror or the statuette of Santo Nino on the
dashboard.

3. No budget allocation to purchase karaoke machines on every White House
Room.

2. State dinners do not allow "Take Home".

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON

1. AIR FORCE ONE does not allow overweight balikbayan boxes.

NEWS
Robot cameras 'will predict crimes before they happen'

The Independent News of the UK reports that scientists at Kingston University in London have developed software able to anticipate if someone is about to commit a crime. The software, called Cromatica, works by examining images coming in from close circuit television cameras (CCTV) and comparing them to behaviour patterns that have already programmed into its memory. It can then mathematically work out what is likely to happen next. And if it is likely to be a crime it can send a warning signal to a security guard or police officer. Full text of the news here.

These scientists are still at their inductive logic. "If you look like a criminal, act like a criminal, then you are a criminal."
The thought sends me the shivers. Many times I love play acting on the street.Sometimes I imagine myself as a communist cadre about to drop off some important document from the politburo to an innocent looking trash can in the middle of Cubao. Can't do that anymore, I guess.

But really, how many folks out there seem to act like a criminal when they actually are not? It's probably a small percentage of this 60 Million ++ people which still translates to a couple of thousands. Indeed, this way of thinking "you are mathematically what you appear to be" is a real menace. The margin of error is not at all marginal if these scientists will only realize that they are talking about human beings who might as well be their own wives and children. Well, that's the UK. That's their worry. This is the Philippines where the most advanced computers cannot mathematically tell the police from the robbers.

Sick man kills self after long hours on the web


According to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a twenty-one year old man killed himself last year after spending long hours playing in Sony's Everquest gaming site. The report said that the 21-year-old Shawn Woolley was addicted to EverQuest. He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy. His mother blames the game for her son's suicide and has hired an attorney to sue the company in an effort to get warning labels put on the games. "It's like any other addiction," Elizabeth Woolley said last week. "Either you die, go insane or you quit. My son died." The full text of the news is here.

If this action were to be filed by somebody from the Philippines, it is very likely that it will not prosper. Philippine law considers the man old enough to know what he was doing and to understand that playing on the web to the point of addiction is harmful to himself. To even insinuate that there is a cause and effect between his suicide and his addiction to the online game may even be considered absurd.Was Sony negligent in not posting warnings on its site that playing can cause harm? That is another way of looking at it. Is it possible that Sony's Everquest drove the man to suicide? While in the US people can get rich making this sort of connection, it is not the same in the Philippines where murderers are even paraded as heroes. Yet, it would be interesting to know how the US courts will tackle this first ever action on web addiction against a big company.

I'm moving to a new server. Please update your bookmarks. Henceforth, we can be read at www.aceron.net/~marvin/

NEWS
Sixth Grader Might be Expelled for Bringing a Knife to School

News 3 reported that a Madison, Wisconsin sixth grader faces expulsion from his school for bringing a knife.The kid claims he needed it for his science project -- i.e., to cut onions. But the school believes that it should enforce the "Zero Tolerance Rule " for weapons in school.


Chris Schimdt

The report states that Chris Schmidt is a straight-A sixth-grader. He loves school, music and sports, and went to the nation's Capitol as a member of the School Safety Patrol. However, the report said his background is irrelevant for the offense that he has committed. Ms. Valencia Douglas, assistant school superintendent says "We can't say, 'You're a good kid, so your mistake doesn't have as much force, or importance behind it as a kid with other issues,'"

The slant in the news report (full text here) seems to make it appear that the school is being unreasonable. Yet, it is quite possible that the kid intended to threaten somebody with the knife or just brought it for show. With kids these days, you'll never know.

Analyzing the issue further, however, it seems that the problem really is with the rule and not with its application -- assuming there is no other fact but for act of bringing the knife to school. The rule infers criminal intent just by the act of bringing any weapon or weapon-like utensil and punishes the act with a severe penalty. If the school insists on the strict application of its rule, this may be a potential case for violation of the constitutional right to "due process" on account of unreasonableness of the law.

NEWS
Suit seeks billions in slave reparations



CNN reports that a former law student, who discovered evidence linking U.S. corporations to the slave trade, filed a federal lawsuit
in Brooklyn against these corporations for conspiracy, human rights violations, unjust enrichment from their corporate predecessors' roles in the slave trade and conversion of the value of the slaves' labor into their profits. The suit names FleetBoston Financial, the railroad firm CSX and the Aetna insurance company, and promises to name up to 100 additional corporations at a later date.
"These are corporations that benefited from stealing people, from stealing labor, from forced breeding, from torture, from committing numerous horrendous acts, and there's no reason why they should be able to hold onto assets they acquired through such horrendous acts," said Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, the main plaintiff in the lawsuit. Full text here.


Deadria Farmer-Paellmann: A case for overlawyered?

Is this case for overlawyered.com? Or is justice finally catching up after a couple of hundred years of delay? According to CNN, in response to the lawsuit, Aetna released a statement saying, "We do not believe a court would permit a lawsuit over events which -- however regrettable -- occurred hundreds of years ago. These issues in no way reflect Aetna today." For sure, the defense of prescription will be invoked -- that is, the cause action has already expired due to the lapse of time. And corporate lawyer that I am, I suppose this is the book solution to this case. However, this can hardly be classified as another case for the books. It involves the entire Amercian history, psyche and nationhood and a very insensitive treatment of this case can lead to riots like those which characterized the Rodney King trials.

NEWS

CUBA BANS SALES OF COMPUTERS TO PUBLIC



The Cuban government has banned the sale of computers and computer accessories to the public, except in cases where the items are "indispensable" and the purchase is authorized by the Ministry of Internal Commerce. Minister of Internal Commerce, Bárbara Castillo of Cuba issued Resolution No. 383/2001 Article 19, Chapter II, Section 3 of which states that:

"The sale of computers, offset printer equipment, mimeographs, photocopiers, and any other mass printing medium, as well as their parts, pieces and accessories, is prohibited to associations, foundations, civic and nonprofit societies, and natural born citizens. In cases where the acquisition of this equipment or parts, pieces and accessories is indispensable, the authorization of the Ministry of Internal Commerce must be solicited."



According to Wired.com, "the rise of independent journalists in Cuba, who published articles on the Internet criticizing the Castro regime, may have something to do with it. The correspondents, who risk jail time for their "subversive" reports, send their stories by fax, e-mail or phone dictation to supporters in Miami." Full text here.

It is quite apparent that Cuba is in a state of paranoia. With the advent of new media, such as the internet and cellular telephones, Fidel Castro and his monolithic party will have their hands full in keeping freedom loving people from expressing their views to the world..Yet, how long can Castro put up with it? Not for long for sure.Not for long.

WEB ADMIN

We finally registered ACERON.NET!. Thus, effective immediately we can be seen under the domain http://marvin.aceron.net. Our email address will also change to marvin@aceron.net. MBAceron.com will be retired by April 1, 2002. I was never at home with it anyway.

NEWS
Saudi Police stop improperly dressed girls from fleeing burning school

BBC reports that Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers. According to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam. Full text here



This is a perfect example of common sense giving way to obedience of the law. How stupid of the saudi police. But we might be surprise to know that they thought all the time that they were doing the right thing. They probably still do.

Comment

Erap turns the tables on Govt.

What do you know? After committing a big slip on primetime TV by admitting that he is the one and only Jose Velarde, Erap (disgraced former Philippine President), dismissed his top caliber lawyers on the pre-text that he will not get justice anyway from the court trying his case. Now, everybody in the government is frantic that this new Erap posturing might trigger another attack from the Erap mob who lynched Malacanang Palace last May 1, 2001. There is no doubt Erap wants to go on exile.His political supportes are now agitating for it. (See INQ7 text here.) And Gloria -- slick politician that she is -- knows letting Erap go might be the political compromise of the century.

Okay, as for me, I'm just shaking my head as I type this. I am shaking my head. I will go about my business in this country just shaking my head.

NEWS
Computer Waste Polluting Asia

BBC News reports that old computers are being dumped in Asia where they are releasing toxic materials into the environment. The full text is here.

Piles of computer waste are found in Guiyu, China.

BBC cites a report, called Exporting Harm: The Hi-Tech Trashing Of Asia, which details a group of villages in south-eastern China where computers from America are picked apart and strewn along rivers and fields.

In the Philippines, old computers from the US are being resold with warranties at bargain prices by enterprising importers. While there are no reported dumping of old computers as of yet, it cannot be said for sure that the same mass dumping of old computers are not taking place in remote places of the country. Given the rising level of computer use in the Philippines today and the continuing problem regarding the disposal of garbage in general, it will not be long before the these old computers from the first world will find their way in Philippine rivers.

NEWS
Love struck judge likely to go to jail because of love poem

A Philippine judge accused of sexual harrassment by a court employee is likely to get convicted as the victim presented a love poem given by the judge himself to her. The poem, written in the Philippine national lanuage, contains sexually explicit lines and belies any denials from the beleaguerd judge. A portion of the poem goes,

Poem Translation

Dumating ka sa buhay ko You came into my life
isang araw ng Agosto, One day in August
Ang baon mo ay ang iyong ganda You brought beauty
at talinong abogado. And a lawyer's intelligence
Ang tamis ng iyong ngiti The sweetness of your smile
ay bumihag sa puso ko, Captured my heart
Malakas na pampalubag A strong soother
sa mainit kong ulo. To my anger
Kapalaran ay malupit Fate is harsh
di kita makatalik, I cannot make love to you
Sa ngayon o bukas Today or tomorrow
pagka't di mo ibig. Because you do not love me

The full Inquirer text is here.

I've had a wave of referrals lately regarding sexual harassment but none is as amusing as this one. In a macho society like the Philippines, the enactment of the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law was welcomed by a lot of women. It is good that cases are now being filed and the relatively new legislation is being invoked.
However, the only problem I have with this law is it requires that the offended party should be a subordinate to the offender when in most cases, sexual harassment takes place when both parties are of equal rank. Be that as it may, it's better than nothing.

NEWS
Philippine solons sign resolution to allow Estrada's trip abroad

Former Pres. Estrada's cohorts are at it again. Legislators allied with him passed around a resolution asking the Sandiganbayan, the anti-graft court hearing Estrada's plunder cases, to allow him to have his knee surgery in the US. The resolution, signed by 130 House members, was set to be filed Monday night by its principal author, Maguindanao Rep. Didagen Dilangalen. Nineteen senators signed a counterpart resolution in the Senate. The Inquirer's full text is here.

These solons, if they know their basic constitutional law, cannot pass this resolution without violating the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary. I am sure that the Sandiganbayan will turn down the preposterous resolution, but the mere fact that there is such a resolution shows how despicable these politicians are. These politicians are the same sycophants who led Estrada to believe that he could be President and gave him the political machinery for mounting a political campaign. When they handily won the presidency in 1998, they divided the political spoils among themselves as Estrada busied himself with his women and graft money. Now, they want to give him a reprieve from his hospital jail house and send him partying in the US on the pre-text of a new surgery. Despicable....utterly despicable!

NEWS
Did US Law Firm pay plaintiffs to file class action suits?

Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, the top law firm in the US, specializing in shareholder suits, is under a federal grand jury investigation for having allegedly employed improper tactics to recruit plaintiffs, including paying kickbacks to lawyers and brokers for referrals. The full text is here.

Milberg has made its reputation by filing suit on behalf of investors against thousands of corporations, accounting firms and investment bankers, alleging shareholder fraud in connection with precipitous drops in stock prices. The firm is seeking to become the lead plaintiffs' counsel in litigation over the collapse of Enron. It has also filed an enormous number of suits against Wall Street firms over allegations of improper IPO allocations and "laddering" stock prices to give them a false appearance of increasing value. In the world of corporate finance, especially among company management, Milberg is viewed as an opportunistic firm that has made a cottage industry of filing "cookie cutter" lawsuits whenever stocks drop by a certain percentage and growing fat on the settlement fees.

In the Philippines, no class action on the basis of securities fraud has ever been filed. Thus, I've often viewed the Philippine securities business as the arena for snakes with no hope for redemption. Sometime in 1997, a group of international banks gathered to file the first major class action suit against SGV & Company (the Philippine affiliate of Andersen Consulting -- think Enron). SGV is the external auditor of many publicly-listed companies. The basis for the proposed class action was the window dressing that the auditing firm made on the financial statements of Victorias Milling Corp. (a publicliy-listed company). The banks relied upon the financial statements to lend money on the cash strapped sugar miller and it turned out that the corporation did not have enough assets to cover its liabilities and the financial statements did not reflect the discrepancy. There was no sugar to support the quedans -- as it were. Eventually, Victorias declared bankruptcy. The banks tried to look for a major law firm to get the case started, but the major law firms declined engagement because of business affiliations with SGV. When they finally got the law firm to represent them, they got too tired and decided to just forget it -- aware of the backlash that they might face if they filed the case against the giant auditing firm. That is why I will never trust my money on Philippine securities. If nobody can take on an auditing firm such as SGV for a malfeasance such as false financial statements, there is no hope for the Philippine securities market.

Which brings us back to the above story -- it is quite sad that the law firm has been implicated in the scandal. But for the Philippines, I wish they establish a local counterpart here just to teach the snakes in the Philippine securities market a lesson.

NEWS

Linking Patent Goes to Court

BT Group Plc, a US company, claims that it has a patent covering hypertext links -- i.e., the wonder of the internet that allows anyone to click on a link and go to another webpage like this. A U.S. federal court will hear preliminary arguments next week to determine if this most elemental of Internet activities is the business property of a lone company, protected in the form of a patent.

This one is for overlawyered.com. It is undisputed that this company obtained a 1989 patent on web linking. The web community, however, has pointed to earlier versions of hypertext linking prior to BT Group's obtaining a patent, the earliest of which is 1968 demonstration from Stanford University.Where do you think it's gonna go? If it goes in favor of BT Group, then it is going to be very expensive for each member of the internet community. I pray it doesn't go that way.

NEWS
RP now Asia’s darling of fund managers

The Manila Bulletin reported the above story here.

That explains the call we got recently from a headhunter looking for an in-house counsel for "major Wall Street bond trader." I told him sorry. I have decided I hate corporate law years ago. Yet, it is quite interesting that the perception of the Philippine securities market has changed remarkably since the BW Scam. Personally, however, I have never trusted this business on securities. Retained earnings, book value, market value -- these are layers of concepts that govern the securities business that are very much susceptible to "creative accounting". A lot of people have fallen for it and had disastrous results. I am contented in eking out a living with measly appearance fees and helping justice become a reality one case at a time. (yeah right.)

NEWS
NY Attorney Sues Anti-Virus Software Maker over Restrictive Licensing Agreement

The New York state attorney general on Thursday filed a suit against computer security software provider Network Associates on the ground that the company has attempted to censor criticism of its products The issue pertains to the wording in the company's software license agreement which requires Network Associates' consent before publishing reviews of its products or disclosing with third parties results of "benchmark tests" that compare the effectiveness of Network Associates products and competing software. Full ZDNET text here.

This is going to be an interesting case. Network Associates will likely argue that the clause cannot be said to curtail freedom of speech because the user is always free not to get the software in order not to be bound by the prohibition. Yet, civil libertarians will argue that the product involves public interest and the public has the right to know and discuss their views on the consumer product. It can go on and on. Ultimately, however, the court will have to assess its values: Which one is more important the right to freely enter into contracts or the right to free speech? Knowing Americans, it is very likely to go the way of free speech.

NEWS

US Lawmaker charged with Racketeering Told to Behave in Courtroom

In Cleveland, a lawmaker charged with racketeering was warned by the judge to behave in court. Apparently, the lawmaker, who is not a lawyer but is lawyering for himself (what a cheapskate), is indulging in extended speeches in and outside of court to proclaim his innocence. In the process, he is saying the judge is bias and the justice department is being vindictive. Full text here.

This guy will surely go to jail. Nobody should lawyer for himself -- not even a lawyer and more so a non-lawyer. This US lawmaker is toast.

NEWS

Rules of game change: From Europe to Pak, suspects guilty without trial

An article from The Indian Express notes "The new willingness to expel Islamic terror suspects with little attention to legal proceedings, is not limited to the European Union." It claims that in Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Bosnia, a growing number of suspects have been whisked abroad in recent months without due process. Full text here. Whoa. I'm in trouble. I look like Osama Bin Laden without the beard.