The law blog of Aurora attorney Mike Huseman, featuring practice updates authored by Northern Illinois University College of Law alumni, as well as guest contributions from non-NIU lawyers and law students.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Publicity
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Lock him up.
I would really like to hear the opinions of the readers again on this one. Should he or shouldn't he be jailed for contempt of the federal court?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Extreme Debt Collection Tactics
Friday, February 20, 2009
Fees capped at $925 per hour in Tribune bankruptcy
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Disobeying Evictions?
Organizers have been creating vast networks via text messages, web sites, and phone trees to alert neighboring homeowners, and the media, when an eviction has been scheduled and when deputies are on the way. Volunteers will summon friends and relatives to converge at the site to occupy the house in an attempt to block the eviction. People have already started to attach themselves to their porches to attract attention. A central theme in these protests seems to be a willingness to be arrested. Some police departments are arresting people and some are not.
The Times links to the websites of several of these organizations. They appear organized and very well funded. Over the past several weekends, these campaigns have drawn nearly 500 participants to separate protests in New York and four other cities. Certain people speculate that the number of volunteers will reach into the tens of thousands within weeks. Sit-ins are scheduled in upcoming weeks for New York, Los Angeles, and more than twenty other cities across the country hardest hit by foreclosures.
This movement can't be good for the economy at large. If banks cannot repossess their collateral, how are they supposed to survive. We can't continue to bail out the banks forever. Eventually they will have to start making their own money in order for the economy to rebound.
County sheriffs need to get creative in thier attempts to combat this civil disobedience movement. They can't arrest everybody, but they can't arrest nobody either, like the Sheriff of Cook County did (or did not do) in a recent publicity stunt. It is not up to local sheriffs to decide which court orders to obey and which ones to disobey.
Maybe the banks should dispatch hundreds of volunteers out to these people's doors on the first of every month to demand mortgage payments.
Subscribe via email.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Welcome DJ Evans!!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Mailbox Rule Does Not Apply to UPS
Sunday, February 8, 2009
ARDC Disqualifies 587 Lawyers
As all of you hopefully already know, Illinois adopted new CLE rules and requirements in September 2005 and created the Minimum Continuing Legal Education Board to enforce compliance. Lawyers with last names in the first half of the alphabet were to meet the new 20-hour education standard by June 30, 2008 and those in the second half are required to complete their CLE credits by June 30 of this year.
The two-year study requirements will rise to 24 hours in the next cycle and eventually to 30 hours. There were about 2,000 lawyers out of compliance as of December, but the commission made phone calls to many of the lawyers to remind them about meeting the new CLE requirement. About 1,400 lawyers immediately came into compliance, but the remaining 587 did not. That number probably includes some lawyers who have moved, died or retired, said James Grogan, the adminstrator of the ARDC.
How do they get reinstated? Report compliance and pay a reinstatement fee of $250.00.