Caylee/Casey Anthony Case: Indulgent Definately, Indigent Hardly
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Orlando, FL-
HOT MESS SPOILER ALERT
Who thought this was a good idea on behalf of THE BAEZ LAW FIRM?
Who raised their hand at the weekly status update and said:
“I’m sick of this crapp-ass coffee, I make $300 bucks an hour.
I make big bucks so I should be drinking STARbucks.
Gimme a Venti. I can’t drink this swill another 3/4 hour minimum or I will surely die before the trial.
I KNOW.. how about we figure out a way to make OTHERS pay for it??
Sound ridiculous?
That is nothing compared to the caught-on-camera cluster that took place during yesterdays hearing to declare accused murderer Casey Anthony indigent for costs.
Andrea Lyon, lead counsel and chronic look-of-woehaver, feels approximately $70Geeze of her “charity’s” money has been spent on this case. (Edited to add, methinks she is subtracting $22Geeze, read on)
The Center For Justice In Capital Cases
SHUT THE DOOR. This is no charity, except perhaps to Lyon as she is a paid staff member, serving as it’s director.
It is a certification study class at DePaul, run by Lyon and paid by the defense PI Morty.
Furthermore, as the work product developed in this case supports the curriculum and subsequent GPA of it’s tuitionable students, why the hell would the expenses be allocated to the defense of the case against Casey Anthony instead of DePaul?
There is no charity attributable to Andrea Lyon although she testifies to fund raising efforts through various charities and corporations, and that those charities are now, “in the hole.” $70Geeze, to be exact.
Is this the part where we here her use of the word charity was a charitable way to say she imposed on her budget as a professor?
I will say, given her penchant for hardass reporting from her students, how is it possible she has no clue what her books and billable hour are?
There are 14 students working on a death penalty case that are not attorneys, and client attorney privilege would not extend to them as their is no established agency. If I were the National Enquirer I would be finding out which of those undergrads have fat student loans and what kind of access to information they have. Catch My drift?
SanDiego Sugga Daddy
Todd Macaluso, apparently so sure of Casey’s innocence he gassed up the whirlybird, packed his lucky smoking jacket and signed on to the case.
Jose Baez testified that Todd Macaluso gifted $70 Geeze to the trust account of Casey Anthony. Operating pro hac vice (visitors pass) as representation with his own retainer agreement with Miss Anthony, Mac has violated the rules of the Florida Bar:
RULE 4-1.8 CONFLICT OF INTEREST; PROHIBITED AND OTHER TRANSACTIONS
(e) Financial Assistance to Client. A lawyer shall not provide financial assistance to a client in connection with pending or contemplated litigation, except that:
(1) a lawyer may advance court costs and expenses of litigation, the repayment of which may be contingent on the outcome of the matter; and
(2) a lawyer representing an indigent client may pay court costs and expenses of litigation on behalf of the client.
As Casey had access to $275K and was not indigent 10 months ago when Todd Macaluso signed on and paid his apparent entry fee, it would be impossible to defend this “contribution” as legal under Florida law.
ABC
The Approving Bogs for Children company has paid out $200 Geeze.
“In August 2008, we licensed exclusive rights to an extensive library of photos and home videos for use by our broadcast platforms, affiliates and international partners. No use of the material was tied to any interview.”
..”The deal was done with an attorney representing several owners of copyrighted content, ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine said. That attorney is Baez, she added..”
Really, not tied to any interview? When did those images and videos debut on GMA exactly? Who was on that program when they were shown?
I am quite certain I heard Jose Baez say in sworn testimony that he retained Tim Chinaris, former head of Florida Bar ethical committee to field such inquiries and all were turned down. He added that such agreements would not be ethical. Maybe he thinks ethical is transposable with visible.
Several owners of content means multiple people were paid for this “extensive library”. If ABC is claiming that Baez brokered this transaction for all then we have an even bigger problem as he was simultaneously representing the interests of all parties at the time. The agreement that was reached between the parties is critical to understanding the income status of Casey Anthony and her attorneys. Judge Strickland may very well just deny the indigency application and alls well that ends well that these barristers will have to buck up on their own.
That is, until John Morgan gets wind. We will see a copy of the ABC contract in the civil case against Casey Anthony on behalf of Zenaida Gonzalez, fo shcizz. He danced 2 jigs yesterday. There were witnesses.
Without question, Mr. Baez should be REQUIRED to produce this agreement in response to proof their is no recurring revenue or subsequent earnings to his client based on the structure of the agreement. It is not uncommon for such agreements to include royalty clauses, which would mean that someone is getting paid every time a photo or image from that collection is used.
ABC newsroom laid off 1/3 of it’s news staff earlier this month. Nice.
Billable Hours
Perhaps the *thud* moment for me yesterday was when Mr. Baez admitted in open court that he does not track his billable hours on this case.
THUD, AGAIN
Apparently, the reaction is sticking with me.
Under the rules of the Florida Bar, there is a very stringent set of requirements when determining reasonable fees for clients.
Short Version:
RULE 4-1.5 FEES AND COSTS FOR LEGAL SERVICES
(b) Factors to Be Considered in Determining Reasonable Fees and Costs.
(1) Factors to be considered as guides in determining a reasonable fee include:
(A) the time and labor required, the novelty, complexity, and difficulty of the questions involved, and the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly.
How can you bill someone $90Geeze, and have no idea how you got there, or whether or not such activities are reasonable to the client and or case?
Judge Strickland ruled that by end of business today the defense team needed to provide a full accounting of requested trust account disbursements.
I am thinking they will take the rejection of her indigency status before another trip to the dunk tank, but that’s just me.
Can you imagine the car ride home with Cheney Mason?
Role play:
“You effing stupid carpetbagging imp..
Do you even know what the eff IN CAMERA means??
It does not mean that information is sealed forever like the shalac on your hair, you moron..”
AL: Yep, I already told him that. Can I offer you some starbucks?
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I wish I could give this poster the proper credit, but it was commented that all this money transfering starting with payment from ABC could be considered laundering. Great I say. Let’s give Casey more reasons to appeal if she’s found guilty. The case is not air tight as it stands.
Blink, WSH, Kleat, Blinksters, *humbling genuflecting*….could charges be brought against these people if all this movement of funds reveals a money laundering camp?
TIA!
hmm interesting ragdoll cant wai to read what they think!
Hey Chica! xo
I don’t think we’ll find out on this thread. Something tells me they’re moving on with the most recent.
D’oh well. I guess it’s just us 2…LOL
You guys are fricken funny….”I bet your hat is heating up”. hahahahaha. But seriously, when do we get to read the letters? Or will that come into the mix when the civil trial comes into play?
Casey Anthony: ABC News gets drubbing for $200,000 payment
ABC, Disney, Fox, Orlando — posted by halboedeker on March, 24 2010 2:33 PM
(Hal’s only got 12 comments on his blog story, maybe he can get response here, but fwiw, he’s covering the issue still, on the MSM, good for him).
Quoting above story, in complete form, as much as anything, to document the discussion he’s given over here, it won’t get lost to future refs.
(hope that’s ok, Ms. B– trim down, if you prefer)
The bad reviews just keep coming in for ABC News. Critics say the Disney-owned news organization was wrong in August 2008 to pay $200,000 to Casey Anthony and her family for photos and video of toddler Caylee Anthony.
“It doesn’t make them look very family friendly, does it?” said Andrew Tyndall, who analyzes ABC, CBS and NBC evening news at his Tyndall Report Web site. “It’s not just ABC News. It’s the entire corporation.”
“The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News seized on the Disney connection this week.
“This happened in Orlando. And Disney World is in Orlando,” author Bernard Goldberg told Bill O’Reilly. “And Disney World tells people from — from the United States, from Europe, from Asia, all over the place – bring your children, bring your children to Disney World. Well, not far from Disney World, another division of Disney, ABC News, is paying a woman $200,000 who’s accused of killing her child. There’s something ironic about that.”
After ABC’s payment, Anthony was charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
O’Reilly’s take on ABC’s payment: “It’s not a good thing.”
Seconding that view was the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee. In a statement this week, committee chairman Andy Schotz said, “Paying someone while covering them breaches basic journalism ethics. ABC’s failure to disclose this business relationship as part of its coverage the last two years made the breach worse.”
ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine told the committee that the network should have disclosed the payment to viewers and that ABC had instituted a policy — because of the Anthony mistake — to do so in future reporting.
ABC affiliate WFTV-Channel 9, however, had reported the $200,000 payment.
Revelation of the Anthony payment comes at a bad time for ABC News. “ABC has a lot going on right now — reducing your staff by 25 percent is a cataclysmic internal event,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that studies the business.
Yet Rosenstiel said the Anthony story reflects a trend in newsmagazines in recent years. In the mainstream media, paying for an interview is taboo. But newsmagazines will hire consultants or pay fees for video and photographs to tell a story.
“By and large, the networks will argue they aren’t paying for interviews, but money is changing hands and has been for some time,” Rosenstiel said. “The principle behind the idea that mainstream news organizations don’t pay is when you pay people you’re inducing them to make their story more dramatic. A tabloid pays for a more salacious story.”
Rosenstiel attributes the payments in part to the networks’ competing with the National Enquirer, TMZ, E! and other players in television.
The Anthony payment “raised eyebrows because the amount of money is high,” Rosenstiel added. “If the disclosure is embarrassing, then the cost of doing it was much higher than the money, and it wasn’t worth doing it.”
Network insiders say the standard licensing fee is far less. CBS News, for instance, paid George and Cindy Anthony, Casey’s parents, $20,000 to license material, and they appeared on “The Early Show” and “48 Hours Mystery.”
But Al Tompkins, an instructor at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, scoffs at the notion that journalists need to license any material to tell stories. After all, journalists have told stories without photos and video for a long time. But the ABC-Anthony story stood out.
“The amount of money is such an unreasonably high number,” Tompkins said. “You’re paying it to someone under suspicion of murder. She wasn’t indicted at that time. But no matter how you spend it, the public perception could be that you’re paying for special access or you’re trying to curry favor.”
The problem wasn’t that ABC made the payment but that Anthony was indicted, news analyst Tyndall said. “I don’t think ordinary people get worried about the ethics inside the journalism profession,” he said. “What they do get worried about is the idea of money being paid to somebody accused of committing a terrible crime.”
(unquote: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2010/03/casey-anthony-abc-news-gets-drubbing-for-200000-payment.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+entertainment%2Ftv%2Ftvguy+%28TV+Guy%29)
perhaps ragdoll
I certainly cant wait to see if and when this ordeal ends. I am like on my way to a severe mental episode of the mind !! Youmay find me starring at the tv in a catatonic state of mind, rocking back and fort mumbling Justice for cayle justice for caylee justice for caylee until someone either slaps me upside the head or gives me a shot of trazadone. I am afraid I may become like the clients I counseled for many years!!who like joy had severe nut problems thats why they were put in the nut hut for until their spaceship landed into the real world. . Oh did I mention that I have whiplash from trying to read all these documents while trying to watch nancy on the tv behind me. why werent we made with eyes in the back of our heads?
I have a comment about leonord p who is full of p!!
I think that heavy ten gallon rhinestone cowboy hat is pressing down to hard on his cerebrum therefore making him twitch like he had a demon on holiday in his brain..
then theres nancy with her good evening viewers bombshell knews tonitght!! and lets not forget her actions when someone is giving her updates!!!
here is Nancy whoa whoa whoa ellie jiolstead are you trying to tell me that!! blah blah blah!!
oh and dont mention the twins cuz you wont be able to turn her am fm radio off!!! geez what a circus.
Heidi
how weird that no more mention of the letters or the steamy affair!!
I have never seen such antics in a courtroom
order in the court !!
the court is out of order please let’s remember why were here! for caylee. I would love to get a busload of us to orlando to sit on caylees side at least for a few days. what an impact that would make ya think.
baez is so readable when he lies he gets this cockeyed grin! I hope that he will be investigated !
that smile may be replaced with foaming at the mouth if he is disbarred!! back to selling bathing suits!!
Kleat, awesome post! So this is more about reputation & ethics for ABC and Disney than criminal as I understand it?
Chica, gagagagagagagagagaaaa…..finger to the lip. I SO GET IT! It is far more overwhelming for me to understand this case. The OJ trail…….over my head! LMAO @ the LP statement. He’s not in this for Caylee. This is advertising and exposure for him. He has no convictions. I loved his character initially. I thought he was charasmatic and I bought his theories. He just ended up making a fool of himself. I think he talks just to hear himself sometimes but I don’t see how anyone can take him seriously anymore. NG has lost it too. Blah blah blah…. BOMBSHELL! I want facts, not drama and embellished emotions.
Too lazy to spell check. Hope this makes sense….zippppppp!!!
ragdoll makes sense, works for me my friend.
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