Hastings College of the Law in the News

APRIL 2007

Miami Herald Bringing kids to work can end job 4/25/2007
Tomorrow, workplaces around the country will welcome children for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. I feel rather torn about participating. Faced with child-care emergencies, I have brought a child to work or tackled an assignment from home. But when work and family clash in the lives of bus drivers, telephone workers, nurses aides and so many other workers, their jobs are in jeopardy. Even with careful thought ahead of time, we all know that the best-laid child-care plans go awry. That's why Joan Williams' report, "One Sick Child Away from Being Fired: When Opting Out Isn't an Option," takes the debate over flexibility into a new realm. "Work/family conflict is not just a professional women's issue," says Williams of The Center for WorkLife Law, a research and advocacy group at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Williams studied 99 union arbitrations (the legal negotiation process for union workers in lieu of court), and her report reveals how work and family responsibilities regularly clash for more than half of working-class employees. more

San Francisco Chronicle UC Berkeley law student made threat against Hastings, officials say 4/20/2007
The person whose threats of violence shuttered Hastings College of the Law on Wednesday was a student at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, according to officials at both schools. Investigators determined the threat to be a hoax, Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley said in a letter sent Thursday to Hastings Dean Nell Newton. The FBI and San Francisco Police Department determined that the suspect "does not pose a risk to others," Edley wrote, and continue to "investigate whether criminal charges are appropriate." Regardless of the criminal investigation, Edley said, the school will consider disciplinary proceedings against the student. more

San Francisco Chronicle Copycat threat shuts Hastings law school 4/18/2007
Hastings College of the Law was evacuated and shut down today after a "copycat" threat of violence was posted on an Internet discussion board, the university's dean said in an e-mail to students and staff this afternoon. The copycat nature of the threat apparently had to do with Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., which left 33 people dead, including the shooter. After meeting with officials from the FBI and San Francisco Police Department, school officials decided to close the law school for the rest of the day, said Chancellor and Dean Nell Newton. In the e-mail, sent at 3:21 p.m., Newton said that officials had secured the Hyde Street entrance to the law school, and that police were patrolling the area. A San Francisco police spokesman could not immediately verify the patrols. All students and employees will have to present their identifications when they enter Hastings buildings from now on, Newton wrote. Visitors will have to sign in. The school is expected to reopen on Thursday.

Los Angeles Times Major ruling on pay regulations won 4/17/2007
The California Supreme Court handed workers a major victory Monday, in effect tripling the back pay they can seek if they are forced to work through meal and rest breaks required by state law. The long-awaited decision affects hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers in industries such as retail, food service, insurance and banking who are called managers or assistant managers but who spend much of their day ringing up sales, stocking shelves or sweeping the floor alongside the workers they oversee. ...The implications are "exponentially huge," said Donna Ryu, who teaches at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and represented John Paul Murphy, the employee at the heart of this case. "Employers tried to basically argue for a two-year free ride on the backs of employees, thereby trying to get out of two years of liability." more

SF Recorder Where Does All That Associate Money Go? 4/16/2007
Kathryn Cole, a 25-year-old who earned her J.D. last year from the University of Michigan Law School, accepted a position at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges in Silicon Valley. Her starting pay was $135,000, but before she even began working she got a $10,000 raise. Then in January, just a few months into the job, her salary went up another $15,000. Cole, who grew up in rural South Carolina, said she makes more than both her parents combined. On learning about her salary hike, she headed to Cost Plus World Market and bought a new couch for $500. "It was off-white," she said. "But having gotten that second raise, I spent the extra $60 for the dark green slipcover that I really wanted." ...Mymy Henderson and her husband have gone ahead and bought their first house, and the salary boost she received at Fish & Richardson helped. Henderson, a first-year patent prosecutor at the Boston-based firm, moved to the Bay Area a few years ago from Chicago, where she worked as an engineer at Motorola. She received her J.D. last year from Hastings College of the Law. Henderson said the salary jumps to $160,000 took her by surprise. "I wasn't aware of the salary wars," she said. "I wasn't expecting it at all." But it was a pleasant change, the 34-year-old said, one that allowed her to spend a little more on property than she and her husband had planned. more

New York Times WEDDINGS/CELEBRATIONS 4/15/2007
Diana Kim, Steig Olson: Diana Kyung Kim, the daughter of Ki Sim Kim and Dae Youl Kim of Riverside, Calif., was married yesterday to Steig David Olson, a son of Colleen F. Olson and Dwight M. Olson of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The Rev. Beth Waltemath officiated at the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. Ms. Kim-Olson, 29, is an associate at Condon & Forsyth, a Manhattan law firm. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received her law degree from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Her father is a residential sales agent at a Re/Max agency in Riverside. Mr. Olson, 31, is a senior associate in the Manhattan office of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, a Washington law firm. He graduated from Vassar and received his law degree from Harvard. His mother retired as an assistant professor and the coordinator of the early childhood program at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. His father is a professor of mathematics at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio.

SF Examiner T-Third strands riders, clogs tunnel 4/12/2007
The new T-Third metro line is sending shockwaves throughout The City’s light-rail system, leaving frustrated commuters stranded for up to an hour. The T-Third, which runs from Castro and Market streets to Bayshore Boulevard and Sunnydale Avenue, has been experiencing delays since going full-time Saturday, which officials said they expected. The troubles, however, have not been isolated to the T-Third. Commuters who ride other metro lines, such as the N-Judah, J-Church and K-Ingleside, have been waiting up to 50 minutes at station platforms for their trains, which are getting backed up in the system’s underground corridor during morning and evening rush hours. “It took us 45 minutes to get from the Sunset [district] to downtown because we got stuck at Church [Street],” Diana Hughes said, adding that she and her classmates have been late to class at UC Hastings College of the Law this week. “The T line is collectively ruining our lives.” more

SF Bay Guardian A law school of their own 4/10/2007
In today's "I'm gonna sue you" world, in which lawyers are called sharks (and often rightly so), getting a law degree from a school that offers the class "Education for a Just, Sacred and Sustainable World" might seem a little backward. However, since the '70s a number of schools have been encouraging students to study law as a tool for practicing social advocacy — not just for lining corporate pockets (or their own). ...UC Hastings College of the Law has the in-house Civil Justice Clinic, which gives students a chance to add an activist bent to their education. And most other nearby schools — from UC Berkeley's School of Law to the University of San Francisco — now offer some kind of public interest law specialty. So what are these programs like? Is this law lite? Certainly not, Civil Justice Clinic director Mark Aaronson says. For example, clinic courses — which deal with employment law, housing law, and disability benefits among other areas of social interest — are very serious. In fact, students handle real cases and are advised by professional lawyers. more

truthout.org House Tackles "Femicide" in Latin America 4/9/2007
 While headlines in the mainstream media front-page such controversies as Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria and lawmakers' standoff with the White House on timelines for American withdrawal from Iraq, the more mundane - but arguably no less important - work of the Congress goes on. Much of it continues under the radar, receiving little or no attention in the press. Some of it is actually bipartisan!  One example is an obscure measure known as H.RES.100. What is House Resolution 100?   It is an effort by a large bipartisan group of representatives to try to end a deadly phenomenon known as "femicide" in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central and South America.  Introduced by Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (D-California) and 84 co-sponsors, and unanimously approved by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the resolution urges the US government to bring pressure on Guatemala to address the unsolved murders of more than 2,000 women and girls since 2001. ... Efforts to raise awareness of femicide have been spearheaded by numerous immigration and human rights organizations. Chief among them is the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, working in partnership with Guatemalan groups. Asked by Truthout why the US government should take an interest in this issue, the Center's advocacy coordinator and communications director, Felecia Bartow, noted that, in addition to human rights concerns, "The US has provided millions of dollars in aid for Rule of Law programs in Guatemala - and yet the murders and impunity persist. more

Bakersfield Californian Defense may focus on lack of physical evidence 4/8/2007
There is no smoking gun in the Vincent Brothers' trial. In fact the gun that killed Brothers' family was never found. Experts agree a lack of physical evidence may make it difficult for Deputy District Attorney Lisa Green to convict Brothers of murdering his wife, Joanie Harper; their three children, Marques, Lyndsey and Marshall; and Joanie Harper's mother, Earnestine. But it is not impossible, they say. ... UC Hastings College of the Law Professor Evan Lee agreed these kinds of cases can be winners. Think of Scott Peterson, Lee said. Little physical evidence linked Peterson to the murder of his wife and unborn child, yet after Peterson's girlfriend testified about their affair, he was sentenced to death. ...UC Hastings College of the Law Professor George Bisharat said it is crucial in a case with little physical evidence for the prosecution to create a logical narrative with a strong emotional pull. more

Kansas City Info Zone  Chinese-American Author to Speak on Immigration Debate at KU's Hall Center 4/6/2007
Author William Poy Lee will give a lecture titled "Placing a Human Face on the Immigration Debate" at 3:30 p.m. Friday, April 13, at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. Lee, author of "The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese Mother," will read selections from his book and examine how his mother's immigration experience would have been affected by current immigration and public policy proposals, such as English as an official language. Lee, who was born in the United States, will also provide his perspective on assimilation and Americanization. "Although I did not write 'The Eighth Promise' as an 'immigration' tome, it presciently describes in very human terms the process of assimilation for my mother and father as immigrants and then for me as a native son," Lee said. A lawyer since 1979, Lee received a bachelor's in architecture from the University of California-Berkeley and his law degree from Hastings College of Law at the University of California-San Francisco. He now is a full-time writer. "The Eighth Promise," published earlier this year, is his first book.

San Mateo Daily Journal Searching for glory 4/6/2007
Kevin Barger and Akeem Holland got into boxing for different reasons. Barger, a 2001 San Mateo High School graduate, always wanted to try it. Holland, a Fairfield native who played basketball on a partial basketball scholarship at Notre Dame de Namur University for a couple seasons, loved the training. The reasons are different but the results have been the same. Both are fighting in the state Golden Glove championships April 14 in Los Angeles. A win there sends them on an Olympic path with the final destination being the 2008 games in Beijing, China. “I never thought about competing in the state Golden Gloves (championships),” said Holland, 22, a heavyweight who now lives in Redwood City. “I’ve always been into sports. The thing about boxing is it’s so demanding, which is what I like.” Barger, 24, a fighter at 141 pounds and a first-year law student at Hastings Law School in San Francisco, trained in martial arts when he was younger and started going to boxing gyms for workouts. He always wanted to compete in the ring but never got around to it. more

SF REcorder Small Law Firm's Lawyers Follow Partner to Larger Firm 4/5/2007
Bishop, Barry, Howe, Haney & Ryder is about half the firm it used to be. Since toxic tort litigation partner Douglas Wah announced to colleagues in February that he would be joining the much larger Foley & Mansfield, the ripples have carried 14 of Bishop's 32 lawyers away -- all of whom focused on toxic tort litigation. Eight associates and partner J. Scott Wood joined Wah at 90-attorney Foley on April 1. Another four associates have left Bishop for various other firms in the last few weeks. ... At the Minneapolis-based Foley & Mansfield, Wah said he has immediate litigation support when he needs it. "When clients finally take a case to trial, they really want to go with people who have a pretty extensive track record," he said. "I was looking for a firm that had the lawyers with the experience so that they could jump into a trial at the last minute, and that's one thing that was very impressive about Foley & Mansfield. Bishop's attorneys had less asbestos litigation experience and more experience in other areas." Wah graduated from Hastings College of the Law in 1974. more

SF Recorder Defense Lawyers Dismayed by 9th Circuit Ruling on Willful Ignorance 4/2/2007
The question of how to determine whether someone knew they were committing a crime has long been an epistemological briar patch. As 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski put it in a Monday opinion, "we've seen a proliferation of narrow, heavily fact-dependant and at times contradictory opinions that have been difficult for both judges and litigants to navigate." So, in his majority opinion for a 15-member en banc panel, Kozinski set out to "clear away the underbrush" surrounding how juries should be told to treat a defendant who claims she didn't know that what she was doing was a crime, even if she probably should have. ... Such complaints about the Jewell standard are longstanding, said Rory Little, a professor at Hastings College of the Law. "The question is, when do we say someone knows something when they don't know something but should by any reasonable standard," said the former federal prosecutor. He asks students whether they know where their cars are parked -- then notes that they know where they left them, but don't know they're still there. more

Hastings News is assembled by Chuck Marcus