{"id":14164,"date":"2010-10-08T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T17:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=14164"},"modified":"2010-10-08T11:16:45","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T16:16:45","slug":"14164","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=14164","title":{"rendered":"Much Ado About Not Much At All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The regional leftybots are a-buzz over&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;some really, really mundane news.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Emmer is \u00a0the subject of a legal malpractice lawsuit by a former client.<\/p>\n<p>Given the typical leftyblogger&#8217;s understanding of the law, many of them are making a <em>lot <\/em>of this &#8220;story&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, the facts are these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Legal malpractice suits are far from uncommon.<\/li>\n<li>The vast majority that are filed are filed against lawyers that have malpractice insurance; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawyersweekly.com\/reprints\/curtis1.htm\">while legal malpractice suits are quite difficult to win<\/a> (because lawyers defend themselves pretty strenuously), most cases that actually are sent to trial <em>involving lawyers that are insured<\/em> get settled out of court.<\/li>\n<li>That&#8217;s presuming it gets to trial. \u00a0Most such cases, being filed over sour grapes over cases gone awry, or even just weak cases, are dismissed on summary judgment without ever seeing a jury.<\/li>\n<li>Many plaintiffs will use the threat of a malpractice suit to try to induce a quick settlement to avoid a public relations snag for the defendant and his\/her firm. \u00a0This is especially true with higher-profile lawyers.<\/li>\n<li>And there is no more high-profile lawyer in Minnesota right now than Tom Emmer, attorney at law and, as the MNGOP&#8217;s endorsed candidate for governor in a very tight race, a guy with a lot of skin in the public relations game.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And, gosh golly, look at when the summary judgment hearing is scheduled (emphasis added):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>OTHER EVENTS AND HEARINGS<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tSummons and Complaint<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tCertificate of Representation<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tNotice and Acknowledgement of Service<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tNotice of Motion and Motion<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tMemorandum<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tAffidavit-Other<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tAffidavit-Other<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tAffidavit-Other<\/p>\n<p>09\/17\/2010\t \t \tAffidavit of Mailing<\/p>\n<p>09\/21\/2010\t \t \tNotice of Case Filing<\/p>\n<p>09\/21\/2010\t \t \tSchedule Pre-Trial<\/p>\n<p>09\/24\/2010\t \t \tAffidavit-Other<\/p>\n<p>09\/24\/2010\t \t \tAffidavit of Service<\/p>\n<p><strong>11\/08\/2010\t \t \tMotion Summary Judgment  (10:00 AM) (Judicial Officer Halsey, Stephen M.)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Right <em>after <\/em>the election.<\/p>\n<p>While there is no reason to believe that this case was filed by a political enemy of Emmer&#8217;s (the plaintiff is a businessman; businesspeople don&#8217;t care which party their customers are from, as long as the checks cash), it&#8217;s not unreasonable, given how legal malpractice cases work, to speculate that the timing makes perfect sense to the plaintiff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The regional leftybots are a-buzz over&#8230; &#8230;some really, really mundane news. Tom Emmer is \u00a0the subject of a legal malpractice lawsuit by a former client. Given the typical leftyblogger&#8217;s understanding of the law, many of them are making a lot of this &#8220;story&#8221;. However, the facts are these: Legal malpractice suits are far from uncommon. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,63,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-lefty-alt-media","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14164"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14169,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14164\/revisions\/14169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}