Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the state is entitled to a jury trial when suing a private actor for Medicaid fraud under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (State v. Abbott Laboratories, 2012 WI 62).

Tagged with: Constitution Department of Natural Resources DNR Medicaid Supreme Court The Dark Side Ziemer

The skills that make a person a great attorney are not so limited as they are in baseball.

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Practicing law well is a lot like living a well-lived life.

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The other day, some of us were discussing “judicial temperament,” or more specifically, we were swapping war stories about the lack of it.

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I recently spent a little downtime scouring Article I of the U.S. Constitution. What I was looking for was the provision saying that Congress has authority to hold investigations into steroid use by baseball players.

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As a matter of policy, I generally avoid modern literature.

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I recently received a very nice letter from Chief Justice Abrahamson, thanking me for my service on the Supreme Court’s committee to study citation to unpublished opinions.

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A conversation occurs whenever an argument breaks out over U.S. v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144 (1938), which deals with unconscionably upholding the criminalization of shipping filled milk across a state line.

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It is safe to say there is very little about which an old-school conservative like me and an advocate for majoritarian tyranny, such as Roscoe Pound, could agree.

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Many years ago, a former Alabama congressman told me the following story:

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Unless it’s served with lots of beef and slathered with Hunan sauce, I don’t much care for broccoli.

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From time to time, I hear people say something like, “It’s not only important the judicial system be fair; it is important the judicial system be perceived as fair.”

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In my long career, only once have I had a case dismissed because after a preliminary hearing the commissioner decided that there was no probable cause to proceed.

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Now that I’m self-employed again, a friend asked me if it worries me to not have any health insurance anymore.

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People sometimes ask me, “Don’t you have anything nice to say about the State Bar of Wisconsin?”

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Wisconsin law governing fraudulent misrepresentations can fairly be described as charitable. It’s too bad the law doesn’t apply to so-called charities, which are some of the worst fraudsters operating in this state.

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“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde is not just one of the most extraordinary novels ever written, but an allegory of the history of the U.S. Constitution.

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Do you remember where you were when you heard the news of the United States Supreme Court's opinion in U.S. v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995)?

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Now that, after an 11-year hiatus, I've returned to being a full-time courthouse rat, people ask me what's the biggest difference.

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If dictionaries were written by lawyers, one of the definitions for “frustration” would say “finding a case directly on point, but being unable to cite it because it is unpublished.”

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I had been generally aware that some congressmen who don’t like the First Amendment and who particularly dislike the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010), wanted to get around the decision by passing a constitutional amendment to overturn it.

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An ancient witticism goes something like this: The children are the future … And that’s why I stockpile so much ammunition.

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When I started practicing law, I didn’t care who anybody was, what they believed or what they had done.

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Even if you believe that all burglars should receive 10 years in prison, that's not how sentencing in Wisconsin works.

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Tuesday marks a great leap forward for human rights in Wisconsin: people can finally carry a concealed handgun without fear of criminal prosecution.

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A courtroom is a place where hardened lawyers make hard choices.

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I'm afraid that I lack imagination. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the protests on Wall Street (and now, in Madison) are all about.

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Yesterday was the First Monday in October, established by 28 U.S.C. sec. 2, as the beginning of a new term of the U.S. Supreme Court (not to mention a rather lousy play from back in the 1970s).

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This week, Wisconsin is ground zero in the battle between university bureaucrats and free speech champions. No, I'm not talking about the University of Wisconsin's attempts to stifle criticism of its admission policies. That's been going on for years, and will continue for many more.

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It has been a summer of sorrow in the Milwaukee legal community. We lost our friends, David Cannon and Judge Terry Evans. And Saturday we lost another friend: Nathan Fishbach.

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