January - February 2002

Posted Feb. 25, 2002

Faculty

“By saying the sale process remains open, Federated has agreed not to spurn other potential suitors in the meantime,” says Prof. Dan Kleinberger in a Feb. 22 St. Paul Pioneer Press story by staff writer Scott D. Carlson, ’81, reporting that Federated Department Stores Inc. had signed a nonbinding agreement to sell its Minnesota-based Fingerhut Companies to the Business Development Group, based in Wayzata, Minn. Kleinberger said the nonbinding letter of intent would allow the Business Development Group to show venture capitalists that they have the inside track with Federated.

Prof. Peter Erlinder was a guest Feb. 14 on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday public affairs program, on Minnesota’s anti-terrorism bill. Other guests were Rep. Rich Stanek (R-Maple Grove), Sen. Jane Ranum (DFL-Minneapolis), and Aggie Lietheiser, assistant commissioner, Bureau of Health Protection, Minnesota Department of Health. The program is archived at www.mpr.org.

Prof. Dan Kleinberger predicts the courts aren’t likely to step into the fray in response to a suit filed in Hennepin County District Court by a Fingerhut Companies employee and Federated Department Stores stockholder seeking to block Cincinnati-based Federated from liquidating Fingerhut, its catalog subsidiary, says business-pages staff writer Scott D. Carlson, ’81, in the Feb. 15 St. Paul Pioneer Press. Says Kleinberger: “When a company is closing down a piece of the company, that is squarely within the discretion of its board.... The mere fact that it turned out to be a really bad decision doesn’t mean it was a badly made decision.”

Alumni

A report by a special committee of Enron board members that says the company used some partnerships for financial subterfuge rather than for legitimate financial purposes “makes it more likely there will be a criminal indictment,” said Christopher J. Bebel, ’85, in a Feb. 5 story by staff writer Walter Hamilton in the Los Angeles Times. In early February, Bebel, a partner in the Houston, Texas, law firm Shepherd Smith & Bebel, also commented on the Enron scandal in the New York Times, on NBC’s Today Show and Nightly News, ABC’s World News Tonight, CNBC, and CNN Financial News. Before joining Shepherd Smith & Bebel, Bebel was an assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota, regional counsel for the enforcement division of the National Association of Securities Dealers, and an attorney for the enforcement division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Richard Oakes, ’69, the founding dean of the Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, and a “beloved Hamline law professor for more than 30 years,” died Feb. 18 of a heart attack at age 60, reports Minneapolis Star Tribune staff writer Kavita Kumar in a Feb. 20 news obituary. In 1972, Oakes “quit his private practice in criminal law, put a mortgage on his house and took a giant leap of faith with about 30 students and two other faculty members to create the Midwestern School of Law,” writes Kumar, after it appeared the Metropolitan College of Law, where he had been teaching, would fail. Later Oakes was a Fulbright scholar, and before his death he was planning to apply for another. Funeral services for Oakes were Feb. 22 at Pax Christi Catholic Church, Eden Prairie.

 Gov. Jesse Ventura on Feb. 14 announced the appointment of Allison Krehbiel Baskfield, ’91, to the Fifth Judicial District trial court bench in St. James, Minn. She previously was an assistant public defender in the Fifth Judicial District and earlier had been an associate attorney with the Minneapolis law firm LaBore & Juliano (1992), an assistant Minneapolis city attorney (1992-95), acting Minneapolis city attorney (1995), and an assistant Minneapolis city attorney and legal advisor to the city’s Police Department (1995-98). (Feb. 14 governor’s office news release.)

Posted Feb. 11, 2002

Faculty

A decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court is good news for whistleblowers but bad news for employers, Prof. Robert Oliphant said in a Feb. 7 Minnesota Public Radio news story. The court ruled that employees who allege Hennepin County fired them because they complained fumes in their workplace made them sick are entitled to a jury trial in their suit seeking money damages.

“How likely is likely?” asks staff writer Maura Dolan at the start of a Feb. 6 Los Angeles Times story published a few hours before the California Supreme Court opened a hearing on a 1966 state law that says sexual predators confined to state hospitals after their prison sentences can be released only if experts determine they aren’t likely to reoffend. According to Prof. Eric Janus, says Dolan, a study of sex offenders who were freed although eligible for a sexual predator program in Washington state found recidivism rates about about 20 percent.

Emeritus Prof. C. Paul Jones commented Feb. 5 on WMNN radio and the stations of the Minnesota News Network, on the legal options remaining open to Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Minnesota Twins after the Minnesota Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by MLB and the Twins of lower-court decisions requiring the Twins to fulfill their Metrodome lease in the 2002 season.

Posted Jan. 24, 2002

Friends of the College

“He was very helpful. You can imagine that this young man was not fully aware of the intensity of the publicity,” San Francisco attorney James Brosnahan, LL.D. ’99, told reporters following the first court appearance of John Walker Lindh, the U.S. citizen accused of fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to a Jan. 24 Associated Press story, Brosnahan, one of four attorneys representing Lindh, told reporters that Lindh “asked for a lawyer, repeatedly asked for a lawyer, and the officials who have commented on this case knew that.” U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Lindh had signed a statement waiving his right to an attorney before he spoke to the FBI on Dec. 9 and 10. Brosnahan was the speaker and received an honorary doctorate at William Mitchell College of Law’s May 1999 commencement.

Posted Jan. 23, 2002

Faculty

“The key message here is that they have to prove something more than the person has a mental disorder. It’s a separate element to show a real lack of control,” says Prof. Eric Janus in a Jan. 23 Los Angeles Times story by staff writer David G. Savage on a 7-2 ruling Jan. 22 by the U.S. Supreme Court that makes it harder for states to lock up sex offenders who have completed prison sentences. Janus also was quoted on the decision in a Jan. 22 report by legal affairs reporter Nina Totenberg on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and in Jan. 23 stories in the Chicago Tribune and the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger.

Prof. C. Paul Jones commented Jan. 22 on stations of the Minnesota News Network on a decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals upholding a lower-court ruling that the Minnesota Twins—believed to be a target in Major League Baseball contraction—are contractually required to play in the Metrodome in the 2002 season.

Alumni

“As a Muslim, as a Somali, as an American, I hope I can strengthen the national security of this country without violating the civil liberties,” Hassan Mohamud, ’02, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Mohamud, the first Somali to graduate from a law school in Minnesota, was among 64 men and women who received J.D. degrees from William Mitchell Jan. 20. Under the headline “One for the Law Books,” the Pioneer Press ran in its Jan. 21 issue a photograph by Scott Takushi that showed Prof. Eric Janus placing an academic hood on Mohamud. Other media covering Mohamud’s graduation included KARE-TV, WCCO-TV, KSTP-TV, WCCO Radio, and radio’s Minnesota News Network.

Posted Jan. 18, 2002

Faculty

Prof. John O. Sonsteng, a former prosecutor, commented on WCCO-TV’s 6 p.m. news Jan. 17 on new charges filed in California against St. Paul resident Sara Jane Olson and three others for their participation in a fatal bank robbery nearly 27 years ago by alleged members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, was sentenced Jan. 18 to two consecutive terms of 10 years to life after earlier pleading guilty to conspiring to kill Los Angeles police officers.

Alumni

St. Cloud, Minn., Mayor John Ellenbecker, ’81, says that barring the unlikely sale of Fingerhut Companies Inc., 4,700 jobs will be lost in Minnesota and 6,000 nationally.

That would be “the largest layoff in state history” and “we’re going to bear the brunt of it,” he says in a Jan. 18 Minneapolis Star Tribune story by Robert Franklin. Ellenbecker announced two initiatives: a local task force to coordinate help for the company’s 2,700 workers in St. Cloud and an initiative to sell the firm’s St. Cloud buildings.

The office of Minnesota’s attorney general is investigating complaints against the Walser Automotive Group Inc. over extended warranties, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a Jan. 18 story by Patricia Lopez. According to the story, Deputy Attorney General Lori Swanson, ’95, says the office has received more than 140 complaints, in which customers said they were forced to buy contracts they didn’t need or that the contracts didn’t deliver what they promised. Barbara Jerich, ’86, Walser’s vice president and general counsel, said the company conducted an internal investigation and turned up no list of complaints about service contracts.

St. Paul Pioneer Press staff writer Judy Arginteanu reports in a Jan. 18 story that Inver Grove Heights, Minn., Mayor Joe Atkins, ’91, also is the city’s chief weed inspector-although he confesses that his wife won’t let him weed the family garden, because “I pull out too many flowers.” Actually, reports Arginteanu, a Minnesota statute makes all of the state’s mayors weed inspectors, a task virtually all of them turn over to other city workers. The city council in Inver Grove Heights formally appoints the mayor to the state-mandated position-and Atkins several days ago formally appointed the city’s code-enforcement officer to do the actual work.