Monthly Archives: September 2014

Federal Judge Decides BP Blew It.

06 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Damages, Environment Law, Litigation, Negligence, Punitive Damages

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Ruling On The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Well Blowout, by Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog

http://tinyurl.com/kh76r3q

BP has already said that it will immediately appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Among the errors BP asserts by Judge Barbier, it disagrees with the number of billions of gallons of oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon rig. BP is trying to stop the bleeding. Every gallon of oil that spewed into the Gulf has a price tag for damages.

BP maintains a website with its version of the facts and its commitment to safety. Its argument was not sufficient to sway Judge Barbier.  Halliburton and Transocean were not hit as hard as some would have liked, but they were found to bear some of the responsibility for the disaster as well.

It will be interesting to see whether this ruling affects environmental cases, off-shore drilling, and oil and gas ventures in general in the future. -CCE

 New York Times: ‘A federal judge ruled on Thursday that BP was grossly negligent in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout that killed 11 workers, spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and soiled hundreds of miles of beaches. ‘BP’s conduct was reckless,’ United States District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier wrote in his sternly worded decision. Judge Barbier also ruled that Transocean, the owner of the rig, and Halliburton, the service company that cemented the well, were negligent in the accident. But the judge put most of the blame on BP, opening the way to fines of up to $18 billion under the Clean Water Act. In a 153-page, densely technical decision, Judge Barbier described how BP repeatedly ignored mounting warning signs that the well was unstable, making decisions that he says were ‘primarily driven by a desire to save time and money, rather than ensuring that the well was secure.’

Show, Don’t Tell, When You Use The Right Word.

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Editing, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Readability

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Legal Writing: Word Choice, by Jason Steed, Legal Solutions Blog

http://blog.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/practice-of-law/legal-writing-word-choice/

Every good lawyer knows that persuasion begins with framing the issue, and framing the issue begins with effective word choice. But many lawyers don’t realize, or occasionally forget, just how effective good word choice can be—or worse, they misunderstand what it means to make effective word choices. They think, for example, that labeling an act as “extremely egregious” will help the court to understand just how terrible the act was. But every good writer knows that good writing means showing, not telling—and adverbs and adjectives are all about telling.

In other words, adverbs and adjectives are not a sign of good persuasive writing. If you find yourself using adverbs or adjectives to get your point across, then you’re probably making bad word choices. Why? Because adverbs modify verbs, and adjectives modify nouns—and if your verbs and nouns need modifying, then they probably aren’t the best verbs and nouns you could be using.

So how effective can simple nouns and verbs be? . . . .

 

Avoidable E-Discovery Mistake – A Good Lesson on Proportionality.

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Discovery, E-Discovery, Federal Rules of Discovery, Interrogatories, Requests for Production

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Nebraska, Where Proportionality is Alive and Well in Discovery, by Joshua Gilliand, Esq., Bow Tie Law’s Blog

http://tinyurl.com/qgymkto

One lesson from United States v. Univ. of Neb. at Kearney, is that maybe you should take depositions of key parties and use interrogatories to find out relevant information to your case before asking for over 40,000 records that contain the personal information of unrelated third-parties to a lawsuit. . . .

Apple iCloud’s Two-Step Verification – Why It Didn’t Stop Hackers.

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Apple, Cell Phones, Clouds, Cybersecurity, Encryption, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology, Mac

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Apple Says It Is “Actively Investigating” Celeb Photo Hack, by Arik Hesseldahl,

http://tinyurl.com/les3wqe

Apple said Monday it was ‘actively investigating’ the violation of several of its iCloud accounts, in which revealing photos and videos of prominent Hollywood actresses were taken and posted all over the Web.

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Security experts said the hacking and theft of revealing pictures from the Apple iCloud accounts of a few celebrities might have been prevented if those affected had enabled two-factor authentication on their accounts.

Apple hasn’t yet said anything definitive about how the attacks were carried out, but security researchers at the security firm FireEye, examined the evidence that has emerged so far, and said it appears to have been a fairly straightforward attack. That said, it is also one that could have been thwarted had some additional steps to secure the targeted accounts been taken.

That additional step is known as two-factor authentication. Apple calls it ‘two-step verification,’ although it doesn’t work very hard to tell people about it, said Darien Kindlund, director of threat research at FireEye.

‘In general Apple has been a little late to the game in offering this kind of protection, and doesn’t advertise it,’ he said. ‘You have to dig through the support articles to find it.’

When enabled, two-factor authentication requires users to enter a numerical code that is sent to their phone or another device, in addition to using their regular password. Since the number constantly changes, it makes it much more difficult for attackers to gain access the account, even if they know the password.

Assuming the compromised accounts were running without the two-step option turned on, it would then have been relatively easy for the attacker to gain access to the accounts.

As The Next Web reported earlier today the attack may be linked to software on GitHub called iBrute that is capable of carrying out automated brute-force attacks against iCloud accounts. In this scenario, an attacker simply guesses a password again and again until they succeed. While tedious and time-consuming for a person, it’s a simple and infinitely faster process for a computer.

The as-yet unknown attacker had one other thing going for him: Apple allows an unlimited number of password guesses. Normally, systems limit the number of times someone can try to log in to a system with an incorrect password before the account is locked down entirely. Apple has since fixed that aspect of the vulnerability.

‘The attackers never should have been allowed to make an unlimited number of guesses,’ Kindlund said. . . . [Emphasis added.]