Diamond Dust

east corridor, it's a station between Baltimore and Philadelphia; to drivers on Interstate 95, it's not even a wide place in the road betw

and has only three counties, there is a marked polarity between the relatively urbanized northern tip of the state, where most of the popula

Declaration of Independence signer Caesar Rodney that usually stands in Rodney Square, a grassy one-block plaza in the middle of town. He was the hero who had gone home to die but

the Square is occupied by the Public Building housing the state trial courts for the county. Facing the Square on its south is the public library, and on its north is the headquarters of Wilmington Trust Company, the favorite bank of the

mily passed muster, and he was offered the position. He said the only problem with moving to Delaware was that his daughter was taking ice skating lessons and hoped someday to qualify for the Olympics, and there w

, whose main campus is in Newark. Their theme was that Delaware was, and would remain, the kind of place where I would want to be, because du

wanted that. So in an arrangement that may be unique, and which is often called "semi-private," instead of making the school the state university and having the legislature appropriate

ular, don't suffer today from the problems that plague so many parts of our country, especially the major cities. And the problems Delaware does hav

shore resorts, just north of the border with Maryland, at the other end of the ferry from Cape May, New Jersey. Peaches and other fruit were a big cash crop early in this century, but a blight killed most of the orchards, some of which are still standing, eerily beautiful, like rows of surr

yment at the same time, so political pigs have access to slop from other sources, not just the public trough. The office of Attorney General, for example, is established in the state constitution; the AG heads the Department of Justice, is elected in a statewide election every four years, and stands third in line to become governor if something happens t

hat newsletter, which reports the rulings in some cases in Delaware courts, is written by Deputy AGs and typed by secretaries in the Dept. of Justice, both in the course of their public employment. But the subscription money goes to Oberly personally, and although the quality of the newsletter is poor, compared to competing publications, the subs

ou get what you pay for. That story was told to me by several persons, including some of the competing publishers, who had offered to buy Oberly out, while I was working for them, but many other elected officers have lucrative pri

of these representations have been an open scandal for years: In 1981, in an opinion in 'Waters v. State', published at 440 'Atlantic Reporter' 2d 321, the Delaware Supreme Court took Sullivan to task for trying to shirk responsibility for the inadequacy of the legal services he provided. It has been traditi

e he spends on their case and resents taking the time away from his private practice, where he can bill by the hour. Take the case of Susan J. Scott, for example: On 20 September 1986 she fatally shot her live-in boyfriend wh

that the "battered woman defense" wouldn't fly in Delaware, that there wasn't enough evidence to prove self defense at trial, that proving self defense couldn't clear her of the lesser included offense of manslaughter, and that if she pled guilty to mansl

lty plea and sentenced her, reversed her conviction in a written opinion ruling that Werb had committed legal malpractice by giving her advice that was blatantly wrong on three separate points of law. The two charges against her were reinstated, and Scott's trial was scheduled

e Delaware bar willing to go up against the PD, and he had to have a Delaware lawyer to act as local counsel because he wasn't licensed to practice law here. He

ed the PD committed legal malpractice. Now the AG appeared on behalf of the PD, because the AG is the lawyer who represents all state employees, and Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Poppiti summarily dismissed the complaint: He

inal justice system but also the distinctive feature of Delaware civil litigation: Most participants in civil litigation

anies are not admitted to the Delaware bar, so they couldn't go into private practice anyhow. Unlike many states, Delaware no longer cuts lawyers from other states any slack in getting into the Delaware bar, and every candidate for admission has to take the same bar exam and perform the same clerkship, no matter how long the person may have been a lawyer (or even a judge) elsewhere. This anti-carpe

ency fee (often a third of the amount recovered), meaning they get paid only if they win, and the plaintiff doesn't pay any up-front legal fees. That's why there's too much litigation in this country: No matter how bogus the suits are, a lawyer who files enough of them will s

arted in England in the late 1300s and over the centuries developed a separate structure similar to that of the so-called law courts, and certain types of cases became associated with one or the other. By the time America was settled, it was esta

h trusts is within the equity court's jurisdiction. The idea of a corporation is that its directors are trustees for its stockhold

ates have similarly combined the two courts into one, although some states maintain a distinction between the law division and equity division of the court. In Delaware the Superior Court h

if you want to enjoin him from driving across your property in the future, you do that in Chancery; and if you want to do both in one suit, you have to do that in Chancery, too, bec

no juries, so they make all the decisions in every case, and that gives them an awful lot of experience. Unfortunately it's like what John F. Kennedy said about the difference between ten years of experience and one year of experience ten times: They keep getting cases that are exact

ays there's going to be a tender offer for a company, at least one of its stockholders files a class action to enjoin the deal. There are three points a party has to prove to get a preliminary injunction, so the Chancery Court should have a one-page preliminary injunction opinion form that has, for each of those three questions, a "no" box an

ules governing lawyers say they can't split fees except in the same proportions they split the work, and the only work local counsel can usually claim to do is supply the expertise on local practice and precedents. Because the procedural rules in Superior Court are very similar to those of the federal courts, and the Chancery Court rules are virtually identical to the federal rules, lawyers from anywhere in the country already know as much a

r, and Delaware actively encourages that with its laws governing corporate affairs and taxes. When you're going to sue a corporation, you have a choice about where to do it, and one of the cho

are corporation against a whole slew of insurance companies for not covering claims against the plaintiff for hazardous waste dumps. The Chancery Court would never have made a ruling like that, and the lawyers here are hopping and howling at t

against an insurance company - in a car accident case, it's the auto insurance; in a medical malpractice case, its the doctor's professional insurance; in a product liability or slip-and-fall case, it's the casualty insurance; and in tender-offer cases, it's the directors' E&O insurance - so insurance compani

blican and a lieutenant who was a Democrat. The governor appoints the Secretary of State, who regulates corporations - entities that contribute lots of money to campaigns but can't vote and usually aren't in Delaware anyhow. If something happens to incapacitate the governor and lieutenant govern

on't bother to apply for admission to the Delaware bar, and swell its ranks, because the Bar Association and every other privilege extended to lawyers is equally open to lawyers working, but not admitted to practice, here. One re

Supreme Court legislatively. But in Delaware if the legislature passes a law that disfavors lawyers or that lawyers disfavor, the AG invalidates it; so, contrary to the theor

had been with largish local firms long enough that the firms faced the prospect of making them senior partners, and that wouldn't do; so the senior partners used their influence to have the women appointed judges, because Delaware is a state where judges are appointed, not elected. The two exceptions are Vice Chancellor Carolyn Berger, whos

wyers. The citizens are in the same predicament as the serfs when itinerant knights employed by absentee overlords rampaged across the land, destroying crops, herds, and so