San Diego County Public Law Library May/June 2006 E-Newsletter

Witkin Lecture Series Presents James Brosnahan* on Thursday, June 29th!! The Witkin Legal Institute and the San Diego County Law Library Justice Foundation are proud to present one of the premier educational events of the year on Thursday, June 29th from Noon-1:30 pm at the Wyndham Hotel, 400 W. Broadway, San Diego. James J. Brosnahan, Esq. will be the featured speaker discussing "What is an Activist Judge?" Mr. Brosnahan is a fascinating lecturer and will analyze this concept in three areas of law including: - The Genentech case (pending in the U.S. Supreme Court) on the question of whether the judge or the jury should interpret a contract; - A comparison of sentencing guidelines versus the discretion of the trial judge; and - The law of wiretapping and government surveillance. Mr. Brosnahan is a Senior Partner at Morrison and Foerster, LLP in San Francisco. He is a distinguished and respected litigator, having tried more than 138 cases to date. A graduate of Boston College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Brosnahan was recently named to the United States Lawyer Ranking List of the Nation's Top 10 Criminal Defense Lawyers for 2006. In 2004, Mr. Brosnahan presented the Witkin Lecture, "Law in the Time of War." The cost of the lunch and lecture is $40.00. For more information and to register, go to the LLJF website. *Approved for 1 hour General Participatory MCLE credit. The San Diego County Public Law Library is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider.

Summer Intern/New Hire Tours for Law Library Members With summer comes summer interns and newly hired attorneys and support staff. The Library is offering free one hour librarian led tours of the library to acquaint your new staff with the resources and services of the library. Tours will be held on: Friday, June 9th 10-11am and Thursday, June 29th 10:30-11:30am Please call the Library at 619-531-3900 to sign up. Because space is limited, please register at least 24 hours before the tour.

FREE MCLE Class for New Attorneys To welcome new members of the California Bar and introduce them to the Law Library, the Library is offering a free participatory MCLE class to new attorneys who are not yet members of the Law Library. This free offer is also available to our current attorney members, as are all of our MCLE classes. Select from one of these two classes: The Law Library and What It Can Do For You, or Pre-Trial Procedure: What They Didn't Teach You In Law School. Classes will be offered at the following times: Tuesday, June 13th 10-11am - The Law Library And What It Can Do For You (1 hr. MCLE credit) Thursday, June 15th 10-11:30am - Pre-Trial Procedure (1.5 hr. MCLE credit) Wednesday, June 21st 2-3pm - The Law Library And What It Can Do For You (1 hr. MCLE credit) Thursday, June 22nd 2-3:30pm - Pre-Trial Procedure (1.5 hr. MCLE credit) Call the Law Library at (619) 531-3900 to register, you must pre-register and mention that you are a new attorney or a current attorney Library member. The San Diego County Public Law Library is a State of California Approved MCLE provider.

Online Resource of the Month - Loislaw This month our featured database is Loislaw which is available at all four Law Library locations. Loislaw is a comprehensive database with access to Federal and state case law, statutes and regulations. This is a much more menu driven program than some other legal databases which makes this database easier to use for novice online searchers. The service has active hyperlinks to statutes and other cases, but does not include headnotes or annotations for statutes. New case opinions are added quickly, within 24 hours or less. Loislaw also features "GlobalCite," their case validation system. Searching can be done by type of law (cases, statutes, regulations) with the ability to mix and match states or by jurisdiction alone. For the California jurisdiction, Loislaw provides access to Attorney General Opinions, both local and state court rules, Judicial Council forms and interactive local court forms. Loislaw is the only service with the interactive local forms. As part of our subscription, the Library recently added online access to Aspen treatise libraries through Loislaw. The library has a subscription to the California employment discrimination law, the general employment law, real estate, and the Internet and e-commerce treatise libraries and California Smart Rules. Some of the titles included within our treatise subscription are: "Covenants Not to Compete," "Employee Dismissal Law and Practice," "Law of the Internet," "Law of Electronic Commerce," "Drafting Internet Agreements," "Scott on Multimedia Law," "Commercial Real Estate Leasing," "Law of Title Insurance," "Law of Real Estate Brokers," and "Environmental Liability and Real Property Transactions: Law and Practice." Loislaw is part of the legal division of Wolters Kluwer whose holdings also include CCH, Aspen Publishers and Kluwer Books. Come by any Law Library location and try Loislaw on our Public Access computers. Any of the Reference Staff will be happy to show you how to use this terrific resource. Access to any of our online databases is free. The only cost is for printing search results at $.20 per page. Results may also be saved to a diskette or a flash drive.

New Additions to the Library Collection Each month the library adds new materials to its collection. Listed below are some of the additions for May, 2006. We want to feature the return of an old friend. "California Family Law Practice" by Stephen Adams is again available in print. For the last five years it was only available on CD-ROM. This multi-volume set presents family law information in an easy to use format. This set is available both at the Main Library and the North County Branch, KFC115 .C339 2006. Welcome back to the library! Other new additions and where they can be found: THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION LEGAL GUIDE FOR WOMEN 1st ed. New York : Random House Reference, c2004. KF390.W6 A46 2004. Main Library, North County and South Bay ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER LIABILITY : CLAIMS AGAINST DESIGN PROFESSIONALS / KEVIN R. SIDO, EDITOR. 3rd ed. New York, NY : Aspen Publishers, Inc., c2006. KF2925.3 .A97 2006. Main Library only Cooper, Corinne, 1952- ATTORNEY LIABILITY IN BANKRUPTCY / CORINNE COOPER, CATHERINE E. VANCE, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION. Chicago : American Bar Association, c2006. KF313 .C66 2006. Main Library only BENCH HANDBOOK : JURY MANAGEMENT. [San Francisco, Calif.] : California Center for Judicial Education & Research, c2006. KFC1045 .B46 2006. Main Library only BENCH HANDBOOK : THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT. [San Francisco, Calif.] : California Center for Judicial Education & Research, c2006. KF8210.C45 .B46 2006. Main Library, North County and East County Cohn, Dona E., 1958- CALIFORNIA AUTOMOBILE COLLISION HANDBOOK / AUTHORS, DONA E. COHN, JOSEPH M. 2005 ed. Newark, N.J. : LexisNexis, c2005. KFC320.A8 C64 2005. North County only. Eades, Ronald W. JURY INSTRUCTIONS IN REAL ESTATE LITIGATION / RONALD W. EADES. 2nd ed. Newark, NJ : LexisNexis/Matthew Bender c2006- KF8984 .D69 2006. Main Library Rothstein, Mark A. OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH LAW / BY MARK A. ROTHSTEIN. Eagan, MN : Thomson/West, c2005- KF3570 .R67. Main Library only Blinder, Martin. PSYCHIATRY IN THE EVERYDAY PRACTICE OF LAW : A LAWYER'S MANUAL FOR CASE 4th ed. (Reissued April, 2006). Eagan, MN : Thomson/West, c2006. RA1151 .B55 2006. Main Library only Rossow, Lawrence F. SEARCH AND SEIZURE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS / LAWRENCE F. ROSSOW AND JACQUELINE A. STEFKOVICH. 3rd ed. [Dayton, Ohio : Education Law Association, c2006]. KF9630 .Z9 R6 2006. Main Library only

Foothills Footnotes The East County Branch of the San Diego County Public Law Library held another successful Law Day on May 1st. The success is attributed to attorneys from the Foothills Bar Association who volunteered to help the East County community with this much needed service. A huge thank you to those attorneys who staffed the legal clinic that day including Edward Brien, Jerry Carmody, Daniel Cohen, James Dobbin, Joseph Fox, Miranda Franks, Judy Marolt, Jocelyn Medrano, Cheryl Stengel, Edward Torrence. The individuals who took advantage of the free legal clinic were truly grateful.

Internet Resource of the Month With the Primary Election having just been held and the November Mid-Term election coming soon, our Internet Resource of the Month is the website of the San Diego County Registrar of Voters. This site provides information for voters, including online registration, finding your polling place, full text versions of both current state and local propositions and candidate information. You can also see the detailed results of each election that has been held in San Diego County from the most recent and going back to 1991. If you want to see who your elected officials are, you can find out by entering your street address along. There are also district and precinct maps available on the website. In addition, there are various statistical reports about voter turnout and registration. The links on the website take you to Federal, State and other local information sources. The website is available in English, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

Reference Question of the Month One of the more frequently asked questions is how to sue a government agency. Just how is that done? Bringing an action against a public entity or employee presents special procedural requirements. Before a complaint can be filed with the court, the injured party must first file a claim with the government entity, and the claim must be acted upon or rejected. (GC 945.4) Government Code section 910 sets forth the requirements for the contents of the claim. In order to help people comply with this section, claim forms are provided by government entities and are available on the internet. There are specific time limitations for filing a claim and many immunities within the act. "California Government Tort Liability Practice" is a great practice guide to start your research into this area of law. One important point to mention is that the name of the act can be misleading, as any state law claim for money or damages including breach of contract claims fall under the claims-presentation procedures of this act. The following links are provided to help you locate claim forms for public entities: San Diego City Claim Form San Diego County does not have a required claim form, but does provide claim forms for the convenience of the general public. A claim form may be obtained at the County Counsel's Office or by calling (619) 531-4899. The claim must be sent to the Office of County Counsel, Claims and Investigation Division, 1600 Pacific Highway, Room 355, San Diego, CA 92101 California State Claim Form Federal Claim Form

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