February 24, 2004
Limbaugh's Legal Problems
I meant to blog about this last week when the brief was filed, but I forgot.
PDF file of Limbaugh's brief filed with the Florda 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.. It's interesring reading. I realize that it's one-sided, and should be taken with a grain of salt when stating the "facts" of the case.
One part jumped out at me, and I wanted to get the opinions of any lawyers in the audience [he typed while looking in Robin Roberts' general direction].
The normal procedure for getting someone's medical records in Florida is to subpoena the records. The target of the subpoena can then have a hearing where the state has to provide evidence as to why they need the records.
According to Roy Black, Limbaugh's attorney, the state didn't follow this procedure, but instead got search warrants and seized the medical records without Limbaugh's knowledge. Again, according to Black, the state used the following rationale for not following the usual procedure:
According to the prosecutors, they were concered that if they complied with the statute and provided Mr. Limbaugh with the required pre-seizure notice, the state risked losing the medical records.... The contend that they had attempted to seize legal files from Mr. Limbaugh's prior attorney, but found that the records had been transferred to undersigned counsel when counsel took over Mr. Limbaugh's defense.This is the argument that the prosecutors used to a judge when they finally got a hearing.
Is it me, or is this a very silly justification? Limbaugh transferred his files from his old attorney to his new one -- wouldn't it have been incredibly stupid on his part (and malpractice on Black's part) not to do that?
There must have been more to the prosecutors' argument than that, since the judge didn't order the files returned.
The state has until the second week of March to respond. Maybe sseing both sides of the story will shed some light on this.
Posted by at February 24, 2004 09:30 AMLike you, Steve, I don't have much information to work with but this sounds truly outrageous.
Now if they alleged that the doctor's office where the records were held might be a part of the criminal actors - then I might be more inclined in the prosecutor's favor.
But trying to seize legal records is quite outrageous.
Posted by: Robin Roberts on February 24, 2004 04:06 PMThe petition for writ of certiori also alleges that prosecutors used a Health dept inspection to obtain a list of Rush's prescriptions without any warrant or subpoena. That too sounds outragous based on this admittedly one-sided brief.
Posted by: Robin Roberts on February 24, 2004 04:09 PMPsst, me, not Steve.
Another outrage -- they attached the prescription list to a publicly filed document, and (supposedly) directed the media to find the list.
Posted by: Dave on February 24, 2004 06:19 PMThere was an article in the Palm Beach Post last(?) week giving more insight as to why.
I'm no lawyer, but when the ACLU joins w/Rush, something's up. And it's not going to be positive for the DA. This is a political hit, seems the DA got letters demanding he "do something."
Posted by: Sandy P. on February 24, 2004 06:23 PMYeah, I read that. The DA admitted that he's received a lot of correspondence urging him to persue Limbaugh. His defense was (paraphrasing) "I'm talking about emails from residents of Palm Beach, not the ones from out of state!" So, his constitutenta are pressuring him, that's a much better reason.
Posted by: Dave on February 25, 2004 08:00 AM