Volume 2 No. 47 | Nov. 23, 2022
Courts
- 2022 OK 94: STATE ex rel. OKLAHOMA BAR ASSOCIATION v. GIRALDI
- 2022 OK 95: PRICE v. ZHANG
- 2022 OK CR 29: JACKSON v. STATE
No published opinions this week.
Dispositions Other than by Published Opinions
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma Court Calendar
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is in session year round, unless otherwise noted. The Court regularly schedules conferences on Mondays and other days as needed.
More
Bar Center Holiday Hours
The Oklahoma Bar Center will close Wednesday, Nov. 23, at 3 p.m. for the Thanksgiving holiday and remain closed Thursday and Friday. The building will reopen Monday, Nov. 28, at 8:30 a.m.
This year’s OBA Annual Meeting CLE content featured a variety of great topics and speakers. If you missed any of these fantastic and informational sessions, we've got you covered! All videos are now available to purchase in our online catalog. Visit ok.webcredenza.com to access all available OBA CLE. Simply type "2022 ANNUAL MEETING" in the search function located at the top right of the webpage. Contact Renee Montgomery for assistance.
REMINDER!
Dec. 31 is the deadline to earn any remaining CLE credit for 2022 without having to pay a late fee. The deadline to report your 2022 credit is Feb. 15, 2023. As a reminder, the annual ethics requirement is now two credits per year. The 12 total annual credit requirement did not change.
Not sure how much credit you still need? You can view your MCLE transcript online at www.okmcle.org. Email questions to mcle@okbar.org.
The November Oklahoma Bar Journal focuses on the topic of "Municipal Law." OBA member Jeff Harley Bryant contributed the article "Oklahoma Governmental Tort Claims Act | Balancing Competing Interests: Protecting the Public Purse While Compensating Citizens Injured by Torts Committed by Public Employees" to this month's journal:
"The OGTCA waives sovereign immunity, providing for limited recovery for an injured claimant caused by tortious conduct of governmental employees. However, the OGTCA also provides significant protection for cities and towns from such liability.
Sovereign immunity is an Old English law doctrine that was firmly seated in American jurisprudence that stood for the axiom, 'The King can do no wrong.' In Oklahoma, the OGTCA asserts sovereign immunity but then provides a limited waiver of that immunity if a claimant follows both the procedural rules, such as filing requirements, and shortened limitation periods and respects liability limits. Governmental employees acting in good faith are protected both from suit and liability. The OGTCA is the Legislature’s effort to balance taxpayer dollars with available remedies for governmental tortious conduct. This public policy discussion is ongoing, and a legal practitioner would be well-served to compare statutory language being construed by court decisions with statutory language in effect at the time the alleged injury from tortious governmental employee conduct occurred. The Legislature may very well have rebalanced the public interest between providing compensation to injured citizens with protecting the public purse holding taxpayer dollars."
"For the uninitiated, every year shortly before Thanksgiving, the U.S. president is presented with a live turkey from the National Turkey Federation. The president, per tradition, issues a ceremonial pardon, saving the turkey from death via the dinner table.
This incredibly bizarre, somewhat problematic and undeniably American tradition is one of uncertain origins. It all began in the 1870s with a Rhode Island poultry dealer named Horace Vose.
Mr. Vose began sending turkeys to the White House in a much simpler time for U.S. politics. The Poultry King continued to gift his birds to the first families until his death in 1913. Thereafter, the turkey gifting became a free-for-all, with turkeys playing the part of Jimmy Stewart and making their way to our nation’s capital. The democratic dissemination of turkeys ended in 1947 when the presentation of turkeys became something more official, with birds coming from the poultry industry itself."
Announcement: Amendments Made to Oklahoma IOLTA Rule 1.15
On Oct. 10, 2022, upon application made by the Oklahoma Bar Foundation, the Oklahoma Supreme Court amended Rule 1.15, Safekeeping Property, of the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct to clarify the meaning and implementation of “interest rate comparability” in the rule. Beginning Jan. 1, 2023, in order to qualify to offer IOLTA accounts to Oklahoma attorneys, banks must pay the same rate of interest on those attorney IOLTA accounts as they pay on other non-attorney accounts with the same balance and other requirements. The interest earned on IOLTA accounts goes to the Oklahoma Bar Foundation, the official charitable arm of the Oklahoma Bar Association. IOLTA funds provide monetary support for legal aid for the poor, elderly, children, domestic violence survivors, the homeless and many others, as well as funds for access to justice, law-related education, high school mock trial programs and many other critical law-related charitable programs and activities throughout Oklahoma.
Additional information concerning this amendment to Rule 1.15 will appear in the Dec. 1, 2022, issue of the Oklahoma Bar Journal. This rule change does not require Oklahoma attorneys to take any action. In the unlikely event, however, that a bank in which an IOLTA account has been opened does not agree to pay the same interest rate on IOLTA account deposits as it pays on other, comparable deposits made by non-attorney clients, the OBF will work with the attorney and the bank to reach a resolution on the account, which could include opening of an account at a bank that does qualify to offer IOLTA accounts in accordance with the amendments.
Featured CLE
Are You Thankful for Your Law Practice?
By Jim Calloway, OBA Management Assistance Program Director
As we head into the holiday when we are encouraged to count our blessings, are you thankful for your law practice? Most lawyers undoubtedly are. Given the challenges we have faced the last few years, optimism is sometimes in short supply. But according to a recent Thomson Reuters survey, 2022 State of U.S. Small Law Firms, most small firm lawyers are very optimistic about the future of their law practices. See Bob Ambrogi’s summary of the survey in his post "Small Firm Lawyers Are Awash with Optimism about their Practices, Thomson Reuters Survey Finds."
Thomson Reuters defined small firm lawyers as those with 29 lawyers or fewer. But they also break out the data for smaller firms. Mr. Ambrogi includes many interesting graphics from the survey results in his post, and there is a link to download the entire report from Thomson Reuters in return for your email address and other information.
The Oklahoma Bar Journal is a publication of the Oklahoma Bar Association. All rights reserved. Copyright© 2022 Oklahoma Bar Association. Statements or opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. Although advertising copy is reviewed, no endorsement of any product or service offered by any advertisement is intended or implied by publication. Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their ads, and the OBA reserves the right to edit or reject any advertising copy for any reason. Legal articles carried in The Oklahoma Bar Journal are selected by the Board of Editors. Information about submissions can be found at www.okbar.org.