Brockway made no opening statement, called no witnesses, presented no evidence and did not cross-examine several witnesses in the May 2006 trial that ended with Huang being sentenced to 12 months in prison, her current lawyer Ronald O. Kaye said. Huang has been free on bail since the conviction.

Brockway said in a declaration filed as part of prosecutors' arguments opposing a new trial for Huang that he didn't cross-examine every government witness because he didn't "believe that significant points could be scored."

He also acknowledged in the filings that he lost a box of documents from Huang's previous lawyer, whom she had dismissed after he advised her to plead guilty to the federal felony charges against her.

Brockway appeared in court to represent Huang the day after the State Bar Court said he should be suspended for five years for allegedly taking thousands of dollars from four Asian immigrant clients who spoke little or no English and failing to do any work for them. The court found him culpable of 14 counts of misconduct against the four clients.

A judge ruled Monday that no pair of pants is worth $54 million, rejecting a lawsuit that took a dry cleaner's promise of "Satisfaction Guaranteed" to an extreme.
 

"A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands," wrote District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff.

Bartnoff ordered Pearson, an administrative law judge, to pay clerical court costs of about $1,000 to the defendants. A motion to recover their tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees will be considered later.

"We have to understand you can fight the war [on terrorism] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war," said Lamberth, appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

The judge disagreed with letting the executive branch alone decide which people to spy on in national security cases.

"The executive has to fight and win the war at all costs. But judges understand the war has to be fought, but it can't be at all costs," Lamberth said. "We still have to preserve our civil liberties. Judges are the kinds of people you want to entrust that kind of judgment to more than the executive."

Lamberth was named chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1995 by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He held that post until 2002.

The court meets in secret to review applications from the FBI, the National Security Agency and other agencies for warrants to tap or search the homes of people in the U.S. in terrorist or espionage cases.

Shortly after Sept. 11, Bush authorized the NSA to spy on calls between people in the U.S. and suspected terrorists abroad without court warrants. The administration said it needed to act faster than the court could and that the president had constitutional authority to order warrantless domestic spying.

Investigators from the Los Angeles Ethics Commission and the State Bar of California have launched separate inquiries related to City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo's use of city resources for personal reasons, authorities and sources said Thursday.

The inquiries come amid growing criticism from community and city leaders about Delgadillo's conduct. In recent days, the city's top prosecutor has acknowledged letting his wife drive his city-owned vehicle without a license and enlisting staff members to run personal errands and baby-sit his children.

"There are certainly concerns about the misuse of public property for private benefit," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause. "Particularly because we are talking about a position that must maintain a high level of public integrity … we would want an investigation to make sure that integrity is there."

Nick Velasquez, a spokesman for Delgadillo, said "the city attorney is fully prepared to cooperate with any investigation."

Because such investigations are confidential, authorities from the state bar and Ethics Commission declined to confirm them.

The state bar, however, confirmed its inquiry earlier this week in a letter to a Whittier attorney who lodged a complaint about Delgadillo's alleged unethical conduct after reading articles in The Times.

"I believe in ethics," said attorney Allen P. Wilkinson, who made the complaint. "Attorneys already have a bad reputation among the public as being dishonest and I don't think that type of conduct should be tolerated in the legal profession."

Meanwhile, on Thursday, two Ethics Commission investigators met for 20 minutes with the general manager and assistant general manager of the General Services Department, which is in charge of the city's fleet of vehicles, and asked for information on the agency's policies and procedures for providing city-owned automobiles to officials and various employees.

"They were looking for general information on what the rules are, and how people can arrange to use a vehicle," said one city official familiar with the afternoon meeting.

City Councilman Dennis P. Zine said he supported an investigation. "The Ethics Commission has a responsibility when allegations like these are brought forward to investigate," Zine said. "They should investigate this. It's very embarrassing for an elected official who is a prosecutor, who enforces laws, to be involved in something like this that defies common sense."

It has been a tough week for the Delgadillo family. On Monday, the city attorney admitted that his wife was driving with a suspended license when his city-owned GMC Yukon was damaged. Michelle Delgadillo was using the car to go to her doctor's office when she backed into a pole in a parking lot. The city attorney had initially let taxpayers pay for the $1,222 repair job, but after the matter became public he decided to reimburse the city.

Delgadillo also acknowledged Monday that — unbeknownst to him — he had driven without auto insurance for about a year and his wife had done so for about two years. Then, on Wednesday, The Times disclosed that Delgadillo had periodically called on his staff members to run personal errands and baby-sit his two young sons.

Delgadillo, who makes $205,977 annually as city attorney, said his employees had done those favors on their personal time, although several sources said the chores were performed during normal business hours.

One person who won't investigate Delgadillo is Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who has recused his office because of a potential conflict: Delgadillo has been rumored to be interested in challenging Cooley for the district attorney's job. On Thursday, Cooley's office sent a letter to state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown saying that he would refer any allegations of wrongdoing against Delgadillo to the state for consideration.

"We believe that because of our conflict situation, any criminal inquiry that may be warranted is properly referred to your office for your consideration and any action you deem appropriate," wrote Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. John K. Spillane.

Whenever the city Ethics Commission finds evidence of criminal wrongdoing, it normally refers the matter to either the district attorney or city attorney, depending on whether the suspected violation is a felony or misdemeanor.

The suit claims that Avvo, which tries to affix a score of 1 to 10 on thousands of attorneys in 10 states, violates the state's Consumer Protection Act. The suit does not ask for a specific monetary amount, though Berman is asking the court to shut down the site. He also is considering seeking a temporary restraining order and the possibility of adding more attorneys who have "impeccable reputations" to the suit.

"The bottom line is the Avvo rating isn't a true representation of one's ability to practice law and deliver positive results to their client -- it dupes consumers into thinking the site is an accurate reflection of an attorney's ability," Berman said in a news release.

Named as plaintiffs are Seattle attorneys John Henry Browne and Alan Wenokur, with the suit listing several alleged inaccuracies about rankings of other attorneys.

It says that Bellevue attorney Enrico Salvatore Leo was able to boost his score on Avvo by updating his profile with softball awards, with the score later dropping after he removed the achievements from his profile. And it says attorneys now serving prison terms score higher on Avvo than some Supreme Court justices, and several attorneys connected to Avvo have higher rankings than law school deans.

Avvo Chief Executive Mark Britton had yet to digest the entire 25-page lawsuit as of Thursday afternoon, but he had read enough to dispute claims that his newly launched rating system was misleading consumers.

In an interview, Britton said the suit was brought because Browne didn't like his Avvo score. The Seattle criminal defense attorney -- who has been quoted in P-I stories about the new online service -- has an Avvo score of 5.2, or "average," partly because of a 2005 disciplinary action he received from the state bar over compensation issues.

"I think that because Mr. Browne did not like his rating, they are filing this suit in an attempt to chill our rating system," said Britton, the former general counsel at Expedia who founded Avvo in February 2006. "All I can say is that I believe the First Amendment is alive and well, and certainly within that amendment and the defenses that go with it, we are able to make an opinion, to make an assessment regarding how well a lawyer might represent someone."

Berman said the case is not just about disgruntled lawyers who don't like their scores, contending there is evidence that attorneys can manipulate their scores on Avvo in order to boost their rankings. Since Avvo received media attention last week, Berman said he has been contacted by numerous attorneys from across the U.S.

Britton said the company, backed with $13 million from Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners, had not earmarked a certain portion of the venture funds for legal defense. But he planned to file a response in a timely manner under Washington law.

In addition to Avvo and Britton, the suit also lists 25 John Does as defendants. Those include law firms and venture capital firms who could be added to the suit if it is proved they "aided and abetted" certain conduct. In a P-I story earlier this week, Berman said he did not plan to go after Avvo's venture backers.

On Thursday, Berman said he changed his mind on that issue because new information became available.

The suit claims that Avvo violates the state's Consumer Protection Act because it is not an objective or unbiased resource, even though the startup says its ratings benefit consumers.

"We are trying to get consumers more information than they ever had before," Britton said. "Before Avvo was launched, everybody was pretty much going to the Yellow Pages and search engines, which are not the most efficient places for people to find a lawyer. By providing that information and guidance, it just helps consumers get the legal help they need."

The suit also claims that Avvo holds attorneys hostage by forcing them to hand over credit card information to update their profiles.

Britton said that the credit card information is a security measure in order to guard against "hacker bots" and other people claiming profiles that are not theirs.

"There is nothing nefarious that we do with the information," he said. Still, Britton said the company is working on a new system to verify attorneys in ways that do not use credit card information.

The lawsuit also claims that Avvo uses a secretive method to come up with its rankings.

Asked about adding more transparency, Britton said that they would consider doing that, but they are most concerned about people "gaming the system." Disclosing the method by which it comes up with the rating could lead to people manipulating the score, he said.

Avvo continues to make changes to the Web site based on the feedback from lawyers and consumers, something Britton said Berman chose not to do.

"He chose rather just to file a complaint," said Britton.

In a Monday interview, Berman told the P-I that he views this as an important case because those who are in need of legal advice should be able to get trustworthy information. "If you are going to have a service out there, it should be reliable and it should be trustworthy, and this site is neither," said Berman.

While some union foes called the court's ruling an important victory and predicted that it would lead to other such laws, the National Right to Work Committee acknowledged that it decided a narrow issue.

The justices did not say it was unconstitutional to require teachers and other public employees to pay dues to a union. Rather, they said only that states that allow public sector unions may also protect the rights of dissidents.

At issue before the court was a unique Washington state law that said unions may not collect fees from a nonmember and spend this money on politics unless "affirmatively authorized by the individual."

The state's largest teachers union challenged this rule in court. The Washington Supreme Court struck down the restriction as a violation of the union's rights, but the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court.

"Unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of nonmember employees," said Justice Antonin Scalia. "It is undeniably unusual for a government agency to give a private entity the power, in essence, to tax government employees," he wrote, referring to the "agency shop" laws in many states that permit such arrangements in the public sector.

The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal of a convicted murderer from Ohio Thursday because he filed it two days late, even though he met a separate deadline set by a judge.

The judge mistakenly told the prisoner, Keith Bowles, 34, that he could file court papers by Feb. 27, 2004. Under federal rules, however, the deadline was Feb. 24. Bowles filed on Feb. 26.

The high court typically adheres strictly to deadlines and this case was no exception.

The 5-4 decision, the 16th this term, fell along conservative-liberal lines and also provoked a strong dissent from Justice David Souter.

Writing the opinion for the court's majority in this case, Justice Clarence Thomas said the judge's error did not alter the 14-day time limit set in federal law and legal rules. He said Congress could relax the deadline if it wishes.

Bowles was convicted of murder in Ohio for his role in a group beating of an unarmed man, who later died. The beating was in revenge for an earlier beating that day to a relative of a member of the group in Painesville, about 30 miles northeast of Cleveland, court records showed.

Bowles was given 15 years to life in prison. Early in 2004, a federal judge gave Bowles additional time to tell the court he intended to appeal, mistakenly noting a 17-day deadline.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Bowles' appeal was untimely.

Souter said Bowles' case cries out for an exception to the rule.

"It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way, and there is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch," Souter said.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia joined Thomas' opinion.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens joined Souter in dissent.