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No, he is not within his rights. If you keep doing stuff like this, the court can call you a vexatious litigant and then you will need permission from the court to file any suits, if you had not been disbarred by then.

You're not supposed to bring suit if you have no standing and know it. He likely knows it. It's improper and unethical. The fact that it is rarely punished does not change that.

Wasn't there a rather famous lawyer who became disbarred and fined for bringing bogus lawsuits against the gaming publishers? Yeah, we discussed him here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)

As a lawyer, you swear an oath to be ethical and proper as an agent of the court. http://www.michbar.org/generalinfo/lawyersoath.cfm (for example). You basically promise not to be a schmuck.

Jack Thompson calls himself an activist, but he's still a schmuck. This guy is also a schmuck.

--
BMO

One of the big reasons we have so many alcohol related crashes is because people get up to somewhere above the legal limit but they say "hey the law doesn't know wtf they are talking about, I'm fine to drive".

Another big reason is the people who say "I should be below the legal limit, I'm fine to drive" and even worse per individual but probably less numerous are those who say "my fifty dollar breathalyzer which I used improperly says I'm safe to drive". Just because you're under the legal limit it doesn't mean you're safe to drive. IIRC if you are in an accident they have the right to test your blood (in California, anyway; arguably, when you get a driver's license you are agreeing to blood testing... fucking leech bastards aren't satisfied with draining your wallet, or making you wait a month for an appointment for said draining so you can drive around in an unregistered car in the mean time) and if you are over 0.02% it's considered to be alcohol-related. This is essentially a facetious concept, because (at least according to the MI police, who have a vested interest in being correct) the machines [used for testing BAC of blood] can be no more than .02 percent accurate.

It's when people think they are the exception that things really start to get dangerous.

Too true. "It can't happen to me" have got to be some of the most common last words (right behind "shit", "fuck", and "oh no"...)

It's easy and takes around 15 minutes...

State Bar of Michigan (look under Attorney Grievance Commission)

Law Firm the Asshole Works For

Uhm, have you ever heard of contract *law*? The only reason that contracts can be enforced is because law exists to enforce them. I would have thought that contract law being law would have been self-evident, but I guess that's not safe to assume on slashdot. See: http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/topics/contracts .html

There is also specific state laws concerning NDAs and trade secrets, see:

http://www.michbar.org/e-journal/bar_journal/bppja n02.html
http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/ObjectID/2ECF62E6- B334-4E83-9A94FA20A3FAFD38/catID/1FBE2D95-203C-4D3 8-90A2A9A60C6FD618/310/119/ART/

But hey, if want to believe that violating things that exist in the law books isn't illegal, go ahead.

In any case, I'd question the validity of an NDA which required somebody to keep secret a piece of information contrary to a large public good.

It's a good thing that you're not a judge nor lawyer then, because you can't violate an NDA just because you think it's not doing the public good. "Hey, I believe that keeping this technique for making super cheap LCD screens is against the public good, I'll just reveal it!"

For example, if I found out under an NDA that my employer was putting out a product that was killing people, and keeping it quiet, I'd be ethically bound to blow the whistle.

So Cisco is killing people? What's your point?

Certainly an NDA that forces you to break the law (such as by concealing knowledge of a crime) would be void.

What law is the NDA in question forcing the person to violate?

However, I would feel justified in doing so if I had clear evidence that an employer was committing a crime, or harming people and not doing something about it.

So do you actually have any reason to believe that Cisco/ISS are comitting a crime, or is that just 100% wild, rampant speculation?

Seriously. We here in Europe can't for the love of god understand what's up with this..first a giant fuss about that ugly nipple and now this. It's just pathetic!

Really?

Please refresh my memory, in how many European countries can you get actual jail time for drawing Swastikas? What about selling Nazi artifacts on eBay? How many years does that get you?

What about this?
The Council of Europe has added provisions to its European Convention on Cybercrime that criminalize certain Internet content.
Link.
Link 2
Need I go on?

I just love it when you Euros try to display your superiority by criticizing the Yanks on the issue of free speech.

Tell him that judges prefer plain language. Of course, your boss's boss probable uses terms like "monetize" and "action item", in which case this is a lost cause.

From MI state bar directory

WHOIS info: