Fact Sheet - Property Auctions: Fill & Download for Free

I’ve been a lawyer for 34 years and I worked at 6 different law firms the first 24 years after I passed the bar exam. After that, I became so disenchanted with the office politics and backstabbing that go on in big law firms that I finally decided to set up my own small law firm with just myself and another lawyer.Padding up time sheets to overcharge clients is practically an art form in many if not most law firms. ”Creative” accounting practices to pay as little as possible in Federal and State taxes is par for the course. Romantic entanglements between married male lawyers and single or married female lawyers, secretaries, paralegals, interns and/or support staff are so common that it’s practically expected and one is more surprised not to find it in a law firm than to actually see it happen. Senior partners that earn six figure salaries from the law firm but actually stopped practicing law decades ago and only put in an occasional appearance at their office are a dime a dozen. At one very large law firm that I worked for in San Juan over 20 years ago when Puerto Rico’s economy was still solid there were actually some lawyers who had been hired exclusively —OK let’s be charitable and say ”primarily” rather than ”exclusively”— for their skills at playing golf and tennis so they could spend most of their time entertaining and/or hustling wealthy corporate clients as roving “goodwill ambassadors/rainmakers” for the law firm in Puerto Rico’s many fine hotels and resorts (pics below). In my experience, heavy drinking is common enough not to raise too many eyebrows but thankfully every law firm that I worked at had the decency to have alcoholism rehab protocols in place to assist those who really needed it. On the other hand, I’ve only met two lawyers among hundreds that had a substance abuse problem; one got help and was fully rehabilitated but the other wasn’t able to kick the habit and was fired from three law firms in quick succession and was eventually disbarred for mishandling his clients’ cases and using escrow funds to support his addiction.Financial improprieties “per se” I saw none in the law firms where I worked —thank God— but there was an incident that sticks in my mind and took the cake; it concerns a lawyer that I came to know during my stay at the last law firm (other than my own) where I worked.The most underhanded thing I ever saw didn’t concern a member of any law firm that I worked at but a solo practitioner that wasn’t a co-worker. That particular solo practitioner had been hired by some Germans to liquidate their father’s estate in Puerto Rico probate court (pic below). The lawyer in question actually conspired with an appraiser and a real estate agent to have a straw man buy a beachfront condo worth about half a million dollars for less than $100,000 so that the straw man could flip it and make a hefty profit practically overnight; the property was owned free and clear. The lawyer, appraiser, real estate agent and straw man would then split the profits from the resale (the straw man had a third party buyer already lined up, cash in hand).The German heirs (who had relatives in the US and spoke perfect English) contacted the law firm that I worked at because they wanted a second opinion; they weren’t concerned about the artificially low appraisal value they had been given for the property but their lawyer had told them that for tax reasons they’d actually be better off selling the property quietly in a private sale rather than by putting it up for auction or advertising for other possible buyers. The Germans had also been told that the price was so low because the local real estate market had tanked when that was not the case (this was around 15 years ago when the local economy was already slowing down but the market for prime beachfront real estate was still fairly strong). Their lawyer was also rushing them to sell the property as soon as possible by proxy rather than “go through all the expense of flying all the way to Puerto Rico for a real estate sale”.Acting on their own and unbeknownst to their lawyer, the German heirs contacted the law firm I was working at (initially by telephone and then by e-mail) to clarify the picture because they were uncomfortable with their lawyer’s insistence to sell and because some of the things their lawyer was telling them didn’t seem to add up. Because I handled most probate cases at the law firm I was directed to take the Germans’ call (the Germans spoke very politely at all times but I sensed that they smelled a rat).After getting all the particulars I referred the Germans’ query to a senior partner at my law firm who had significant experience in taxes and real estate law. He and I checked the court filings online and we immediately noticed that the court docket was rather thin for a probate case. The next day we drove over to see the property by ourselves as discreetly as possible from the outside (the property was about an hour and a half’s drive from San Juan and the drive dovetailed nicely with other law firm business we had to attend to in that general area). We took one look at the property and it was immediately obvious to us that the Germans were being scammed because there was NO WAY that that property was worth less than $100,000. It was PRIME real estate at a PRIME location and my boss knew that comparable properties were selling in the $450,000 to $500,000 range. On closer examination of the paper case file during one of my visits to probate court it also became obvious that the appraiser and real estate agent were in on the scam and that the purported buyer was a straw man (the “buyer” was a process server earning a modest income that routinely worked for the Germans’ lawyer). It was also clear that the proposed sale had “conflict of interest” and “fraud” written all over it and was also contrary to various statutes even on a purely procedural level (compliance with local probate court rules was marginal at best).Under normal circumstances my boss (the senior partner I referred the matter to) and I would have been reluctant to intervene because the Germans had violated their lawyer’s trust and lawyers undercutting other lawyers’ practice is a definite professional “no no” but this was a bombshell and a number of major criminal violations at both the Federal and State level were plainly in evidence.As luck would have it, my boss was a retired local politician who had served 20 years in the state senate and was very well connected socially and professionally and he happened to own a condo in the same development where the Germans’ property was located (I suspect that’s why they decided to call the law firm where I worked in the first place); my boss also knew the Germans’ lawyer from sight because both my boss and the Germans’ lawyer belonged to a social club in that same development.The Saturday after we got the Germans’ phone call my boss went to a gathering at the social club where he happened to see the Germans’ lawyer. My boss casually walked over to the guy, introduced himself and invited the other lawyer to have a few drinks on my boss’s tab, which the other guy was only too happy to agree to. My boss and the Germans’ lawyer made small talk, as lawyers do, but after half an hour or so my boss informed the Germans’ lawyer that he had uncovered the lawyer’s scheme to defraud the Germans. My boss was VERY SPECIFIC as to the myriad legal violations that the other lawyer and his partners in crime had already committed and how much time they could expect to serve if convicted. My boss then told the Germans’ lawyer in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t drop the case, rescind his professional service agreement and return the Germans’ retainer in full, my boss would go to the FBI and the local D.A. as well as to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court (pic below) and he would personally see to it that the lawyer was prosecuted to the full extent of the law and was disbarred for life into the bargain.The Germans’ lawyer turned white as a sheet of paper and hurriedly left the place without saying anything but the very next day (a Sunday) the lawyer phoned the Germans and told them that he couldn’t continue representing them for “personal reasons” and that he was rescinding their agreement and returning their retainer in full with no charge to the Germans for the work already performed. The very next day (a Monday) the Germans’ lawyer voluntarily withdrew the probate petition. A few days after that, the Germans hired the law firm where I worked and a new petition was filed in probate court which my boss and I handled jointly to the case’s conclusion (as a lowly associate I did most of the work and as partner my boss got the lion’s share of the billing, as is customary in all law firms). The estate was liquidated about a year later in full accordance with the law. The condo was auctioned off at about $475,000 and the Germans netted over $400,000 after paying all taxes and legal fees. I never head anything else, good or bad, about the Germans’ first lawyer. At times I’ve felt tempted to look his name up and see how he’s doing or if he’s still practicing but I always change my mind (in fact he may be deceased by now because he was already in his 70’s when these events took place).

It says in the question:Isn’t there a point of diminishing returns when it will be mathematically impossible to come up with a thoroughly original tune?Oh my. I do worry about the state of musical education.Dear user, whaddya mean will be?We’ve been there for ages. Centuries, possibly.Here’s a secret for you: It doesn’t matter.I could write a tune for you right now, off the top of my head, that probably doesn’t exactly resemble anything anyone had already written. But you probably wouldn’t like it, because it wouldn’t be very good.In fact, I have done! Here it is: an absolutely original Johnston melody, written for this answer alone:You can even listen to it here: original - Sheet music for PianoI wrote this tune simply by typing the notes into the editor at random, then listened back to it and tweaked it slightly (lowered the opening note, flattened that E in the second bar, converted a boring pair of notes in bar three into the little run in demisemiquavers).There. You see how it easy it is to come up with an original melody? You can just poke about at random and then fiddle with it a bit! (I actually quite like this melody, silly as it is, and may return to the poking-about-at-random method of musical composition in the future.)The purpose of this demonstration is not to show off my amazing music composition skillz, but to argue that within the enormous set of possible melodies, there are only so many melodies that strike us as, for want of a better word, good.And they have been used over and over again, in different contexts, in songs we love, but because of the art and craft of the composer, we haven’t noticed that the melody of Song X is strikingly similar to the melody of Song B. (Although, technically, the melody of ‘Song X’ isn’t like anything else in the universe— Ornette Coleman fans, you know what I’m talking about, right?)We haven’t noticed, because the mere chain of notes that makes up a melody can mean something completely different, in a different musical context.When people complain about songs sounding the same as each other, it’s usually in the form of a complaint that, e.g., One Direction’s ‘Best Song Ever’ is strikingly similar to The Who’s ‘Baba O’Riley’. But that’s a case where One Direction were obviously going for something that sounded like ‘Baba O’Riley’: the chattering keyboard line, epic chords (in ‘Baba’ it’s I-V-IV and in ‘Best’ it’s IV-I-V, but whatever), stupendous drumming.What I’m talking about is the phenomenon whereby multiple songs can have very similar melodies, and it doesn’t bother us, because all those songs use the melody in a different way.And here is a video demonstrating just that!Of course, it does bother some people.Some people feel that if a melody has been used in a song, then it belongs to that song and that song only, and cannot be used in another song.My personal opinion is that these people need to shut their damn mouths and live with the fact that music is always borrowing from itself all the time.Unfortunately, some of these people are lawyers.There is a lot of money to be made by insisting that some eight-note snippet in your record is My intellectual property, I wrote that, it’s mine, you can’t have it, that was original with me, I did that, pay up.This is precisely what happened with the recent lawsuit in which Katy Perry was sued by Christian rapper Flame, who claimed that her song ‘Dark Horse’ used a significant piece of musical material from his song ‘Joyful Noise’.Flame’s defence team got a musicologist to testify, contrary to the facts as observed by basically every other musician who’s looked into this, that the snippet in question was completely original to Flame and not like anything else out there. And a jury full of mutton-headed dweebs, completely ignorant of music and its history, but dazzled by the fact that there was a guy in the room whose job title ended in ‘-ologist’, found this convincing.But it’s bullshit.Music reuses other music all the time. It has to. Folk musicians regularly make up new songs on the bases of traditional ones: that’s how Bob Dylan got started. The melody of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ is based on the traditional tune ‘No More Auction Block for Me’, and here’s Odetta to sing it for you:Ray Charles’ ‘Hit the Road Jack’ has a memorable bass line, a descending four-note phrase:It’s exactly the same as the opening four notes of John Dowland’s ‘Flow My Tears’:And yet John Dowland isn’t suing Ray Charles’ estate. Admittedly that’s because John Dowland died in 1626.You may think Well, four notes, that’s not a melody.But that’s precisely the level of triviality that the Flame/Katy Perry suit arrived at.People are complaining that a few notes in someone else’s song, slightly resembles a few notes in their own song.And they are getting away with it.This is madness.Compare the situation with the other arts.Somebody paints a picture of a mountain landscape. Somebody else paints a picture of the same landscape.The first artist does not sue the other artist on the grounds that they already painted a picture of that landscape, and so now it’s theirs. Or that painting that particular bit of the mountain using a combination of Burnt Umber and Cerulean blue was my idea, I think you’ll find.The materials of music can be arranged in endless ways, but only some of them appeal to a broad variety of people. And once people successfully establish their claim that such-and-such a small building block of music is theirs and theirs alone, they effectively steal it from future musicians, and piss on the labours of musicians of the past, who used that exact same building block, but weren’t such proprietorial assholes as to claim it as their personal property.There are maybe only so many melodies out there which we find pleasing; but they can be arranged and re-contextualised in an infinite variety of ways.Because musical art is not really about the melodies.It’s about what you do with them.Thanks for reading.

This is what the sign looked like in 1978.Photograph by Ken Papaleo/Herald-Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public LibraryIt’s still around because of Hugh Hefner.In 1978, when the sign, then made of wood and sheet metal, was a deteriorating symbol of Hollywood tackiness, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce needed a quarter of a million dollars to revitalize it, Hugh Hefner held a fundraiser where each letter was auctioned to 9 sponsors for $27,777.77 each.The 9 sponsors were:H: Hollywood Independent Newspaper publisher Terrence DonnellyO: Italian movie producer Giovanni MazzaL: Kelley Blue Book founder Les KelleyL: Actor Gene AutryY: Hugh HefnerW: Singer Andy WilliamsO: Warner Bros. RecordsO: Singer Alice Cooper in memory of comedian and friend Groucho MarxD: Businessman Dennis LidtkeThe new letters are made of steel with a concrete foundation.Hugh came to the rescue again in the 21st century. Land in the vicinity of the sign was put on the market in 2008. Concerned about the possibility of real estate development in the area immediately around the sign, which could obstruct the view of the iconic sign, a non-profit conservation group, the Trust for Public Land, signed an option to buy that property, which they planned to gift to the city of Los Angeles, for $12.5 million and had an April 30, 2010 deadline to come up with the funds. A week and a half before the deadline, the group was nearly $1 million short of their goal. Learning of the shortfall, Hefner donated $900,000 to the nonprofit, then later gave an additional $100,000.The site of the sign and surrounding land are part of Griffith Park.The fact that Hefner saved the sign isn’t really lesser known, but the specific details are often glossed over.The sign is monitored with motion detectors and security cameras. Penalties for trespassing can earn you a $1,000 fine and six months in county jail.The History of the SignA History of the Hollywood Sign in 16 Rare PhotosHow Hugh Hefner Saved the Hollywood Sign—TwiceRemembering how Hugh Hefner saved the Hollywood Sign—twiceYouTube Star Arrested After Climbing Hollywood Sign