Last month we updated you on the apparent difficulties that Jessica Cutler, a.k.a. Washingtonienne, has been encountering in paying her lawyers. Those difficulties persist.

On Friday, Judge Paul Friedman, who is presiding over the invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Cutler, ordered the following:

[O]n or before July 7, 2006, defendant Jessica Cutler must personally respond in writing to her counsel’s motion to withdraw and/or advise the Court of her retention of new counsel or her intention to proceed pro se.

The judge issued this order after Cutler failed to respond to her lawyer’s motion to withdraw (for nonpayment of fees). So Jessica, if you’re out there reading this, please get back to the court — ASAP.

Personally, we would give multiple body parts to watch Jessica Cutler represent herself. It would be the greatest pro se performance since Anna Nicole Smith. We suspect Judge Friedman would become very sympathetic to Cutler after having an ex parte conference with her in chambers.

For all you law geeks out there, the text of the full order appears after the jump.

Here’s Judge Friedman’s order, in full:

On May 22, 2006, counsel for the defendant filed a motion to withdraw from this case pursuant to Local Civil Rule (“LCvR”) 83.6©, citing defendant’s failure to pay attorneys’ fees. In accordance with LCvR 83.6, counsel’s motion to withdraw is accompanied by a certificate of service listing the defendant’s last known address and stating that the attorney has served upon the defendant a copy of the motion to withdraw and a notice advising her to obtain other counsel, or if she intends to conduct the case pro se or to object to the withdrawal, to notify the Clerk of this Court within five days of the motion.

As of this date, the Court has received no notification from the defendant expressing either her intent to conduct the case pro se or objecting to the withdrawal, nor any other communication from the defendant personally.

Accordingly it is hereby ORDERED that on or before July 7, 2006, defendant Jessica Cutler must personally respond in writing to her counsel’s motion to withdraw and/or advise the Court of her retention of new counsel or her intention to proceed pro se.

SO ORDERED.
PAUL L. FRIEDMAN
United States District Judge

DATE: June 23, 2006

Earlier: Prior coverage of Jessica Cutler (scroll down)

Slept with a bunch of people and blogged about it? Actually, no. She’s about to lose the legal services of the attorney representing her in Steinbuch v. Cutler — for the third time.

Back in April, attorney William Bode, who had been representing Jessica Cutler, withdrew (hehe) as her counsel in the case. There was some speculation as to why Bode withdrew, which he denied to the media.

Now Jessica’s latest lawyer, John Umana — who, by the way, is a “leading proponent of intelligent design,” as reported by the Legal Times — wants out. Unlike Bode, Umana has spelled out the reason for his withdrawal, and it’s the oldest reason in the book: nonpayment of fees. (The text of his motion to withdraw, which one of you helpfully forwarded to us, appears after the jump.)

This is not the first time Jessica has had problems paying her lawyers:

Umana, for example, is Cutler’s third attorney in a little more than a year. Her original lawyers, Thomas Wilson and Alexander Vincent of Washington’s Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, sued Cutler last month in D.C. Superior Court, claiming she owed them $54,271.19. Cutler had already paid $35,000, they said.

Where did all the money go — the Playboy payment, the six-figure book advance, the HBO dough? Jessica’s website, where she solicits PayPal donations, hints at the answer: “Please — I need money for slutty clothes and drugs!”

But even the biggest cokehead/connoisseuse of slutty fashions would have a hard time burning through the cash Jessica has accumulated since she emerged as Washingtonienne. Sounds like someone could use a visit from Suze Orman.

Here is the full text of Umana’s brief motion to withdraw:

John Umana, Law Office of John Umana, successor counsel to defendant who appeared in this action on April 3, 2006, hereby moves for entry of an order pursuant to LCvR 83.6(c ), granting him leave to withdraw as counsel for the defendant. The grounds for the motion are that defendant has not paid fees to undersigned counsel.

Should the situation change, undersigned would consider further representation of the defendant. Undersigned provided the requisite Notice, pursuant to LCvR 83.6(c ), to defendant on May 12, 2006 and herein.

A Man Scorned [Legal Times]

Earlier: Robert Steinbuch Is Searching for Jessica Cutler’s True Spanker

Now, courtesy of the Legal Times, a quick update on a case that’s far more interesting than Enron: Steinbuch v. Cutler.

The article speaks for itself — res ipsa loquitur — and it’s well worth reading in its entirety. If you’re wondering about whether Steinbuch has a case and what Jessica’s best defenses are, they’re laid out in the piece, which features analysis from law professor and blogger Daniel Solove (among others).

Here’s our favorite excerpt, proving that truth can be stranger than fiction:

It’s hard to know why anyone would care to set the record straight about whether he is able to ejaculate with or without a condom or whether he likes to spank or be spanked. But [Steinbuch attorney Jonathan] Rosen says that’s exactly what Steinbuch intends to do.

“There are graphic and intimate details which are not true,” he said in a telephone interview. “Those are facts that are going to be litigated.”

To summarize the Legal Times piece: Steinbuch v. Cutler represents Robert Steinbuch’s attempt to clear his name. He wants the world to know that he’s good in bed. Really good.

Very well, Professor Steinbuch: you’re GREAT in bed. There, it’s established. It has been printed. In a blog.

Boy, that was an easy problem to solve. Did you really have to go make a federal case out of it?

A Man Scorned [Legal Times]

(For those of you who can’t get enough of Jessica Cutler, we share a random story about a reading she did last month in New York, after the jump. Note: It’s not for the squeamish.)

Here’s an account of the reading from our eyewitness correspondent:

You may be tired of Jessica Cutler, but unfortunately, I’m not. I saw her read at this:

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
TRUE SEX CONFESSIONS NIGHT
WEDNESDAY APRIL 19 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

She read a very entertaining piece about leaving a tampon in for a week. It had to do with a guy (a reporter, who apparently claims to have slept with Colin Powell’s daughter), who had a huge dick, and had shoved a forgotten tampon all the way up, where it stayed for a week, the stench growing and growing, until she finally went to the gyno to have the stench taken care of… at which point she told him, when he was breaking it off with her, that she didn’t really want to kiss a guy who had been eating out a rotting tampon all week. Oh, and he was doing her best friend. Because, what would a Jessica story be without the betrayal of a best friend?

Anyway, it was very amusing.

Well, so is Judge Paul L. Friedman, who is presiding over the invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought against Jessica by Robert Steinbuch, one of her former lovers. This afternoon Judge Friedman issued a testy memorandum opinion and order (PDF), in which he bench-slapped the lawyers in the case for their ridiculous and embarrassing conduct in the case, as well as their repeated violations of court rules.

Okay, it’s late in the afternoon, on a Friday before a holiday weekend. So forgive us for the somewhat half-assed treatment of an opinion that deserves more thorough scrutiny.

After the jump, excerpts from the ruling, along with our commentary.

Judge Paul Friedman’s opinion begins with a dry recitation of the procedural history of the case. Pretty boring, although we did enjoy this sentence: “Plaintiff filed a motion to quash the defendant’s notice of deposition.”

Uh, if plaintiff had done a little less “quashing” of the defendant, then maybe we might not be here.

Judge Friedman: “As for plaintiff’s motion for a protective order, it essentially requests that the Court place a gag order on the defendant…”

Gag order? Who said anything about gags? We thought Steinbuch’s thing was hair-pulling. (But hey, they’re not mutually exclusive.)

Judge Friedman: “[P]laintiff is distressed by the fact that this lawsuit has drawn media attention. Perhaps the plaintiff should have considered that fact before he filed suit.”

Ouch. No additional snark necessary. As they say in the law trade, res ipsa loquitur.

And, in closing, this final salvo from the court:

Since counsel have shown themselves unable to abide by the Rules of this Court or refrain from engaging in unnecessarily litigious behavior, counsel for both parties are ordered to read the Local Civil Rules of this Court and Appendix B to those Rules — the D.C. Bar Voluntary Standards for Civility in Professional Conduct — and to abide by them in the future.

Double ouch. Counsel for both parties are also ordered to go to their rooms, without dinner.

The Court also briefly considered spanking both parties, but declined to do so — because the parties might actually like that.

Steinbuch v. Cutler [D.D.C. (PDF)]

Earlier: For the Record: William Bode Too ‘Busy’ to Represent Washingtonienne
A Spinoff from Her Sitcom: Jessica Cutler’s Legal Drama

Earlier this month, we reported on the highly suspicious “notice of withdrawal” (hehe) filed by William Bode, former lawyer to Jessica Cutler, the Blogger Formerly Known as Washingtonienne. Now we bring you this update.

By way of summary: lawyers to Robert Steinbuch, the ex-lover of Jessica now suing her for invasion of privacy, moved to disqualify William Bode as Cutler’s lawyer. They argued that Bode had a conflict of interest, alleging that he was “W” — the middle-aged partner in a small Georgetown law firm, with whom Cutler had a sexual relationship, as described in her blog.

So what happened next? Bode withdrew from the case, filing a cursory notice of withdrawal that was conspicuously silent on the allegations that he was “W.”

Now Bode tells the Legal Times what he never bothered to tell the Court: that he is not “W.” Bode claims that he withdrew from Cutler’s case because he is “too busy.”

C’mon, Bill, do you really expect us to buy that? When was the last time a middle-aged male lawyer said he was too “busy” for Jessica Cutler? Unless you’ve found a younger and hotter intern to sleep with, we’re disinclined to believe you.

As for why Bode refused to address the allegations in any court filing, but was willing to discuss them with the media, our theory boils down to two words: Rule 11.

(Note to non-lawyers: Rule 11 is this rule that says you can’t lie to the Court, ‘n stuff. But lying to the media is okay — and everybody does it.)

Dirty Talk: Washingtonienne Blogger Loses Lawyer [Legal Times]
Love and Libel in Washington [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: A Spinoff from Her Sitcom: Jessica Cutler’s Legal Drama

• Post-modern age, oh how we love thee. Shall you be compared to a summer’s day? Or that which is more beautiful, like the poetry of the large intestine swooning for a burrito? [Poop Report]

• Viral marketing at its finest. A product that they would make if they could, but they can’t, so someone else does, then they sue, and reap double the internet memes. Smoking must make you smart. [TSG]
  
• Immigration just looks like an intractable issue. The solution is actually quite simple. [TSPR]

• Why couldn’t it have been DeLay? Watching “the Hammer” scale a chain-link in his wife beater would have been a dream. Run, Tom, Run! [WFTV]

Yes, we know you’re getting tired of her; so are we (and just wait until her TV show airs). But since this blog owes some of its prominence to reporting her misadventures, we owe you an update about Jessica Cutler.

According to the Associated Press:

A judge on Wednesday allowed a lawsuit to proceed against Jessica Cutler, the former Senate aide who posted details of her sex life on the Internet. The case brought by Sen. Mike DeWine’s former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Robert Steinbuch, alleges that Cutler engaged in an invasion of his privacy in 2004 by publishing sexually explicit facts about a relationship with Steinbuch.

But even though the judge declined to dismiss the suit, his ruling on the statute-of-limitations issue may not bode well for Steinbuch:

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that Steinbuch had one year from the time of the Internet postings to bring the matter to court. Almost all of the material at issue in the case was posted on the Internet more than a year before the lawsuit was filed May 18, 2005.

Steinbuch, by the way, is now a law professor at the University of Arkansas (where Bill Clinton used to teach). Kinda gross to imagine your professor entering through the back door, isn’t it?

Yawn, this is boring; we don’t care about this technical legal crap. Where’s all the juicy stuff?

After the jump, of course.

Update: This post is the subject of a correction.

On Monday of this week, a reader sent us this email (with attached documents):

Check out the attached motion to disqualify Jessica’s newly retained counsel, William Bode. Steinbuch’s lawyers filed it last Friday, claiming that Bode is, in fact, “W” from Jessica’s short-lived (yet still living in cache-land) Washingtonienne blog. Yes, the same “W” who was into paying Cutler for a bit of butt **** ing every now and then. The motion is wonderfully gossipy and trashy, and not just in a lawyer way.

We agree with this characterization of the motion. One of us practiced law for a bit, and we sure never saw stuff like this in any motion papers:

“W” is the subject of the Blog and discussed in the Blog, inter alia, as follows: ‘W = A suger daddy who wants nothing but anal. Keep on trying to end it with him, but the money is too good…. I am done with W, for real this time. A man who tries to **** you in the ass when you are sober does not love you. He should at least take you out for a few drinks to spare you the pain.

C’mon, Jess, don’t be so naive — the guy’s a lawyer. Screwing people up the butt is in his job description.

So yeah, according to the motion to disqualify, Jessica allegedly slept with “W” — a “middle-aged, lead attorney in a small Washington, DC law firm,” who lives in Georgetown (just like William Bode). Then she blogged about it. Then she retained “W” to represent her when another former lover/blog subject sued her. This all shows exquisite judgment.

Our tipster’s sober commentary:

I’m pretty sure this is a conflict of interest everywhere, even in this jaded town. Oh, and Bode filed an oh-so-meek notice of withdrawal. Also attached.

Bode’s one-page notice doesn’t admit that he was a paramour of Cutler; but actions speak louder than words. Why else would a lawyer turn away paying work?

And on that subject: How was Cutler compensating Bode for his legal services? Was he doing this pro bono [sic]?

Oh, Jessica…

Judge Allows Sex Blogs Lawsuit to Proceed [AP]
Reliable Source: For Washingtonienne, A Rendezvous at the Bar? [WP]
Robert Steinbuch Faculty Bio [University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Jessica Cutler Online
Steinbuch v. Cutler: When is a Personal Blog Considered Publicity? [Privacy and Security Law Blog]

Earlier: Oh, Look, It’s the Ides of March: Jessica Cutler’s TV Show
Beat Me, Whip Me, Take My Book Contract Away

Practice pointer: Judges also like it when you call opposing counsel’s argument “dumb-ass.”

Who says the practice of law is hard? It took us about ten minutes to crank out a constitutional analysis of Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s immunity from arrest under Article I, Section 6. And we gave it to you for free. A law firm would have charged you several thousand bucks!

It’s Friday, as well as April Fool’s Day (observed). You didn’t think we’d let the day pass without a CNN headline post, did you?

Lawyer: Apple Trademark Claim Silly [CNN]

It's been pointed out to us that statements that Trent Lott has made in his past, such as: "The Democrats seem to think that the answer is a lawsuit. Sue everybody." And: "If their answer to everything is more lawsuits, then yes, that's a problem, because I certainly don't support that." And: "It's sue, sue, sue... That's not the answer."

Do not jibe with the measures he's taking to rebuild his famous front porch: "Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott and his wife sued State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. to force the insurer to pay for damage to their house in Pascagoula on the Gulf of Mexico, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina."

So, if you're scoring at home: Sending the Solicitor General to advocate on behalf of golddigging whores -- vital to the national interest. Megarich Senator spends taxpayer dollars suing to have his "in harm's way" gulf state home rebuilt -- terrifically important. Valerie Lakey nearly vivisected by a pool pump -- surely she can pull herself up by her bootstraps!— DCEIVER

Priorities, yo. They used to count for something in these parts. Yet with all the trouble in the world, it's hard to understand why on earth the White House is dispatching U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of famed anthropomorphic-fugue-state-with-tits Anna Nicole Smith in her seemingly interminable quest to take home dead tycoon J. Howard Marshall's millions.

Surely the administration realizes that participating in this oddball legal venture makes it so they can never, ever, ever, ever, ever argue that citizens are getting killed economically by frivolous lawsuits. Wait. Forever ever? Forever ever? Ever, ever? Ever, ever? Ever, ever? Ever, ever? Yes. That much forever.

CNN's Law Center has no compelling answers for why assisting this case is in the national interest. The central issue, "when may federal courts hear claims that involve state probate proceedings", is deemed a case "only a lawyer would love." That's not fair, however. This case is also beloved by anyone passionate about drug-addled skanks.— DCEIVER

Anna Nicole Smith gets White House boost [CNN]

We were very excited to see the details of the sex harassment suit filed against a Fox News executive, but those looking for another loofa will be disappointed. No falafel porn, just some PG-13 office cursing, the most ribald of which was his comment that "a pregnant woman had 'tits' that were 'f---ing huge' and like 'cannons' or 'melons.'" Well, were they? Isn't truth a complete defense? Maybe that's something else. In any case, Fox only disputes one detail in the case:

The EEOC says that Chillemi use the phrase "as useless as tits on a bull" in front of women. Mintz said that's not the precise language. The phrase isn't 'as useless as tits on a bull';  it's 'as useless as teats on a bull'. It's something that's useless. It's not a sexual commment."

Fox News: Bad Language Isn't Illegal [B&C]