The USDA will begin enforcing these standards in October in hopes of differentiating low quality “impostors” from the best oil. The standards will also conform to international and trade group definitions so that buyers know whether they have a true high-end bottle of EVOO or just the “Two-Buck Chuck” variety.

Patricia Darragh, executive director of the California Olive Oil Council, a trade association of producers responsible for most US-grown olive oil explained that “[t]here has been a concern for some time about the quality and truthfulness of oil brought into the United States.  In the absence of a federal standards, some unscrupulous importers have flooded the market.”

The new regulations provide specific chemical parameters of purity and freshness that provide a basis for enforcement. They include indicators for fatty acid composition, which helps separate olive oils from seed oils, and the ultraviolet light absorption, which indicates the oil’s state of preservation, as well as a taste test by experts.

Glad to know that we have such rigorous criteria for olive oil. It’s certainly more important than applying strict standards to the forensic science promulgated in court and used to lock people away for the rest of their lives.

I’m not surprised by the results in the case of the juror fame-monger who probably has Lady Gaga lyrics tattooed on her head. Likewise for the innocence appeal. No DNA, no service. And even then you’re likely to get the burnt bottom sludge from the coffee pot. But saying that the right to remain silent is waived if a suspect in fact remains silent? I know some preschoolers who can appreciate the disconnect in that decision.

It’s weeks like this that make me miss Scalia’s decision in Melendez-Diaz. Kagan isn’t going to change the game much, unless she tips the balance toward a 6-3 court. Maybe they’ll legitimize oil spills next.

The WSJ Bankruptcy Beat reports that local investors are helping out bankrupt businesses in California and Wisconsin.

In California – a state flush with debt but low on cash - the Pasadena Playhouse will be resurrected by its patrons. The Playhouse filed its Chapter 11 plan of reorganization late last week.  The plan calls for patron donations to pay off the priority, administrative, and secured claims in full. Since the Playhouse has a storied history in California and is beloved by local theatre-goers, this plan might just work.  Moreover, since local and state government’s have little interest in supporting the arts, this is perhaps the only way a plan to save the Playhouse would work.  The stage has been dark since February, and this high school drama geek hopes that new productions will soon bring back light and life to the stage.

In the upper Midwest, struggling businesses need a candyman. It appears that one in Wisconsin has found just that.

The bankruptcy court in Milwaukee has approved the sale of Quality Candy and Buddy Squirrel to local investors.  The investors have promised to keep the candy operation up and running (to the delight of dentists).  A win-win for Wisconsin sweet tooths and the bankrupt company. I just wonder what is a “Buddy Squirrel” – maybe it’s better not to ask.

The blog is back in business – aiming to put out more content due to subscriber demand.

Here’s a preview:

Hustler law will damage access

Restricting or enlarging current law is not the way to remedy the release of disturbing crime scene photos, yet the state Legislature seems poised to do just that. Last month, a true-crime reporter working for Hustler magazine requested photos depicting Meredith Emerson’s nude and decapitated body under Georgia’s public disclosure records laws. In 2008, Emerson was brutally killed while hiking with her dog in North Georgia. The atrocities were horrid and disturbing.

Hustler is now revisiting Emerson’s death for a possible feature in its pages. More widely known for its photos of nude (but living) women, Hustler is no ordinary media outlet. Understandably, last month’s request dismayed the slain woman’s family. But it’s disappointing that it created such pandemonium at the state Capitol that legislators scrambled to pass a law preventing the release of such photos.

The New York Times reports that Bankruptcy Judge Lifland ruled that the individual investors’ losses should be defined as the difference between the cash paid into a Madoff account and the amount withdrawn before the fraud collapsed in mid-December 2008.

This ruling decidedly disadvantages the investors who argued that their claims should be valued on the balances shown on their final account statements. The result is a significantly reduced claim amount that duped investors might be able to recover.

It is a harsh result, but the reasoning makes some sense. Ultimately, this is a Ponzi scheme, which by its nature is a fraudulent endeavor. Because of this, the final account statements upon which investors relied cannot reflect legitimate “securities positions” for claim valuation.

The trustee and the investors/creditors do not have the same goal in the Madoff case. The trustee has a duty to maximize the value of the bankrupt estate for the benefit of all creditors. The individual creditors are, rightly so, motivated by their self-interest. The trustee is looking to bring as much property into the estate as possible, and remedies are only as good as the evidence. At the end of the day, the existence of a Ponzi scheme thwarts investor efforts.

In the Madoff case, the bankruptcy trustee calculated investor losses to determine whether an investor had a valid claim in the bankruptcy or whether there are funds that can be recovered by the estate.  Such determinations not only positioned the mob of unsecured creditors against each other (old investors with potentially legitimate profits vs. new investors who bought in when the scheme was in full swing), but also left the trustee with few allies in the quest for assets.

Indeed, while investor “restitution” in many Ponzi schemes uses the  “cash in, cash out” method, Madoff isn’t the average Ponzi scheme.  Ponzi schemes do not have an average shelf-life to measure; the Madoff scam spanned more than a decade (and perhaps dates as far back as the 1980s) and came to a crashing end with an estimated $65 billion in losses. Madoff’s approach involved the purchase of blue-chip stocks and then taking options contracts on them to limit losses.  Madoff did not promise unmatched profits to the countless investors who placed money with his investment firm. Rather, he offered more modest and consistent gains to elite clients usually at a rate of 10%.  Many Ponzi schemes promise to deliver returns of 20% or more, but Madoff’s more restrained output contributed to the fraud’s longevity.  This strategy of steady returns was often described as “too complicated for outsiders to understand,” since Madoff was reluctant to give details on how the investments worked.

Judge Lifland acknowledged that “the complex and unique facts of Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme” defied any simple analysis. “It would be simply absurd to credit the fraud and legitimize the phantom world created by Madoff” when determining victim losses, he said.

No doubt the issue will wind its way up to the Second Circuit – the investors are many and they are angry. A case can run with that momentum almost indefinitely.

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Quietly and quickly approved in December 2009, a state rule provides that DNA found at a crime scene that fails to exactly match the DNA of a person already contained New York’s DNA database can nonetheless be used to search for suspects if the DNA closely resembles that of someone on file.

The premise of this strategy is uncomplicated. Family members share genetic traits, and it would be reasonable to conclude that a partial DNA match indicates that a relative of a person in the database is the unknown suspect. Thus, the search can be narrowed to family members of the person who clearly didn’t commit the crime in question (since that person’s DNA does not precisely match the crime scene sample).

I’ve written about the inherent pitfalls of this approach.  While no one wants to rally against legitimate crime fighting tools, there are also issues with literally bringing the investigation into the family room. By any other name, an investigation of this source is based on guilt-by-relation, and since families can be expansive, the investigation would affect more innocent people than guilty.

California has the most aggressive approach to using familial DNA searches as an investigation technique, and other jurisdictions have followed suit. Notably, there is no national standard for how close a DNA profile has to be to qualify as possibly related to the database offender.

Law enforcement officials say the policy frees forensic scientists from sitting on potentially valuable evidence that they had not been able to turn over to local police departments.

As I said in my article, we’re well past debating whether these policies should be implemented at all, however, there needs to be informed discussions about repercussions, regulations, and limitations in connection with these policies.

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