Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I'm having as much fun following this DC Madam situation as anyone, and I can't wait for more names to come out, but holy cow is this woman's lawyer a nut. Walter Olson reports that this nut once sued the Supreme Court justices for not taking a case:
A Google search reveals that a Florida attorney named Montgomery Blair Sibley, proceeding pro se, sued federal judicial officials including the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court (including "Steven" Breyer) demanding a million dollars in damages from the Justices individually for various purported offenses which included not granting certiorari review to a domestic dispute Sibley was involved in.
And the Washington Post has a longer story about this guy's shady past and present. He appears to be half Larry Caldwell, half Larry Fafarman and all nuts:
While this 50-year-old scion of the highborn has recently been suggesting that he could make public the names of the 10,000 in order to protect his client Deborah Jeane Palfrey, he had to pay less attention to urgent business in two other places.One was Florida, where the state bar was seeking to yank his license for at least two years. He was found guilty in absentia (in part for being a "vexatious litigant") and now faces suspension if not disbarment. "He is someone who abuses the legal process," says Barnaby Min, counsel for the Florida Bar.
The second was in Montgomery County, where he was to stand trial for failing to pay $11,218.20 in past-due rent on office space in Gaithersburg for a tiny shipping-crate company he heads. That trial was continued.
Something is amiss here, and we haven't even gotten to the part where he sued the U.S. Supreme Court for treason (twice!), asking for $1 million in damages. Or that he spent 77 days in a Miami jail for refusing to pay child support. Or that Maryland has stopped him from running a law office in the state. Or that federal prosecutors in Palfrey's case say Sibley's filings are so ignorant of basic legal tenets that they are "almost incoherent."
All of this is bad, because it also means we haven't even mentioned "Big Pimping Pappy" yet...
He filed so many suits against so many people, almost all of them immediately dismissed, that Florida courts ordered the clerk's office not to accept any more filings from him relating to the divorce unless another member of the Florida Bar also signed the complaint. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said his suits amounted to a "multi-headed leviathan of meritless litigation."
This guy is from one of the nation's oldest and most prominent families. His ancestors were high government officials at every level going back to the early days of the country. And this guy appears to be a huckster and a nut.
Comments
Having DC Madam reveal her list to protect her from conviction is so crazy that it just might work. Of course to do something this crazy, you need an insane lawyer.
Reminds me of what Captain Jack said in the Pirates 3 trailer: "If I wasn't mad, this might not work"
(apologies if the quote is not exact)
Posted by: daenku32 | May 6, 2007 12:57 PM
I am genuinely sorry to hear this about Palfrey's lawyer. I mean, this case had such promise! I was looking forward with great appetite to the mass outing and the resultant scurrying about by the pols and the media. It would have all been such great fun.
This news, though, coupled with the recent media claims that none of the names on the list of some 10,000 are worth mentioning (ahem) , appears to have put an end to my expectations. Dadburnit.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | May 6, 2007 1:33 PM
Yeah -- ABC basically said that the names they found on the list were not newsworthy. Given that they only have phone records, there is a chance that a couple of more noteworthy clients have managed to avoid detection, but is sounds as though ABC is not interested in doing much more digging.
Now, if they handed the records over to the blogosphere....
Posted by: tacitus | May 6, 2007 5:09 PM
What is it with crazy lawyers from Florida?
First Jack Thompson, now this guy?!
Posted by: Spooky | May 7, 2007 7:14 AM