Q&A: What can I do if I am caught driving without a license again?
Question: What can I do if I am caught driving without a license again? I was in an accident; I do not have a license. Took a chance to get back and work. I have been caught before and this will make it my third felony driving while suspended. The ticket written was only for not providing a license, what can I do?
Answer: Okay hotshot let’s get real here. What you say doesn't make sense: there is no charge of felony driving while suspended, so I'm guessing there is more going on than you've alluded to. Otherwise, the answer to your question will depend upon the reason you don't have a license in the first place. Are you suspended or barred? Why are you suspended or barred? What happened the prior times you were arrested? What else is in your criminal history? Are you on probation or parole? Depending upon the answers to those questions you could be looking at a very minimal fine or as much as prison, and additional license suspensions.
And one more thing, stop making excuses for criminal behavior. You said, "Took a chance to get back and work." What does that mean? I suspect the devil is in the details behind that statement. Where were you driving to? Huh? Cat got your tongue? The judges aren't stupid, you think the prosecutor is going to be played that easily? You didn't say you were heading to work so throwing that tidbit in won't get you to first base.
The fact is you just struck out.
A walk down the aisle is not an investment decision.
My office mate and I recently litigated and successfully settled a cow-in-the-road case in southern Iowa. The facts are as simple as a black cow weighing 1,000 pounds out on a county road after dark where there are no lights doesn't show up in your headlights until it's too late to stop. In that case the driver's wife died. The driver was a family doctor and we thought that would help him in the community with farmers who admired his dedication to Iowa families. Think again. No one in the community came forward to admit ownership of the cow.
Another film director stands accused surrounding Iowa’s film tax-credit program. See the linked article below.
This week I received another call about an engagement ring dispute. He bought the ring, spend nearly two thousand dollars for it, they broke up and she moved out of state. He’s been trying to get the ring returned, but she’s refusing. I’m guessing she’s enjoying making his life just a little bit miserable. As my mother is fond of saying, “Steve, misery loves company.” Yes Mom it does.
For a measely 
What’s going on in Iowa courts? That depends on what you read and who you talk with. There are many different cases of interest from the Heartland. There is one I just couldn’t help but report about.
There are times when as a personal injury lawyer who does a lot of car, truck, motorcycle accidents along with workers’ compensation claims I am completely baffled. This week I got a call from an out-of-state resident who visited Iowa and was injured at a hotel. The matter was a trip-fall type of claim. We lawyers refer to them as premise liability cases. Premise liability is a difficult case to prove, you really need an artificial defect in the property to win these cases. By artificial defect I mean something created by the owner, the lessee or the business that increased the risk of injury.
Something is very wrong out there when there are so many wrong-way interstate driving events along with digitally distracted drivers. Is it distracted driving, or drunken drivers, or a combination of the two? I’m writing today because of what one younger client told me this week.
A Man Need Not Apply
Iowa's Version of MMA Tort-Reform Was A Recipe for Disaster 
Make Politicians Publicly Disclose their Stock Options within 24 hours of Purchase
There’s nothing wrong with what losing teaches a child.
David Muir from ABC World News with Diane Sawyer has a new series on Made in America. This is the best series that can start the conversation about how we can take the largest consumer economy in the world, America, and refocus our attention on keeping America working. I've seen in the last ten years. Someone is actually getting it. If just 1% of what you spend on consumer goods we would create 200,000 new American jobs. That's $0.18 cents a day and you can create 200,000 new American jobs.
As officers of the court we lawyers are ethically constrained from openly criticizing the court. As a practical matter we just won’t criticize publicly because to do so risks angering those who rule for or against our clients. My opponents would love nothing better than for me to openly criticize the judges and justices. If I did my clients would soon seek out another lawyer who was more constrained and less likely to anger the Court.
Crimes of hyperbole?
I did a quick search of the Iowa stories on the notion the remaining four justices that authored Brien vs. Varnum (the gay marriage license case in Iowa) and came up with a list of stories that is both interesting and disturbing. To have lived the law for over 30 years and assisted people, not corporations, with people problems of significance to their lives, I must say this one stumps me. We have so many economic problems right now; and so it’s difficult for me to understand why the gay marriage license issue is worth all the time, money and effort being put into it. Vote No morphed into what now appears to be a show-down in the Iowa legislature over judicial impeachment procedures involving the remaining four justices. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s strict constructionist point of view expressed this week further inflamed those proposing impeachment. To say that a point of view about Constitutional law is a reason to impeach a Justice is to ask for a dumber society and a pathetically weak judiciary. Points of view are nothing more than an opinion, but in the case of the judiciary it’s a learned point of view developed after law school and a long distinguished career. How did we ever get to throwing justices out of office because of a learned point of view? This is a prime example of the tail wagging the dog. If you want Judges and Justices with no backbone, a lack of intelligence and the will to do nothing, but what the public asks, then just keep up the flames of the impeachment process.
Cedar Rapids Iowa has found a different way to cash in on law breakers; 
If you want to read a good story about a courageous young man from Waterloo, Iowa and his equally courageous and loving sister read the news story, 
I chose this title because interpretation of the Iowa Constitution isn’t a matter of public opinion or the will of the legislature; it’s a matter of judicial study over a long period of time and after a lifetime of education, training and professional development. To believe or hope that the Iowa Constitution and the rights it created are something a person without a law degree can interpret is asking for chaos. In this case the Vander Plaats interpretation is complete and utter foolishness which if implemented would lead to lawlessness.
I’ve lived in Iowa since 1978. I arrived on a bus from Chicago via a train from Providence. With me I had one trunk and a typewriter. The trunk was large enough that no taxicab driver would stop to give me a ride. I finally figured it out and hid the trunk behind the electric train's iron support beam and stood there with only the typewriter. Once in Iowa City I stayed overnight in a local hotel before being picked up the next day and dropped off at temporary housing in Reno Hall. Everyone thought I talked funny. I admit to being different from Iowans in many ways. What I soon discovered about Iowans was how accepting they were and surprisingly how open-minded. People back home asked why Iowa? (Actually they asked why Idaho, or Ohio or Utah… but we won’t talk about New England’s version of geography.)
Already having pleaded guilty to federal charges in a $1.3 Billion Florida Ponzi Scheme a woman is free while she cooperates with the U.S. Government. The law firm where the Ponzi was being carried out is now bankrupt and shuttered. So the office manager finds herself unemployed. My source sends me a news 
Growing up in a seaport town you learn early that when rats are leaving the ship it means it’s going to sink.
You can do this personal injury work only so long before it’s clear to you that the system is rigged to make money for insurance executives and not to resolve personal injury claims. To the insurance executives that run our insurance system, injured people are nothing more than a necessary evil, a mere nuisance. For that matter so am I. They love to hate me. The system simply tolerates injured people while claiming payments to them are a waste; all the while the system is the waste that feeds the pigs running it.
To put this case in perspective I need ask only one question. Can road conditions, including snow and ice, really cause a car accident?
If you’re going to bash gays you may at least have the decency to do it openly and without the guise of hiding your fears and anger behind a smear campaign against judges that you know aren’t going to be able to defend themselves.
Iowa has its first criminal charges being filed for 
If I were a client and had to pick a lawyer I’d ask only one question. Can you tell me what that question is? I didn't think so. When you know the questions to ask you'll then be ready to take on a client's legal work.
Many years ago I found myself away from the city and in some rural part of Iowa talking to a jury when one elderly woman told me there is nothing wrong with this generation that a good depression couldn’t cure. This is a wise old woman. We won that case and that's pretty amazing because that farm wife sat listening to a young lawyer with a heavy Rhode Island accent that dropped r's where they belonged and then added those r's back onto words where they should not have been. I started in this practice more than 30 years ago and to every rural Iowa jury I showed my love of the law practice, common sense and no fear of hard work or insurmountable odds. Back then we didn’t use computers, cell phones and iPods weren’t even being discussed. We used things like paper, pens, typewriters, Dictaphones and recorders. We wore out the leather on the bottom of our shoes investigating cases along with the leather on briefcases. God I’m feeling old. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing this?
In the July 27, 2010 WSJ I read where Steve Jobs in the past ten years has been paid over 
The title of Reuters news item (September 7, 2010) as reported by Maggie Fox, 
There is a scam being played out across the Midwest having to do with a quick confidence game involving lawyers, a potential client and law suit funding companies.
Lawyers know squat-diddley about marketing; really we don't understand the concept. Judges know less and I'm guessing they will admit their lack of understanding. After all, they are an independent judiciary and don't need to market. Right? Is that right? If so why are the three that are doing their job under attack in Iowa? So I have to wonder, do they need to better understand marketing? Today let's discuss why lawyers and judges would be wise to appreciate at least something about Internet marketing.
The flooding in Iowa is too almost Biblical proportions. We are so tired of rain, rivers overflowing their banks and dams breaking, that the idea of buying a boat and moving north to a lake is looking pretty attractive to most of us. So what are Iowans with flood damage supposed to do when insurance companies tell them there is no coverage? The answers may surprise you when you find out this is going to turn into an expensive lesson for many people.
Texting while driving is like driving while drunk and sooner or later we will have to pass a law requiring people to just think. 
For my east coast friends who remain geographically challenged Missouri is a state, a part of the United States and just south, that’s down, of Iowa. Missouri is the “Show Me State” which once again Iowans are stuck showing them the errors of their ways. Missouri’s elected officials are picking on exotic dancers a-g-a-i-n. If Missourians are going to pick on exotic dancers then we may as well debate the merits of that age old tradition, the demolition derby. Boiled down to its essence, assuming there is an essence, the demolition derby is a contest that seeks to find several people dumb enough for a small cash prize, to climb into a car or truck and ram other contestants until you’re the last fool moving. Sounds a little like some marriages, but let’s leave that comparison for another day. In the derby the cash prize comes from a promoter who sells beer, pretzels, popcorn, hotdogs and maybe a t-shirt or two. Exotic dancers on the other hand are usually young woman dancing on a stage or in someone’s lap for tip money. The promoter is a bar owner who charges an entry fee and gets paid handsomely for selling inebriated patrons watered down drinks containing a small portion of alcohol. They aren’t selling t-shirts; in fact clothing is optional, well … at least it is for the dancers. 
Some of you, who can’t mow grass, cut weeds or afford to fix city parks may wonder how you too can help.