Do you know pig Latin?
O-Day ou-yay ow-knay ig-pay atin-Lay?
Blawgletter doesn’t either. But some federal judges appear to ow-knay ow-hay o-tay iss-may e-thay oint-pay.
So it happened oday-tay when a court of appeals affirmed dismissal of a complaint because, it concluded, a state court had dismissed the same claims before the plaintiffs non-suited their state court case. The issue, in our view, came down to whether the state court’s post-non-suit entry of a "Corrected Final Judgment" affected the, er, finality of a previous "order" that "DISMISSED" the "case". The panel held that the earlier order did indeed constitute a final judgment for purposes of res judicata and collateral estoppel. But it said bupkes about the impact of correcting the order on finality. Orris-nay ersus-vay E-thay Earst-hay Ust-tray, No. 05-20710 (5th Cir. Sept. 18, 2007).
Perhaps e-way iss-may e-thay oint-pay. But we don’t think o-say.
Barry Barnett
