OPEC spans the globe.
With the market price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil hovering just above $125 a barrel and regular gasoline prices spiking above $4.00 a gallon, your ordinary American citizen wants to know who to blame. Count Blawgletter as one of them.
We can speculate about causes. Does the lack of new
Thom Weidlich at Bloomberg reports that "[a]t least 24 proposed class actions have been filed since mid-March against brokerages over claims investors were told the [auction rate] securities were almost as liquid as cash." The cases stem from the collapse of auctions that supplied liquidity for ARSs in February. Investors could no longer sell the
Bribery doesn’t necessarily add up to securities fraud.
What happens to a company that pays $420,000 in unlawful consulting fees to a state senator whose legislative committees oversees the company’s activities? Good government?
What about when the truth outs? Can you say plunge in price per share?
A 42-month series of $10,000 payments to a
Why do people kill themselves? Does self-destruction ever make sense? And who can say what caused a specific person — Lance Dowell, say — to hang himself after hospital doctors negligently failed to urge him to stay for psychological treatment?
If you think a jury ought to hear all the evidence and render a verdict
Abraham Lincoln liked jury trials just fine.
Last February, Blawgletter reported a steep decline in Texas state court jury trials in civil cases. In 1996, district court juries rendered 2,971 verdicts but only 1,428 during 2006 — a drop of 52 percent. District judges also directed verdicts 253 times in 1996 but 473 times in
Golden Bridge’s new argument (about validity of a wireless technology patent) has fallen down. My fair lady.
Can you raise on appeal an argument you didn’t make in the trial court? Usually not. Golden Bridge Technology, Inc. v. Nokia, Inc., No. 07-1215 (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2008).
What if you have shiny new appellate
Blawgletter hears and reads a lot about meritless lawsuits. We wonder what the speakers and writers mean by that.
Meritless, to us, implies something close to frivolous. And frivolous treads on ground parlously close to, if not over the line of, sanctionable.
But let’s not go there today. Let’s stick with meritless.
Will the ALI opt for baby steps on new aggregate settlement principles?
Remember that 1L who talked in class all the time? The one whose hand shot up even if the prof hadn’t asked a question? The gunner who made you wish Socrates kept his method to himself?
Every law school section had an individual
Blawgletter wrote this comment to the American Law Institute last week:
Congratulations on your excellent progress towards making Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation a reality. I appreciate and commend your dedication to such a challenging project.
So I ask your indulgence for my suggestion of what I see as an improvement to a
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962).
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
