A Bexar County, Texas, district judge issued a temporary restraining order putting a two-by-four across the head of banks that committed to finance Bain Capital’s and Thomas E. Lee Partners’ purchase of Clear Channel Communications. WSJ story here. Clear Channel press release here.
The judge, John D. Gabriel, didn’t rule on the merits.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation heard arguments today at the Homer Thornberry Judicial Center in Austin, Texas. The Panel assigned 20 minutes each to more than a dozen motions to centralize before one federal judge cases pending in multiple federal district courts. Most of the arguments consisted of short bursts, often as terse
Entrance to Clear Channel Communications headquarters.
Two prolific borrowers — the private equity firms Bain Capital and Thomas E. Lee Partners — have sued six of the biggest banks — Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Wachovia — for refusing to carry through on financing a buy out of
Six of the nine Justices sided today with the Ninth Circuit — over, among others, the Fifth. Wow! Sweet sassie molassie. Hall Street Assocs., L.L.C. v. Mattell, Inc., No. 06-989 (U.S. Mar. 25, 2008).
The issue concerned arbitration. As Justice Souter framed the matter:
The question here is whether statutory grounds for prompt vacatur
The Eleventh Circuit today reversed dismissal of misappropriation claims by a group of doctors against a "preferred provider organization" that contracted for their services and another company that sold "medical discount cards". The practitioners of the healing arts complained that the PPO improperly let the card-seller use their identities and practice information to market its
The NYT reports that the new prime minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani, ordered the release of the judges that his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, confined last year when he imposed martial law.
Musharraf remains Pakistan’s president.
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Who can understand what happened to produce what looks like a U.S. recession? Blawgletter hears that, at the simplest level, lenders believed borrowers’ promises of intention and ability to repay far beyond honest limits. They "credited" obvious lies. Shame on the liars — but also on the believers.
Who deserves the greater blame? We don’t
Barack Obama is as white as he is black. The one-drop rule is not a genetic law or a social fact; it is a construct of this country’s racist imagination. For Pete’s sake, he’s a distant cousin of Dick Cheney’s. We need to start stressing the idea that his universal appeal is partly due to
Blawgletter had the honor last week of contributing to an amicus brief in Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., No. 07-210 (U.S.), which the Court will hear April 14. The issue? "Whether reliance is a required element of a RICO claim predicated on mail fraud and, if it is, whether that reliance must
