Nummers!
The WSJ reports this afternoon that the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has opened an investigation into potential anticompetitive activities in the chocolate industry. The disclosure follows issuance of search warrants in Canada for a similar probe. See This Price-Fixing Case Looks Pretty Sweet.
The article says that "Justice Department antitrust enforcers
When can a defense prevent dismissal of a case? When the plaintiff wants a dismissal to avoid the defense.
That sums up the Fifth Circuit’s decision today in Hyde v. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., No. 05-10203 (5th Cir. Dec. 20, 2007). The plaintiff, George W. Hyde, brought the case in Texas state court. He alleged
A unanimous panel of the Third Circuit today affirmed an order compelling arbitration of federal claims on a non-class basis. The court did so despite two Pennsylvania appellate decisions that went the other way, holding that bans on class arbitrations ran afoul of state law unconscionability principles. It justified the ruling on the ground that
Say you get an opposing lawyer’s notes, perhaps because he left them in your conference room after taking a deposition. What ought you to do with them? Does your duty to your client compel you to read them? Or do your obligations as an officer of the court bar you from taking advantage?
The Supreme
This Arthur Miller never knew Marilyn Monroe. We think.
Blawgletter recalls our first law school class. Arthur Miller — then the reporter for the advisory committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — boasted (probably in a gangster pinstripe suit) that we could have our stinkin’ substantive law if we liked it so freakin’
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski in a, er, non-judicial setting.
We do not call this process sham pleading; we call it litigation.
PAE Gov’t Services, Inc. v. MPRI, Inc., No. 06-56438 (9th Cir. Dec. 18, 2007) (Kozinski, C.J.) (explaining reversal of order striking complaint that district court believed contradicted earlier pleading) (footnote omitted).
The NYT reports that the monarch of Saudi Arabia may have pardoned a young woman whom the authorities accused of violating Islamic law by meeting a former boyfriend to retrieve an old picture of her. A group of men raped the woman and the ex-boyfriend.
A Saudi court increased the woman’s punishment
A Michigan district court declined to enjoin a former "restoration drycleaning" franchisee from continuing to ply its trade despite a non-compete clause in the defunct franchise agreement. The Sixth Circuit reversed, holding the clause unambiguous and the evidence sufficient to require enforcing the non-compete by way of preliminary injunction. Certified Restoration Dry Cleaning Network, L.L.C.
Less than half of Americans (47 percent) have Googled themselves, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. A small majority (53 percent) have Googled other (non-celebrity) folk.
Two percent Google themselves regularly.
You can read the whole report, Digital Footprints, here.
Barry Barnett
The Honorable Benjamin N. Cardozo knew how to turn a legal phrase.
A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 464 (1928).
Barry Barnett
