Ten, 20, or even 100 judges who look at the same evidence will all reach the same conclusion about the True Facts of a case, right?
No?
Why not?
The reasons may include, per Linda Greenhouse's latest column, that Their Honors actually "don't know" all the info they need in order to
The American jury makes a profound contribution to the very structure and fabric of American law, Ciulla v. Rigny, 89 F. Supp. 2d 97, 98 (D. Mass. 2000), and so it is here. Indeed, this particular case would be of little interest to anyone other than the litigants were it not for the remarkable
The Ninth Circuit held today that due process allowed a 125,000 to one ratio between punitive and actual damages in a sexual harassment case. Arizona v. ASARCO LLC, No. 11-17484 (9th Cir. Oct. 24, 2013).
The panel cut district court's $300,000 award to $125,000 on the ground that due process would not permit the extra $175,000.
Blawgletter not too long ago got one of those machines that heats water and then blasts it through a canister of coffee essence to make — voila! — a steaming cup of joe.
These devices come from a Wide Range of sources, but many of them appear to spring from people who make the coffee-essence-canisters
Blawgletter once wrote Barnett's Notes on Commercial Litigation on a more-or-less monthly basis. But guess what? Each issue took at least a couple of days to compose. Which time at $875 an hour adds up.
So now we blog, or blawg, on Blawgletter. So much time is saved!
Which brings us to a topic we
Blawgletter's old friend Bryan Garner has taken to writing for the ABA Journal. We love his monthly column, "Bryan Garner on Words".
If you've ever sampled Bryan's oeuvre — which ranges from Making Your Case (with Justice Antonin Scalia) and Black's Law Dictionary to Rules of Golf in Plain English – you may have deduced that
The head of CME Group — the Chicago Mercantile Exchange – writes for the today's WSJ op-ed page:
In 2008, Harvard sent 28% of its graduating class to firms where they would become bankers, traders or investors. By 2010, Harvard was sending just 17% of its graduating class. Yale graduates entering the finance business fell
Blawgletter spent half a day this week on a Windy City panel — lawyers and law firm Chief Pricing Officers — that talked about the “Anatomy of a Fixed-Fee Negotiation”.
We learned that firms have funny names for not charging by the hour. Sobriquets ranged from “alternative” fee arrangements to “appropriate”, “tailored”, and “preferred” ones.
You'd really prefer not to see an opinion that starts like this, in a case you argued:
There are good reasons not to call an opponent's argument "ridiculous," which is what State Farm calls Barbara Bennett's argument here.
Uh-oh.
The reasons include civility; the near-certainty that overstatement will only push the reader away (especially when,
The Tenth Circuit has ruled that Microsoft didn't kill WordPerfect. The market did.
Or at least that, if Microsoft did commit software-icide, it didn't lose money doing it and therefore Did Nothing Wrong. Novell, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 12-4143 (10th Cir. Sept. 23, 2013).
For other instances of antitrust-icide in the Tenth Circuit