Law, Strategy, and Risk in Commercial Disputes
Scene: A beach. Palms sway in an August breeze. Salt water swells wash the sandy coast. Snappy and Bitey sit in wicker chairs, beneath a fan that rotates faster than the heat calls for.
Snappy: Did you hear about all those nice lawyers whose big firm liked them so much its leaders told them they…
When a firm borrows money by selling an issue of bonds or notes to the public, it does so under an "indenture" that sets out the loan terms and creates a trust in favor of the buyers. The indenture also names a trustee to run the trust for the benefit of people who acquire the…
A firm fires an employee for the sole reason (say) that she refused to murder the CEO of the firm's main rival. May a jury consider, in deciding whether to award the employee punitive damages, the firm's murderous motive that resulted in the firing?
No, the Supreme Court of Texas held today. No matter how…
The Wall Street Journal reports that law firm partners on the high end boosted their hourly rates more than those at the low end.
Blawgletter doubts that should surprise anyone. The difference between a really good lawyer and a good one resembles the difference (with apologies to Samuel Clemens) between lightning and a lightning bug.…
The town that Blawgletter grew up in included people who would ask you to stand or sit someplace else so they could watch the Andy Griffith Show by saying "you've been drinking muddy water". The gentleness of the nudge made moving easy. And it still makes us smile.
Today, a ruling out of the Seventh…
The WSJ has a front-page online item on an effort within the American Bar Association to change the rule on who can own law firms. Right now, only lawyers can, as a matter of legal ethics, share in law firm equity. But the rule differs in U.K. and even more so Down Under.
People who…
If you say it loud enough, you'll always sound precocious.
Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".
[Note: Robert died on Monday. R.I.P.]
The NYT reports that a federal jury in Houston today convicted high-yield CD king Allen Stanford on all but one of the 14 fraud counts against him.
Stanford grew up in Mexia, Texas, and got a finance degree from Baylor in Waco. In the 1980s, he moved to Montserrat and later Antigua.
His Stanford Financial…
AT&T claimed that a state-wide franchise it got from Kentucky in 1886 — to build and use "telephone lines, exchanges and systems" — gave it the right not only to furnish Bluegrass Staters phone service but also to provide them cable TV. And the district court agreed.
The Sixth Circuit did not. The panel ruled…
The Golden State's Proposition 8 today failed the fourteenth amendment's "equal protection" test because, a 2-1 panel of the Ninth Circuit held:
[T]he People of California may not, consistent with the Federal Constitution, add to their state constitution a provision that has no more practical effect than to strip gays and lesbians of their right
…