The Supreme Court of Minnesota.  (It will make sense if you read the whole post.)

Blawgletter has heard, and sometimes says, that such and such beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  The phrase applies to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling yesterday on state power over national banks.

The 5-4 decision pivoted on what "visitorial powers" means.  The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency sued to stop the attorney general of the Empire State from asking national banks to hand over info on their compliance with New York banking law.  The Comptroller cited a statute that barred states from flexing "visitorial" muscles. 

The Court (per Justice Scalia) held that visitorial powers enable an overseeing authority — such as a board of trustees or a state that breathes life into legal fictions like corporations — to pry and fuss and vex the visitee even if the subject of the visiting has done nothing unlawful.  But powers visitorial differ from run of the mill law enforcement.  The statute keeps states from using their inherent authority to pry but not from suing to enforce their laws.  Cuomo v. Clearing House Assn., L.L.C., No. 08-453 (U.S. June 29, 2009).

The liberals joined Justice Scalia.  The other conservatives – plus Justice Kennedy — not so much.

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Bonus:  The Minnesota Supreme Court poked Norm Coleman in the eye with a sharp stick.  Unanimously.

A federal judge today sentenced Bernard Madoff to 150 years in a place where he can think about the men, women, children, charities, museums, and clubs he took billions from.

The event puts Blawgletter in mind of Dante, whose Divine Comedy consigned fraudulent advisors to the eighth — next-to-last — circle of Hell.  (Satan himself occupied the bottom-most ninth.)

But a cruel reality intrudes on Judge Denny Chin's ruling – the fact that a great many people lost life savings because they trusted Mr. Madoff and his helpers.  A $60 billion plus fraud couldn't last without aid and support from those enablers, who profited from their fiduciary crapulence.

Where can victims — including a 60-plus woman who now eats sometimes out of a dumpster — turn?

Critics of tort liability would say too bad, so sad — leave the "deep pockets" alone.  God forbid suing someone less culpable because that someone can pay damages.

 Poor things.

The U.S. Supreme Court today held that New Haven violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by ignoring test results in deciding which firefighters to promote.  The city could not justify promoting black firefighters ahead of whites and Hispanics by citing fear of a "disparate impact" lawsuit under Title VII.

[T]he City could be liable for disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job related and consistent with business necessity, or if there existed an equally valid, less-discrimnatory alternative that served the City's needs but that the City refused to adopt. . . . We conclude there is no strong basis in evidence to establish that the test was deficient in either of these respects.

Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428, slip op. at 28 (U.S. June 29, 2009).

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas joined.  Justices Breyer, Souter, and Stevens joined in Justice Ginsburg's dissent.

 Our feed crosses the Quinnipiac.

 
The Iron Horse took himself out of the lineup in what would have been his 2,131st consecutive game.

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that's the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.

Lou Gehrig, July 4, 1939, Yankee Stadium.

Employee hurt her back at work.  She later signed a one-page "Arbitration Acknowledgment".  It called for arbitration of disputes "with your particular employer."  Later still, employee sued Macy's Texas, Inc. 

Macy's Texas moved to compel arbitration.  Employee replied that the one-pager didn't identify Macy's Texas as a party to the Acknowledgment and that it instead listed other companies — "Federated Department Stores, Inc., Macy’s West, Inc., and Federated Systems Group, Inc."

The Supreme Court of Texas today held the non-specification of the actual employer as a party to the arbitration agreement didn't matter.  Employee, the court concluded, "cannot avoid arbitration by raising factual disputes about her employer's correct legal name."  In re Macy's Texas, Inc., No. 08-0584 (Tex. June 26, 2009) (per curiam).

Something bothers Blawgletter about the decision.  It looks sloppy.

What if you had a contract to buy toothpicks?  The agreement says you'll purchase the goods from "your particular vendor" and names three possibilities.  An "assistant manager" signs, but he likewise doesn't specify for which legal entity he does so.  Later, the toothpicks don't show up on time, or they have splinters, or they otherwise don't comply with the deal.  Who can you sue?

The court's per curiam logic would say you can bring suit against any entity that (a) belongs to the same corporate family as the three potential toothpick suppliers and (b) you name in your petition as the "particular vendor".

The defect in our view didn't involve a question of an "employer's correct legal name."  It instead concerned a basic failure to agree on who the contract binds.  The case should have turned on whether the actual defendant also in fact employed the plaintiff.

We concede that the court might have decided the mandamus under the doctrine of equitable estoppel, which allows non-signatories of arbitration agreements to enforce them.  But it didn't.  Sloppy.

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