Can you pick out the lawyer-bashing lawyer?
Cully Stimson’s expression of remorse for bad-mouthing Gitmo detainee lawyers hasn’t convinced many people — least of all the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The NACDL has collected reviews of Mr. Stimson’s offensive remarks and their aftermath here. You can also see what the NYT’s editors think on the subject — preview: bad, bad, bad — at this spot.
Magistrate Judge V. Sue Shields yesterday declined to order plaintiffs to provide discovery regarding their "downstream" sales of ready-mix concrete. The plaintiffs in the case, In re Ready-Mixed Concrete Price-Fixing Litigation, No. 1:05-cv-979-SEB-VSS (S.D. Ind.), allege that Indiana concrete makers, uh, fixed prices.
Whether the victims of any price fixing passed along overcharges to customers doesn’t matter, the Court held. The plaintiffs may recover the overcharges even if they suffered no loss of profits as a result — courtesy of course of the Illinois Brick doctrine.
Read Her Honor’s scholarly Entry on Motion to Compel here.
And, yes, Blawgletter represents a party to this case, too.
A 2-1 Fifth Circuit panel vacated the district court’s certification of an ERISA case as a class action today in Langbecker v. Electronic Data Systems Corp., No. 04-41760 (5th Cir. Jan. 18, 2007). The lawsuit involves claims that fiduciaries of an EDS 401(k) plan improperly required beneficiaries to purchase EDS common stock through the plan after the stock became an imprudent investment. The district court, the majority held, had not sufficiently appreciated intraclass conflicts and other barriers to class treatment. Judge Thomas Reavley authored a strong dissent.
The court has not yet posted the opinion on its website, but you can read it here.
Note: Blawgletter represents a party to the case.
Update: Opinion now available on court’s website here.
Further update: See Jerry Kalish’s post re Blawgletter post in The Retirement Plan Blog here
Flying spaghetti monster. Arbitragation
monster photo unavailable.
Today an en banc Fifth Circuit reversed a district court’s vacatur of an arbitration award for non-disclosure of the arbitrator’s prior professional association with the prevailing party’s lawyers. Positive Software Solutions, Inc. v. New Century Mortgage Corp., No. 01-11432 (5th Cir. Jan. 18, 2007) (en banc) (opinions here). Writing for the 11-5 majority, Chief Judge Edith H. Jones concluded that the Federal Arbitration Act "does not mandate the extreme remedy of vacatur for nondisclosure of a trivial past association . . . ." The Court also noted that "requiring vacatur on these attenuated facts would rob arbitration of one of its most attractive features apart from speed and finality — expertise."
Note: Blawgletter represents a party to the case.
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Blawgletter’s college coevals (circa 1977-81) approached gender issues very carefully. A writer for the daily paper — which "I know it when I see it" Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once chaired — lampooned the up-tightness, penning an article in which he expressed anxiety about calling a woman . . . a woman. The "man" in "woman" struck him as implying distaff inferiority, and so he proposed using a sex-neutral substitute. He rejected "person" because of the "son" and at last latched onto "pygmy" as a replacement for "son" in "person". Hence "woperpygmy".
Blawgletter felt that the article masterfully used humor to deal with a serious, and at times grim, subject. But Blawgletter cannot locate the article or recall the author’s name. Any help?
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Blawgletter confesses a distaste for litigation about arbitration. Instead of promising to settle fights cheaper-better-faster, arbitration agreements nowadays provide fodder for lawsuits. Blawgletter, following the lead of its sister e-publication, Barnett’s Notes on Commercial Litigation, calls the phenomenon "arbitragation". Get it?
A new opinion fresh out of the Sixth Circuit spotlights the arbitragation problem without lamenting it. (See the "for publication" opinion.) In Electronic Data Systems Corp. v. Donelson, Nos. 06-1211/1478 (6th Cir. Jan. 18, 2007), two former EDS employees alleged race discrimination by a supervisor who displayed in her work cubicle a black-face doll hanging from a noose around its neck. They originally filed suit in federal court (2002), worked out an agreement to arbitrate their claims (2003), went to arbitration (2004), received a favorable award (2005), and persuaded the district court not to vacate it (2005). And, in 2007, the court of appeals rejects EDS’s arguments for vacatur.
Cheaper-better-faster than litigation? Nosir.
Texan (and U.S. Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales announced yesterday that the federal government will submit all requests for secret domestic surveillance to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Read an unsecret article about the development here.
What does the decision to permit judicial oversight have to do with business trial law? The rule of law, baby. The sweet, sweet rule of law — and not of men or women.
Check out a Colbertian YouTube riff on the new at&t’s reassembly from chunks of the old AT&T here.
The Seventh Circuit just upheld dismissal of a securities case against PricewaterhouseCoopers. The plaintiffs alleged that they exchanged assets for stock of a PwC client, Anicom, Inc., in reliance on PwC’s false representations about Anicom’s financial condition. See the opinion here.
Blawgletter occasionally scans a website that styles itself "The Most Prestigious Law School Discussion Board in the World" and nearly always ends up fighting back a guffaw. What makes it funny?
Take a recent thread. The first post raises a "moral hypothetical question" — whether you should turn your best friend in for killing someone. Responses include:
"[No.] But I would have a hard time going out for beers with [my friend] again."
And Blawgletter’s favorite:
"Does Batman exist in this hypothetical? Because I’d call him."
Silly, yes, but also, for Blawgletter at least, smile-inducing.
Warning: Don’t visit the website if you can’t bear to see sophomoric or hateful posts now and then.
