One of my partners once told a judge that he should not hold our clients in contempt of court for disobeying the court's order because our clients were not ever going to obey, even if they were held in contempt. Because the purpose of civil contempt is to compel compliance, and since our clients were not ever going to comply, there was no grounds for civil contempt.
Not surprisingly, the court was not swayed.
A few weeks ago, we got the contempt sanctions overturned by the Court of Appeals (albeit on a related, but slightly less innovative argument).
Many of my opponents have made arguments that have struck me as goofy, but I can't compete with the Anus Motion.
Everybody's doing a brand new dance now
(C'mon baby, do the Anus Motion)
I know you'll get to like it
If you give it a chance now
(C'mon baby, do the Anus Motion)
I had a client once who had been wrongfully convicted of murder, whose convictions were subsequently overturned, but who was then sentenced to life without parole because he had escaped three times in the intervening 28 years. And he actually escaped, so we couldn't really claim he was innocent of those crimes. We got him out on the most ridiculous technicality, having to do with how they counted the number of days between when he filed a notice of his intent to plead guilty and when his guilty plea was accepted. Of course, it was incredible to see our client walk free after 28 years in prison, but I admit that I did get a little extra satisfaction from the way we got him out.
In the linked-to article: that thing about the Dutch taxing houses by width? It was also true in one town in Westchester County, NY, in 1973, which is why my mother's house was deliberately built on the property "sideways". The long side, featuring the door into the living room, faces the side; the short side, with the door leading into the kitchen, which is the door everybody actually uses, faces the street.
Apo, do you and or the internets (is there really a difference) have reason to believe that Patrick Combs' 95K fake check story is true?
(Warning -- probably no one except the lawyers here, if them, will appreciate this.) I have an example of what struck me as a bogus argument -- not even an argument really -- but unfortunately it was a court that was writing it, not my opponent. In 2002, I briefed and argued a case before the federal Court of Appeals here. The court, on its own motion, had taken the unusual step of hearing the case en banc (the entire court, not the usual three judges) because they considered the issue I had raised so important. I argued that satisfying the requirements of the statute that was at issue in the case did not go to subject-matter jurisdiction. (For reasons I'll spare you, that issue was very important to the case.) One of my star cases for that proposition was a case the same Court of Appeals had decided in 1998 (also one of my cases) holding that satisfying the requirements of a federal statute goes to the merits, NOT to subject-matter jurisdiction.
I ended up losing the appeal 5-4. How did the majority distinguish its own 1998 case? It quoted that case for the proposition I had cited it for: that "The plaintiff 'had presented a non-frivolous claim under federal law; no more is necessary for subject-matter jurisdiction.' [citation to the 1998 case] The jurisdiction-versus-element of the claim debate seems alive and well."
The debate seems alive and well?! Here I had thought that the court was supposed to follow its prior decision, overrule it, or distinguish it. If a lawyer wrote a brief in the same court responding to a seemingly decisive case against his/her position by saying "the debate seems alive and well," the court would definitely ridicule, and quite possibly impose sanctions upon, the lawyer. But if you're writing the opinion, you can say any goofy thing. FWIW, Judge Diane Wood's opinion for the four dissenting judges was brilliant.
The PDF of the decision is at http://tinyurl.com/fljrx , with the part I've quoted on page 10 thereof.
6: The AP and the WSJ ran the story.
(is there really a difference)
I have better manners.
7: I'm gonna apply the presumption against tinyurl.
I once lost a securities fraud case on the ground that a mutual fund did not have standing to bring the case because it did not rely on a false representation in making an investment decision. The mutual fund doesn't make decisions, only manager make decisions. However, the manager also could not recover for fraud because the not did not lose any money, only the fund lost money.
Could they team up and bring a class action?
Or, or what about this?: The fund sues the manager for making a decision which lost it money. Then the manager sues the fraudster for causing him to make a bad decision. The lawyer is extra-happy because his palm is greased in duplicate.
(12) Weird security, our client was the only purchaser, so no class.
(13) Might have wsroked, but the decisionmaker of the suer and the sued would have been the saem person, and I couldn't see asking him to expose himself to personal liability to his investors, plus various other obstacles.
This happened in the early 1990's, and it's highly unlikely the same result would occur now, since Mutual fund actions are much more common today.