#Gregory Garre

[empiricalscotus]

The Echo Chamber Grows

A seemingly innocuous Supreme Court case in 2017 looking at the narrow issue of time bars in class action lawsuits saw two giants of Supreme Court advocacy duke it out before the nine justices. California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities pit Tom Goldstein of then-named Goldstein and Russell for the Petitioner CALPERS against Paul Clement, then of Kirkland & Ellis, who argued…

[gregoryburrusproductions]

Alexander Zonjic in Maplewood NJ Smooth Jazz NJ from Gregory Burrus on Vimeo.

Detroit Sway Dancing to Smooth Jazz at The Woodland in Maplewood Opening show - award-winning flutist Alexander Zonjic (Motor City Sway) with his band incredible keyboardist James Lloyd of the famed Pieces of a Dream and introducing violin phenom @Evan Garr. They knocked it out of The Woodland . Folks singing, dancing and doing the Detroit Sway. #livemusic #smoothjazz #dancingallnight. #richfiel #tapintosoma #gregoryburrus #GregoryBurrusProductions #maplewoodnj

[aboutzatanna]

RIP Alan Grant

9th Feb 1949 -  20th July 2022   

Alan Grant was a prolific writer from the UK who also worked for DC and was part of the ‘British Invasion’ of creators during the 80′s and 90′s.  Grant is well known for his work on Shadow of the Bat, Detective Comics, Judge Dredd and the Demon series starring Etrigan the Demon.  I’ve written a more in depth post about his work on Batman in my main blog.    Suffice to say, seeing so many of my favorite creators pass away this year and so close to one another, has been a major downer.    

Since this is a Zatanna blog I checked to see if Grant ever wrote with her in it and sure enough, he did in this little known Elseworlds OGN called ‘JLA: Riddle of the Beast’. 

Set in a fairy tale like world, the main character of the story is Robin Drake who goes on to fulfill a quest involving the Riddler, a radically different Zatanna appears as a mage and Robin Drake’s love interest in the story.

  As evidenced by the name, Robin Drake is likely more based on Tim Drake (since Grant also wrote him several times in the 90′s) than Dick Grayson. Still, who would have guessed there would have been another universe besides Young Justice where Robin and Zatanna are an item?     

The art style is also beautiful and worth flipping through just to admire the art. This OGN had an army of pencillers working on it:  Mike Kaluta, Andrew Robinson, Hermann Mejia, Carl Critchlow, Alex Horley, Liam Sharp, Martin Williams, Glenn Fabry, Doug Alexander Gregory, Rafael Garres, Jon Foster, Saverio Tenuta, Jim Murray, John Watson, Greg Staples and Simon Davis.

Anyway, I thought this would be interesting for those of you who are not just Zatanna and YJ fans but also fans of fantasy like LOTR. 

I’m always happy to share the works of Alan Grant (RIP). 

[kwebtv]

TV Guide - April 28 - May 4, 1962

Ronald Robert Harper (born January 12, 1936)  Television and movie actor.

His first television role was in 1960 for the NBC television series Tales of Wells Fargo. Steady television guest appearances followed, including a role on NBC's series The Tall Man. In December 1960, he appeared in the episode "Duel at Parkison Town" of NBC's Laramie.

Harper appeared in soap operas, including CBS's series Where the Heart Is and Love of Life. He appeared as a regular performer for several television series, including Planet of the Apes, and as Uncle Jack for the third season of Land of the Lost. His movie credits included roles in Below Utopia (1997), The Odd Couple II (1998), Freedom Strike (1998), Glass Trap (2005) and The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007).

Other TV appearances were 87th Precinct (1961–1962), Wendy and Me (1964–1965), The Jean Arthur Show (1966), Garrison's Gorillas (1967–1968), Planet of the Apes (1974),  Land of the Lost  (1976),  Loving, Capitol and Generations.  (Wikipedia)

--------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Lansing (/ˈlænsɪŋ/; born Robert Howell Brown, June 5, 1928 – October 23, 1994)  Stage, film, and television actor. 

Lansing is probably best remembered as the authoritarian Brig. Gen. Frank Savage in 12 O'Clock High (1964), the television drama series about American bomber pilots during World War II. During his long career, which spanned five decades, Lansing appeared in 245 episodes of 73 television series, 11 TV movies, and 19 motion pictures.

Lansing first appeared on TV on Kraft Television Theatre in 1956. In the 1961–1962 television season, Lansing was cast as Detective Steve Carella on NBC's 87th Precinct series, based on the Ed McBain detective novels. His costars were Gena Rowlands, Ron Harper, Gregory Walcott, and Norman Fell. Also in 1961, he played Jed Trask, a troubled shooter, in the Bonanza episode, "Cutthroat Junction". He guest starred in two other episodes of the NBC's western series: "Danger Road" (1970) as Gunny O'Riley and "Heritage of Anger" (1972) as John Dundee. He played Doc Holliday in an episode of NBC's The Tall Man, with Barry Sullivan and Clu Gulager. Lansing would star alongside Clu Gulager again in a 1965 episode of NBC's The Virginian TV series titled "The Brothers". Again on NBC, in 1966, Lansing guest-starred as General Custer in a three episode segment of Branded called "Call to Glory".

Other television roles include portrayals of an alcoholic college professor in ABC's drama Channing, as Gil Green in the 1963 episode "Fear Begins at Forty" on the NBC medical drama The Eleventh Hour, as a bounty hunter on Gunsmoke, and as a parole officer in a 1968 episode ("A Time to Love — A Time to Cry") of The Mod Squad.

He was the interstellar secret agent Gary Seven in a Star Trek episode ("Assignment: Earth", 1968), which also featured Teri Garr, and was originally intended as a backdoor pilot for an unsold new series.

Lansing played an international secret agent in The Man Who Never Was, and Lt. Jack Curtis on Automan. He also played a recurring role, known only as "Control", on 29 episodes of The Equalizer between 1985 and 1989, which then was spun-off into the made-for-TV movie Memories of Manon which aired on 13 February 1989. He guest-starred in The Twilight Zone episode "The Long Morrow" and in the Thriller episode "Fatal Impulse." He also guest-starred on other television productions such as NBC's Law & Order.

Lansing's final television role was that of Police Captain Paul Blaisdell, on the series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.  (Wikipedia)

[jonigirard3]

More vibrational readings of healers, gurus, etc.

More vibrational readings of healers, gurus, etc.

Gene Latimer (150) and Tachyon Energy Products (110) Eric Altman 170 Erik Berglund 150 Gregory Hoag 130 Guy Finley 120 Hale Dwoskin 170 Harriet Lerner 180 Heart Connection 180 Jon Kabatt Zinn 210 Kaitlyn Keyt 170 Larry Crane 150 Laura Knight Jadczyk 200 Lee Caroll channeling Kryon 150 Lisa Garr (The Aware Show) 150 Lisa Nichols 200 170. Updated on 2/21/2018 Margaret Lynch 170 Mariah Windsong (Couture) 170 Mashhur Anam 170 see https://www.yourvibration.com/3325 Michael Mohoric healer 170 Oprah Winfrey 190 I have a long list of people I am asked to review... if you have requests, email me, please. Only known people... friends and yourself: it will cost you some money. Next click to read the rest of the story

https://healingcodesblog.university1000.com/106392 The healing codes and other healing modalities reviews

[gerardo-writes]

REVIEW - Watch Hollow: The Alchemist's Shadow

REVIEW – Watch Hollow: The Alchemist’s Shadow

SYNOPSIS

New York Times bestselling author Gregory Funaro brings us the second installment of the thrilling Watch Hollow series, where magic exists, monsters roam in the shadows, and wooden animals come to life.

Having defeated the Garr, a vicious tree monster who lived within the enchanted woods of Watch Hollow, Lucy and Oliver Tinker now have the home they’ve always dreamed of: Blackford…

[ericfruits]

Howrey Dissolution Certified Questions To Be Argued Today

An oral argument before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals this morning

Monday, December 17, 2018 10:00 AM

SPECIAL SITTING - REGULAR

No. 18-SP-0218 ALLAN B. DIAMOND, CHAPTER TRUSTEE OF HOWREY, LLP V. HOGAN LOVELLS US, LLP, ET AL *public interest

Christopher R. Murray, Esquire Christopher Sullivan, Esquire Shay Dvoretzky, Esquire Michael Ryan Pinkston, Esquire Robert Radasevich, Esquire Jack Mckay, Esquire Robert Novick, Esquire Gregory G. Garre, Esquire Brian R. Matsui, Esquire Logan G. Haine-Roberts, Esquire

In a February 2018 opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had sought guidance on governing District of Columbia law

Pursuant to D.C. Code § 11-723 we respectfully ask the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to resolve three questions of District of Columbia law that “may be determinative” of this bankruptcy appeal. D.C. Code § 11- 723(a):

(1) Under District of Columbia law does a dissociated partner owe a duty to his or her former law firm to account for profits earned post-departure on legal matters that were in progress but not completed at the time of the partner’s departure, where the partner’s former law firm had been hired to handle those matters on an hourly basis and where those matters were completed at another firm that hired the partner?

(2) If the answer to question (1) is “yes,” then does District of Columbia law allow a partner’s former law firm to recover those profits from the partner’s new law firm under an unjust enrichment theory?

(3) Under District of Columbia law what interest, if any, does a dissolved law firm have in profits earned on legal matters that were in progress but not completed at the time the law firm was dissolved, where the dissolved law firm had been retained to handle the matters on an hourly basis, and where those matters were completed at different pre-existing firms that hired partners of the dissolved firm post-dissolution?

Our phrasing of the questions should not restrict the Court’s consideration of the issues. The Court may rephrase a question as it sees fit in order to best address the contentions of the parties or the specifics of D.C. law.

The argument can be heard in real time on the court's web page. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/12/an-oral-argument-before-the-district-of-columbia-court-of-appeals-this-morning-monday-december-17-2018-1000-am-special-s.html

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/12/an-oral-argument-before-the-district-of-columbia-court-of-appeals-this-morning-monday-december-17-2018-1000-am-special-s.html

[garrickgoyle]

Title: the more i hear the less i know Word Count: 1653 (kill me i don’t even like garrick that much) Pairings: N/A unless u take into account garrick and miranda are, like, married Summary: *garrick done does get arrested* Notes: so here it is! i don’t have anyone to kill but i DO have a death eater to lock up (for the time-being at least since he’s back for round 2 in the nineties, presumably bc he’s one of those guys as is revealed). i wrote it between the hours of 4 and 8 am and it’s shit but it’s done and Uh hopefully a death eater being arrested will be a cool thing to brighten some characters’ days and make other death eaters scared LOL! anyway, the title is from the song “distractions” by groenland. Warnings: ok, so there are allusions to/vague descriptions of domestic/physical abuse, boys leering at girls, umm garrick continuously refers to an house-elf as an “it” even when the house-elf refers to herself as a she, ummm. y ea h. i think that’s it.

Garrick had never known a quiet night; there had always been some variation of noise wherever he was led. He had followed his father into the kitchens once as a boy to watch him order a house-elf to place its hand into an open flame, to keep it there and count to thirty. His father told the house-elf, in a saccharine tone, like he had been granting it a favor, that it was allowed to cry if it wanted to and that it had permission to scream. In the end, the house-elf didn’t cry and it didn’t scream, but Garrick could remember its broken sobs and whimpers. For the first fifteen seconds he watched its ugly, grey face wrinkle up in pain, and then he spent the remaining fifteen with his back turned, sneaking pastries off the table.

The lack of silence carried over into his school years, when he followed his housemates into the nooks and crannies of the castle. There was not a single empty classroom that they had not found, it felt like, that they didn’t fill with their conversation; they whispered about their plans, about what their fathers were doing. They made lewd comments about the half-blood girl in their Potions class, the one whose skirt always seemed a little too short for regulation. Garrick never did understand the muffled, exaggerated moans his friends made when they talked about getting a peek up a skirt on the staircase, but he felt something fizzle in the bottom of his stomach at the sound of them nevertheless.

He felt a similar fizzle the day he followed Gregor into Gringotts; what might have been a quiet evening in Diagon Alley exploding into chaos and ruin. Flashes of light illuminated his face and screams filled the air as they rushed down the stairs, nearly tripping over his feet with every other overeager step he took. It was meant to have been as quiet a kidnapping as possible but Garrick had never known anything without noise or a plan he couldn’t disassemble, sending its parts scattering; he could take orders and go where he was told, but action took a level of precision and reflexiveness that he had never quite mastered as he grew and his limbs stretched, flailing just as they had when he was thirteen.

But then there had been a roaring in his ears as he lifted his wand that night, a pounding, swirling, deafening tidal wave beating against his eardrums. And for a split second, in the time between the words left his lips and the woman fell to the ground with a thump, when it could have been silent if not for the rapidfire beat of his heart, he felt in control of every limb, nerve, and cell. He thought the woman’s face ugly and grey as it went slack and he felt rooted there, watching a trail of blood falling from her nose onto the pebbled street, but then in one nauseating swirl of motion, they were gone.

Garrick had never known a quiet night. His childhood summers were painted with shattered glass bottles, whiskey drenching the carpet in the parlor, in a house that had only recently became theirs. Up on the walls were pictures of ancestors with no blood relation to him, staring with an unwavering, penetrative gaze, as if they knew the Goyles cheated their way into wealth and into their family’s walls. He sometimes heard them whispering over the nonstop creaking of the house while he lay in his bed, though he could never think of what they would want to talk about so late at night and never in front of him. Their hushed conversations were often interrupted by the sounds of his mother crying, or his father’s shouting, by heavy footsteps stomping down the halls and slammed doors. Garrick was an only child and his father often hit him upside the head and reminded him that he was also a stupid one but his mother couldn’t give him any siblings to make up for it.

The parlor in which Miranda had now stood in had all new carpets and the portraits on the walls gazed at her with begrudging respect. She was holding a crying Gregory in her arms in a way that contradicted every passing complaint she made about feeling like a broodmare and when the nanny swept him out of her arms, it was even obvious to Garrick that she hated that that contradiction had the gall to exist in the first place. He thought for a moment about commenting on it, maybe requesting Gregory to be brought back into the room, when a sudden flurry of movement occurred; there was a loud crack! before a house-elf came stumbling through the door without announcement and Garrick instinctively tensed. Miranda looked incensed at the insolence and only managed to take two steps forward before the house-elf spoke.

“Mimney tried to tell them to leave, Master! She tried to tell them to go! But — But they wouldn’t listen!” It wheezed, then stumbled over the edge of the carpet and fell to its knees with a high-pitched wail. Garrick flinched; Miranda’s eyes hardened as they flitted toward him.

“Get to the fireplace, Garrick,” she ordered, moving toward him as if she would physically push him there if need be. For a brief, fleeting moment, Garrick felt something in him kick; if he had been any other man and if Miranda had been any other woman, he might have immediately identified it as a short bout of fondness. But they weren’t and never would be, so all he could focus on was the spike in his heart rate and the sweat that broke out across his brow.

“Wha—” was all the sound he had managed to make in return before the door flung open again, this time bringing two cloaked men inside, their Auror badges shining in the candlelight. The house-elf curled in on itself, half-dragging its body across the floor until it hit a hall, its wailing only growing louder as it rocked back and forth.

Garrick reached for his wand where he kept it in the inside pocket of his cloak but stopped short when he realized he wasn’t wearing it and before he could comprehend what his next step should be, Miranda’s own wand was flying across the room. She looked enraged at being immediately disarmed, close to spitting in the faces of the men as they came closer like they owned the space, looking more commanding in the house more than Garrick had ever managed to feel.

“What are you doing here?” She demanded, but their eyes glanced off his wife and landed back on Garrick. The one closest to him had curly hair and Garrick could quickly identify him as McKinnon, but his brain stuttered and skipped as he tried to recall a first name in his panic.

“Ye wanted for the murder of a muggle woman named Hope Lupin. We have several witnesses that have put ye at the scene and are ready t’identify ye in a lineup,” McKinnon announced, his wand in one hand while he held the other in a gesture arrogant in its sense of casualness, like Garrick wasn’t going to be a real threat — he wasn’t someone who’d have them on the tips of their toes. “Now, I advise ye can make this easy for ye ‘n ye wife here ‘n come with us without makin’ a mad dash, eh? Save us all some time.”

The last time Garrick tried to run from someone threatening him he was standing in that same parlor; his mother was crumpled on the floor much like the house-elf was, but she had been quiet. Garrick could hardly remember the last time he had even heard her voice. In his father’s hand was the spade for the fireplace as he stood as an enormous presence a few stride lengths from Garrick, much like Miranda was, but Miranda’s glare wasn’t pointed toward him nor was the curled lip in disgust. Miranda had squared off, aligning herself with him, because Miranda wasn’t anything like Garrick’s father but Garrick — Garrick was still the same thirteen year old who had took stumbling steps back, hastily trying to make a fruitless escape. Garrick hadn’t changed; he had killed that woman but he had also followed his orders, and yet he was still the same person he always was. He was still scared, small, and stupid.

In a split second, he made a dash for the fireplace, no real destination in mind beyond AnywhereButHereAnywhereButHereAnywhereButHere. He took less than a couple steps before he felt a strong shove at his back, the floor coming up to meet him. The last thing he heard was Miranda’s shout as his head hit the hearth, and then everything went black.

Garrick had never known a quiet night. He had never known one in the manor he grew up in, old in its age but new in their occupancy of it; he had never known it at Hogwarts, blindly carrying out commands barked at him by his housemates; and he didn’t know it then as he sat in a cold, wet cell in the middle of the ocean. He could hear the waves crash against the rocks, the pounding in his head, and the moaning, chanting, crying, screaming. They echoed in ways he had never thought possible; in an endless, winding loop, they wormed their way into his thoughts as he curled in on himself, pressed against the wall, the taste of blood flooding his mouth as he tried to recall Miranda’s words; the ones she hissed at him months ago as Gregor apparated them into the foyer, Garrick’s limbs shaking with pent up energy and his eyes darting wildly.

“An Imperius, Garrick,” she said, squeezing his bicep tightly. “That’s what you’ll say: it was an Imperius.”

[empiricalscotus]

When Opposites Attract Ideology Falls to the Wayside

When Opposites Attract Ideology Falls to the Wayside

Lots of noise is made about partisan and ideological divides on the Supreme Court.  There tends to be less hubbub surrounding instances when justices that traditionally divide ideologically, vote together. Such surprising coalitions formed in the majority and dissent for the Court’s decision in last week’s Patchak v. Zinke ruling.  Although this decision was met with only limited fanfare…

[jonigirard3]

More vibrational readings of healers, gurus, etc.

More vibrational readings of healers, gurus, etc.

Gene Latimer (150) and Tachyon Energy Products (110) Eric Altman 170 Erik Berglund 150 Gregory Hoag 130 Guy Finley 120 Hale Dwoskin 170 Harriet Lerner 180 Heart Connection 180 Jon Kabatt Zinn 210 Kaitlyn Keyt 170 Larry Crane 150 Laura Knight Jadczyk 200 Lee Caroll channeling Kryon 150 Lisa Garr (The Aware Show) 150 Lisa Nichols 200 170. Updated on 2/21/2018 Margaret Lynch 170 Mariah Windsong (Couture) 170 Mashhur Anam 170 see https://www.yourvibration.com/3325 Michael Mohoric healer 170 Oprah Winfrey 190 I have a long list of people I am asked to review... if you have requests, email me, please. Only known people... friends and yourself: it will cost you some money.

https://www.yourvibration.com/4181/reviews-4/ Raise Your Vibration with Sophie

[ericfruits]

Dissolution Obligations At Issue

Certified questions in the Howrey bankruptcy case are up for argument before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on September 12 

No. 18-SP-0218 ALLAN B. DIAMOND, CHAPTER TRUSTEE OF HOWREY, LLP V. BENSON KASOWITZ, ET AL

Christopher R. Murray, Esquire Christopher Sullivan, Esquire Shay Dvoretzky, Esquire Michael Ryan Pinkston, Esquire Robert Radasevich, Esquire Jack Mckay, Esquire Robert Novick, Esquire Gregory G. Garre, Esquire Brian R. Matsui, Esquire Logan G. Haine-Roberts, Esquire

In a February 2018 opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sought guidance on governing District of Columbia law

Pursuant to D.C. Code § 11-723 we respectfully ask the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to resolve three questions of District of Columbia law that “may be determinative” of this bankruptcy appeal. D.C. Code § 11- 723(a):

(1) Under District of Columbia law does a dissociated partner owe a duty to his or her former law firm to account for profits earned post-departure on legal matters that were in progress but not completed at the time of the partner’s departure, where the partner’s former law firm had been hired to handle those matters on an hourly basis and where those matters were completed at another firm that hired the partner?

(2) If the answer to question (1) is “yes,” then does District of Columbia law allow a partner’s former law firm to recover those profits from the partner’s new law firm under an unjust enrichment theory?

(3) Under District of Columbia law what interest, if any, does a dissolved law firm have in profits earned on legal matters that were in progress but not completed at the time the law firm was dissolved, where the dissolved law firm had been retained to handle the matters on an hourly basis, and where those matters were completed at different pre-existing firms that hired partners of the dissolved firm post-dissolution?

Our phrasing of the questions should not restrict the Court’s consideration of the issues. The Court may rephrase a question as it sees fit in order to best address the contentions of the parties or the specifics of D.C. law.

The Ninth Circuit cites the 1990 D.C. decision in Beckman v. Farmer on partnership dissolution.

The case is one of the career highlights of my friend and mentor Jake Stein, perhaps the most universally beloved lawyer in the history of the District of Columbia Bar. (Mike Frisch)

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/08/full-employment-for-lawyers.html

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/08/full-employment-for-lawyers.html

[empiricalscotus]

Attorneys in the Clutch

Attorneys in the Clutch

Earlier this year I ran a blog post on the most powerful justices across time, which focused on their decisions in cases with single vote margin majorities.  That post accounted for the decision makers, but it did not consider the attorneys whose arguments factor into the justices’ decision calculi.  This post takes a look at those attorneys by focusing on all single vote margin decisions during…

[maxwellyjordan]

Remembering Justice Stevens: A lost link to our past

Gregory G. Garre is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins and Chair of the firm’s Supreme Court & Appellate Practice. He served as the 44th Solicitor General of the United States from 2008 to 2009.

A somber, important and now familiar ritual is playing out, again. A casket solemnly carried up the marble steps of the Supreme Court. Members of the court — justices, clerks, court staff — public officials, and ordinary citizens lining up to pay their final respects while the casket lies in the great hall of the court. Glimpses of the grief-stricken faces of justices, a reminder that the court really is more of a family than we can appreciate.

We have seen this tradition carried out too often over the past several years. But it is also an opportunity to see the Supreme Court as an institution come together to honor one of its own, with the justices leaving aside their personal views (and disagreements) on this decision or that.

This time, we honor Justice John Paul Stevens. Much has been (and will be) written about the mark he left on the law. Reflecting on Justice Stevens, three things stand out to me.

* * * * *

The first is just how he connected us to our past. By tradition and design, the Supreme Court provides continuity, familiarity and stability in a government that otherwise is largely dominated by turnover. Justices are appointed for life and, fortunately, most serve for a long time. Justice Stevens is an all-time great in that sense. He served on the court longer (almost 35 years) than all but two other justices, and he lived longer than any other justice (99 years).

His decades of service on the Supreme Court spanned multiple chief justices (Warren Burger, William Rehnquist and John Roberts), a series of different doctrinal ebbs and flows, and numerous landmark decisions. Throughout, Justice Stevens was a constant, always there. All of the current justices served on the court with Justice Stevens, worked at the court as law clerks while he was there, or both. Even after he retired from active service, he remained a part of the court.

Justice Stevens also provided a link to our history. He is the last member of the Supreme Court who served in World War II, enlisting one day before the bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor. More than that, he seemed to have a Forrest Gump-like quality of intersecting with history’s moments and figures. He was in the stands at Wrigley Field in 1932 when Babe Ruth called his shot (then lived to see the Cubs actually win a World Series, 84 years later). He lived through the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition, while growing up in Chicago. He recalled meeting Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, the former of whom reportedly gave him a caged dove.

In a sense, Justice Stevens connected us, and the Supreme Court, to this past. History always marches on. But the loss of this link feels more palpable with Justice Stevens’ passing.

* * * * *

The second is what Justice Stevens was like on the bench. Oral argument before the Supreme Court today has become something of a blood sport, with aggressive questioning from all flanks. Justice Stevens was a throwback. Instead of trying to get first blood, he typically waited until the close of argument to ask a question. And he did so in an unfailingly polite fashion. One of the first questions he asked me as solicitor general started like this, “May I ask this question, Mr. Solicitor General?” Seriously, he was that polite — in a case where he disagreed with my position, no less. In fact, his questions often started with an unassuming, “May I ask…?” That seems almost quaint today. But I miss his uniquely low-key style on the bench.

That doesn’t mean I miss his questions. His disarming manner of asking questions masked the fact that he often asked the most difficult questions, zeroing in on the key legal principle or fact at the crux of the case, and asking an advocate in the kindest way if they would just agree with him on a point, leaving them to realize only later that they had often sunk their case by doing so. It always reminded me of the detective show “Columbo,” another link to the past. Just when the lead suspect would think they had gotten away with it, Columbo (played by Peter Falk) would return to the scene of the crime, raise his finger, pause for a moment, and say, “There’s just one more thing.” And that would be the question that did the suspect in.

Waiting for Justice Stevens to ask that question as time was winding down was one of the scariest moments of oral argument.

* * * * *

And the last is the example that Justice Stevens set as a person. From my interactions with him as an advocate before the Supreme Court and a law clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist, and the few other times we spoke, he was true to his Midwest roots — a kind, humble, friendly person, even despite his important position. Certainly he treated the advocates who appeared before him much more courteously than he had to. He was that way off the court too. And from what I could tell, he also had the important quality, for a Supreme Court justice and really anyone else, of being able to disagree yet get along. That’s not always as easy as he made it look.

He will be missed.

The post Remembering Justice Stevens: A lost link to our past appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/07/remembering-justice-stevens-a-lost-link-to-our-past/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[maxwellyjordan]

Argument analysis: Justices debate time travel in assessing liability for inadequate disclosures about tender offers

The argument yesterday in Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian presented the justices with an odd interpretive problem about revisions to the securities laws made in the 1960s to govern tender offers. At that time, federal courts commonly read statutes as “implying” private rights of action, permitting private parties to file suit to enforce the securities laws whenever it seemed a useful way to ensure compliance. So when Congress wrote the provision proscribing misleading information in disclosures about tender offers (Section 14(e) of the Securities Exchange Act) by using language that had received that treatment already, it would have been reasonable for Congress at that time to expect that courts would find a private right of action under that statute as well.

That was then, but this case comes up now. Federal courts now are most reluctant to infer private rights of action, viewing the practice as an intrusion on the legislature’s paramount responsibility and authority to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Put simply, then, the question for the justices is whether they should read Section 14(e) to mean what Congress probably should have expected it to mean when Congress wrote it or read it under the court’s modern system of statutory interpretation.

For several of the justices, this is not a close call. Sparring with Daniel Geyser (representing the investors challenging a disclosure as misleading), Chief Justice John Roberts was vociferous in his condemnation of the “ancien régime” and the “bad old days” when courts freely recognized private rights of action. For Roberts:

[I]t’s not just a question of Congress’s words or even Congress’s intent. It goes to the authority of the courts to engage in the sort of fundamental law-making enterprise that inferring a private cause of action involves. In other words, the reason we do it differently is not because we have any different view on the tools of congressional intent. It’s because we have a different view on the appropriate limits on our authority.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed just as solid in his opposition to private suits under Section 14(e). As he put it, “we look at the statute these days.” He acknowledged that “we’re not overruling [cases] that recognized private rights of action before, but we’re not expanding [them] either. … Just to state the obvious, there’s no private right of action in the text.” He ridiculed the argument for finding an implied right of action as “kind of a time travel argument,” creating a cause of action now because “Congress would have thought in 1968 that courts create implied causes of action.”

To be sure, there was considerable pushback. Several justices were troubled that the broad argument against a private right of action was not raised properly in the lower courts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, posing the first question of the argument as usual, asked Gregory Garre (representing the company) why the court should consider the issue “when it wasn’t raised in this case until … the motion for rehearing in the court of appeals.” Garre admitted that his client had conceded the point in the face of adverse precedent in the lower courts, but insisted that mentioning it in the petition for certiorari should be good enough. That brought a sharp retort from Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

Aren’t we rewarding you for not raising it adequately below, rewarding you for mentioning it in two sentences in your cert petition and not asking us to take it as a separate question presented? Where should we draw the line as to when we stop rewarding counsel for … moving the ball on cert grounds. … You could write almost any question and throw the kitchen sink in if you choose.

Another prominent train of thought turned on the incongruity of recognizing a private right of action under Section 14(a) (for misleading proxy statements), something the Supreme Court did long ago, but not recognizing one under Section 14(e) (for misleading tender-offer disclosures). Ginsburg, for example, asked Garre how it could be “rational to distinguish 14(a) from 14(e) for private right purposes? …. So proxy statements go one way. Tender offers go the other?” As Justice Stephen Breyer put it, “why would you want to have one set of language meaning negligence when they try to take you over by proxy statements, but … exactly the same words, not negligence, when they try to take you over by a tender offer?”

Justice Elena Kagan took another tack, challenging the idea that the justices should “throw out the statutory interpretation toolbox,” and suggesting instead that it is enough to be a “sensible statutory interpreter.” She argued that the “context” should be critical: “Congress is looking at something, a particular set of words that has been found uniformly to create a private right of action, and then Congress writes those same words.” Garre’s repeated recourse to the text, in Kagan’s view, “suggest[ed] that the usual tools of statutory construction … go out the window; all of a sudden context doesn’t matter; we just look mechanically at the words because this is such a fraught inquiry.” Even the most casual observer could recognize a marked distinction between the tools Kagan would apply here and the tools Roberts finds at hand.

The stark methodological divide is typical in an area in which the justices often have disagreed. The argument does not suggest a court likely to reach a quick consensus, but rather groups of justices applying their settled views to the case before them. An April argument with such an entrenched division of views sounds like a late June opinion.

[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case. The author of this post is not affiliated with the firm.]

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Empirical SCOTUS: To extend or not to extend

Occasionally someone will pose a question about Supreme Court practice to me that deals with an issue I haven’t examined. Recently I had one such interaction with John Elwood of Vinson & Elkins. John asked if I had looked at applications for extensions of time to file petitions for writs of certiorari. Because I hadn’t looked at this issue in any detail before, I decided to bring a quantitative understanding of the practice to this post.

Putting the material together to file a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court is no small endeavor. Compounding the time involved, parties often bring on experienced counsel to take over cases pending possible Supreme Court review. With filing requirements creating specific parameters for when cert petitions must be filed, counsel may find themselves under the gun to file in a timely manner. To circumvent these requirements, counsel may request certain time extensions to file. This post takes a look at several aspects of these requests, namely: who files them, how the justices respond and what these applications for time extensions contain.

The Rules of the Court create the time-specific filing requisites. Rule 13 contains the initial requirement that petitions must be filed “within 90 days after entry of the judgment.” Rule 13.5 then adds, “For good cause, a Justice may extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari for a period not exceeding 60 days.” The Supreme Court requires attorneys submitting applications for extensions to establish the “basis for jurisdiction in this Court, identify the judgment sought to be reviewed, include a copy of the opinion and any order respecting rehearing, and set out specific reasons why an extension of time is justified.” Rule 30, entitled “Computation and Extension of Time,” contains additional information. Specifically, it states that:

An application to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari … shall be made to an individual Justice and presented and served on all other parties as provided by Rule 22[, which requires the application to be “addressed to the Justice allotted to the Circuit from which the case arises”]. Once denied, such an application may not be renewed.

These filings are not at all unusual. Looking at one randomly selected swath of time between December 4-12, 2017, 42 applications for extensions were filed prior to cert petitions. Although the maximum amount of time one can request is 60 days, not all petitioners request the entire amount of time. Here is an example of an application filed by experienced appellate attorney Shay Dvoretzky of Jones Day. The application for a month’s extension was granted but amended to one day less than the time requested.

For the data in the post, I started with a random sample of 200 applications from the 2015 through the 2017 Supreme Court terms. First, I looked at the amount of time requested in the applications. The applications are sorted into the closest category if the requested time is in between two of them.

Click graph to enlarge.

Note that the majority of the requests are for the maximum allotted time. A substantial minority of applications asked for less than the maximum amount of time, though. Why? In theory an attorney could craft a “good cause” argument for a more limited extension.

Although the justices are responsible for applications based on their allotted circuits, this does not necessarily lead to an even division of labor.

Click graph to enlarge.

Justice Anthony Kennedy is assigned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and is thus responsible for the largest and most populated geographic region. He received the most applications, followed by Chief Justice John Roberts, who is responsible for the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th, District of Columbia and Federal Circuits, and Justice Clarence Thomas, who is responsible for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Now that we have a sense of the terrain for these applications, we can take a look at the justices’ responses. The justices responded to several applications by shifting the deadline to a few days before or after the requested date. This type of response most likely relates to the Supreme Court’s logistical concerns and not to the merits of the applications.

Of the 200 applications, 35 (17.5 percent) were denied or resulted in extensions that were at least a week below the requested time. Several justices disproportionately denied applications. In fact, only three justices denied applications in this set in their entirety. Of those three justices, Kennedy denied 12, Justice Antonin Scalia six, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg one.

More justices got into the action of granting applications, but for less time than requested. The breakdown of these is as follows.

Click graph to enlarge.

Kennedy also led in this category, along with Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Neil Gorsuch was not far behind. Most of these amended extensions were given for one month instead of the two months requested. As both data points suggest, Kennedy is the most likely justice to deny or amend such extension applications, so those filing in the 9th Circuit should take care to provide good reasons for any requested extensions.

I dug deeper into a separate sample of 50 applications to understand their content. First, I looked at who files these applications and was met with some surprises. The following figure tracks the firm or group associated with each of the 50 applications in which this was made clear in the application.

Click graph to enlarge.

Pro-se applications (filed on an applicant’s own behalf) were by far the largest group. Following these and other small law offices, firms with experienced attorneys also placed highly in this figure. Several of the attorneys of record on the applications are well known in Supreme Court circles. These include Mayer Brown’s Andrew Pincus, Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic’s Jeffrey Fisher and Kirkland & Ellis’ Paul Clement. Other notable names on this list of 50 random applications include University of Texas’ Steve Vladeck, Jones Day’s Gregory Castanias, Latham & Watkins’ Gregory Garre and MacArthur Justice Center’s Amir Ali.

Of these 50 applications, four were met with grants that provided less than the time requested. (One applicant received an additional week, likely related to scheduling surrounding the holiday season.) Only one of these amended grants was from a pro-se filer, while the other three were from attorneys backed by big-name firms or groups. This at a minimum implies that an attorney’s place of practice is not the only variable the justices examine when deciding on these applications.

But what do these applications contain? I ran topic modeling software across the sections of these 50 applications relating to the rationale for extensions. This led to five sets of key words that help explain the types of requests made in the applications. The key words are as follows:

Petition; certiorari; argument; writ; oral; reply; date

Time; issues; current; complex; preparing; retained; attorneys

Court; additional; record; circuit petitioner; states; supreme; review; appellate; filed

Counsel; case; due; extension; prepare; undersigned; day; recently; holidays

Including; file; appeals; law; applicant; state; pending; full

These key words help clarify that common justifications for the extension requests include other obligations before the petition’s original deadline date, holidays or break periods, case complexity and differently retained counsel at the Supreme Court level. Such explanations by no means secure granted applications in every instance, but they do give a sense of the reasons behind such requests.

Although this is only a small part of Supreme Court practice, successful applications may allow for improved petitions, while denied applications may result in cert petitions that are incomplete or less polished, reducing the likelihood that those petitions will be granted.

This post was originally published at Empirical SCOTUS.

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Argument analysis: When neither baseball nor Vermeer analogies persuade the court

The Supreme Court showed no great interest in the bankruptcy problem at the heart of Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, LLP v. Appling, in which the court heard argument yesterday. From the beginning, the justices asked relatively few questions of either party. Those they did ask did not appear to go well for Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, a law firm seeking to recover a debt from R. Scott Appling, a less-than-honest former client. When the justices finally perked up later in the session, they seemed largely interested in trying to figure out exactly how broadly to rule in favor of Appling.

This case is about whether a debtor’s false statement about a single asset can be a statement “respecting the debtor’s … financial condition.” To use an example adopted by both Justices Stephen Breyer and Neil Gorsuch, if one says, “I own a genuine Vermeer,” does that statement tell the listener about one’s financial condition? This matters because the Bankruptcy Code generally relieves debtors from their obligation to repay debts, but excludes debts obtained by false representations from this relief — unless, as provided in 11 U.S.C. §523(a)(2), those false statements are “respecting the debtor’s … financial condition.” Here, Appling was unable to pay his legal bills, but Lamar agreed to continue working and forbear from collecting on the bills already due because Appling allegedly claimed that he was expecting a large tax refund that would more than cover the outstanding bills. If statements like “I can’t pay my bills now, but I will when I receive my tax refund” are statements “respecting the debtor’s … financial condition,” then Appling’s debt to Lamar is dischargeable under the Bankruptcy Code.

Representing Lamar, former solicitor general Gregory Garre was in a tough spot. To win, he has to persuade the court that the Bankruptcy Code uses a handful of very common words as terms of art. To be fair, the Bankruptcy Code sometimes does this — a gulf separates the bankruptcy meanings of phrases “to avoid” and “preference” from their meanings in everyday language — but the provision at issue here seems not to be one of those times. Garre began by arguing that “financial condition” means something more specific than “finances” and that “respecting” is more specific than “about” or “relating to,” but he struggled to get the justices on board. He parried with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Breyer through a baseball analogy, but he could not come up with a sentence that was plausibly about a player’s batting average, but was not a statement “respecting” a player’s batting average.

Garre then tried a more categorical assertion: that any statement that concerns a single asset cannot be a statement about one’s “financial condition.” Perhaps sensing that his textual argument was not gaining traction, he pivoted to the history and purpose of the statute, which he described as “sort of the gorilla—it’s the elephant in the room.” He argued that Congress passed Section 523 in response to shady lenders “dup[ing] applicants for credit into making false statements by simply omitting debts or assets on those statements, and then using that as coercion once they went into bankruptcy.” But this argument also did not appear to win him any friends. Gorsuch summed up the mood, saying, “I’m not sure I understand how that helps you even on its own terms, assuming I’d be willing to look at it, of course.” As Gorsuch interpreted Garre’s argument, “an omitted liability, one asset or lack – or one debt can reflect on the overall financial condition.” Garre pressed on, but Gorsuch finally expressed enough incredulity to nudge the advocate on to his next argument.

Garre then suggested that the court could apply a reasonable-person test to determine whether a statement about a single asset could be about one’s overall financial condition. But both Breyer and Gorsuch seemed to think that this contextual argument cut in favor of Appling. Garre could fall back only on his broad policy argument that the Bankruptcy Code provides relief to honest debtors but not to dishonest debtors.

Toward the end of Garre’s time at the lectern, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Kagan returned to the meaning of “financial condition,” pressing him about whether statements going to one’s ability to pay one’s debts are statements about one’s overall financial condition. Kagan asked which statement revealed more about the speaker’s financial condition: the statement “I’m above water” or “I have a bank account with a billion dollars in it.” Garre responded that “the ‘I’m above water’ tells you about your financial condition,” whereas the statement about having a bank account with billion dollars does not, because the latter statement reveals nothing about one’s debts. But of course, “I’m above water” is arguably a statement about the ability to pay one’s debts, which Garre had previously maintained was not an expression of one’s financial condition.

Paul Hughes, representing Appling, received a few softball questions from the justices. Justice Samuel Alito invited Hughes to comment on Garre’s argument that statements about the ability to pay are not statements about one’s financial condition, but he did not challenge Hughes’ assertion that “it’s hard … to see the distinction between those two.”

The only pushback Hughes received was on policy grounds. Sotomayor asked if Appling’s reading of the statute would protect debtors. Hughes explained that there are other protections for debtors in place. Ginsburg and Chief Justice John Roberts questioned Hughes about the burden on small businesses. In an amicus brief in support of Lamar, the National Federation for Independent Businesses argued that the holding of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit would impose additional costs and losses on them, a claim for which NFIB had cited its own report. Hughes deftly observed that the same report also said that bankruptcies are not a significant problem for small businesses.

By the end of Hughes’ argument, the justices seemed most interested in how to rule in Appling’s favor.  They questioned Hughes and Assistant to the Solicitor General Jeffrey Sandberg, arguing on behalf of the United States as amicus curiae, about whether they should adopt Appling’s proposed reading of the statute or that of the federal government, which emphasizes the “context and purpose” of the alleged false statement. Both Hughes and Sandberg conceded that there is no practical difference between their interpretations of the statute. By that point in the argument, it seemed difficult to imagine that the justices would be deciding the case in Lamar’s favor.

On the whole, it seems unlikely that the justices’ ruling will clarify much beyond a few words in Section 523. This case may be in the running for the narrowest decision of the term.

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