Rollers (at least on Saturday night).

I saw the Rev bash a dude in the face(he kept grabbing the base of his mic stand and hitting him in the mouth--asked him to stop a couple times) with the butt of his guitar in a little club back in the day. Then calmly put it on its guitar stand turn around and dive off the stage onto the dude and beat his ass. He crawled back up onstage and said--now that I kicked your ass gtfo as security dragged him off Bass and drums playing the whole time--Rev grabbed his guitar and was right back into it.

These insurrectionists now going to jail should create a class action suit and sue Trump and all those who riled them up and sent them to the Capital.

I don't think this is beyond a civil juries ability to connect those dots and put some culpability on Trump and few others. You have all sorts of court testimony piling up saying 'we acted because of what Trump said', and if enough people hear the same underlying message it does start to gain some evidentiary weight.

Completely non-viable.

Are you saying the law does not provide an avenue for them to do so or that in your view they could not win?

I see it more of a nuisance and political statement suit than a winner so it would have to be funded by advocates who want to make Trump's life difficult, like the Lincoln Project.

When it comes to actions taken consideration of how the person actually hears it is considered and does matter even in criminal trails. Thus why yelling Fire in a crowded theater can lead to jail. The person hears a real threat, even if one is not present and how the individuals react to those words matters.

We now have in criminal trials dozens, maybe a hundred by the time it is done of defendants from Jan 6 saying 'I thought the POTUS was calling on us to rise up and act to defend the Constitution', and I cannot see why a good litigation lawyer could not spin that in to a decent argument.


I want you to think about a real time of need (not Trumps fake one) where the POTUS in an emergency is calling on all citizens to 'fight for the country' to 'fight for the Constitution' and he does mean battle. Is it wrong for citizens who hear the appeal to act? Is it wrong only if the POTUS is wrong and somehow the citizens are to be able to discern and second their POTUS correctly?


I think a case can be made that individual citizens have a duty to listen to such appeals by a POTUS to rise up and act. And if you can get a jury to agree with that then Part 2 is 'it is reasonable to believe the people were incited to act because they believed what POTUS was asking them to do was act'.

Maybe not a winner but certainly a viable argument imo.

And one that shames Trump again as a litany of his prior followers, now all criminals, join the class action hoping to get paid while offering their testimony showing Trump took advantage of so many of the most marginal and vulnerable in his base. A win for the Lincoln Project.

First, Trump very well might win on grounds of presidential immunity. Second, this wouldn't have a prayer of surviving as a class action. Individual issues would predominate. Trump almost certainly would argue that people entered the Capitol for different and myriad reasons, that he should be allowed to test what those reasons were, and that it therefore would be inappropriate to allow such a case to be certified as a class action.

There are a lot of other problems as well.

Lets try it this way.

One of if not the main purpose of Class Actions is to "... to serve justice for those who mislead the public by intentionally withholding important information or warnings....". Agree?

If we had the ability to have sitting in the court room fool proof lie detectors such that the jury could see on the record every statement a person on the stand lied about, do you believe this case would not only proceed but likely be won by the class action actors? That they would be able to illicit enough info that Trump and Co knew exactly who they were manipulating (naive zealots) and what they would likely do?

If you agree with the above, which is my belief of what would happen, and thus underpins my view that means you believe the facts, if we could dig them out would support the class action.

If you then say 'without said lie detectors you never get that info, thus I won't certify a Class Action because I think using normal tactics of depositions and testimony will fail', that seems a stretch for me for a judge to deny the attempt by them to see if they can get out enough info and win.

I certainly respect you have a different view and even if presented with up to 100 claimants, all with trial record testimony all saying they acted similarly on a similar belief based on the words of one man, POTUS, that a judge might hand wave that away as not enough. You could be correct.

But again I think for a group like Lincoln Project or any body out their whose goal is to antagonize Trump and keep his worst actions in the public eye who then raise money around that, even the announcement of this suit being filed and then the subsequent TV rounds to explain what the lawsuit is seeking, before a dismissal would have benefits. I think they instantly raise more money than the initial filings would cost and they think succeed in keeping Trumps actions under a spotlight for however long it lasts.

I don't agree. The main reasons for allowing class actions are (i) efficiency; and (ii) to allow defendants to be held accountable in situations where large groups of people are harmed because of the same conduct but it would be economically non-viable for each member of the class to sue individually.

In any case, the quoted language has nothing to do with the legal standard for certifying class actions.

This is the standard:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/l...certification/

Ok,I would just as easily quote and use your statement as the basis of the rest of my post logic as it equally fits, in my view.

I am close to 100% certain that your contemplated action would never be certified as a class action by any federal judge in the country. It's so unlikely that I would be quite shocked if anyone wasted money in the attempt.

And that is fine. I respect your view on it even if I think it would potentially have a path and I have never said anything stronger than that. And again I see value in it even as a nuisance suit. Filed and discussed on TV news with panels of 'class actions members' stating why they joined the suit, what they believed, and more.

I guess anyone can file a non-viable action for political reasons if they want to absorb the cost.

I have a lot of direct professional experience in the United States in this area. You of course are free to disagree, just as I am free to disagree with an orthopedist about whether I need knee surgery. Odds are, the orthopedist is correct, but anything is possible. Doctors make mistakes.

Not saying this as an indictment but it seems the lawyers here have a real issue when even in deference someone holds a different opinion than them on matters that involve the law. Like they have to go out of their way to provide bonafides when deference is not absolute.

I am not sure what the dynamic is at play but I find it very strange that so much issue is taken with even nodding agreement but holding to some semblance of belief that deviates from the 'lawyer stated one'.

It is very strange to me.

I don't think it is unique to lawyers. If a lay person disagreed with a medical doctor about an issue related to that doctor's expertise, I suspect that the doctor would have limited enthusiasm for a retort that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Ditto if a lay person was discussing merger accounting with a subject matter expert from Deloitte.

The difference is that the number of non-lawyers who have confidence in their opinions on the law seems to exceed the number of people outside the finance and accounting world who have confidence in their opinions about accounting standards. I would have said the same thing about medicine, but it appears that a lot of people who couldn't figure out how to program their TV remotes have decided that they have expertise in vaccines. Personally, I would not feel very confident debating the nuances of heart surgery with a cardiologist.

Similarly, I don't see how it's possible to opine confidently on how a federal judge would apply a legal standard if you aren't clear on what the legal standard is and you have no experience observing how the standard typically is applied. But that doesn't mean I'm claiming that my opinions about the law are infallible. I've been wrong before. Even within the law, there are a lot of areas where I have little or no confidence in my opinions. (Tax law is an example.) This is not one of those areas.

I like this.

/off topic blah blah

Your posts on US law, precedence and legal mechanisms are always appreciated, Rococo.

This!!! Thanks, Rococo!

A polite way of telling him "you have no idea what you are talking about." Such a nice person rococo.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-international

Cliff notes: The IDEA think tank classifies the US as a "backsliding democracy". While one think-tank doing this is hardly the final say, the reasoning mimics what we have seen in other democracy indexes. The three main things being pointed out are decreasing right to assembly, decrease in civil liberties and voting rights, and probably the most important point; rejecting democratic process and questioning democratic transfer of power.

I don't think there is any reason to suspect the GOP's embrace of baseless claims of election frauds is going to stop. It has been an effective way to gather the voting base, and it has allowed for record levels of donations. It also seems that embracing Qanon, claiming there exists "Jewish space lasers" or using the typical extreme right tactic of disguising calls to violence against political opponents as "humor" is rewarded on the party level rather than punished. This is evident from party leadership who promises people doing this membership in important committees if and when the GOP retakes the House of Representatives.

In previous years indexes have also pointed to decrease in press freedom, and tendency that started well before the Trump era. So it is hardly a case of "GOP vs democracy", rather it is a rather bi-partisan effort, though certain chilling movements certainly seemed to have gained a lot of traction in the GOP in recent years.

+1

Here are a couple more "main things":

4. "Defund the Police" rhetoric, which has lead to a massive increase in violent crime, especially in minority communities. Hard to believe in Democracy when the politicians make it more dangerous to walk in your own neighborhood while the Elite are safe in their gated communities with private security guards.

5. Thugs rioting, burning and looting primarily minority neighborhoods being labeled as "protestors" is an insult to law-abiding, hard-working citizens.

Me neither thus why i said the 'Lawyers here'. I've worked with utilized more lawyers in my career than most. My view has always been the best ones invited engagement and don't act as if their position is unassailable and should not be questioned.

That is not to say they should not get deference but this weird seeming aversion to someone not necessarily agreeing as if it is an offense baffles me.



Well lets look at that.

I was on record here saying at the very start of covid I thought it was wrong for the CDC to say 'Masks don't work. Don't wear a mask'. I still bought N95 masks for my family as they were abundant. Masks I ended up donating to the community Fire Station when finally they did say Masks were needed but now in short supply.

As a poker I thought that was the wrong EV move to make on such thin data. You err on the side of wearing the masks, which has little consequence if wrong, as opposed to not wearing them when being wrong can equal death. Easy gambit to decide which error you want to make.

And it is not that I do not give great deference to the CDC but that does not mean I won't question nor explain to others why I do not agree.

Do you think that is wrong? Do you think due to their immense bonafides, in any instance like that I should simply turn off my critical brain and just follow blindly in nodding agreement?

I absolutely believe in giving them and even you (in law) deference. That means if I disagree with you on a point of law, and someone was to ask me on this forum I would say 'hey man, that is just my opinion and he is the lawyer so take my view with the required grains of salt' but it does not mean I will ever stop questions or just nodding agree and I find it so weird some seem to expect that.

I would agree that the US has had serious and widespread civil unrest in recent years which has been downplayed along partisan lines. Though it should also be stated that a fair bit of of normal protests have been painted unfairly along partisan lines. It goes without saying that if you can't trust government to properly differentiate the two, but just call it whatever is politically expedient, you have a problem. On one hand you risk using police against a normal assembly in on place and on the other you risk not properly handling civil unrest in another place.

I think meaningful law enforcement reform in the US is possible and necessary, but I also think it is unlikely at a national level. It's a divisive issue in a divided political climate, wielded often for political talking points rather than action. There does seem to be more movement at local levels, which should probably be assessed individually.

Well said.

Bolded is the key point. And these things have a way of spreading from the GOP to the entire U.S. political spectrum. Disregard for the rule of law is the next step down the democratic escalator.

I don't know that I have observed a meaningful decrease in press freedom. But the increased distrust of MSM is palpable. This is an area in which the GOP has successfully exported its Weltanschauung far beyond party borders. Allegations of media bias have been around forever. But until 15 years ago or so, allegations of deliberate lying, deception, gaslighting, etc., were mostly (though not exclusively) the province of the fringe right. But I hear these sorts of allegations almost as frequently from the left now.

Intense distrust of the MSM benefits the GOP more than the Democratic party, and it benefits the Trump wing of the GOP most of all. Fifteen years ago, if you had asked someone with profoundly anti-democratic instincts -- say, Steve Bannon -- whether he would like to usher in an era in which no one believed anything they read, I suspect that his answer would have been "hell yes."

Yes they are. Very much by me as well as I find the law fascinating and spend way too much time reading and watching judicial review stuff.


True story.
In the early 2000's (DotCom) I was Chairman of a fintech start up company that launched on an IP platform that was all Patent Pending technology.

Long story longer the company soon found itself being sued by a major competitor in the space who felt this area was within their Patent protection. Our CTO, a very well reputed data scientist and technologist, and our CEO, both greatly disagreed.

We hired one of the best reputed Patent IP lawyers in the country to review our position and give opinion on what we should do.

The gambit was high as we had raised $10MM and one quarter of it was sunk in IP build out and a Beta roll out to a major industry customer who had partnered with us. if we could not go that path then we would just shut down the company and give people their pro-rata portion of the money back.

The lawyers felt strongly that this case was likely not winnable for us and it would costs us a lot (the estimate was ~$300K) to fight it. As the Chairman, I asked them for a formal written recommendation as I would have to take this to the shareholders.

I however, in consultation with our CEO and CTO agreed with them there was a definable distinction and ended up recommending we go against Lawyer advice, keep building out the business and fight and risk losing more money if we were wrong.

As the Chairman, the person who represented the Stakeholders more broadly this really fell to me more than the CEO whose mandate is more narrow and who is more conflicted. It I had to recognize he will lose his job and dream if we shut down and i have to filter that bias.

Anyway I took the case to the shareholders (it was the monied shareholders I was most wanting to engage with) and I made the case for putting aside the legal advice and proceeding. I had personally lawyered up, as I did not want personal exposure if sued if things got really bad. We set up 3 times for conference calls with the IP Lawyers for groups of investors who might want to speak to them directly and hear their view. They did. Of the ~40 shareholders we had (minimum investment was $150K or accredited Investor level) 35 of them participated in the calls.

I held fast, and I continued to make the case to continue. They voted and supported my view. These were mostly all very wealthy and successful business people. We respected the Patent lawyers view. We took into full consideration and we gave it a ton of weight in our deliberations. We DID NOT accept their advice when we advised our client of the litigation threat and they said they would continue the beta test with us regardless and make their ultimate call upon its conclusion. A very risky thing for them to do in terms of sunk time and employee time and without that vote of confidence we would not have proceeded.

We decided to continue and the lawsuit was on. Many months in to the legals my personal lawyer suggested I engage with the suing firm, as they were active investors in many competitive other DotCom startups and see if we could broker a deal of some sorts. I did and we offered them a First Right of Offer (like a First Right of Refusal but better for our company) on our subsequent earmarked Financing so that they could become a significant shareholder in the company but would not have to sink a penny as they got to sit on the sideline and see if we were being successful or not and they accepted it. They also negotiated on an anti dilution follow on which gave them the right to participate in all future financings at a pro rata amount equivalent to their percent holdings.

So for them it was a win/win as they were very active in supporting other Tech startups with disruptive Tech and then buying them out if successfully. And that is exactly what ended up happening with us. They bought out all the private shareholders of the company in the very next round of financing and became the sole shareholder with the founding management team and the rest of us got a nice exit on something that would have been a significant right down and loss had we instead just took our lawyers advice without using our own discretion and thought.