Sunday, June 7, 2009

Indiana Pension Funds Submit Stay Request To US Supreme Court

WSJ reporting that the White & Case windmill chase is to be finally decided, likely in less than 48 hours, and by none other than Bill Clinton nominee and recent cancer survivor Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The emergency stay request, filed shortly before midnight Saturday, came after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York approved the acquisition of most of Chrysler's assets by a group led by Fiat, the Italian auto manufacturer. A U.S. bankruptcy judge early last week approved the sale.

The stay request asks for the extension of a temporary hold on the sale put in place by the appeals court until Monday at 4 p.m. EDT or when the high court decides whether to intervene.

"Absent a stay, the court will be deprived of the opportunity to decide critical, nationally significant legal issues relating to management of the economy by the United States government," the pension funds said in the stay application.

Under Supreme Court practices, individual justices field emergency motions and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will handle the filing. She could rule herself or refer the motion to the entire court. Justice Ginsburg can also reject the appeal outright or request other parties involved in the case file briefs on a tight schedule.
While the merits of the Indiana Pensioners' case can be argued, what is clear is that the speed with which this case has proceeded through the courts is a violation of simple due process. White and Case, a mere ten days ago, announced that as part of their discovery they received 87,000 documents totaling 385,000 pages from 39 separate productions. How one law firm even working 24 hours a day has even a remote chance of going though all of this and prepare any semblance of an argument is laughable. And these productions were received as recently as 3 days before the Fiat sale hearing: the government's strategy of literally drowning the law firm with data has worked, and the courts are complicit in this derailing of procedure. But in a case where one lawyer calls another lawyer a "terrorist", there is little that can surprise anymore.

Zero Hedge has offered its services for a distributed effort of perusing the discovery data dump by engaging our readers who have a legal expertise. If Messrs Lauria and Kurtz are ok providing ZH with any data that may eventually end up in the public record as a Joint Appendix or otherwise, we would assist to the best of our capacities in finding more such comparable emails where former Willkie Farr bankruptcy partner, current Auto Task Force member, Connecticut resident and prolific Democratic donor Matt Feldman tells Capstone MD Robert Manzo "I'm not talking to you. You went where you shouldn't" for trying to salvage a deal in the 11th hour, simply because the President does not negotiate with "terrorists." Sphere: Related Content
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