tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post908537267124852541..comments2023-11-03T06:35:48.003-05:00Comments on Shark and Shepherd: Don't tread on SuhrRick Esenberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07280070509167910367noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-69778306834549019202008-01-21T02:22:00.000-06:002008-01-21T02:22:00.000-06:00I feel compelled to make a short comment here. Pe...I feel compelled to make a short comment here. <BR/><BR/>Perhaps Esenberg's political blogging has led certain commentators to believe that he allows his legal and political views to taint the minds of impressionable law students. Of course, I admit, as I am sure Esenberg would admit as well, that personal beliefs can color one's interpretation of the law and have an impact, at times, in the presentation of material. (This is no doubt equally true for liberal and conservative professors.)<BR/><BR/>But, having taken two classes from him, I can say that Esenberg is not only a fine law professor but also an extremely fair-minded one. In fact, Esenberg's style is more conversational than dictatorial (“how might a plaintiff's lawyer argue this?” or “how might a defense attorney argue that?”). It is simply not true that Esenberg enters the classroom and begins ranting on his favorite controversy of the day. <BR/><BR/>Ironically, in my class, the sole guest lecture was given by Chief Shirley, and, despite my personal disagreement with Esenberg on a number of issues, including the white paper out of which he is getting impressive mileage, I assure readers that final grades were not positively correlated with any particular political perspective.<BR/><BR/>Esenberg appreciates thoughtful debate. The problem is that he is often more thoughtful than those with whom he debates. I should note, however, that this does not change the fact that he is wrong about everything. Well…a lot of things.<BR/><BR/>By the way, the WMC video is hilarious as a matter of law. I particularly liked the comment that companies might leave Wisconsin on account of the med-mal cap being struck down and risk contribution theory being extended to the detriment of a handful of pigment manufacturers.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps restrictions on freedom of contract can somehow be abolished under the new rational basis with teeth standard applied in Ferdon. This way Wisconsin can retain the optimal business climate for WMC's constituency.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-50037574234784585962008-01-17T08:07:00.000-06:002008-01-17T08:07:00.000-06:00Mr. Plaisted says of the 'Thomas' opinion that "Ju...Mr. Plaisted says of the 'Thomas' opinion that "Justice Butler can't help it if the Court had to take a long time explaining the history and it's reasoning so that even he could get it." He explained it in such a way that the State Bar's Litigation Section read it as findings of fact in the Section's original rationale for opposing a bill to undo the effect of the 'Thomas' decision.Terrence Berreshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02867275234105879358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-69810691259694538592008-01-16T16:03:00.000-06:002008-01-16T16:03:00.000-06:00Well, Mike. I guess Justices Crooks and Butler saw...Well, Mike. I guess Justices Crooks and Butler saw it because they did say they were departing from federal law. I guess they and me and Daniel Suhr all must be wrong.Rick Esenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07280070509167910367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-28228220478354055552008-01-16T15:52:00.000-06:002008-01-16T15:52:00.000-06:003rd, in his radio interview, the Professor said th...3rd, in his radio interview, the Professor said that kids do not get extra points for sucking up. That's why I asked the Professor to tell me if he thought Daniel had a good set of references in his paper. He had, uhm, the Prof, two Sykes, and the WSJ.Display Namehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15842340986220388709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-22903748841502096582008-01-16T15:05:00.000-06:002008-01-16T15:05:00.000-06:00It looks like Plaisted and Illy T would not give t...It looks like Plaisted and Illy T would not give the studious Mr. Suhr a very good grade if he was their student. <BR/><BR/>I would certainly fail this course. You guys lost me somewhere around the first legal precedent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-74789736348812526242008-01-16T14:49:00.000-06:002008-01-16T14:49:00.000-06:00OK, professor. SCOTUS did not go "away from Stoval...OK, professor. SCOTUS did not go "away from Stovall" when it decided Biggers & Braithwaite -- both cases clearly try to effectuate what Stovall meant within the facts of the individual cases. Stovall remains the seminal case, and the protections afforded in that case are what the SCOW was trying to effectuate. Both may be questionable, but which is more clearly wrong: my statement that Wisconsin was trying to comport with SCOTUS precedent OR Suhr's claim that the Dubose case represents a significant departure from prior precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court? How can you have such a "significant departure from prior precedent" if you are in word and deed trying to follow it and make it live? It is something that you only see if you want to see it.Mike Plaistedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-8634229833481985232008-01-16T14:36:00.000-06:002008-01-16T14:36:00.000-06:00Here's the haiku version, elliot: Someone called D...Here's the haiku version, elliot: Someone called Daniel Suhr heaved forth a fat slab of baloney, and now it's being sliced and diced.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-75317132534443643372008-01-16T14:07:00.000-06:002008-01-16T14:07:00.000-06:00I think a whole bunch of stuff just went over my h...I think a whole bunch of stuff just went over my head.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15820148729023510413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-69847226760518597732008-01-16T13:03:00.000-06:002008-01-16T13:03:00.000-06:00MikeNothing you say here changes the basic facts. ...Mike<BR/><BR/>Nothing you say here changes the basic facts. SCOTUS went away from Stovall and followed the Biggers-Braithwaite approach. Justice Crooks realized that he was departing from that approach in DuBose itself as illustrated by the language I cited. That's why he based his decision in Article I, section 8 of the state constitution. He had to.<BR/><BR/>Justice Butler himself recognized that was the case in Knapp. Your characterization of the case is just wrong.<BR/><BR/>As for Mallett, I used the phrase that it was not "unheard of" because it was not. Collins did it. Once. 21 years before. That's why I also used the phrase "very limited."<BR/><BR/>As for whether thje Collins circumstances were present in Mallett, no other court had ever concluded that they were and the "history" history of the lead paint industry and physical properties of lead paint pigments that the majority relied on were highly disputed. The majority took them as facts (not inappropriate at the summary judgment stage) but then did not require them to be proven below as a condition of imposing collective liability. <BR/><BR/>I'll respond to IT but I have to get ready for class first.Rick Esenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07280070509167910367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-52582295310140435062008-01-16T11:56:00.000-06:002008-01-16T11:56:00.000-06:00"They can do better than that." - EsenbergFrom rea..."They can do better than that." - Esenberg<BR/><BR/>From reading the original posts and the comments here I conclude they can't do better.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-89098259782007823972008-01-16T11:26:00.000-06:002008-01-16T11:26:00.000-06:00FYI - From my blog.UPDATE: Rick Esenberg noticed t...FYI - From my blog.<BR/><BR/>UPDATE: Rick Esenberg noticed this post and, besides not getting how unintentionally funy his WMC video is, purports to get all legal on my ass about my comments regarding the lead paint case (Thomas v. Mullet) and the Dubose case. <BR/><BR/>Esenberg "dares" me to back up my claim that he mischaractorized the lead paint case. Here goes: In the video, Esenberg says "suing an entire industry, although not unheard of, has been very limited to particular circumstances that really were not clearly present in the lead paint situation." There is a reason that he uses weaselly qualifiers in his statement -- "really were not clearly present" -- because he knows that the circumstances really and clearly were present. The Thomas decision was firmly rooted in cases against another industry that was spreading poison anonymously, knowing it to be poison -- that being the drug companies that brought us DES, a cancer-causing drug given during pregnancy, to supposedly prevent miscarriage, an industry, no doubt, Esenberg would also be defending. The only difference the Court in Thomas saw in the two circumstances was that there was someone else to sue -- namely, the poor landlord that used the poison paint. <BR/><BR/>Certainly, the opinion by Justice Butler had to explain much of the history of the lead paint industry -- this is the sort of necessary extrapolation that Suhr criticizes as "extensive citations to non-legal authorities" and "moral outrage substituted for sound legal reasoning" in Thomas. Justice Butler can't help it if the Court had to take a long time explaining the history and it's reasoning so that even he could get it. It is not surprising that he and Esenberg still pretend not to -- at least for the WMC's purposes.<BR/><BR/>Now that I have "dared" to take Esenberg up on his challenge, I can't wait to see what the consequences are.<BR/><BR/>As far as Dubose is concerned, Esenberg compares the Wisconsin Supremes trying to get in line with Stovall the equivalent of "the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to abandon the rule of Brown v. Board of Education in interpreting the state equal protection clause and return to the 'separate but equal' rule of Plessy v. Ferguson". Well, no, although the radical right-wing of the U.S. Supremes could get there themselves any time now. The few cases that came after Stovall did not in any way overturn or reinterpret the Stovall language -- they were dealing with other suggestive IDs, such as those in a courtroom, etc. The Dubose court recognized as such:<BR/><BR/><BR/>"The Court, attempting to follow the 'totality test' developed in Stovall [in Simmons], determined that the in-court identification was not tainted. However, 'the exclusionary effect of Stovall had already been accomplished, since the prosecution made no use of the suggestive confrontation. Simmons, therefore, did not deal with the constitutionality of the out-of-court identification procedure. The only question was the impact of the Due Process Clause on an in-court identification that was not itself unnecessarily suggestive.' Brathwaite, 432 U.S. at 121-22 (Marshall, J., dissenting)." <BR/>Throughout the Dubose decision, the Court states that they are developing the new rule "with Stovall as our guide." "We adopt standards for the admissibility of out-of-court identification evidence similar to those set forth in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Stovall," the Court said, and so they did. This is hardly a "significant departure from...prior precedent...of the U.S. Supreme Court", as Suhr claimed in his hit-job. It is rather a fairly commendable attempt to follow the precedent of the U.S. Supremes in a way that gives it real meaning. If Esenberg and Suhr don't like the Court doing that -- which is, after all, their job --let them complain about it directly rather than claiming the Wisconsin Court is going off on wild tangents.<BR/><BR/>Esenberg complains that "these are all legitimate issues and not the result of some WMC/talk radio/Federalist Society disinformation machine." Well, I don't know where I'd get that idea, with the WMC propagating his video, talk radio and blog wing-nuts using the video and Suhr for anti-Butler fodder and the Federalist Society doing god knows what. Esenberg knows that he is helping to lay the groundwork for the scorched-earth WMC campaign to come. The line between his sainted notion of "education" and propaganda is a thin one, and he knows what side he's on.Mike Plaistedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20692053.post-2081241829697579762008-01-16T10:26:00.000-06:002008-01-16T10:26:00.000-06:00Please read Suhr's characterization of Knapp again...Please read Suhr's characterization of <I>Knapp</I> again. First, he describes it as a Fourth Amendment case, but it's a Fifth Amendment case. While Knapp raised Fourth Amendment arguments in his resubmitted briefs they were not addressed.<BR/><BR/>(Incidentally, contrary to your claim that judges don't make rules, the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine happens to be exactly that: a judge-made rule.)<BR/><BR/>Then Suhr describes <I>Knapp</I>'s result as "arrogance" and an example of a "failure to defer to the U.S. Supreme Court." In this case, there exists no such requirement to defer to SCOTUS, nor is it even clear what SCOTUS requires under the circumstances, which is what I explained, and what you appear to agree with.<BR/><BR/>Do you seriously contend that Suhr's remarks demonstrate a fair -- or even honest -- representation of this case? I certainly don't, especially when his conclusions are based on an observation that raises the question of how closely he read it, if at all. He obviously didn't attend very closely to the SCOTUS decisions to which he claims Butler "failed" to defer, yet he portrays Butler as "arrogant"? Please.<BR/><BR/><I>The disinformation comes from people who ought to know better and act as if the criticisms raised by those that they disagree with are spun from whole cloth.</I><BR/><BR/>I sincerely hope you're not talking about me here. But, speaking of spinning from whole cloth, how about Suhr's representation of <I>Kohn v. Darlington Community Schools</I>: "Justice Butler, in dissent, says he would strike the statute down <B>for violating his expansive reading</B> of the federal and state constitutions' equal protection clauses."<BR/><BR/>Emphasis added. Now <I>that</I> is a fabrication from whole cloth. Butler "says" no such thing, and in fact his analysis is based on whether the substantive changes to the repose statute rescue it from the court's prior holdings in <I>Kallas</I> and <I>Funk</I>. So if there is such an expansive reading as Suhr believes, it belongs to the 1975 and 1989 versions of the court, long before Butler appeared on the scene.<BR/><BR/>As for Charles J. Sykes, Suhr cited him as a source, not me. It's not my problem Suhr's attitudes appear to vibrate in consonance with Sykes's errors.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com