Today’s Filings, and My Transition
In my final act as a partner in Goldstein & Howe (other than signing a letter leaving the partnership), today we are filing these reply briefs in two cases involving federal res judicata principles. One is in Clark v. Wyeth. The other is in Bahar v. Michigan Bell Telephone Co. For the Stanford Clinic, we also today filed this amicus brief for NACDL in Cunningham v. California, though the credit there goes to Jeff Fisher (who will join the Stanford faculty in the fall) and Pam Karlan, with their team of Scott Reents, Cody Harris, and Pete Patterson.
I see that the Bahar petition was denied.
I hope the court is taking an interest in preclusion doctrines; my pending certiorari petition involves an entity that was held precluded by a determination made in a prior proceeding to which it was not a party. While there is no claim of privity; the court below took the position, in essence, that when a question of surviving spouse status is decided in an adversary proceeding the decree is the equivalent of a marriage record and the world is bound. (There is also a threshold issue as to whether a municipal pension fund, created by state statute, is a person for purposes of 14th amendment procedural due process. I hope so.)
Comment by Norma Chase — September 7, 2006 @ 3:04 pm