The Sunday Pickle

The Wheel

Through winter-time we call on spring,

And through the spring on summer call,

And when abounding hedges ring

Declare that winter's best of all;

And after that there's nothing good

Because the spring-time has not come ---

Nor know that what disturbs our blood

Is but our longing for the tomb.

- W.B. Yeats

Two Terrific Posts from Indiana Blogs

Thomas Kemp at Kemplog has this great post titled "Public Records, Private Profits." Can you believe the U.S. Supreme Court turned down free access to its own historic records? Go read all about it.

And Doug Masson at Masson's Blog has this terrific post titled "I Remember." It's about the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. The account of Bobby Kennedy calming a crowd in Indianapolis two months before his own assassination I find chilling.

WAMU in Washington has a great show going on the assassination right now from Memphis moderated by Tavis Smiley. (Link to permanent archive on PRI.)

Sealed Cases & Oral Argument

Marcia Oddi at the Indiana Law Blog has been posting about the cases that the Clerk has sealed and that have also disappeared from the docket. (Here, here, and here, for example.) One of my cases has suffered this fate.

I have been listening to oral arguments--especially those in the Indiana appellate courts. Back on March 25th, the Court of Appeals held argument in Allianz Insurance Company v. Guidant Corporation. (Direct link to argument; RealPlayer required).

It is very difficult to figure out what this case is all about. But the argument begins over whether the briefs were properly sealed and what information is so sensitive that it cannot be public. Chief Judge Baker seems pretty skeptical confronted with briefs, the only public portion of which seems to be the table of contents and proof of service.

It sounds like the parties agreed to keep it all hush-hush, because if the world knew how much other litigation there is involving the parties--and this information is in the briefs, presumably--then the businesses would suffer.

I had a case that I requested sealed once upon a time. But that was because of some allegations about someone not a party to the litigation that I didn't think needed to be aired. I simply filed the brief in a sealed envelope with a motion to have the case sealed pasted to the envelope. No green paper; no filet of brief.

The first 15 minutes or so of the argument about the secrecy is pretty interesting. I can't make much of the rest on the merits.

Time Stamps Bloat Court PDF Files

The recent practice of the Clerk to include time stamps with the PDF files bothers me. The graphic bloats the files from 75-150 KB to 500 KB. Half a megabyte for information that interests me not at all.

The graphic slows down loading considerably; and it's just plain ugly.











What do you think? Does anybody care whether an opinion was filed at 8:48 a.m. on April 1st?

Supreme Court & Court of Appeals Judges Resign!??!

After issuing a spate of opinions today, all of the Supreme Court Justices and Court of Appeals Judges resigned en masse without comment.

After making some calls, I have learned that part of the deal to get Tom Crean to leave Marquette for Indiana was jobs for his assistant coaches. The assistant coaches will fill all the spots available on the Court of Appeals. There are 15 of those, so some trainers will take up the additional empty slots.

Because some of the Marquette players want to follow Crean and will have to sit out a year to do so, they will be taking Supreme Court seats. If there are still openings on the Supreme Court to fill, some student managers have agreed to transfer to IU and serve on the Supreme Court as additional work-study.

There's a rumor that if Northwestern wants a new coach, the 7th Circuit is similarly willing make room.