But It’s Not Over Yet
On fighting on in the courts while Pelosi and Fox News call Biden “president-elect.â€
by Dov Fischer
November 10, 2020, 12:01 AM
Not only has Nancy Pelosi crowned Joe Biden “president-elect,†but so has Fox News. (The other “news†outlets had been crowning him for weeks.) The other night several Fox News reporters started using that term. But of course the election is not over. Rather, it is in litigation. Time has stopped. That is how the law works. Or, in the tritest of Yogi Berra’s memes, it ain’t over till it’s over.
Seriously, imagine Joe owes Don $10,000 under the terms of a contract. Don comes to collect. But Joe proactively files a lawsuit seeking equitable relief, claiming that he does not owe the money, that the underlying contract was invalid because of the Statute of Frauds or a lack of consideration or mistake or fraud or whatever other legal basis can nullify a contract. Well, it goes into litigation, and no one owes the money until the litigation plays out. The November 3 presidential election now is in litigation. Once a complex matter goes into litigation, one never knows what may emerge. Ultimate outcomes often differ from initial expectations.
I began my own litigation practice at Jones Day in 1994. I was new to the field after 10 years practicing as a congregational rabbi, teacher of Talmud and Biblical studies, a hospital and police department chaplain, and an organizational executive. Early on in that new litigation career, I was handed a terribly difficult case to defend. It was quite a bit of responsibility dumped onto my shoulders, being asked to defend an ostensibly indefensible case. My client was one of the three main national credit reporting companies. According to the complaint, our credit reporting failures had caused the plaintiff to lose her six-figure salary, relegating her to a life of misery and poverty, forcing her to move from her big home in a big city to a different kind of home in a smaller city in a lower-cost state. I read the complaint, and it seemed we had caused terrible misery. We had no chance. All the facts seemingly were against us. Hopeless.
A year later I had won that case. Disregarding her assertions in her court papers, I conducted my own research. It turned out that this terminated employee previously had sued and had won a boatload of money, claiming that the reason she had lost that same job had been sexual harassment at a sexually hostile work environment. Uh huh. So she had convinced a jury in another city within the state that the reason she had lost her job had been the sexual stuff. Then, having collected one bonanza, she turned around and sued in another city within the same state, now claiming that her termination instead had been because of the credit-reporting mistakes. Along the way of uncovering the true facts, it also turned out that the reason she had moved from the big city to the new state and smaller city had nothing to do with anything in the lawsuit. Rather, after having collected mega bucks on her prior sexual harassment claim, she had decided she now was rich enough to leave the work force for life, and she proceeded to marry a multi-millionaire who owned a factory in an out-of-state small town, so moved there. Interesting what some fact investigations turn up.
more
https://spectator.org/2020-presidential-election-not-over-yet/
