Supreme Court Update
The justices now have our case on the docket for their Friday, December 5, conference. The wait continues.
posted by Irv Muchnick at 6:37 AM
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
About Me
- Name: Irv Muchnick
Author of CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling's Cocktail of Death (Fall 2009) and WRESTLING BABYLON (2007). Lead respondent in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case for writers' rights, Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. http://muchnick.net
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3 Comments:
Interesting; they also have Berg v. Obama (seeking cert in the birth certificate challenge) in the same conference.
Irv, I did snark at you a bit for speculating as to why the case was postponed the last time. LOL, I am now going to offer some speculation of my own:
If the Justices were of a mind to uphold the Appeals Court's odd ruling on the standing of the C's, they would have already denied cert; after all, that is a question of judicial precedent and they would been able to decide that without oral arguments from the parties. So, it appears likely (at least to me) that they might be heeding the plea to "settle this now" that was in the Reed response to the Objectors' response. No matter what one thinks of the Reed position, that brief did set forth a convincing reason (damage to the public good from continued erosion of the databases) why the Court should act now to resolve all questions.
I of course have no insight into what they will do. But I am feeling more confident now that they will rule in such a way that vacates the Appeals Court's ruling & revives the settlement in some form. But, of course, we shall see.
If they indicate that unregistered works are to be included in the settlement, then I assume it moves on to the payout phase, correct? Or is there still another chance for appeal?
Does anyone know what happens if the deny cert without comment. OR if they indicate that the circuit court is correct and unregistered works should not be included? Then what happens to the case?
In response to the questions in the comment above, let me say first that there are too many permutations of possibilities for anyone to be able to address them authoritatively. The only thing we know is that there are certain forks in the road after the Supreme Court justices do whatever it is they are about to do.
If the High Court simply reverses the Second Circuit decision throwing out the unregistereds, then I believe the objectors' appeal on the merits goes back to the Second Circuit. If the Supreme Court simply denies cert without comment -- meaning the Second Circuit ruling on jurisdiction stands -- then the case goes back down to the district court in New York for restructuring of the settlement in accordance with that ruling.
Irv
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