Benchslaps

Judge Uses Cartoons To Benchslap Jones Day

Law firm tried to pull a fast one on a federal judge. The judge was not amused.

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Judge Robert J. Jonker is a saucy one.

He once shot down Thomas M. Cooley Law’s trumped up defamation claims by declaring that the statement that Cooley “‘grossly inflates its graduates’ reported mean salaries’ may not merely be protected hyperbole, but actually substantially true.” Snap.

So it wasn’t a tremendous shock to see Judge Jonker involved when a recent benchslap kicked off with a cartoon.

Is it the funniest cartoon in the world? No. Indeed, it falls into the Ziggy realm of groan-inducing comics. But is it a special kind of embarrassing when a federal judge feels words are not enough to call out your inappropriate behavior and breaks the judiciary’s largely staid approach to put a comic into an opinion? Absolutely.

So what got him so irked?

No party objected to the Court’s jurisdiction.

Imagine the Court’s surprise, then, when it learned via an after hours filing (docket # 374) that on the very same day this Court was meeting with counsel in Michigan, one of parties — Cooper Industries — was filing a motion in New Jersey Superior Court (Essex County) asking the State Judge to enjoin the parties from proceeding with the litigation here in Federal Court! And more than that, the very same lawyer whose name appeared on the motion papers in New Jersey — Michael H. Ginsberg of Jones Day (Pittsburgh Office) — was actually present in Court in Michigan discussing case scheduling issues and other logistics related to handling the case in Michigan. Yet Mr. Ginsberg did not mention or even hint that he was planning to file a motion in New Jersey Superior Court to enjoin the parties from proceeding here in Michigan.

Oh Jones Day! Maybe they’re hiring all those Supreme Court clerks so there’s a lot of people around with multiple years of clerking experience to explain how devastating it is to try to pull a fast one on a judge.

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And it’s not like this tactic even makes sense. Judge Jonker spends the next several paragraphs explaining basic civil procedure and how state courts can’t generally enjoin federal courts, no matter how covertly you file that motion. Sure, you can request one or the other court hold off, but as Judge Jonker notes there’s a gulf between asking a court to “stay its own hand” and trying to make an end run around a federal judge.

More than that, at least in the Western District of Michigan, this kind of behavior by counsel would — barring some explanation — likely fall below the expected standard of practice for candor with the Court and the other parties. Of course, there may be explanations or circumstances of which the Court is unaware. Maybe it really was something the Court said. Or maybe there is some other misunderstanding. But at a minimum, prompt explanation is needed.

Yikes.

Jones Day had better have a really good answer. I don’t think Jones Day’s standard practice of throwing a hissy fit is going to satisfy Judge Jonker.

You can read Judge Jonker’s opinion in all its glory on the next page….

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