I never really liked Friends. The characters were unnecessarily broad, the romantic subplots were improbable, and the idea that 20-somethings lived in giant Midtown apartments and never hung out in bars strained credulity. Screw those guys.
But maybe people who live in D.C. buy that sort of tripe. Which kind of makes sense — that whole town is based on broad stereotypes, its romances make no sense (James Carville and Mary Matalin? like that’s believable), their apartments are too big, and even though they do have bars, most of them suck.
A new D.C. Circuit opinion penned by Judge Janice Rogers Brown suggests Friends is a hit in chambers because she decided to “party like it’s 1999” and went to the Friends well to kick off her latest benchslap of the federal government:
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In an episode of the iconic 1990s television show Friends, Joey Tribbiani tries to dissuade Rachel Green from moving to Paris. Joey asks Rachel to flip a coin. If he wins the coin flip, she must agree to stay. Rachel flips the coin; Joey loses. When later recounting the story to Ross Gellar, a befuddled Joey says, “[w]ho loses fifty-seven coin tosses in a row?” Friends: The One with Rachel’s Going Away Party (NBC television broadcast Apr. 29, 2004). Before Ross can answer, Joey explains Rachel’s rules: “Heads, she wins; tails, I lose.”
That’s gratuitous. “Heads I win; tails, you lose” is actually a common phrase. There’s no reason we had to sit through an 11-year-old bad sitcom plot to get to that point. And in that vein, isn’t an issue as serious as government overreach and abuse of criminal forfeiture immediately demeaned as soon as you mention “Joey Tribbiani”?
Because that’s what was at issue in this matter, the government trying to pull a fast one under the guise of criminal forfeiture:
The proceedings in this case have largely followed the same rules. SunRise Academy (“SunRise”) claimed the federal government seized property from criminal defendant Charles Emor belonging to SunRise. But the government succeeded in excluding SunRise from Emor’s criminal proceedings, suggesting SunRise could press its claims to the property in a third-party forfeiture proceeding. When SunRise later did so, the government filed a motion to dismiss the petition, contending that SunRise should be denied a hearing based on findings the court made in the prior proceeding from which SunRise was excluded. Because this heads the government wins and tails SunRise loses form of criminal forfeiture does not comport with the statutory scheme, we reverse.
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And the government would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids — Joey and Rachel.
(You know the drill: full opinion on the next page…)