Amazon antitrust suit could test scope of law, profs' 'cold calls' spur debate, Cellino and Barnes battle former colleagues over fees, and more??
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?? FTC's Amazon antitrust lawsuit faces high bar in US court - experts
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit accusing Amazon of abusing its retail market power to stifle competition faces hurdles in court, testing the scope of U.S. antitrust law and posing roadblocks for the agency, legal experts said.
The U.S. consumer agency, which enforces federal antitrust law, and 17 states filed their lawsuit against Amazon in Seattle federal court on Sept. 26, asking a U.S. judge to consider an injunction and other penalties to combat alleged unlawful conduct.
Several legal experts told Reuters that the FTC faces a high bar in trying to show that U.S. consumers would be better off in a world without Amazon's policies in place.
The lawsuit said Amazon has unfairly given preference to its own products and that the company's policies punish merchants that want to sell products for lower prices on other platforms.
Under U.S. law, the FTC has the burden to prove that Amazon is not just a big market player with power but also that it has taken illegal steps to acquire or maintain its dominance. The agency also must define and prove the relevant markets, a key threshold issue.
?? Law professors 'cold calls' spur heated debate
A robust debate over law professors' use of "cold calls" — randomly calling on students in class instead of waiting for volunteers to answer questions — is unfolding online after a prominent conservative attorney took to social media to decry an opt-in approach used in a Yale Law School course.
“The idea of a law school class where students could opt out of being called on!” wrote Adam Mortara on Sept. 24 in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that has been viewed more than a million times and generated hundreds of comments. “Judges don’t let you put up the red light when you don’t want to answer.”
Mortara is the lead trial lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions in the SFFA v. Harvard case and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. In an interview, he said:
“The whole point of what we do in law school is to train people to be agile minded like a lawyer. I really don’t understand the idea that you should opt out of interacting with the faculty in a dynamic and spontaneous way.”
Proponents of the Socratic Method—the instructional process that includes cold-calling used in the legal academy since 1870—say the prospect of being called upon at any moment incentivizes students to keep up on their reading and teaches them to think on their feet.
But the Socratic Method has come under increased scrutiny over the past decade as law student mental health has become a larger priority for schools. A 2021 study of first-year law students concluded that cold calling and grading curves are contributing to elevated levels of unhappiness, while a separate survey that year found high levels of anxiety and depression among law students.
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?? Cellino, Barnes firms battle former colleagues over fees, years after split
Ross Cellino, the founder of now-defunct personal injury juggernaut Cellino & Barnes, scored a win on Sept. 25 in a fight with one of his former colleagues over fees when a judge said she wouldn’t block Cellino’s bid to collect.
Chief U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty in Concord, New Hampshire, granted Cellino’s motion to dismiss petitions from former Cellino & Barnes attorney Brian Goldstein. He had sought a determination that Cellino and his firm Cellino Law had no right to a 20% cut of Goldstein’s fees in 13 cases that Cellino claims began at Cellino & Barnes or Cellino Law. McCafferty said she did not have jurisdiction over the fee fight.
In the litigation, which began as separate complaints filed earlier this year by Cellino Law and The Barnes Firm but were consolidated, the law firms accuse Goldstein and Greco of stealing clients and say they have liens on Goldstein Greco’s fees in more than 680 cases.
Cellino & Barnes, a New York-based personal injury firm known for its ubiquitous "Don't wait! Call 8!" jingle and multimillion-dollar marketing budget, dissolved in 2020 into two separate firms, Cellino Law and The Barnes Firm. Cellino sued to dissolve the firm in 2017, citing a breakdown of his professional relationship with his business partner, Steve Barnes. The Barnes Firm was launched by Rich Barnes, Steve’s brother, after Steve died in a plane crash in 2020.
?? Former judge Richard Posner loses latest bid to dismiss wage lawsuit
Former U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner has lost his latest bid to dismiss a lawsuit by an Indiana man who says he is owed $170,000 for working at Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se's, a short-lived center for self-represented litigants founded by the prominent jurist.
U.S. District Judge Theresa Springmann in Hammond, Indiana, on Sept. 25 adopted a magistrate judge's recommendation that she reject Posner's arguments that Brian Vukadinovich waited too long to sue him and could not hold him personally liable.
Posner's legal team has said the judge has a confirmed Alzheimer's diagnosis and had no legal capacity to enter into any agreement to pay Vukadinovich, but their motion to dismiss focused on other grounds, including a two-year statute of limitations they said applied to his claims.
The retired 7th Circuit judge's lawyers argued that even if the statute of limitations did not bar his claims, any contract regardless was formed with the center and not Posner.
But Springmann agreed with U.S. Magistrate Judge Joshua Kolar that Vukadinovich had plausibly alleged Posner had entered into an oral contract with him in March 2018 that provided a personal guarantee for his earlier deal with the center.
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