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The madness of the Disney thing is just as much, if not more, about the madness of US corporate culture than US corporation law. Man, I should dig up a case I came across due to a family connection who knew the people which involved a vanishing will, misogyny, a crooked lawyer, etc after a company founder without close relatives died leaving a free for all for control of the company.
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May 20, 2020 23:27
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Well yeah I guess that it the point corporate law is totally fine with the board being Totally insane
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May 21, 2020 00:05
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I just read that disney decision end to end (it's interesting ok) and while it was revelatory of Eisner's stupidity in promoting the hiring of his buddy, despite the fact that in order to get him they'd have to compensate him enormously because the dude was already raking in megabux annually from his old company; I did not see much or anything revelatory of the stupidity of corporate laws. On the contrary, the judge's discussion (and citation of the chancellor's discussion) tended to reinforce to me the sensibleness of the corporate laws at play. To wit, corporate officers have various duties including a duty of care, that delaware (and presumably other) corporate laws sensibly parse out corporate officer malfeasance into buckets like "bad faith" or "negligence", and that they variously shield or don't shield those officers from personal financial liability depending on the nature and severity of their negligence, bad faith, or whatever. What I already find absurd about corporate law is the way that the necessity of corporate personhood (to do things like enter into contracts) has been extended to grant corporations rights properly held only by individual citizens (like the right to political speech, itself extended to the right to make campaign donations). But I didn't see anything about that in the Disney appeal decision, it's all just fairly sensible stuff about a board letting a compensation committee determine and write complicated compensation contracts and then advise the board as to the nature and potential outcomes of that compensation contract, without requiring each individual board member to personally review the committee's notes or spreadsheets or whatever. That's kind of the point of hiring experts and then listening to what they have to say, it'd be absurd to require or expect individual board members to do otherwise. What absurdity am I missing here?
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May 21, 2020 00:41
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I don’t know where to start
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May 21, 2020 00:43
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How aware are you of the ovitz story from outside of that decision ?
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May 21, 2020 00:44
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the key thing with all that corporate law is that the next time you see some idiot going CoRpOrAtIoNs ArE lEgAlLy ReQuIrEd To MaXiMiZe PrOfItS as an explanation for anything you can see just how absurd the idea that anyone thinks they have a legal requirement to do poo poo in any way that matters yeah, who cares, if you say you carefully considered the idea of literally lighting the money on fire and thought that it would benefit the company, case dismissed
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May 21, 2020 00:50
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euphronius posted:How aware are you of the ovitz story from outside of that decision ? Not at all. evilweasel posted:the key thing with all that corporate law is that the next time you see some idiot going CoRpOrAtIoNs ArE lEgAlLy ReQuIrEd To MaXiMiZe PrOfItS as an explanation for anything you can see just how absurd the idea that anyone thinks they have a legal requirement to do poo poo in any way that matters Ah. Yeah, I already understood that very well, so maybe that's the disconnect.
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May 21, 2020 01:24
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The ovitz thing was a huge debacle where basically Eisner gave hundreds of millions (a lot of money back then) to his friend for no reason. The resulting case you read was the cover up and rubber stamp
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May 21, 2020 04:05
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euphronius posted:The ovitz thing was a huge debacle where basically Eisner gave hundreds of millions (a lot of money back then) to his friend for no reason. The resulting case you read was the cover up and rubber stamp Huh. That's definitely not the impression given by the judge's ruling, in which it seems clear that Eisner forced ovitz out, ovitz tried really hard not to get fired, and then ovitz got like $80M in parachute money. It sure doesn't make Eisner look good though, that's for sure.
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May 21, 2020 05:17
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:i asked him to stop stalking a female friend of mine for saying that she had heard allegations of sexual assault against guy fieri. i am being threatened by a guy fieri stan. Has he done anything to you, personally, PHIZ KALIFA, other than mailing you a book? If not, what has happened is that you have received a book at your house called You're An rear end in a top hat and have drawn several inferences from that event: 1. This guy did it 2. This guy knows where you live 3. Because this guy has said "I will end you" and such to other people, by sending you the book he is expressing a real intent to cause you harm 4. Because you have a family, he is also expressing an intent to harm your family Now I'm assuming you have hard evidence of 1 other than making assumptions based on just knowing this guy. If 1 is true, then 2 is also reasonably clear. 3 and 4 are absolutely not though, not even a little bit. Without actual evidence that 3 is the case, no one is gonna take this seriously. Even with evidence of 3 and 4 it's probably difficult but I'm not American so I don't really know.
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May 21, 2020 06:28
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The guy mailed the book to your house instead of delivering it personally. That tells you he's either lazy or a coward. Does he have a history of violence?
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May 21, 2020 06:52
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Leperflesh posted:What absurdity am I missing here? There is a little known secret about The Law that mostly only lawyers and judges are privy to: most everything makes sense in the proper context. There are alot of laws. Like, alot. I cannot express to you how many different laws (statutes/ordinances/rules of procedure, etc.) there are, per city, state, per country. Every city in america has somewhere between 100 and 100,000 ordinances, every state has between 20 and 150 sections of code, each with dozens or hundreds of subsections, and then the federal govt. has tens of thousands of sections of different codes. Every one those figures is too small, btw, I'm just throwing out numbers. Then, 95% of those individual laws have been litigated in front of a Court somewhere because it a) is unclear about what to do in certain circumstances, or b) its defective in some material way or c) its worded in such a way as to have more than one reasonable interpretation, or d) it conflicts with some other law somewhere else or e) its total bullshit for some reason. Then those Court rulings get challenged in higher Courts or years later by a different Court that changed their minds, sometimes in whole, sometimes only in part, and those decisions create lines of precedent that materially alter how people understand those laws. And then, there are thousands of situations and issues that aren't explicitly covered by some law out there, and those cases have to be litigated to some effect because nobody knows what to do. And for the most part, these laws are written by, argued by, and interpreted by generally smart people, albeit with an agenda. Many times (not the majority of times, in my opinion) the people with the agenda will be looking for ways to interpret the law for specific situations to get the result they want - obvs the parties to the lawsuit, but sometimes the judges as well. But again, these are typically smart, competent people. The kicker is this: no matter how good you are at writing a law - some are very good, some are very bad at it - no matter how good you are, you STILL can never absolutely write a law so good and so well conceived that it can ever hope to keep pace with the amount of creative ways the human race will come up with to gently caress poo poo up. The capacity of the human race for creative fuckery is limitless. People are so good at loving poo poo up, and there are so many goddamn people, that humanity will always eventually find the gaps in legal logic and dump a river of fuckery into it and then tee that novel situation up for Courts to deal with. What ends up happening, through trial and error, is that the law generally adapts and evolves to assimilate, and build gateways and canals, for these rivers of fuckery that make sense in the context of the world at large, or the specific facts of a case. Take the "business judgment rule" that has been tossed about. In one context, it seems ridiculous that at CEO can do whatever the gently caress they want, so long as they couch it as having been an exercise of their professional judgment. On the other hand, imagine a world where every single shareholder could sue the company they invested in over every single decision they made? Oh, you paid $15/sqft for your new office building? You could have gotten it for $13.sqft. I'm suing you for the .001% difference in my stock portfolio now. Every company, small, medium, large, monolithic, makes anywhere from dozens to thousands of these kinds of decisions per day - imagine a world where anyone could litigate every single one of these decisions? Sovereign Immunity for governments works on much the same principal. But news headlines, water cooler talk, etc. doesn't give a poo poo about why a rule is the way it is, or how it works (which is fine, btw, the law relies on other social and economic pressures to resolve issues, in order to function), the headlines only care that "PFIZER SPENDS EXTRA $2.2M ON MANUFACTURING PLANT; COURT SAYS SHAREHOLDERS HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN" So what you wind up with is alot (and I would posit its actually just a small minority, its just those are the ones you hear about) of cases where, in context a law and/or Court decision makes perfect sense, but because in the specific case you're hearing about there was a result that seems unfair or unjust, it seems like bullshit. That was way longer than I planned, I'll leave it there. blarzgh fucked around with this message at 16:05 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 16:01
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1) per my previous messages, the dude has an established history of violence and conflict with others in my social circle, including verbal/text threats, and mailing this exact same book. 2) he used to live nearby, but has since relocated to new hampshire once he was kicked out of his apartment for harassing people online 3) he has make and articulated threats of violence against me, directly 4) his harassment against me has been ongoing for almost two weeks 5) local police have informed me that the mail issue is more likely to result in a restraining order than the threats, so they're waiting to hear back from the postal inspectors. I want to know if there's anything I can do to help build my case in the meanwhile. I'm collecting statements and records of messages he's sent, but what else can I be doing? blarzgh posted:Sorry I'm unfamiliar with the Flavortown Penal Code 
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May 21, 2020 16:43
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therobit posted:You probably aren't going to get control of your dad's pizza shop. Hahaha I was wondering about Vince McMahon specifically, but I can see the answer is 'maybe' at most. Thanks for the answers!
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May 21, 2020 16:53
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:1) per my previous messages 
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May 21, 2020 17:08
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:1) per my previous messages, the dude has an established history of violence and conflict with others in my social circle, including verbal/text threats, and mailing this exact same book. You keep parceling out bits and pieces of the story across many messages (this message, for example, seems to add some new information that was not in any previous messages, such as "two weeks" and "history of violence"), and expecting people to piece things together. Instead of getting mad when people don't understand what your concerns are, perhaps try laying it all out in one message, with all of the relevant detail?
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May 21, 2020 17:18
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why don't you answer the questions I ask in the post that I ask them in? edit- this is the legal advice thread not the fuckin maury povich thread. i've provided enough lurid details for readers to understand what happened, the main point is what do i do going forward? PHIZ KALIFA fucked around with this message at 17:28 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 17:25
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:why don't you answer the questions I ask in the post that I ask them in? Read the book.
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May 21, 2020 17:37
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:why don't you answer the questions I ask in the post that I ask them in? You've been harassing this thread more than this guy has been harassing you
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May 21, 2020 17:38
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It is not the legal advice thread Common misconception
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May 21, 2020 17:38
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euphronius posted:It is not the legal advice thread This thread gives consistently great advice, that weirdly is pretty much always: “pay an irl lawyer to explain to you that you’re a petty moron” and that’s why we love it.
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May 21, 2020 17:53
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blarzgh posted:So what you wind up with is alot (and I would posit its actually just a small minority, its just those are the ones you hear about) of cases where, in context a law and/or Court decision makes perfect sense, but because in the specific case you're hearing about there was a result that seems unfair or unjust, it seems like bullshit. Ah right. Yeah. Like... I guess I forgot that even though this is patently obvious to me, a person who has followed and/or read about dozens of legal cases over the last 20+ years, it might not be obvious to everyone. What actually strikes me is how hopeless appellants' case was, and how frequently I read judgements where all or almost all of one sides' arguments were so transparently worthless and without merit. Including poo poo like "you can't appeal this using an argument that you didn't raise in the original trial, dumbass" or "this appeals court can't reverse findings from the original judgement that were based on the evaluation of credibility of witness testimony", you know, what I'd have thought was basic Law School 101 introductory stuff? Is this just selection bias on my part (I'm not randomly reading decisions where both sides' arguments had merit), or do legions of lawyers habitually make hopeless, pointless arguments to courts?
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May 21, 2020 17:53
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Leperflesh posted:Ah right. Yeah. Like... I guess I forgot that even though this is patently obvious to me, a person who has followed and/or read about dozens of legal cases over the last 20+ years, it might not be obvious to everyone. Better to make the effort and get it shot down 99% of the time than not to make it at all. You probably advised the client that it's very unlikely you win on those issues, but you can give it a shot.
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May 21, 2020 17:55
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It’s judgment not judgement. Unless you are in England or something.
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May 21, 2020 17:56
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:why don't you answer the questions I ask in the post that I ask them in? How has "go see a lawyer" not been your main takeaway? This guy is a social media d bag but you're also in here bragging about going to doxx him to his job so it's not like you arent making it worse. The thread has commented and explained, in specific terms what your options are and even if you don't like it the only alternative is to schedule a legal consultation.
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May 21, 2020 17:57
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Orders from judges are persuasive pieces so you should think what they are saying is right and how the losing party was dumb and why did they ever bring the case ?
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May 21, 2020 17:58
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:why don't you answer the questions I ask in the post that I ask them in? reading your posts gives the strong suggestion to everyone that we're not getting the full picture here (because each post changes details and/or adds significant new ones); perhaps there are a few things that give the impression that maybe this is a two-way spat between nutjobs, such as you contacting his office to get him fired, rather than complete one-way nutjobbery to a pure an innocent victim you got your answer already: talk to the police re: harassment. anything else is hugely fact-dependent, which is problematic to tell you anything on because your retelling of the facts is, well, unreliable and leaves key bits out. for example, it is useful to know that the police are the ones talking to the postal inspectors, not you. if you want more, pay a local lawyer to help you who can sit you down and pull out all the relevant facts that they're gonna need to know and then, when you get to "and so that's why i called up his work to get him fired" you have given him money for the pounding headache he now has.
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May 21, 2020 18:00
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Leperflesh posted:Ah right. Yeah. Like... I guess I forgot that even though this is patently obvious to me, a person who has followed and/or read about dozens of legal cases over the last 20+ years, it might not be obvious to everyone. Sometimes it’s just “even if the percentage chance of a win is low, the payoff for a win is so high that the expected value is still positive.” Sometimes your clients just don’t give a poo poo about the cost and want to have the fight. Even if I tell you “you’re gonna lose”, sometimes it doesn’t work til they hear it from a judge. And if the argument is non-frivolous then there’s no legal bar against doing it if your client wants you to - in fact, that’s how now judicial interpretations come about, lawyers arguing positions that seem hopeless, getting buyin a little at a time, and all of a sudden you have a unitary executive and Chevron is dead.
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May 21, 2020 18:13
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Legal Questions: I’m mailing The Spoonman Manifesto to my many enemies. Good idea, or great idea?
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May 21, 2020 18:15
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Hermsgervørden posted:Legal Questions: I’m mailing The Spoonman Manifesto to my many enemies. Good idea, or great idea? Best idea if you can mail a copy to me
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May 21, 2020 18:20
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evilweasel posted:Better to make the effort and get it shot down 99% of the time than not to make it at all. You probably advised the client that it's very unlikely you win on those issues, but you can give it a shot. So there's no "annoy the judge" factor here? Aren't you risking affecting the judge's overall view of your suit/appeal/whatever, if you pack it full of nonsense that you know perfectly well has no chance, that you're an idiot and your case is probably stupid and so are your clients and gently caress you? I mean I know judges are supposed to be impartial arbiters of justice, but LOL no they aren't. euphronius posted:It’s judgment not judgement. Unless you are in England or something. My spellcheck accepts both, and so does Marriam Webster; and if you're gonna spell check people's posts, you had no problem with "alot"? Also, you're using a ’ instead of a ' as an apostrophe, and some browsers are going to have trouble with that, depending on character rendition. I assume your stupid apple device is doing it for you, but maybe throw that in the trash and get a device that respects ANSII standards for text-based internet communications. You know. Since we're rules-lawyering our shitposts now.
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May 21, 2020 18:35
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Kalman posted:Sometimes it’s just “even if the percentage chance of a win is low, the payoff for a win is so high that the expected value is still positive.” doubleposting illegally because I forgot I wanted to reply to this one also not using punctuation in this post I guess I see your point but there is probably a line beyond which your argument is gonna get thrown out 100%, not 99%, yeah? (Ok I lied I used a little punctuation there)
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May 21, 2020 18:37
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Leperflesh posted:doubleposting illegally because I forgot I wanted to reply to this one The line is whether you get sanctioned for making the argument and if you're at a reputable law firm then you're not going to cross that line because judges bend over backwards to avoid calling attorneys' arguments frivolous unless it's the twentieth time you've made the same dumb argument and gotten repeated court orders telling you to stop.
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May 21, 2020 18:41
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Leperflesh posted:So there's no "annoy the judge" factor here? Aren't you risking affecting the judge's overall view of your suit/appeal/whatever, if you pack it full of nonsense that you know perfectly well has no chance, that you're an idiot and your case is probably stupid and so are your clients and gently caress you? This is very interesting because even assuming the Judge is prickly about it if you have a paying client to insists on X when it is a pointless and nonsense endeveor; despite it being a waste of everyone's time what are your options other then firing the client? And even then what about someone who needs the paycheck too much to risk firing said client?
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May 21, 2020 18:45
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gently caress this thread is on fire today
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May 21, 2020 18:50
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Leperflesh posted:So there's no "annoy the judge" factor here? Aren't you risking affecting the judge's overall view of your suit/appeal/whatever, if you pack it full of nonsense that you know perfectly well has no chance, that you're an idiot and your case is probably stupid and so are your clients and gently caress you? On appeal, you're stuck with the facts and record you have. You often don't have a lot of options besides trying to convert a factual dispute into a legal dispute.
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May 21, 2020 18:51
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pentyne posted:This is very interesting because even assuming the Judge is prickly about it if you have a paying client to insists on X when it is a pointless and nonsense endeveor; despite it being a waste of everyone's time what are your options other then firing the client? And even then what about someone who needs the paycheck too much to risk firing said client? Do clients really insist on, like, "no see, he owed a duty of care while negotiating his own employment contract, because he was acting as an employee, even though he wasn't officially hired yet, even though the logical conclusion of this argument is that nobody can ever actually negotiate favorable terms for their own employment because paying money to employees is contrary to the shareholders' interests"? Purely hanging on "well he participated in decisions about how to decorate his new office, and also they sent him some papers to look at, that's work!" I sorta thought that sort of patently stupid argument was a contrivance invented by lawyers, not clients, but maybe sophisticated clients really do come up with poo poo like that. Referring to this: quote:As a threshold matter, the appellants’ de facto fiduciary argument is The clients may have told their lawyers "OK but how about he was negligently ripping off his own employer because he was technically an employee before he signed his employment documents" and their lawyers say "no see we didn't present that argument to the Chancery court, so we can't now argue it on appeal" and the clients say "do it anyway?"
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May 21, 2020 19:16
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I think the best for this is Criminal Appeals where almost every single judgement where the facts apply (gently caress you I'm English) includes some variant of "Yes the judge stepped outside of the guidelines, but they are just guidelines and the fact that he did so doesn't make the sentence unreasonable by itself" but that's a rod the court makes for itself because every so often it'll just go "Yeah we think in all the circumstances we'd prefer this sentence" so everyone chances that line because, why not?
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May 21, 2020 19:24
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Tree law question: is bamboo part of tree law, even though bamboo is grass from a botanical perspective? Hypothetically, if neighbor A has bamboo from a stand neighbor B planted along the fence on the property line growing under the fence, could A sue B to force him to pay for removing the shoots that come up on the A side? Let’s say that at maturity the bamboo is forty feet high, and neighbors A and B are in California.
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May 21, 2020 19:41
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Leperflesh posted:Do clients really insist on, like, "no see, he owed a duty of care while negotiating his own employment contract, because he was acting as an employee, even though he wasn't officially hired yet, even though the logical conclusion of this argument is that nobody can ever actually negotiate favorable terms for their own employment because paying money to employees is contrary to the shareholders' interests"? Purely hanging on "well he participated in decisions about how to decorate his new office, and also they sent him some papers to look at, that's work!" I sorta thought that sort of patently stupid argument was a contrivance invented by lawyers, not clients, but maybe sophisticated clients really do come up with poo poo like that. They almost certainly argued that one of the myriad of exceptions to the presentation rule should have applied and lost - which is a good example of the kind of 95% thing I mentioned. Also, that appeal couldn’t have cost them more than a couple hundred thousand. How much did they stand to gain if they won?
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May 21, 2020 19:46
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