photo credit: Serge Melki
Yesterday, June 23, 2011, the Supreme Court issued its ruling (actually it’s second ruling) in this very long running and convoluted case (it started back in 1994).
I love Chief Justice Robert’s reference to Dickens’ Bleak House story of a lawsuit that had become so complicated that “no two…lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause: innumerable young people have married into it;” and, sadly, the original parties “have died out of it.” A “long procession of [judges] has come in and gone out” during that time, and still the suit “drags its weary length before the Court.” One could obviously right exactly the same thing about Stern v Marshall.
There are already some great discussions on this ruling out on the web. Two I particularly enjoyed are Steve Sather’s at A Texas Bankruptcy Lawyer’s Blog and Steve Jakubowski’s at The Bankruptcy Litigation Blog.
Here’s one great comment from Steve Sather: “Thus, the Court’s consideration of the constitutionality of §157(b)(2)(C) is not just about which person in a black robe will decide a particular case or which estate of a dead person will receive a lot of money, but rather, it is a mighty bulwark protecting us against a new King George and his corrupt judges.”
Probably the biggest concern is whether this ruling will increase the workload of an already overloaded court system. The majority opinion stated that no, “We do not think the removal of counterclaims such as Vickie’s from core bankruptcy jurisdiction meaningfully changes the division of labor in the current statute.” However, the dissenting opinion, written by Justice Beyer, stated that it would increase the workload because a game of jurisdictional ping-pong would occur between the District and Bankruptcy courts.
I guess only time will tell.
