Betcha Litigants Have Surpassed This Bar Since

From a 1901 Minnesota Supreme Court decision.

Comments

[dwb68]

????????????????????????????????????????

Once millennials get on state and Federal Appeals courts, I bet they start issuing emoji filled Per Curiams. This seems to deserve it.

[LawTalkingGuy]

They’re already there and they are writing long, smug, and completely self-indulgent opinions.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, maybe. But Justice Coney Barrett deserves more time to establish her credentials.

[LawTalkingGuy]

They're not millennials. I was thinking Justin Walker. I would definitely have voted to elevate him to the DC Circuit from ED Kentucky. He had no business interacting with litigants in any way shape or form.

[Dilan Esper]

That's it, I am never hiring Wm. F. Hunt.

[dwb68]

What if everyone you hire is Wm F Hunt?

Or: What if Wm F Hunt was just doing the job and making the arguments his clients demanded? I know many lawyers try to talk their clients into some sense, but often clients have other ideas. When the money or emotion runs high (and in divorce cases I've observed both at once), often clients tell their lawyers to just dooooo it, no matter the odds. There are a lot of clients out there with more money than sense.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Some courts probably had the urge to put it this way, with Gohmert and Trump as plaintiffs.

[Aladdin's Carpet]

What was the question asked here?

[ReaderY]

Another anonymous plaintiff!

[DodgerBobH]

I don't believe that opinion would be allowed in California. "Decisions of the Supreme Court and courts of appeal that determine causes shall be in writing with reasons stated." (Cal. Const., art. VI, sec. 14.) I suppose saying it is frivolous is arguably a reason, but it does nothing to "insure that the reviewing court gives careful thought and consideration to the case and that the statement of reasons indicates that appellant’s contentions have been reviewed and consciously, as distinguished from inadvertently, rejected.” (People v. Rojas (1981) 118 Cal.App.3d 278,288-289.)

[Kazinski]

They list the reasons: it's frivolous.

Now as Josh says in his post above, just because someone calls it frivolous doesn't mean it actually is, but it is a reason.

[dwb68]

Just because someone calls it frivolous doesn’t mean it actually is...

However when an appellate court says its frivolous, it is, almost by definition. A courts opinion is the only one that really counts in this case, lol.

[Dilan Esper]

Thanks for taking what was a joke seriously.

[Andrew Dhuey]

The following year, at the Supreme Court of Minnesota in Burrows v. Western Union Tel. Co., 90 N.W. 1111, 1113 (Minn. 1902)
(Collins, J., concurring):

On the facts, no distinction can be made between the case at bar and Schuneman v. Tolman, 85 Minn. 130, 88 N.W. 1103, in which a per curiam opinion was written, characterizing the appeal as frivolous, and the questions at issue unworthy of discussion. If the majority opinion here -- in which I concur -- is not right, our disposition of the Schuneman case was clearly and palpably wrong. Each has been properly disposed of, and no case establishing a contrary doctrine can be cited. In these days it is the duty of the drawer of a check to know that the party to whom it is delivered is the one for whom it was intended. It is his business to ascertain that he has not been imposed upon by a false personation of the party to whom it was intended the check should be made payable.

[Dilan Esper]

That's a great find.

[John F. Carr]

You can still find an occasional "we affirm for the reasons stated by the district court in its thoughtful opinion." But even those tend to go on at length.