San Bernardino: Do Not Pass Mediation, Go Straight to Bankruptcy
The Associated Press reported on July 18, 2012, that the San Bernardino City Council voted 5-2 to declare a fiscal emergency, thereby allowing it to skip the mediation step now required by California law, and head straight to bankruptcy.
How quaint and optimistic are the lyrics of The Vandals’ song, “San Berdu”:
I wanna go with you and leave all this behind us
We'll live in San Berdu and sell the place in Cypress
Venture Capital Firm’s Request to Send Employment Discrimination Suit to Arbitration Is Declined
David Streitfeld reports in the July 20, 2012 New York Times that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold E. Kahn denied the request of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to arbitrate a sex discrimination claim brought by partner Ellen Pao. The article quotes Silicon Valley attorney Melinda Riechert, who represents employers, as saying: “People who want to keep cases out of the press and the blogosphere should seriously consider arbitration agreements.” That’s definitely the trend.
Collision of Madoff Bankruptcy Trustee and California Attorney General Produces Mediation
Collisions in the CERN supercollider yield exotic particles such as the Higgs boson. On July 18, 2012, Bloomberg reporter Linda Sandler reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that a legal super collision between the Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard and California State Attorney General Kamala Harris has yielded another byproduct: mediation.
The collision has occurred over the estate of Stanley Chais, the “financial wizard”who funneled gazillions in investor funds to Madoff, earning $270M in fees between 1995 to 2008. Mr. Chais, like the Blue Norwegian parrot in the Monty Python skit, is defunct, having joined the choir invisible.
At issue is whether the bankruptcy trustee’s powers trump the powers of California’s State Attorney General to protect consumers from fraud. Unsurprisingly, as discretion is the better part of valor, Mr. Picard chose not to pick that fight in his (or Mr. Madoff’s) home state of New York against the NY State Attorney General.
The parties will pursue mediation, says Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland.
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