“Is This Some Sort of Joke?”
I know-that headline could refer to almost anything in the news these days, in particular the ideas that (1) a vaccine denier (and unrepentant rogue falconer) may actually be put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, and (2) the United States might invade and occupy the Gaza Strip so its population can be cleared out and its beachfront properties (once de-mined) turned over to certain as-yet-unnamed persons or entities with experience in real-estate development but absolutely zero understanding of history or even reality. I ask you, what could possibly go wrong should either of these things happen? It's clear sailing ahead for America, my friends.
Here the jokiness pales by comparison, because the headline is simply quoting a February 3 order by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria. But anytime a federal judge says is this some sort of joke?" and he or she wasn't looking at me, I'm probably going to mention it, so here we are.
The order is only two pages so I'll just embed it below with a brief comment. The plaintiffs sued to block a merger attempt by grocery chains Albertsons and Kroger. The court dismissed their complaint twice for lack of standing and yet they tried again. But it turned out that the federal and state governments had also sued to block the merger, and in both cases they won. The merger was off.
Whereupon the plaintiffs in this case, having done nothing but file two and probably three defective complaints, and having been completely uninvolved in the lawsuits that were successful, filed a motion for summary judgment and, more to the point, claimed they were entitled to recover attorneys' fees and costs on the grounds that they were the prevailing parties."
The court analyzed the matter this way: At this point, the reader may be asking, is this some sort of joke? It is not. The plaintiffs are actually making these arguments." End of analysis.
Now, was this the most ridiculous argument ever made? Maybe not (he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the nearly 4,000 articles to date on his legal-humor website). But it's in the ballpark.
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