Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Nuts & Boalts

Law Students

: Nuts & Boalts

Her Day in Court

I have to give law school props for trying and, in some measure, succeeding. I went in a dedicated liberal hippie do-gooder and came out another Big Law first year associate, going to work in my black suits and white shirts and carrying the obligatory black umbrella. I was pleasantly surprise to discover the other day that I have not entirely gone over the the corporate world.

I went down to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit my first week of work, along with the other shiny young things in my department. Among the arguments we heard was a case involving a Bernie Madoff like Ponzi scheme. The case had gone into receivership, and the appeal was from a woman contesting the receivership plan.

Like pretty much everyone else in the case, she'd lost everything. She was representing herself, because she didn't have the money for a lawyer. Her argument was basically that since she was the last person to invest in the scheme, and since her money had been deposited less than twenty-four hours before the bank froze the account, and since the account still contained more money than she'd put in, she should get all her money back.

Listening to this woman, who had no idea of how the legal system worked or what the law dictated, stand before the court and argue that they should give her money back because that would be fair, was heartbreaking. The problem was that the judge in the trial court had tried to do what was fair - to give all the investors something, even though it would only amount to cents on the dollar. It was hard not to sympathize with her, though, because if she had just put the money in a little later, or if the bank had waited a little longer to clear it, or if the SEC had moved a little quicker, she wouldn't have been standing in that courtroom.

The trial court's ruling was upheld, of course. It's not like the Second Circuit could have done anything else. Which makes me hope that when she got the ruling, and realized she really had lost everything, she at least felt like she'd been heard.

Because sometimes that's all our system can do.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).