The Terror of Truth
Bank Lawyer’s Blog:
I warned you that this idea would spread like a plague, didn’t I? No sooner do banks start winning litigation by telling the truth than institutions of higher learning start following suit. Duke University was sued by the University of Louisville for breach of a contract in which the universities had agreed that their football teams would play each other four times. Duke backed out with three games remaining. Duke’s defense? As articulated by Above The Law, it was simple: “Our team sucks.”
Duke’s lawyers argued the Blue Devils, which have a record of 6-45
over the past five seasons, were so bad that any team would be a
suitable replacement.
Judge Shepherd agreed in his summary: “At
oral argument, Duke (with a candor perhaps more attributable to good
legal strategy than to institutional modesty) persuasively asserted
that this is a threshold that could not be any lower. Duke’s argument
on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”
If this trend keeps up, trial lawyers will have to learn a whole new skill set, and an unfamiliar one at that: complete honesty. How much rust will have to be scraped off the moral engines of shysters everywhere to power up that existential leap into the void? I shudder to contemplate…
Thank all that is right and holy with the world that we still live in a land that honors “truthiness” above “truth,” a land where even a beaten down war hero can still strike the pose.