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Wealth has its privileges - like having an entire Supreme Judicial Court decision censored
By adamg on Fri, 02/11/2011 - 6:55am
UPDATE: The Globe reports the court impounded the decision when it realized it had not addressed an order by a lower-court judge impounding some of the information in the decision.
Hackman, um, Dershowitz, argues before SJCSteve Syre at the Globe reports a Supreme Judicial Court decision on some divorce case was pulled off the court's (actually, Westlaw's) Web site yesterday, just a few hours after it was posted, possibly because it had details on hubby's business as a hedge-fund manager at a secretive $9-billion firm. The information seemed relevant to the decision since it was about how to divide the family assets, but now the decision has been "impounded."
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly also pulled down the copy of the decision it had posted.
You can still see the docket for the case, but the names of the parties themselves have been impounded, along with the names of a couple of people who filed amicus briefs in the case. At least for now, you can still watch the oral arguments before the court (Alan Dershowitz is up first, for the husband, looking and sounding like Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State).
Ed. note: You can sign up to get e-mail notifications on new SJC decisions. When I got e-mail about the decision yesterday, while it was still online, I started reading it, thought it was just another routine, if somewhat pricey, divorce decision and didn't finish and didn't post about it. Probably just as well; I don't think I would like being stuffed in a box in the basement of the Adams Courthouse.
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Comments
disgusting
fucking typical.
First the FBI thing now this.
Adam, you're getting my Friday off to a ka-ka-filled start. You better start posting some fluff pieces on the friggin ducklings in the Common or something.
Easy solution to that
Go frig the ducklings yourself, and I'm sure Adam will post about it. Especially if you do it on the orange line and someone posts a pic of you to twitter.
This is what Wikileaks is for
If you or anyone else downloaded it and have a copy on your local disk, please send it to them.
No copy here
What I normally do with SJC and Appeals Court decisions is read them on the Westlaw site and then, if I think I'll write about them, cut and paste a copy into a text editor to fix some formatting issues, then post them on Universal Hub (which I do because Westlaw uses temporary tokens on their documents, so no permalinks; unlike, say, federal appeals court cases, which are permanently posted as PDF files on their own site).
As I mentioned, I started reading this decision, then gave up, because I didn't think it was particularly interesting beyond the sheer amount of money involved. So I never saved a copy to my laptop.
Check your history
If you were reading it on your computer's browser, then it's quite possible you have a copy of it in your browser's cache.
No need for WikiLeaks
As courts have regularly ruled, once a document enters the public domain it remains there -- even if it were initially released into the public domain erroneously and later withdrawn.
So if anyone has a copy, they should be able to post it publicly without fear of anyone trying to silence them. No need to go the anonymous publication route of WikiLeaks.
I'm surprised. An anon against WikiLeaks?
Traitor.
This is what Muck Rock is for
Sort of a local WikiLeaks, only focusing on documents obtained legally through FOIA and public-records requests.
Oh the humanity!
Is this seriously a story? Decisions are rountinely impounded to protect confidential and proprietary information about the litigants. This is neither nefarious or uncommon. The next time someone drags you into court (for reasons I'm sure you will find completely understandable at the time) and wants to create a public record about your bank account numbers, ATM passwords, the computer code you are working on to make a living, your sexual history, or the secret formula to your new hot sauce, I'm sure you will tell your lawyer - "oh no, I don't want that impounded, the people deserve to know."
After they've been made public, though?
Don't they usually have a hearing first on whether to put something under wraps?
The humanity
I was reacting more to the notion expressed by some of the other commenters that impoundment, as a practice, was unjust or was somehow reserved for the powerful. Courts do typically address whether a decision is supposed to be impounded before they release it for obvious reasons, so who knows why this one got released (it could have easily been an error in the clerk's office for all we know). However, if the decision was supposed to be impounded to protect one of the litigants, there is nothing wrong with the court pulling it after posting to prevent it from spreading any further.
dershowitz
Not Gene Hackman, an ugly Woody Allen
Dershowitz . . .
. . . used to think that guy had rock solid principles. Cheered him on in his feud against Barnicle. Now? The man disgusts me.
I agree 100%.. a true scumbag
I don't know the man personally, but there have been at least 2 times in my life I have witnessed Dershowitz utter those immortal words;
"Don't you know who I am?"
And both times he was told no, which infuriated him even further. It was fun to watch. Though I did like Maven's, they had great tsimmes.
"Don't you know who I am"?
If you find yourself uttering those words- its too late for you- such narcissism is almost never overcome. Introspection and empathy are impossible at that point- the ego has gone out of control and few who say such things are ever able to reign it back in.
I don't know the man
Larry Fine?