Law Commons^™

Cryptocurrency’S Clash With Bankruptcy: Insolvent Crypto Exchange Companies Create Difficulties For Courts & Customers, Mary Taylor Stanberry

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

This comment explores the novelty of cryptocurrency, its legal ambiguity in the realms of securities, property, and tax law, and the difficulties arising from insolvent crypto-exchange company’s estates within the context of the United States Bankruptcy Code. For the purposes of this comment, individuals who invested in crypto-exchange platforms will be referred to as “customers” rather than “investors” to avoid potential confusion in the context of 11 U.S.C. § 507 of the Bankruptcy Code. Customers who invested with insolvent crypto-exchange companies are concerned about being last in line for repayment of their investments based on traditional bankruptcy creditor priority. These …

Total Return Meltdown: The Case For Treating Total Return Swaps As Disguised Secured Transactions, Colin P. Marks

Faculty Articles

Archegos Capital Management, at its height, had $35 billion in assets. But in the spring of 2021, in part through its use of total return swaps, Archegos sparked a $30 billion dollar sell-off that left many of the world's largest banks footing the bill. Mitsubishi UFJ Group estimated a loss of $300 million; UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, lost $861 million; Morgan Stanley lost $911 million; Japan's Nomura lost $2.85 billion; but the biggest hit came to Credit Suisse Group AG, which lost $5.5 billion. Archegos itself lost $20 billion over two days. The unique characteristics of total return swaps and …

A Tribute To Gerald S. "Geary" Reamey, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

Geary Reamey began teaching at St. Mary's University School of Law in the Fall 1982 semester. He will have taught for forty-one years at St. Mary's when he retires in May 2023. Geary is known throughout Texas for his work, both as a speaker and as a writer, educating lawyers and judges about Texas criminal law and procedure. He is known among St. Mary's Law alumni for creating and operating, along with the late John Schmolesky, a vibrant criminal law and procedure curriculum, including the first-year Criminal Law course.

"Grossly Negligent Utilities," "Unimaginable Property Damage" And The Scope Of Liability Insurers' Duty To Indemnify Subrogated Property Insurers - Probative And Empirical Inferences From Courts' Divided Subrogation And Indemnification Decision, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Each year, extreme weather, natural disasters and allegedly "grossly negligent" investor-owned utilities concurrently destroy property, persons and lives. In the wake, billions of dollars are lost. Given utilities' general immunity under the judicially created filed-rate or filed-tariff doctrine, residential and commercial owners are precluded from filing ordinary negligence actions against utilities. Thus, many injured consumers try to settle their property-loss claims with their insurers. Some property insurers satisfy the "make-whole" doctrine and cover all losses. Most insurers, however, refuse to settle any claim. Or, they partially compensate the insureds. Yet, an overwhelming majority of property insurers are increasingly filing subrogation …

Tiktok’S Fall From Grace: How Growing Security Concerns In Chinese Technology Affect U.S. Courts And Presidential Successors, Madeline Cartwright

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

In recent years, the United States government has warned that China may use Chinese companies as a vehicle for infiltrating American data security. The U.S. first acted on this warning in 2017 when it effectively banned Huawei—one of the world’s largest telecom companies—from the U.S. market. Then-president Donald Trump subsequently turned the controversy to the popular social media app, TikTok, in an attempted ban over alleged privacy issues. Personal data collection and the legal implications behind trying to ban China-linked apps is an increasingly controversial topic in American politics. This article assesses the lawsuits following these groundbreaking governmental movements, including …

Teaching Bankruptcy Valuations To Law Students And Other Unnatural Acts, Jack F. Williams

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

We often measure that which we can as opposed to that in which we are most interested, and fail to appreciate the difference between the two. Experts may aid a trier of fact in measuring fair market value, fair value, investment value, or some other measure of value; however, courts make determinations with regard to a legal standard, not a financial standard. For example, “fair valuation” may be used for determinations of insolvency or the “fair and equitable” rule may be used for determinations of chapter 11 cramdown plan confirmation disputes. Other measures of value may be used in determining …

Consumer Bankruptcy In The Neoliberal State, Michael D. Sousa

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

The rise of financialized capitalism as a component of the neoliberal state has resulted in our debt-based economy, under which utilizing credit—and incurring significant debt—is a necessary strategy for individuals and families to avoid economic marginality and to maintain some semblance of financial security in an evaporated welfare state. The current capitalist logic of differential accumulation and financial expropriation has created perpetually indebted citizens for whom debt needs to be understood as a social power and as a class relation of domination and exploitation between creditors and debtors. Many consumers who experience unmanageable debt often turn to the bankruptcy process …

The Texas Two-Step: How Corporate Debtors Manipulate Chapter 11 Reorganizations To Dance Around Mass Tort Liability, Laura S. Rossi

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

The purpose of the bankruptcy system is to grant a “fresh start” to the honest but unfortunate debtor, while the purpose of the tort system is to make injured parties “whole” again. As a result, these systems inevitably clash when a business debtor files for bankruptcy while there are pending tort claims against it. The tension between these systems has reached a whole new level following the emergence of a new strategy deemed the “Texas Two-Step.”

A Texas statute leaves open a loophole for otherwise solvent companies to dodge mass tort liabilities and protect their assets, leaving injured plaintiffs with …

E-Museletter: January 2023, William Taylor Muse Law Library

Museletter

This Issue:

Director's Message

Library News

Featured Resources

Materials Update

Things to Consider

Student Services Corner

The New Judicial Power Grab, Josh Chafetz

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

What Cash Bail Left Behind: St. Louis’ Bail System, Three Years After Reform, Brianna Coppersmith

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Consequentialist Retribution’S Real-World Ramifications And How It Impacts Judicial Credibility, Mikayla J. Lewison

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

“With Friends Like These . . . .” Doctors And Nurses Criticizing Co-Employed Colleagues. Are These Criticisms Admissible As Vicarious Opposing Party’S Statements?, Marc D. Ginsberg

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Healthcare provider incivility includes non-collegial conduct such as physicians criticizing co-employed physicians when speaking with patients. This conduct is, obviously, disruptive, and does not help to establish productive, collegial, employee relationships.

Additionally, this incivility may have evidentiary consequences in medical/hospital negligence litigation. If the healthcare providers are employed by a hospital or other healthcare organization, the criticisms of co-employed colleagues which are communicated to patients may be admissible against the employer in medical/hospital negligence litigation as vicarious opposing party’s statements. This paper explores this evidentiary curiosity.

Legitimacy Without Legality, Or Bassok

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Beyond the controversy on women’s right to elect an abortion, in Dobbs v. Jackson there is a deep yet hidden disagreement over the Court’s source of legitimacy. The majority judgment speaks of the Court’s source of legitimacy in terms of expertise, while the dissenting opinion speaks of it in terms of public support. My starting point for exposing this disagreement is the divergence between the accurate quote of Alexander Hamilton’s famous dictum from the Federalist No. 78 in Justice Alito’s majority opinion, and dissenting Justice Breyer’s paraphrase of the same dictum in the Dobbs oral arguments. The paraphrased version replaced …

The Marketplace Of Ideas Is In Chaos. Chaos Theory Would Like A Word, Jared Schroeder

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The marketplace of ideas is the Supreme Court’s dominant tool for rationalizing expansive First Amendment safeguards. The model, however, is fundamentally flawed. Enlightenment-based assumptions about truth and human rationality that justices installed into the theory’s foundations have been criticized by scholars and, in the era of powerful algorithms and generative AI, are becoming even more suspect. The space is in a state of chaos. Perhaps chaos theory can help. The theory provides a lens through which to revise marketplace theory and therefore re-examine First Amendment free-expression rationales. Chaos theory identifies that Enlightenment-era positivistic, reductionist thinking fails to account for variables …

Is It Really A Man’S World? Using Real-Life Negotiations To Reframe The Negotiation Gender Gap, Michael Conklin, Roya Choupani, Erdoğan Doğdu

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Much has been written regarding the gender negotiation gap. However, the existing literature frequently involves only hypothetical negotiations where the participants do not experience the effects of the negotiation as one would in real life. This first-of-its-kind study utilizes a dataset of over 1,000 negotiations from the television show Pawn Stars to analyze the role gender plays in negotiations. Negotiation best practices analyzed in this study include the willingness to walk away from the negotiation, use of a counteroffer, use of objective language, and the implementation of cognitive anchoring by making extreme initial offers. The results shed light on traditional …

A New Tool In Police-Civilian Mediations: Conflict Coaching And Its Potential Benefits, Beatrice Connaghan

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Communities across the country have implemented mediation programs as an alternative dispute resolution process for civilian complaints against police officers. These programs vary from state to state, but certain challenges exist in each, such as ensuring neutrality, encouraging participants to engage fully in the mediation, and navigating subconscious biases held by officers and civilians. In response to these issues, this article considers whether conflict coaching opportunities within these programs have the potential to improve their effectiveness in resolving disputes and better support mediation participants. Conflict coaching is an emerging conflict navigation tool and thus there is limited research on its …

Status To Be Determined: Analyzing Indian Status Within The General Crimes Act In A Post-Castro-Huerta Landscape, Joshua Zoeller

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The General Crimes Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1152, is an older statute that pertains to federal criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed in Indian Country. The General Crimes Act is limited in scope as it only applies to cases where the alleged perpetrator of the crime is not a Native American but the victim is determined to be a Native American. But who decides how to label each party as “Indian” or “non-Indian” (to borrow language used in the courts)? And is ‘Indian status’ an element of the statute that the prosecution must prove or is it reserved for …

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Assisting Incarcerated People With Collective Action, Daniel J. Canon

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Probable Cause Reform As Bail Reform, Wendy R. Calaway

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Compulsion, Indoctrination, And Retribution In State Pledge Of Allegiance Statutes, Allan Walker Vestal

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Insider: Laura Coates’S Just Pursuit And Critiquing Prosecution From Within, Dana Mulhauser

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Preventing Gamesmanship: Bipa Class Action Litigation In The State And Federal Forums, Mary Fletcher

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of Daca: Balancing The Rights Of Undocumented Individuals And Constitutional Considerations, Olivia Dixon

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.