Walter Olson writes at Point Of Law on a “lawsuit in a Moscow commercial court in which the government of Russia is invoking the RICO law — America’s RICO law, that is, not some equivalent on its own books — to demand that Bank of New York pay compensation over a ten-year-old episode in which rogue bank employees opened a channel that allowed Russian exporters and others to move money out of the country without official oversight.”
The case, he suggests, showcases the suspicious lure of tendentious, yet well-compensated cases to some American law professors.
An affidavit by plaintiff’s expert and Harvard lawprof Alan Dershowitz had relied on the incorrect reading of the original press release, raising (at least) the question of how carefully experts such as Dershowitz investigate the factual underpinnings of such suits before proffering their hired opinions. And Notre Dame’s Robert Blakey, along with two other experts retained by Marks to support the suit, had appeared only two years ago as co-counsels in a different case where the brief argued that Russian courts could not provide an adequately impartial forum to a foreign party locked in a dispute with powerful Russian interests. Blakey now says his name appeared on the other brief by mistake and disclaims having any opinion on the impartiality issue.
The best cousel money can buy?
Kudos to you! I hadn’t thought of that!