What is Palimony?

If you read gossip columns, you may have come across the term "palimony" in the past and wondered what, exactly, it is. Palimony is a portmanteau derived from the words "pal" and "alimony," and describes a settleMent in which one former partner pays money to the other. It is not an actual legal term, but is rather a sort of joke meant to describe a rather uncommon legal agreeMent.

If you're still not understanding it, imagine this: you have been in a long-term relationship with a woman, Karen, whom you live with, but are not married to. If you had made promises to support her over the years, she may be able to sue you in court for a support settleMent. The more technical term for palimony is a "non-marital relationship contract," although that term lacks something of the catchiness of "palimony." However, this is a more legally descriptive term, as it describes the relationship as being not a marriage, but with some of the agreeMents that serve as the underpinnings for marriage: love, support, etc.

The problem with securing a palimony settlement is that there is a lack of an actual contract. The person suing for palimony needs to be able to prove that there was some promise for financial support, which can be difficult to do. In an actual marriage, financial support is part of the contract, which makes alimony much easier to claim.

The neologism "palimony" was actually coined in regards to a court case involving Michelle Triola Marvin's case against Hollywood star Lee Marvin, whom she claimed had made promises to support her for the rest of her life. However, she encountered the problem most associated with palimony cases now, namely that it was virtually impossible to prove such promises were made. The California Supreme Court ruled that the standard common law marriage rules applied in the case, namely that Michelle Triola Marvin was entitled only to the property she had brought into the relationship.

Because of the nature of palimony, it is frequently employed in cases of long-term gay relationships. Liberace was sued by his former partner (a relationship Liberace himself denied) in such a case, as was fellow pianist Van Cliburn. Martina Navratilova was also the defendant in a palimony case. Comedian Bill Maher recently had such a case brought against him, which was dismissed.

For more information about divorce and alimony payments, visit westpalmbeach-divorcelawyer.com.

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Supreme Court Limits Antitrust Suits

In a victory for major U.S. companies, a unanimous Supreme Court has set a strict standard of proof for cases alleging predatory bidding in violation of federal antitrust law. The court held that the standard it applied in 1993 to predatory selling also applies to predatory buying.

That means that a plaintiff alleging predatory bidding must satisfy a two-prong test. First, it must show that the defendant bid so high a price on raw materials that it would lose money on sales of its products. Second, it must show that the defendant would later recoup its losses after driving its competitors out of business.

The February 20th decision, Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber Co., reversed a million verdict against the lumber company which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had affirmed. It was written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The case involved a claim by Ross-Simmons, a Vancouver, Washington sawmill, that Weyerhaeuser used its dominant position in the Northwest timber market to drive it out of business. Ross-Simmons contended that Weyerhaeuser bid up the price of sawlogs to a level that prevented Ross-Simmons from competing.

To prove this at trial, Ross-Simmons presented evidence that Weyerhaeuser controlled a dominant share of the sawlog-purchasing market, sawlog prices rose during the predatory period, and Weyerhaeuser's profits declined during the same period. The jury returned a verdict for Ross-Simmons of million, which was trebled to million.
In affirming the verdict, the 9th Circuit rejected Weyerhaeuser's contention that the two-pronged standard applied in claims of predatory pricing - set by the Supreme Court in its 1993 decision, Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. - should be applied also to claims of predatory bidding.

The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the Brooke Group test does apply. In so finding, the court noted the parallels between a company's exercise of monopoly power in predatory pricing and a predatory bidding scheme's reliance on monopsony power, or "market power on the buy side of the market."

"If all goes as planned," Justice Thomas explained, "the predatory bidder will reap monopsonistic profits that will offset any losses suffered in bidding up input prices."
Given these parallels, the court said, predatory-pricing and predatory-bidding claims "are analytically similar" and "similar legal standards should apply to claims of monopolization and to claims of monopsonization."

"Both claims involve the deliberate use of unilateral pricing measures for anticompetitive purposes," Justice Thomas wrote. "And both claims logically require firms to incur short-term losses on the chance that they might reap supracompetitive profits in the future."
These similarities led the court to adapt its two-pronged Brooke Group test to apply to predatory-bidding claims.

The first prong, Justice Thomas said, requires the plaintiff to prove "that the alleged predatory bidding led to below-cost pricing of the predator's outputs. That is, the predator's bidding on the buy side must have caused the cost of the relevant output to rise above the revenues generated in the sale of those outputs."

The second prong requires the plaintiff to prove "that the defendant has a dangerous probability of recouping the losses incurred in bidding up input prices through the exercise of monopsony power. Absent proof of likely recoupMent, a strategy of predatory bidding makes no economic sense because it would involve short-term losses with no likelihood of offsetting long-term gains."

In setting so strict a standard, Justice Thomas noted that there may be a "multitude" of legitimate, procompetitive reasons for a company to engage in higher bidding. "[T]he risk of chilling procompetitive behavior with too lax a liability standard is as serious here as it was in Brook Group," Thomas said. "Consequently, only higher bidding that leads to below-cost pricing in the relevant output market will suffice as a basic for liability for predatory bidding."

The decision is Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber Co., 549 U.S. ___ (2007).

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Supreme Court

From Publishers Weekly

It's not laws or constitutional theory that rule the High Court, argues this absorbing group profile, but quirky men and women guided by political intuition. New Yorker legal writer Toobin (The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson) surveys the Court from the Reagan administration onward, as the justices wrestled with abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. Despite a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. The real power, he argues, belonged to supreme swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor, who decided important cases with what Toobin sees as an almost primal attunement to a middle-of-the-road public consensus. By contrast, he contends, conservative justices Rehnquist and Scalia ended up bitter old men, their rigorous constitutional doctrines made irrelevant by the moderates' compromises. The author deftly distills the issues and enlivens his narrative of the Court's internal wranglings with sharp thumbnail sketches (Anthony Kennedy the vain bloviator, David Souter the Thoreauvian ascetic) and editorials (inept and unsavory is his verdict on the Court's intervention in the 2000 election). His savvy account puts the supposedly cloistered Court right in the thick of American life. (A final chapter and epilogue on the 2006–2007 term, with new justices Roberts and Alito, was unavailable to PW.) (Sept. 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

It Now to this time - 

The last several years have delivered a rich harvest of outstanding studies of the Supreme Court. In addition to some highly technical works by political scientists, journalists have contributed studies of remarkable value and insight. I am thinking here of Greenburg's incisive "Supreme Conflict"; Greenhouse's biography of Justice Blackmun; and Biskupic's perceptive study of Justice O'Connor to name a few (not to mention Jeffrey Rosen -- who is a George Washington law professor but who also writes for the popular press and presents PBS programs as well). The good fortune of we "Court watchers" continues in this exceptionally discerning study by Jeffrey Toobin who writes for the "New Yorker" among other publications.

Toobin covers roughtly the period of 1992 through the 2006-07 term of the Court. His focus is similar to that of Jan Crawford Greenburg in "Supreme Conflict": the frustration of conservatives at their inability to secure a Court that would implement their agenda on abortion, public support of religion, and diminution of federalism despite a conservative majority on the Court. But as both books so well explain, all that changed with the coming of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito--as some recent decisions which Toobin discusses in his final chapters indicate. What is interesting is that the same members made up the Court between 1994 and 2005; yet the dynamics of decisionmaking changed dramatically.

To trace this evolution, Toobin discusses the Federalist Society; the Thomas nomination; the pragmatism of Justice O'Connor; Jay Sekulow and his "American Center for Law and Justice";and the perplexing Clinton White House nominations of Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. Toobin uses an effective technique of discussing each Justice in detail not all at the beginning of the book, but at the point in the narrative when that Justice is the central actor. Is is obvious that the author has had the assistance of several of the Justices (in this regard, the book reminds one a bit of "The Brethren") including I would surmise: O'Connor (extensively), Breyer, Souter, and possibly Stevens and even Kennedy. He also interviewed more than 75 law clerks. Hence, the reader is privy to some rather remarkable views of the Justices as seen by their fellows--a major strength of the book. Strangely enough, Chief Justice Rehnquist, whom one would assume would be a central character in this drama, earns relatively little attention. In fact, one of Toobin's most interesting assertions (along with the contention that Souter was close to resigning after Bush v. Gore) is that in the later years of his tenure, Rehnquist really lost his fire to remake law and became content to masterfully administer the Supreme and lower courts.






One section of the book is devoted to Bush v. Gore, a topic to which Toobin has devoted an entire book, and it is a superb analysis of that unfortunate episode. In the third section of the book, much attention is paid to Justice Kennedy, a puzzling character at times, but one who has assumed O'Connor's spot as the swing vote. Also of interest is O'Connor's growing frustration with Bush and the GOP, despite her central role in Bush v. Gore. The final section focuses upon the Bush White House and its maneuvers in filling the Rehnquist and O'Connor vacancies, another outstanding job by Toobin. The most interesting concept raised in this discussion is the Roberts' Court view of stare decisis--namely, does it still exist? Geoffrey Stone (former dean of the University of Chicago law school and provost at Chicago) has spoken eloquently and perceptively about this same phenomenon.

The book runs around 350 pages; it has a number of color photographs, 8 pages of notes, and a brief three-page bibliography. By any measure, Toobin has done as insightful and thorough a job in this study as one could imagine. The writing is crisp, does not bog down in legalistic details, and directs its focus where it should--the Justices as a small group together for the long haul and entrusted with making the most fundamental decisions of American democracy.
 

From Bookmarks Magazine

The Nine is a welcome addition to the spate of recent Supreme Court histories (see Jan Crawford Greenburg's Supreme Conflict, ***1/2 May/June 2007). Informative and authoritative, Jeffrey Toobin's account draws on exclusive interviews with the principals (one critic cited a possible breach of secrecy) and offers colorful anecdotes about the members of the Court. The most important parts of the book explore Sandra Day O'Connor's critical swing votes, Clinton's impeachment hearings, and the Court's role in Bush v. Gore. "The tragedy," Toobin concludes, "was not that it led to Bush's victory, but the inept and unsavory manner that the justices exercised their power." Only David J. Garrow, a Supreme Court historian, faulted Toobin's "debatable opinions" and disdain for various justices. Well written, though chronologically disjointed, The Nine is, overall, a timely and important examination of the Court's past-and its future.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.