Good morning, your Honors. I know you're in Jacksonville today and have many important matters to decide. Sorry to bother you again, as I did here and here. But when I woke up this morning, I was too excited to stay in bed. I was thinking, "This might be the day the MDL judges consider my request that they hold one of their upcoming MDL hearings at the federal courthouse in East St. Louis!"
But then I got to thinking about it some more. How exactly does the MDL Panel decide where to hold its hearings? In a moment of heart-stopping panic, I realized I forgot to read the rules. All good lawyers know to read the rules. What do they say about the location of the MDL hearings?
Luckily, I keep a spare copy of the federal rules next to my bed so I can work on memorizing them each night during David Letterman. I went back into the bedroom, opened the rulebook, and found Rule 16.1 of the Rules of Procedure of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which states, "The Panel shall convene whenever and wherever desirable or necessary in the judgment of the Chairman."
Now that's a lot of power someone gave the Chairman. But I understand. There are seven of you, and someone's got to decide where the next fun trip's going to be. Although I realize some consider East St. Louis less than "desirable," at least I've learned who needs to be convinced otherwise. I'm going to get to work on it right now. The Chairman will be hearing from me again soon.
Deserved or no, ESL has the reputation of being the sort of place you stay away from, at least if you're a small-town white boy whose idea of "the big city" is Springfield, IL. :)
Posted by: Kit | March 24, 2004 at 08:20 AM
Maybe if you get them over the ESL, we can take a field trip over from Wash U to see the marvels of an MDL hearing. It would certainly be better than sitting in class!
Posted by: musclehead | March 27, 2004 at 08:07 PM