Former federal prosecutor Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo Law School, discusses Donald Trump’s claim that he is entitled to presidential immunity in the case charging him with trying to overturn the 2020 election. Bloomberg legal reporter Ava Benny-Morrison discusses the beginning of the testimony of the state’s star witness against Sam Bankman-Fried. Bloomberg law reporter Dan Papscun discusses the legal “hot tub.” June Grasso hosts.
This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio, And did you see today that deranged Jack Smith. He's the prosecutor.
He's a deranged person.
Wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment, wants to take away my right of speaking freely and openly.
Donald Trump never seems to miss an opportunity to ridicule Jack Smith, the Special Council who's bringing charges against the former president in two cases into jurisdictions. The trial date in DC on charges of trying to overturn the twenty twenty election is just five months away, but Trump is looking for a pass by arguing he has absolute presidential immunity, and his attorneys have asked federal Judge Tanya Chuckkin to toss out the indictment. Joining me is former federal prosecutor Jessica Romp, a professor at Cardozo Law School. Jessica tell us about Trump's claim of presidential immunity.
So their argument is that Trump enjoys absolute presidential immunity from prosecution because he claims that the indictment brought by the Special Council related to January sixth is based on what they contend are his official acts while president. I would submit this is the most significant motion that Trump has filed to date in all of the cases that are pending against him, and that the court's decisions on this motion could establish new law regarding whether a president is beyond the reach of the criminal law for acts taken while president, even after he leaves office.
What do you make of his attorney's arguments? They make several levels of arguments. Are they convincing well?
The motion is well written, and unlike some arguments we've seen from Trump's counsel and some of the cases brought against him, this one is well written, it's well presented, and it does present a very important issue of law, one that the courts will have to take seriously. No court has ever squarely decided the question of whether a president enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution at all, because there's never been a precedent for criminal charges being filed against a former president. But there are two issues that the courts will have to address in ruling on the motion. The first is whether, in fact presidents do enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken during the presidency, and if they find that there is such a thing as absolute immunity for president from criminal prosecution, then they would have to apply that doctrine of immunity to the facts presented in this case. If the court told that there is no absolute immunity for a president from prosecution even after they leave office, then they don't necessarily have to address this second question of whether or not Trump's actions fall within the scope of such immunity if they find that there isn't such an unity.
This motion was just filed last Thursday, so prosecutors haven't had time to respond. But what do you envision their argument will be against the claims of presidential immunity.
I imagine what they're going to argue is first that the courts should not extend the doctrine it's a judge made doctrine of immunity for presidents to the criminal context, and we can talk about why. I think they have very good arguments that the court should not recognize immunity from criminal prosecution for former presidents. But secondarily, they will argue that even if the court were to find that in some cases a president could enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken while president, that it would not apply to the conduct that is alleged in this case, because if the courts were to follow the doctrine they have applied in the context of civil suits for damages brought against a former president, which asks whether or not the conduct in question falls within the outer perimeter of the president's official response stability, the Special Council would argue that these actions do not fall within that outer perimeter.
Trump's attorneys say the judge should look at Trump's actions on their face to determine if they're official, and also that even if they were a mix of official and campaign related, they should still be covered by the legal shield the immunity. Do you agree with that?
So, in asking whether or not the actions fall within the outer perimeter of the president's official responsibility, one has to ask at what level of generality do we look at the acts. Trump's attorneys invite the court to look at them at a very high level of generality and say, these are statements on matters of public concern. In his tweets and his public statements, for example, at the rally on January sixth, he is communicating with state officials about elections and communicating with members of the Department of Justice about whether or not the presidential election was conducted consistent with law. At that level of generality, it's easy to characterize his actions as within the outer perimeter of the president functions to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. But when you look at a more granular level, and also in context of all the actions that are alleged in the indictment taken together, it's much easier to characterize them not as being within the outer perimeter of Trump's official duties as president, but instead as crimes or part of a course of conduct that was a conspiracy to overturn the election and obstruct the official proceedings of Congress and defraud the United States, as alleged in the indictment. And so the case law does hold that the court should not look into the motives behind a particular action and instead look at the acts objectively and whether or not they further a presidential function. But saying that the court should not look at motives does not mean that the court can't look at the statements and the actions in context.
Trump's attorneys also point to his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial in the days after the January sixth attack and argue that he can't be tried again after the Senate failed to convict and remove him from office.
I do not think the court will agree with that analysis. The language that they point to has to do with I think the court would find whether a president could be indicted and prosecuted while in office, and if one goes back and considers, for example, the analysis in the Office of Legal Council memo that was prepared initially in nineteen seventy three during the Watergate era, which looked into whether or not a sitting president could be subject to prosecution while in office. That memo, which was then reaffirmed in two thousand by the Office of Legal Council, essentially held that because of separation of powers concerned primarily, a sitting president could not be prosecuted, but instead would have to be subject to impeachment first and removed from office before the president would be amenable to criminal prosecution. What Trump's lawyers are doing, in effect, is taking that same language that provides for the impeachment of a president and then contemplates that a president could be criminally prosecuted after being removed from office to say that the exclusive remedy for a president who commits crimes while in office is to be impeached, and that a criminal prosecution could only follow as an additional consequence if the president had been in fact convicted in the Senate. I think that's not a fair reading of that language, and I don't think a court would agree with it.
Has Judge Chuckkin ruled on an issue involving presidential immunity before.
She has in a different context. It was a case, I believe, involving former President Obama who had been sued by individuals. She held that he enjoyed absolute immunity from that civil action against him in his individual capacity. She has not ruled on a question of immunity from criminal prosecution. In a case that presents many of the same facts in the civil context. Judge Meta from the DC District Court ruled that former President Trump did not enjoy absolute immunity from civil prosecution with respect to many of the claims in a case that was brought by members of Congress and members of the Capitol Police who were injured in the January sixth ryot. That case is pending before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. It's been pending since December, and that case I think will be very instructive to Judge Chutkin in ruling on whether or not if she gets to the question of whether much of the conduct alleged in the Special Council of January sixth indictment falls within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. If the DC Circuit renders an opinion holding that it does not fall within the outer perimeter, that would be very instructive to her if she gets to that problem. Obviously, in the meantime, she may also find persuasive the ruling of her fellow judge on her court Dutch Meta that these actions largely did not fall within that outer perimeter.
Tump is the first former president to face a federal indictment. So this is uncharted territory. What has the Supreme Court ruled in the past in the area of presidential immunity?
So the Supreme Court has ruled on presidential immunity in the context of damages, actions and civil suits. In the most important cases a case called Nixon versus Fitzgerald, in which the Court said there is a doctrine of absolute presidential immunity that shields the president even after he leaves office, from damage's actions brought by individuals for actions taken within the outer perimeter of the president's official responsibilities. The court in that case drew on precedents from the con text of other executive officials, such as prosecutors, but it also looked to immunity doctrine that court had developed in the context of judges, other officials whom the court said would if they were not provided immunity, would be potentially subject to damages suits brought by aggrieved individuals who would contend that these officials had, in the course of their duties injured them and that they were entitled to damages. And those cases that recognized absolute immunity for prosecutors and judges that essentially, if we don't adopt this doctrine, these individuals who perform these very public and important duties will be distracted and concerned as they perform their duties about the potential of being subject to innumerable suits. And so essentially we have to balance the potential interest that some civil litigants would have in collecting damages against such individuals rightfully against the public interest in preserving the ability of these officials to do their jobs in the public interest without being overly concerned about being subject to suit in the future. And the Court recognized that there's obviously a loss in some cases for people who would have meritorious claims, but that it was counterbalanced by the public interest in having these officials be able to perform their duties without such concerns and distractions, And so in Nixon versus Fitzgerald, the Court said, essentially, we're going to adopt that reasoning which applies with great force to the president of the United States, who, in addition, as to whom there's real separation of powers concerns if the courts were to intrude upon the executive's ability to perform his functions as president. But the Court again in Nixon versus Fitzgerald, talked about how those cases did not opine on the availability of criminal prosecution, and in fact, in Nixon versus Fitzgerald, the Court was very clear to say, and it has said in subsequent cases on the question of absolute presidential immunity, that those cases are limited to the question of civil damages in civil suits brought by private parties. So I think there's a very strong argument to be made that the Court would not extend that doctrine of immunity to criminal prosecution.
What about the case of Trump the Vance where the Supreme Court ruled on the Manhattan DA's grand jury subpoena to Mazar's Trump's accounting firm.
I think that's instructive as well, and that builds on this idea that the Court sees a distinction between criminal cases, including investigations and prosecutions, and civil lawsuits. In the Trump Vivance case, I mean that involved the subpoena from a state grand jury seeking documents from Trump while he was president, and he asserted absolute immunity and that he shouldn't have to respond to that state grand jury subpoena, and the Court said, the public interest in criminal investigations is really paramount. It's a similar interest that the Court talked about in the United States versus Nixon when President Nixon as president was ordered to comply with a subpoena from the grand jury working with the Special prosecutor Archibald Cox, seeking evidence in the grand jury's investigation related to Watergate. So in both cases, the Court has talked about, essentially the paramount public interest in criminal prosecutions and investigations, and how that is really quite distinct from the private interests involved in civil lawsuits against the former president or president.
So Trump is all about delay with these cases, and his lawyer said they'll try to take this to the Supreme Court if they lose at the DC's Circuit rulings denying motions to dismiss an indictment normally wouldn't be appealable until after a verdict, right, But is this different?
This is different. And that's one of the reasons why I think this motion is so significant, not just on the merits and for the new law that it could estound Bush once it's decided, but for the fact that the motion, because of its nature, and the fact that I think it is going to be deemed immediately appealable because of the so called collateral order doctrine, could derail the trial simply by going through the appellate process, and the time it will take for the matter to be decided, and how that may well go beyond the March twenty twenty four trial date that's been established under the collateral ordered doctrine, a decision by a court that can't be effectively reviewed on appeal from a final judgment that involves an important issue that separate from the merits of the action, can be appealed before the action is fully resolved. And I think that the claim that the former president is advancing that he's entitled to absolute presidential immunity from prosecution would meet that standard. It's independent from the merits of the case and whether or not he's guilty of the charges. And if he were right that he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution, that interest wouldn't be vindicated by being resolved after a conviction. If there were a conviction, he's effectively arguing I shouldn't even have to stand trial. And so I think that there is a very good chance that the appellate courts will here that issue before any trial.
Jessica, if you look at this and we don't have the prosecutions brief yet, would you say that it's an uphill battle for Trump.
I expect that the trial court and the DC Circuit will rule against Trump. But when it gets to the US Supreme Court, and I do anticipate the Supreme Court would take this case, then it's a much harder outcome to predict. I think on the merits that the Supreme Court should rule against him, including on this threshold issue of whether or not the doctrine of absolute presidential immunity extends to criminal prosecutions. But it's hard to predict how this Supreme Court will rule. And if they get to the second question, which is whether or not these acts fall within the outer perimeter of the presidential functions and duties, then again it's going to turn on how the Court chooses to characterize the acts at what level of generality, and whether they look at them collectively and in context or essentially separate them out individually the way the former president has invited them to. I also think that there's a sort of a larger context here that may influence how the Court perceives the consequences of its ruling decisions about recognizing immunity, and to what extent do require courts to consider the consequences of ruling one way or the other explicitly in terms of thinking about the impact on the public interest and seeing certain kinds of cases proceed, and also the impact on the president's ability to carry out their functions without being overly concerned about the consequences down the road. In terms of lawsuits or prosecutions. Here we have an individual, the former president who's the charge defendant in this case, who says that he should not be subject to prosecution in part because of the impact on future presidents and thinking about their ability to carry out their duties without being distracted by worries that they themselves would be hauled into court subsequently and charge. And he is running for president and saying on the campaign trail that if re elected, he would direct his attorney general to prosecute his political enemies, including now President Biden. And so I do think that the part of the mix and the court evaluating the consequences of its ruling would be if they do rule that a former president can be subject to criminal prosecution while acts while president, will that mean that we would subsequently see future prosecutions of former presidents sort of ramp up in the way that we are seeing essentially an escalation in the threat of impeachment for presidents while in office.
Yeah, that's an interesting point. I want to ask you about it hearing next week on the prosecution's motion for a gag order on Trump. What are the things that hast away when considering a gag order.
The judge is going to be mindful of the prohibition essentially on imposing a prior restraint on an individual from exercising their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech. In this case, the individual involved also is running for presidents, so he has contended that his speech about the case overlaps with his political speech and furtherance of his candidacy. So on the one hand, the judge is going to be very careful not to run a foul of the former president's First Amendment rights, and courts have generally been very hesitant about any order that in advance restrains an individual from exercising their First Amendment rights. On the other hand, the judge has a duty and is authorized by law to take appropriate action to preserve the fair administration of justice. And there are local court rules that effectively mirror the rules of professional conduct that tell lawyers that they shall not make statements extra judicially outside of court that pose a material risk of materially prejudicing a preceding. And so the question before the judge with respect to the former president is to what extent can she impose an order on him as a party as opposed to a lawyer to try to ensure that he does not materially prejudice that proceeding that is unfolding before her and will eventually lead to a trial. So she has to balance those concerns, and one of the things she'll be taking into account is the record of his statements up until this point that pose the risk of materially prejudicing the preceding, including by intimidating witnesses. And so she's going to be looking, I think, very carefully at the record of his statements up until this point, whether they appear to have crossed that line or not, which and if they have, then she's on a much firmer footing and restraining him. Oh, whether they don't come close to that line, in which case perhaps it would not be warranted for hitting her pose restraint on it.
It'll be interesting to see if she follows in the footsteps of the New York judge who issued a limited gag order last week. Thanks so much for your insights, Jessica. That's Professor Jessica Roth of Cardozo Law School. Coming up next, the star witness testifies against Sam Bankman Freed. This is Bloomberg. Caroline Ellison took the witness stand this afternoon and within minutes pointed to her former boss and boyfriend, Sam Bankman Freed as the man responsible for the loss of billions in customer funds and the collapse of the cryptocurrency platform FTX. Ellison, who made a deal with prosecutors in exchange for her testimony, portrayed Bankman Freed as the brains behind the company operation, who knowingly transferred more than fourteen billion dollars of FTX customer funds to the sister Hedge fund, directed her to ignore concerns about auditors, and inflated Alameda's balance sheet to secure loans. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Ava. Benny Morrison, who's covering the trial, set the scene for us. Ava. What was it like when Ellison walked into the courtroom?
Caroline Ellison walked in this afternoon. She was with a couple of FBI agents. She was wearing a gray suit jacket in a pink dress. She didn't look at Sam when she walked past him and took a seat in the witness box. Sam just briefly glanced at her as she walked past. There was a moment where she was asked to point out Sam, and she took quite a long time to figure out where he was sitting in the courtroom and then acknowledged that he's sitting there. He was wearing a suit before getting into her testimony.
And right off the bat, she admitted to crimes just as the prior witness.
Had done exactly, and I think the prosecutors do that to be open and upfront with the jewelry that these corporating witnesses have pled guilty to crimes. They've admitted to being involved with some of the allegations that Sam Bacon Freed is used of as well. So she said, yes, he directed me to commit crimes. She said that she committed fraud and she was involved in using STX customer funds through a hedge fund which was CEO of before it collapsed, Almeter Research, and she knew that some of those funds were being used to repay creditors. She also spoke about how some financial statements were manipulated, essentially given to investors, which helped Bankment Free raise more money as FTX was in real financial trouble.
Did she blame bankman Freed for everything? Did she take any responsibility?
She did? She spoke about how she came to know Alameda had these special privileges on FTX, and she spoke about outlining the probability of Alameter being unable to pay some of its loans back to creditors and returning some of those customer funds to FGX a couple of years or at least a year before FtF collapsed. So, while she was alleging that Sam was fully aware that Alameda had this relationship with FTX, and that she had conversations with him about it and they discussed figures and went through spreadsheets together, she seemed to be pretty open and detailed about her own involvement in all of this as well. She spoke quite confidently, She was very matter of fact. She answered each question in a very detailed way.
Was Sam Bagmunfreed the person who was directing her at all times? According to her testimony.
Yes, she said a number of times that Sam told her to do X or Sam directed her to do Y. Was very clear from her testimony that she was alleging he was the brains of the operation and called the shots on what she should be doing. She also said that you know, Sam wasn't CEO when she's CEO of Elament Research. She often turned to him for advice and guidance on making big decisions.
And how did she describe their relationship.
She said when she first met Sam when she was a trader at Jane Street at Trading in New York and then went to work for Alimeter Research for him, she said that they dated or off for a few years. She said that it was a little bit awkward dating her boss, and it led to some awkward situations. She said that she felt like he didn't pay her enough attention in their personal relationship and she wasn't really getting enough out of it, and I think that sort of complicated her professional relationship with him.
We've heard a lot about her notes and a tape recording.
Yes, this is the interesting thing with Ellison. Obviously, she is the prosecution style witness and she has a lot of powerful testimony, but she also comes with a lot of contemporaneous notes that she made of meetings with other executives, even her personal diary. Prosecutors also have a recording of an all hands meeting that she had with staff Alimeter in November last year, when the company and FTX were falling apart. At the scene, so she comes with a lot of that evidence as well. We haven't really got into the nitty gritty of personal diary notes. There were a few references to do lists that she would make in Google docs, so that evidence was pretty dry today, and we were really in the weeds going through balance sheets and probabilities of whether Alameter could afford to repay their loans.
Did anything stand out to you that, you know, you said, wow.
There was one point where the prosecutor was leading her through a series of spreadsheets that she had created and spoke to Sam about, and in that she did a bit of a calculation on whether they should invest three billion dollars in some further investments, and she looked at the impact that potential investment would have on Alameda's ability to repay some of its loans, and in one scenario, if they did the investments, there was one hundred percent probability they wouldn't be able to repay them loans. And she said that she showed this to Sam and he went ahead with some of these major investments. Anyway, I thought that was a pretty interesting and typical part of her evidence because it seems to suggest that he knew how high the stakes were for Alameda and what was at risk in terms of repaying loans, that he went ahead and well the douce Anyway.
Thanks Aver. We'll check back with you tomorrow when her testimony continues. That's Bloomberg Legal Reporter Ava Benny Morrison. This is Bloomberg. What exactly is a legal hot tub. It's not as diverting or exciting as it may sound, and it really has nothing to do with hot tubs. It's formerly called concurrent expert testimony or a concurrent expert evidence proceeding, and it's more like a discussion among experts. If you haven't heard about it, it's because it's a novelty in US courts. Here to tell us all about it and how it got. That name is Dan Paskin, Bloomberg Law Reporter. So tell us exactly what this legal hot tub is, Dan, Yes, So you can kind of think.
Of it as a debate between experts, often economic experts, but not necessarily where instead of one sitting on the stand in a trial or on the pre trial hearing and getting examined and then cross examined by one size attorneys and then the other both or all of the witnesses sit together before the judge and are basically prompted to debate each other on a series of predetermined topics or questions.
So, tell us about this hot tub. It doesn't sound very legal to say, even legal batub tell us what federal Judge James Donado used it for in San Francisco this summer.
So Donado held the second hot sub he's held in this case. This is a lawsuit alleging Google basically has anti competitive control over the payment systems in its play store, which is like if you have an Android zone, it's where you get your apps. And the second hot tub was to basically determine whether the plaintiffs experts have reached kind of valid models for figuring out how much consumers were harmed by these play store policies and what the impact was on the market. Pretty central evidence for a trial to figure out whether Google, in fact, you know, overcharge customers and buy how much if it did.
Is the judge the only one asking questions? Or are the lawyers asking questions? Is their cross talk between the experts.
There's a lot of crosstalk. It's almost exclusively Tonauto asking the questions. He allows the attorneys a couple attorneys to sit with the experts in the hot tub, but they're really only allowed to ask questions right at the end if they have kind of clarifying questions for either expert. Otherwise, to Notato prompts one side or the other. We'll say like, yeah, I read your report, I had this question about this, you know, one part of the model, and then we'll prompt the other experts like do you disagree with that? So why it got pretty heated. Several times there was I don't know if you would call it yelling, but definitely raised voices. The court reporter had to interrupt I think three separate times because two experts and the judge were talking over each other and she couldn't transcribe that in real time. So it definitely is a little more chaotic than your average court oral testimony.
Is this because the expert testimony is so complex for the judge to understand? Or is it because this is quicker? I mean, what's the real reason behind this?
The reason do not outheld the hantab was to answer this Google motion over whether the experts should be allowed to testify or not. And Donato told me in an interview afterwards that it's very useful for him understanding their testimony and their models. It is really complicated, and that's a big reason why judges are deploying hot tubs, that they haven't deployed too many of them. But it's not just that's the complexity. It's also faster. To another said, it's a lot cleaner compared like normal expert testimony, non hot tub testimony to a game of telesphone. Right, you've got the expert on the stand, you've got their attorney questioning them, and then you've got the judge hearing their answers. So it's kind of filtered through what questions the attorney wants to ask and then how the economist in this case answers those questions. The judge might not necessarily be getting the exact answers they're looking for and instead getting, you know, the version that the economist wants to give, the response to the questions the attorney wants to ask. And so by having this hot tub, it's a lot more direct and clear. The judge can ask really complex questions and get, you know, exactly what they want out of them, and kind of follow up if you have dodges the question or doesn't answers have factorily and they're economists to typically get hired for these cases. One who's done several of these told me that it's pretty hard for an attorney to cross examine them, to kind of catch them in errors or obfuscations, because the stuff is so complex and because it involves, you know, so many years of study. Really the only person in the courtroom can really call them on their mistakes or on lack of clarity is the other economists. So it also means that you have the only other person able to make these calls in the room with them and able to disagree in real time.
Do attorneys object to this because it's taking them out of the equation with a very important witness or witnesses?
Yeah, So, I mean, like these are arguably some of the most important players in a trial, especially in anti trust but also in I imagine you know, patent cases and elsewhere, and what they come up with can really determine not just whether a company or an individual is liable or not, but also you know, monetarily how much they have to pay. The attorneys aren't the biggest fans of having to step back and basically watch this thing happen. But once I spoke to you also appreciated how useful it was for the judge and again how clean the whole thing was. But yeah, you're right, they definitely losed quite a bit of control. They're relegated to preparing for the hot tub and then you know, trying to pick up pieces afterwards. Probably the most helpless they are throughout the proceedings.
So where does that term hot tub come from Australia?
Which kind of you when you learn that makes quite a bit of sense. I feel like you can you can definitely imagine for one of an Australian accents saying hot At least it makes sense to me.
Right.
These originally pretty much the right around the beginning of the decade, and it was deployed originally by the Australian Competition Tribunal and their kind of anti trust dedicated port system basically for this reason to get a clearer understanding of what experts we're talking about and make them really drill down on their agreements and their discy agreements. It was pretty successful there. They've modified it quite a bit. I don't think it's technically called the hot ted there more, but it's effectively the way still run the way that's Nato Rana in his courtroom, and it's taken off in a bunch of other countries in Europe, in South Africa, Canada has used. It's mostly been unpopular. In the US, We've only found a little less than two dozen instances of federal judges using on although it's been to play an arbitration a little bit, but it hasn't it hasn't taken off.
Yeah, and I'm wondering have there been any appeals based on the fact that this was used.
So Dnata's case, he in the Google play is used a hot tub for class certification about a year ago. It was last June, and Google appealed as the ruling, which he found in favor of the class and certified the cost of consumers that are pretty large cost of consumers that would have put Google on the hook for for quite a bit of money and hypothetical damages. Google appealed that to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, but before they could actually rule, and it was kind unclear exactly how much the hot tub aspect of it would affect the ruling. I'm not sure that would have changed anything. Donato actually changed his mind in part because of evidence that came up at the hot Tub that I attended and decertified class kind of rendering the Ninth Circuit clebrations mood.
There's no appeal from his reversal, but in the end he decertified the class.
Yeah, and it looks like they probably won't. The parties are actually have settled on a potential settlement. I think we'll get details of it in a couple of days. It should be pretty interesting. I'm really curious to see exactly how much money they're getting and whether there's any other form of relief. But no, there hasn't been any other appeals. The Men Circuit basically handed the ruling back to Donado when he changed his.
Mind at the end of August, So this was pretty consequential then to make him change his mind.
Yeah. So if you read his ruling on the classification, he quotes from the hot tub that I attended at the beginning of and basically says it helped him get a better understanding of the issues. Basically, what happened was part of the model that one of the experts used in certifying the class was also relevant for determining damages to that class, and the defendants expert tried to poke some holes in it at the hot tub that I attended, and Donato found those to be kind of a valid attack, and so he didn't just throw out the testimony of that plaintiffs expert for the merits of the harms, but also for the class itself.
I think they have to come up with a new name for this, don't you. The judge held a hot tub just doesn't sound right.
Oh yeah, I mean like pitching the story was quite the experience. I got a lot of raised bad roads from editors, although I have the receiver of a variety of memes created from it, which was pretty nice. But no, attorneys don't love it. I talked to an economist. He said strongly believes we need to find another term for it. If she mentioned that it's kind of weird when you're at a conference and someone walks up to you and it's like, I recognize you from the hot shows. I think people are trying to find another term. But concurrent expert evidence that concurrent expert witness proceeding.
Is not very catchy, not very catchy at all.
Thanks so much, Dan. That's Dan Paskin, Bloomberg Law Reporter, and that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com slash podcast Slash Law, And remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg