Thank you very much—always nice to win, even if it is a one horse race!

Thanks, Peter, for taking up the gauntlet! You have won the Letters Blogatory special prize, and you might have won it anyway even if others had participated, as I think your comment is insightful. I will email you separately re the details.

I think the injunction will be vacated. Kaplan believes there is no firm decision as to whether injunctive relief is available under RICO – but congress have twice had the opportunity to expressly write it in, and have declined to do so. This would imply that it is not the way in which the statute was intended to be used. Additionally Kaplans previous injunction was vacated. Douglass Cassel tells me that the two injunctions are ‘like night and day’, and whilst I would not want to argue with the professor, they look more like slightly different shades of grey, since they achieve a very similar result.

Far more difficult to predict is what will happen to the opinion. Without the availability of the injunction, this was a trial without remedy, and so presumably lacked standing. Yet in this instance, the opinion is almost as valuable to Chevron as the injunction, and if left intact, it’s a potential game changer. So even though the second circuit could well vacate the injunction, Chevron will still be touting the opinion, and using it as a barrier to collection. This is wrong – court time is surely not for holding trials without remedy just so as the judge can write an opinion. But the opinion has now been written, and it is probably difficult to make it disappear.

Of course, should the second circuit choose to examine it, they may question that, when writing this opinion, so much faith was placed in the testimony of a judge who is a self confessed crook, and who has been well rewarded for his appearance. Perhaps they will have their own opinion on this.

So, some significant success is the prediction, but I’d guess we’re still some way from Chevron compensating the victims.