No, that is not my general rule. The applicable rule is more specific: I do not answer hypotheticals that amount to thinly veiled, unfounded smears.

This started with a request that you answer in the hypothetical. You don’t engage in hypotheticals unless the hypothetical facts are proven, is that your general rule?

I have asked for the ethics opinions, which I have not seen, and will reply further once I receive them. But even without them, Page’s comment concedes that the ethics expert, in the end, approved of what the lawyers did. Unhappy with this ending, Page implies that the ethics expert, by rendering three successive opinions upon request, was herself (himself?) not reliable. This is simply the latest example of how Page consistently attacks any expert, in any field, who has the temerity to side with Chevron against plaintiffs’ PR machine.

Page also repeats another of his timeworn tactics: attacking straw men. No one on these pages has placed corporate lawyers on a pedestal of untouchability. The more modest and realistic point is simply that one ought not to make (or imply, as Page often prefers to do) charges of unethical conduct against anyone (even lawyers) without solid evidence. Informing us that an ethics expert has blessed the conduct of Chevron’s lawyers — not once, but three times — is hardly persuasive evidence of unethical conduct on their part.