Judicial Notice (03.01.26): Bluff Called

Tom Goldstein goes all in, Judge Cannon returns to the table, Netflix folds its hand, and Susman Godfrey scoops the pot.

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As I write this, the United States and Israel are attacking Iran, and Iran is retaliating. This is huge news—but as OJ readers know, I stay in my legal lane. And while the strike on Iran implicates international law and the law of war, these are doctrinal areas where I don’t have enough knowledge to opine. So I’ll leave this topic to others—such as Professor Thomas Lee, who argues that Donald Trump is on shaky ground in trying to justify the attack legally, or Professor Jack Goldsmith, who contends that law is not really relevant here—because “the truth is that there are only political constraints.”

So what can I discuss intelligently? Certainly the world of large law firms aka Biglaw, a focus of my presentation this past Friday at the 2026 annual conference of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC). Thanks to Melissa Peters, president of NALSC, for being such a delightful interlocutor in our “fireside chat” (sans fire, since we were in New Orleans and the weather was warm).

I also have expertise in a topic that lies at the intersection of Biglaw and legal education, namely, the increasingly early recruiting process—in which some firms are recruiting 1Ls in their first semester of law school. On March 17, I’ll be participating in a webinar sponsored by the New York City Bar, Law Student Recruitment Chaos: Possibilities for Reform? If you’re interested in this subject, please join us.

Now, on to the news.

Lawyers of the Week: Shawn Rabin, Bill Carmody, Michael Kelso, and all the lawyers from Susman Godfrey, Edelson PC, Keller Rohrback, and Stoll Berne who won a $305 million verdict for Oregon wildfire survivors.

When I recently wrote about star trial lawyers Bill Carmody and Neal Manne charging $4,000 an hour for their time, I pointed out that their firm, Susman Godfrey, does much of its work on a contingency or fixed-fee basis. This often works out to be more lucrative than hourly billing—and I wouldn’t be surprised if that ends up being the case in Susman’s latest win, a $305 million verdict issued by an Oregon jury.

Susman partners Shawn Rabin,** Bill Carmody, and **Michael Kelso—along with associates at Susman Godfrey, as well as attorneys from Edelson PC, Keller Rohrback, and Stoll Berne—represent 16 plaintiffs who suffered devastating losses in the 2020 Labor Day wildfires in Oregon. They sued PacifiCorp in Oregon state court, alleging that the utility company’s negligence—including failing to cut power during a windstorm, despite warnings from fire officials—caused their losses. After a trial before Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Steffan Alexander, an Oregon jury awarded $242 million to the plaintiffs—an amount expected to grow to around $305 million, after doubling economic damages under Oregon law and adding a 25 percent multiplier for punitive damages.

This isn’t the end of the road for the case. PacifiCorp is appealing, and when all is said and done, the plaintiffs could end up with significantly less—as a result of the appellate proceedings, settlements, or some combination thereof. But as Shawn Rabin put in a statement, “This verdict is a meaningful acknowledgement of the devastation [our clients] have endured, and it reaffirms the irreversible losses they’ve suffered as a result of the fires.”

Other lawyers in the news:

More than three weeks after

Brad Karp’sresignationas chair ofPaul Weiss, people are still talking about him. Clients are largely standing by Karp, as Patrick Smith reported forThe American Lawyer. And as I mentioned when I joined Smith for theLegal Speak podcast, Karp might actually be able to focus on and grow his practice as a litigator, freed from all the responsibilities he had as chair.Karp stepped down after the latest Epstein files revealed more

interactionsbetween him and Jeffrey Epstein than we previously knew about. Should these files have been released in the first place? ProfessorDaniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, wrote a thoughtful guest essay forThe New York Times(gift link), in which he argued that the Epstein files should never have been released.William Christopher Swett, a former lawyer atMotley Rice,agreedto plead guilty to federal charges arising out of an alleged scheme that defrauded the firm and its clients of at least $1.5 million (but we don’t yet know the specific charges, since Swett’s plea hearing remains to be scheduled).

In memoriam: Michael Caga-anan Aguhar, a Chicago lawyer and community organizer who advocated for immigrants’ and workers’ rights, passed away at 42 after a sudden medical emergency. May he rest in peace.

Judge of the Week: Judge Aileen Cannon.

Judge Aileen Cannon (S.D. Fla.) is a “fan favorite” here at OJ: the #1 and #3 stories in the history of this newsletter are about the controversial jurist, who has issued several rulings highly favorable to Donald Trump during her five-plus years on the bench. And now Judge Cannon is back in the headlines—after ruling in Trump’s favor yet again.

In July 2024, Judge Cannon dismissed the classified-documents case against Trump and two co-defendants, after concluding that special counsel Jack Smith had not been properly appointed. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) appealed that dismissal—but after Trump returned to the White House, the DOJ dropped the case.

Smith prepared a two-volume report about his work on the Trump cases, as required by the special-counsel regulations. Volume I covered the election-interference case that was brought in the District of Columbia (D.D.C.), and it was publicly released in January 2025. Volume II covered the documents case overseen by Judge Cannon—and that report has never been shared with the public.

Trump and his co-defendants opposed the release of Volume II. In January 2025, before Trump took office, Judge Cannon issued a temporary order blocking the report’s release, based on the fact that the criminal proceedings were still pending (at least as a technical matter). After the Trump administration officially took over and dismissed the cases, removing that technical impediment, Cannon left her order in place while she considered a different argument for blocking Volume II’s release: it shouldn’t be made public because Smith was improperly appointed.

Last Monday, Judge Cannon entered an order to permanently block release of Volume II. Judge Cannon referred to the motions as “unopposed” and to the parties as holding the “uniform view” against releasing Volume II, because the government—now controlled by Trump—also opposes release. In her 15-page order, she lit into Jack Smith for even working on Volume II after her dismissal of the case, accusing him of engaging in a “brazen stratagem” to “circumvent” her dismissal of the case.

What happens next? The Knight Institute and American Oversight tried to formally intervene in the case to argue in support of disclosing Volume II, and after Judge Cannon denied their motion to intervene, they appealed that denial to the Eleventh Circuit. So it’s possible the Eleventh Circuit could rule in their favor—although it’s a long shot, since these types of calls are often left to a district judge’s discretion.

As Andrew McCarthy of National Review argued in two columns, however, the Democrats could subpoena the report if they take control of Congress next year—and it’s not clear that the Cannon order could be properly invoked to block such a subpoena. According to McCarthy, although “Cannon had full authority to suppress evidence in connection with proceedings in [the Trump criminal] case,” that case is now closed—and “a judge has no general supervisory authority over the DOJ’s operations.” Or as former federal prosecutor Ken White put it on Serious Trouble, “[g]enerally, a judge would not get involved in dictating that the Department of Justice cannot release any part of its investigative record…. [I]f there was contrary law, whether it’s a congressional subpoena or whether it’s an obligation of a special counsel to prepare a report, you wouldn’t expect a judge to get involved in this.”

So it’s theoretically possible that, Judge Cannon’s order notwithstanding, Volume II of Jack Smith’s report could someday see the light of day. But I wouldn’t bet on that happening anytime soon.

In other news about judges and the judiciary (and with my customary thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing for flagging many of the articles linked below):

On Tuesday night, four justices—Chief Justice

John Robertsand Associate JusticesElena Kagan,Brett Kavanaugh, andAmy Coney Barrett—attended the State of the Union. As someone who watched the State of the Union (until I nodded off), I was prepared for Donald Trump to insult the justices to their faces. So I was relieved to witness what wound up being, in the words ofThe New York Times, “a fairly cordial encounter.” Upon entering the chamber, Trump shook hands with all four justices—three of whom voted against him in the tariffs case. And when he got to the discussion of tariffs in his speech, he called the Court’s ruling “disappointing” and “very unfortunate”—downright diplomatic by Trump’s standards, as Sarah Isgur and David French noted onAdvisory Opinions.Chief Justice Roberts was perfectly friendly toward Trump on Tuesday, with the cameras rolling. But might the Chief be losing patience with the president behind the scenes? In a

Times guest essay(gift link), Linda Greenhouse highlighted one (largely overlooked) passage from the Chief’s opinion in the tariffs case that could be read as a subtle sign that he’s losing patience with Trump.Turning to the lower courts, federal judges around the country are

definitelygetting fed up with the Trump administration. PerThe Times, there have been “at least 35 instances since August in which federal district court or magistrate judges issued an order requiring the government to explain why it should not be… punished for violating court orders.”And that count didn’t include the

benchslapdispensed by Chief JudgePatrick Schiltz(D. Minn.) on Thursday. In hisorder—which ran to 41 pages, when you include two lists of habeas cases where the administration allegedly did not comply with judicial orders—Judge Schiltz wrote, “The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again and again and again—to force the United States government to comply with court orders.”I wonder what Justice

Clarence Thomaswould make of some of the orders and opinions expressing exasperation with the Trump administration. In a recenteventhosted by American University’s law school—which Justice Thomas had to attend virtually, after an unspecified security concern—he expressed disapproval of opinions that are “too edgy.” He explained, “I don’t like those kinds of opinions simply because it isn’t about me. It isn’t about my emotions. It isn’t about my critique of your style. It is about my argument, trying to get it right….” (Come to think of it, I’m hard-pressed to think of any Thomas opinions containing benchslaps directed at colleagues; he doesn’t hesitate to attack doctrines or ideas that he views as wrongheaded, but he doesn’t get personal.)I’ve never understood why federal courthouses are controlled by the General Services Administration (GSA), which is part of the executive branch—and it now appears that the judiciary wants that to change. In a

letterto Congress, JudgeRobert Conrad, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts,proposeddraft legislation that would establish a new “Judiciary Buildings Service.” This new entity would gradually assume responsibility over courthouses and other judicial facilities, taking it out of GSA’s hands.

Turning to federal judicial nominations, last week I mentioned that Chief Judges Jeffrey Sutton (6th Cir.) and Debra Ann Livingston (2d Cir.) announced their plans to take senior status—and now they’ve been joined by a third distinguished jurist, Judge Timothy Tymkovich (10th Cir.). He’ll go senior upon confirmation of his successor; as for who that might be, see these tweets from Mike Fragoso.

So the Trump administration has three new appellate vacancies to fill—and there could be more, with roughly 20 Republican circuit judges currently eligible to go senior (per Bloomberg Law and Professor John P. Collins). But with midterm elections approaching, the window for a judge to announce their retirement and have a successor confirmed—at least by the current Senate, in which Republicans enjoy a 53-seat majority—is starting to close.

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