For those of us who toil in the vineyards of civil litigation, unalloyed good news is rare. Even great outcomes come at too high a cost in fees and what is usually years of delay. Far more often the outcomes are anything but great — either the high cost and daunting process of litigation makes any attempt at justice unattainable, or in the cases that are brought, justice is thwarted or so compromised that it is just a tarnished accommodation of competing financial interests of parties and counsel moderated by an exhausted deal-making judiciary.
The enduring popularity of crime fiction and the mystery novel, as Dorothy Sayers well understood, is that it represents a “dream of justice” not encountered in the actual tribunals of our courts or their corridors. So it was with considerable delight and astonishment that I picked up my morning newspaper on Feb. 26 to read the following full page announcement in the New York Times:
