David Dunn recalls a classroom scene from his first year of law school. The students were discussing a 1930s case involving a railroad company, and the professor asked them to name the rule of the case.
People came up with all sorts of exotic answers,” recounts Dunn, a litigation partner at Hogan & Hartson. “And after about 15 minutes the professor turned, pounded on the table and said, ‘No, the rule in this case is that in the 1930s the railroad always loses.’” In May, California’s East West Bank faced what it feared would be a similar fate–that in the early years of this century, the bank always loses.
