AMC: If One More Bro Says This, I'm Going To Scream

Have We Learned Nothing From The Last Three Months?

I was literally in the midst of writing the screed below, and then I was entirely vindicated:

https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=350480

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We’re going to have to update that old saw: the only things that are certain in life are death, taxes, and gaslighting by the bros.

Honest to g-d.

Ever since the parties ran to the Courthouse this weekend to file an inappropriate letter, in lieu of a motion, despite the fact that they couldn’t be fcked to actually just file the consolidated complaint that the Vice Chancellor has asked them to file on no less than four occasions that I can think of off the top of my head just sitting here (because … I don’t know why? maybe they aren’t paid enough? I’m sure there’s some good, head-patting reason they will give me that girls just don’t understand), all the bros have been coming out of the woodwork to say that the Vice Chancellor is primed and ready to drop her final approval of the settlement any minute now.

They mean it literally!

They mean that she did not mean anything that she said in the Opinion, but that we are not supposed to take her at her word, that we are supposed to read the words that she said and think, “oh, she just meant that … figuratively?” She … actually … had done all the work to approve the settlement … and had written up the entire approval … but for some reason … decided not to publish the entire opinion and instead just published the rejection? And then is just sitting around on an opinion that she’s going to whip out when we least expect it, like some twisted wish fulfillment of every arbitrageur on Wall St.?

Bro, I really do not think that’s how this works.

So, they say I’m the one who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Again.

They say I don’t understand how the Court works.

Again.

They say I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Again.

Maybe I don’t! Maybe I’ve just so happened to be right about everything in this case, maybe somehow I’ve been like a broken piece of a clock, but where the broken piece of the clock is on the façade of the clock, and it gets stuck on the second hand, so it just swings around with the second hand, keeping perfect atomic time all day, instead of like in the aphorism about how even a broken clock is right twice a day. Except in my little vignette, the clock isn’t really broken, is it?

Look, I’m not saying I can’t be wrong, or that I won’t be wrong, because I obviously can be and I obviously will be, and particularly because I’m standing up for myself and writing about this, I’m sure to be tempting some old Greek God who has a particular disdain for such behavior and who will come down from Mt. Olympus just to smite me for doing such a thing, but for fck’s sake, if Vice Chancellor Zurn had an entire settlement approval opinion written, she would not have said that she didn’t. She would not have said, “I’m getting this to you now, because I know you are in a hurry, and I know I can’t approve the settlement as it is, so you should tell me if you’re super attached to this provision, before I go ahead and do the deep dive on the rest of these things, like class certification and the opt-out issue, because those things are thorny, and there are a ton of other objection issues to deal with, and a whole bunch of other things I’ve got to wade through with my meticulous eye and supreme attention to detail, and I ain’t doing that if you are just going to be running for the hills anyway if I find the slightest problem with something.”

If she had the whole thing done, why would she have held it back? It makes no sense. It’s not who she is. It does not compute.

But they will not stop saying it.

That it happened before. Yeah, dude. I know. There’s precedent like that. I’ve read it all. But it’s nothing like what happened here. It’s precedent like we have debriefed in great detail here, where something like Ghost Penciling™️ happens, where the Court lays out their entire approval, but for a small piece, and then tells the parties basically, “if you go and fix this, I’ll trade you for a final approval,” and then guess what? No surprise, the parties go and fix that, and in a day, the parties get a final approval. And everyone is using that precedent to say that we are going to get a final approval in a day here? And I want to literally scream.