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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brasso from Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: Wow cool a bag. Hello, I'm a girl with the purse.

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Speaker 1: Not just a purse. It's a broken bag. I went

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Speaker 1: to school. Look at named brickn I don't think this

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Speaker 1: is same broken. Rory Gilmour may not have known about

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Speaker 1: the ultimate status symbol, but her grandmother did. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: a broken bag. You've heard of it. Of course, that's

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Speaker 1: a very nice purse. Maybe I shouldn't use it. Oh no,

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Speaker 1: a broken bag is meant to be used and seen.

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Speaker 1: I had no idea. Well, well, well, a broken bag,

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Speaker 1: A broken bag of broken bag for Rory. The iconic

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Speaker 1: broken bags range in price from twelve thousand to more

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Speaker 1: than three hundred thousand dollars, and there's a six year

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Speaker 1: waiting list to purchase one. So luxury brand Hermes when

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Speaker 1: to trial to protect its right to the valuable Berkin

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Speaker 1: trademark against a digital artist who started selling meta Burken

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Speaker 1: and f t s digital images depicting the Burkin but

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Speaker 1: covered in colorful cartoonish fur. The artist Mason Rothschild claimed

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Speaker 1: the meta Berkens were artworks protected by the First Amendment,

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Speaker 1: but a Manhattan jury disagreed and found for Ermez. Here

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Speaker 1: to look behind the verdict is intellectual property litigator Terrence Ross,

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Speaker 1: a partner at Captain Uten Rosenman. The jury found him

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Speaker 1: guilty of trademark infringement, delustion, and cyber squatting. Do we

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Speaker 1: know what tests they used in order to come to

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Speaker 1: that well? The judge specifically asked them, the jury, to

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Speaker 1: determine whether or not the meta berkins produced by Mr

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Speaker 1: Ross child War artistic works are consumer products, and they

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Speaker 1: answered that question saying that they did not view them

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Speaker 1: as artwork. They viewed them as consumer products. And so

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Speaker 1: we have to assume that they at least considered the

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Speaker 1: Rogers test, because one of the requirements of the Rogers

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Speaker 1: test is that it be an expressive work, you know,

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Speaker 1: artistic work. It would have been rejected out of hand

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Speaker 1: that test. So there's this blurry line between art and

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Speaker 1: commercial products. So the jury determined that n f T

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Speaker 1: s are more akin to commercial products. Does that have

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Speaker 1: any impact on future cases? Not? Really. The finding of

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Speaker 1: the jury is a fact finding. Legal findings are left

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Speaker 1: to the judge of the court. The jury only makes

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Speaker 1: fact findings and the factual circumstances changed from case to

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Speaker 1: case is particularly true and trademark law where you can

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Speaker 1: have widely different facts producing widely different results, and so

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Speaker 1: that finding by the jury is limited to this specific

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Speaker 1: case against Mr. Ross Child. Rothschild had argued that his

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Speaker 1: n f T s or works of art protected by

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Speaker 1: the First Amendment no different from Andy Warhol's famous silk

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Speaker 1: screen prints of Campbell soup cans. How did that argument

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Speaker 1: take a hit when the judge made a ruling right

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the trial, so before opening arguments

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Speaker 1: even commenced. As part of a pre trial set of rulings,

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Speaker 1: the judge bard testimony from the defendant, Mr. Rothschild's expert witness,

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Speaker 1: who is an art critic and proposed coming before the

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Speaker 1: jury testifying that the meta berkins created by Mr. Rothschild

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Speaker 1: were no different than the Campbell soup painting that is

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Speaker 1: now literally iconic in American artwork from the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: and so being unable to present that testimony from their

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Speaker 1: expert art critic really hamstrung the defense throughout the case.

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Speaker 1: So people have been looking at this as a case

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Speaker 1: that had the potential to clarify how trademark law applies

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Speaker 1: to n f t S. Does it do that, well,

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Speaker 1: I don't think a single case, unless it happens to

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Speaker 1: be in front of the Supreme Court, is going to

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Speaker 1: clarify the law in this area. What this case does

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Speaker 1: do is lay down a marker on behalf of trademark owners.

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Speaker 1: It points in the direction of findings that the metaverse

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Speaker 1: is subject to the Landmack the u S trademark laws,

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Speaker 1: and it will encourage other trademark owners to now bring

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Speaker 1: to to enforce their rights in the metaverse. I am

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Speaker 1: aware of two clients of ours who have been thinking

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Speaker 1: it was bringing LAWSS andimbly waiting to see how this

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Speaker 1: came out, and this will encourage them. Now. The other

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Speaker 1: thing this case does is it lays the foundation for

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Speaker 1: appellate decisions. So now there is a concrete verdict in

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Speaker 1: a case that can go up on appeal and we

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Speaker 1: can see what the Pellet courts think of the application

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Speaker 1: trademark laws to n f T S. Yeah, so Rothschild

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Speaker 1: said what happened today was wrong. What happened today will

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Speaker 1: continue to happen if we don't continue to fight. This

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Speaker 1: is far from over, and his attorneys said that they

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Speaker 1: will appeal, they'll take every legal avenue that they have.

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Speaker 1: What are the legal avenues that they have? So the

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Speaker 1: very first option that the defense has here is to

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Speaker 1: file a motion with Judge Rakoff asking him to set

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Speaker 1: aside the jury verdict and to grant judgment to the

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Speaker 1: defense on the legal theories that are presented in the case.

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Speaker 1: This is going to be challenging for the defense. It's

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Speaker 1: something they will do, they have to do. But Koff

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Speaker 1: basically said at the motion to this miss stage that

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Speaker 1: he was uncertain as to whether or not there was

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Speaker 1: sufficient factual prediquette here for the defendant to take advantage

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Speaker 1: of the so called Rogers test, and he wanted the

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Speaker 1: jury to give him some advice on that. And the

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Speaker 1: jury gave him advice and they said, yes, yes, there's

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Speaker 1: not a factual predicate here. This is not an expressive work,

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Speaker 1: it's not art, it's a consumer product, and the Rogers

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Speaker 1: test does not apply to consumer products at least, so

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Speaker 1: we think the Rogers test, which was from our discord.

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Speaker 1: Second Circuit expressly says that the First Amendment protection extends

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Speaker 1: to the use of celebrity names in expressive works where

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Speaker 1: the use of the name is relevant to the work

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Speaker 1: and it's not intentionally misleading. And here that key element

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Speaker 1: that the jury says is missing his web not this

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Speaker 1: is an artistic work. So I think they will lose

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Speaker 1: the post trial motion unless he wants to simply disregard

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Speaker 1: the jury and they'll take it up then on appeal

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Speaker 1: to the Second Circuit. And this becomes pretty important. The

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Speaker 1: Second Circuit is the author of the Rogers test, which

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Speaker 1: the defense heavily relied upon here. It is also one

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Speaker 1: of the most important appellate courts in the nation with

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Speaker 1: respect to trademark law, and that's where we will really

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Speaker 1: get some guidance going forward into the future. The Second

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Speaker 1: Circuit affirms the verdict here and says, yes, there's always

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Speaker 1: trademark infringement. That's going to really be very influential across

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Speaker 1: the rescue nited States, even though the Second Circuits per

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Speaker 1: view is limited to New York. In Connecticut and the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court, as we've discussed, is deciding a case involving

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Speaker 1: Jack Daniels trademark, how might that affect this decision? So

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Speaker 1: in my view, that has always been the eight pound

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Speaker 1: gerrilla in the room that people have tend to take

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Speaker 1: nore here, particularly the judge. The Supreme Court accepted certry

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Speaker 1: in the Jack Daniels case back in November. In that case,

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Speaker 1: the Rogers test is squarely presented to the Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: as to whether it is a legitimate test, whether it

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Speaker 1: really exists, because remember Second Circuit made that up out

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Speaker 1: a whole class. It's not in the trademark lass. It's

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Speaker 1: not statutory. It's judge made locks. And the Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: might say, well, there is no such thing in the

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Speaker 1: trademark lost. Or the Spreme Court could say, yes, we

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Speaker 1: have to have such a test as the Rogers test

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Speaker 1: in order to protect First Amendment interests in the trademark field,

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Speaker 1: but we don't like the way the Second Circuit works.

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Speaker 1: The test, our test will be and then they'll explain

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Speaker 1: what it is. Or they could simply say, you know,

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Speaker 1: Rogers test is a great idea. It's really protects First

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Speaker 1: Amendment interest works partially fine, we're narrowly cabinet to protection

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Speaker 1: of celebrity names used in artistic works, or it may expanded,

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Speaker 1: say what we're expanded to expressive works more generally. But

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Speaker 1: with all those question marks hanging over this case, it

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Speaker 1: really made no sense to try it. In my view

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Speaker 1: other than to say you're moving your docket of cases

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Speaker 1: down the road because the whole thing could be tossed

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Speaker 1: out by a decision the Supreme Court, and there might

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Speaker 1: have to be a do over forgetting the Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: for a minute in the second Circuit, does this revertic

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Speaker 1: stand for the proposition that n f t s cannot

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Speaker 1: be artwork protected by the First Amendment or is it

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Speaker 1: facts specific? I think it's too facts specific to come

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Speaker 1: to that conclusion. The n f t s that issue

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Speaker 1: here were pretty darn close to virtual copies of hermes

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Speaker 1: Is broken bags. I think the principal difference was instead

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Speaker 1: of animal type fabrics, whether it be crocodile ostrich or cows,

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Speaker 1: they were covered with sort of a fur, fluffy fur,

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Speaker 1: purportedly to make some sort of statement about animal abuse.

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Speaker 1: I think so I can imagine n f t s

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Speaker 1: that are far more creative than that. But the key

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Speaker 1: thing to remember here it wasn't the image. This was

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Speaker 1: not a copyright case. The problem was the use of

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Speaker 1: the trademark name Birken. You know, the defendant Mr Rochald

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Speaker 1: did change the name little bit too meta Birken, but

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Speaker 1: the plaintiff her these introduced a lot of evidence of

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Speaker 1: consumer confusion that was sufficient to overcome the insertion of

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Speaker 1: that prefix meta berken. And that's the real problem here,

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Speaker 1: is using the trademark name. He had simply posted n

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Speaker 1: f T s under some new creative name that he

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Speaker 1: came up with, the Rothschild bag graft. This might never

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Speaker 1: have gotten to court. You know, I keep reading that

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Speaker 1: this loss may have a chilling effect on artists who

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Speaker 1: want to use trademarks in their n f T projects.

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Speaker 1: But shouldn't it. I mean, artists shouldn't be infringing on trademarks.

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Speaker 1: So we have had trademark laws in this country since

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Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century. The specific statute we now have,

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Speaker 1: the Land Act, I believe, was past nineteen fifty four.

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Speaker 1: So that's going on seventy years of existing with trademarks

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Speaker 1: in the real world and seventy years of experience. And

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Speaker 1: although from Tom and Tom you hear people complain about

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Speaker 1: a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, we really haven't

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Speaker 1: seen any of that. And that's a lot of experience.

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Speaker 1: I don't see why that changes simply because you're creating

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Speaker 1: digital images to put into this metaverse. I simply do

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Speaker 1: not believe that enforcement and the trademark laws create any

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Speaker 1: sort of chilling effect on First Amendment rights. So I

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Speaker 1: really don't buy that argument, and I think it's disproved

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Speaker 1: by many, many decades of history. I don't think Hermas

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Speaker 1: was in this for the money necessarily. But the jury

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Speaker 1: only awarded a hundred thirty three thousand dollars in damages,

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Speaker 1: which is relatively low. The point of Hermes only asked

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Speaker 1: for about two and fifty dollars, so the jury gave

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Speaker 1: them a portion of that. The trademark infringement cases don't

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Speaker 1: typically a result in significant damage awards. Now, part of

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Speaker 1: the specific reason here is that as Rothschild just didn't

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Speaker 1: sell that many I think the evidence of trial as

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Speaker 1: he sold fifty five point two of these n f

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Speaker 1: T s, and so we just didn't generate that much profit.

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Speaker 1: And the key and the trademarketing idea is what the

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Speaker 1: plane of the trademark onner gets is a disgorgement of

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Speaker 1: the ill gotten gains from the infringer. So there's a

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Speaker 1: cap on it to start with. UM, Now, what we

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Speaker 1: are going to see here is post trial motion for

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Speaker 1: attorney's fees, and those could be substantial and I don't

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Speaker 1: know whether the court will grant them, but that is

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Speaker 1: where the real hit Mr. Rothschild could come from. But

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Speaker 1: I think when you look at this holistically, this case

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Speaker 1: was never about recovering damages. This case was about protecting

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Speaker 1: the brand. The Burke and Trademark harmonies apparently has specific

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Speaker 1: plans in the metaverse as as many fashion houses do

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Speaker 1: to start introducing their own n f T s, and

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Speaker 1: it needed this sort of trademark protection to them to

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Speaker 1: the metaverse. And so this was a case about setting

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Speaker 1: a president, and I think they've been very successful in

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Speaker 1: doing that. Are we going to learn anything more? When

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Speaker 1: Judge Rakoff weighs in during the post trial motions, we

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Speaker 1: might learn a little bit more. Um, it would be

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Speaker 1: possible for him and here to simply say, I'm denying

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Speaker 1: the motion by defendants. Um, the jury verdict stands. Um.

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Speaker 1: Jury verdicts are accorded great weight even in post trial motions,

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Speaker 1: And so he might simply punt on it and let

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Speaker 1: it go straight up to the second circuit in that form.

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Speaker 1: But then again, he tends to write in his decisions

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Speaker 1: and um, so we may we may still learn something

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Speaker 1: more specifically about how he now views the applicability the

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Speaker 1: rogers test after this sort of advisory opinion from jury

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Speaker 1: that they did not regard this to be artistic works.

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Speaker 1: So I understand that fashion brands are like Louis Vitton

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Speaker 1: filing trademark applications for design marks covering digital content including

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Speaker 1: n f T S. UM. Will that help fashion brands

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Speaker 1: in the future in pursuing these kinds of claims. Yes,

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Speaker 1: a registered trademark provides a brand owner with certain procedural

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Speaker 1: advantages UM, as well as the right to obtain attorney's

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Speaker 1: fees UM in a lawsuit. So there are advantages of

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Speaker 1: that UM. It is theoretically possible or a trademark owner

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Speaker 1: to proceed under without a registration under a theory of

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Speaker 1: unfair competition UM. But I think the advantage here is

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Speaker 1: to get the registration. It should not be a difficult

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Speaker 1: thing to do UM and to have the full pana

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Speaker 1: play then of trademark claims and remedies available. And I

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Speaker 1: understand what trademark infringement is and what trademark delustion is.

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Speaker 1: What is cyber squatting? So cyber squatting is where a

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Speaker 1: defendant UM uses a U R L UM that incorporates

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Speaker 1: or at least causes confusion with respect a trademark, and

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Speaker 1: so I do not specifically know what you are l

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Speaker 1: he was Mr Roshaw was using here, but I assume

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Speaker 1: in order to sell these in the metaverse he had

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Speaker 1: to have a website. And if the website was www

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Speaker 1: dot meta Berken dot com, well that would set him

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Speaker 1: up for a cause of action for cyber squadding. Um.

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Speaker 1: The claim from Hermes would be, well, we own the

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Speaker 1: trademark for Berken, and therefore we are entied led to

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Speaker 1: claim and own any U r L that includes or

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Speaker 1: incorporates that trademark. All right, thanks so much for your insights, Terry.

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Speaker 1: That's intellectual property litigator Terence Ross, a partner at Caton

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Speaker 1: Uchuen Rosenman. The Camp Lejune litigation could turn out to

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Speaker 1: be the largest case in US history, with estimates of

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Speaker 1: as many as five hundred thousand claims being filed. Lawyers

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Speaker 1: across the country have spent millions of dollars and thousands

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Speaker 1: of hours preparing lawsuits on behalf of military veterans and

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Speaker 1: their families exposed to toxic water at Camp le June.

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Speaker 1: Now a rule in North Carolina Real Court threatens to

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Speaker 1: throw that work into chaos. Joining me is Roy Strom,

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Speaker 1: correspondent for Bloomberg Law. Start by telling us a little

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Speaker 1: about these Camp Lejune cases. You know the background, sure, so.

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Speaker 1: Camp Lejune is a Marine Corps base in North Carolina

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Speaker 1: and all the way back in two the Marine Corps

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Speaker 1: discovered water at the base had been contaminated. The contaminated

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Speaker 1: wells were shut down in nineteen but there were, by

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Speaker 1: some estimates, over a million Marines, family members, civilian staff,

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Speaker 1: and others who used the water between the nineteen fifties

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. And that water has been linked

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Speaker 1: to all kinds of cancers and other diseases, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of trouble with birth defects or still births. And

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Speaker 1: there was a law effort, a lot of it done

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Speaker 1: by the Marines themselves to get compensation for the illnesses

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Speaker 1: caused by being subjected to this water. And last year

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Speaker 1: Congress passed and President Biden signed a law that allowed

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Speaker 1: veterans to bring these claims. What's the process they have

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Speaker 1: to go through? Lawyers who represent these clients first have

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Speaker 1: to file a claim, a sort of administrative claim with

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Speaker 1: the Navy UM, which is given six months to either

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Speaker 1: offer a settlement or somehow resolve the claim with every

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Speaker 1: individual client. And if that doesn't happen, either because the

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Speaker 1: Navy denies the claim or because of the claimant is

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Speaker 1: a dissatisfied with whatever offers on the table, we're then

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Speaker 1: allowed to file a federal lawsuit, basically a toward claim

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Speaker 1: against the federal government, and it has to be filed

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Speaker 1: in a North Carolina federal court, which is expected to

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Speaker 1: be hearing tens of thousands of these cases. Some estimates

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Speaker 1: are that there will be as many as five hundred

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Speaker 1: thousands lawsuits ultimately filed. So I think we've all seen

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Speaker 1: Anyone who watches TV has seen these ads of lawyers

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Speaker 1: appealing to Camp Lejune victims to hire them. Our plaintiffs

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Speaker 1: lawyers involved in a kind of competition to represent these victims. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: certainly there is a very large number of plaintiffs lawyers

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Speaker 1: who are interested in taking on these cases. And the

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Speaker 1: way that they find those claimants is sort of the

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Speaker 1: underlying process and the business behind that is what I

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Speaker 1: have been reporting on. And it's not necessarily a new industry,

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Speaker 1: a new business, but it's become much more sophisticated and

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Speaker 1: streamlined and has attracted sort of new types of institutional

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Speaker 1: asset managers who view investing in camp to June and

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Speaker 1: another what are called mass toward claims, typically a lot

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Speaker 1: of pharmaceutical drugs that were later found to cause problems.

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Speaker 1: These investors ultimately financed the advertisements. They pay for the

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Speaker 1: ads to run, and they generate a return based on

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Speaker 1: either how the case ends up or sometimes through a

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Speaker 1: sort of more traditional loan type of product to law firms.

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Speaker 1: You write about a group of sixteen plaintiffs who filed

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Speaker 1: their claims and argued that they didn't have to first

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Speaker 1: go through the administrative process. Tell us about out that case. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so this is an interesting aspect of it where like

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Speaker 1: I mentioned, the the cases are required by law to

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Speaker 1: be filed in North Carolina, where campus ing the course is.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's veterans who who were at the space

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Speaker 1: in the eighties who live all around the country now,

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Speaker 1: and certainly that the lawyers who are advertising on TV

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Speaker 1: don't all live in North Carolina. Many of them are

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Speaker 1: in Texas or pretty much anywhere. And so a law

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Speaker 1: firm brought a group of cases early in North Carolina

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Speaker 1: without going through that administrative process. They basically argued they

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Speaker 1: had done that before in trying to get compensation through

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Speaker 1: the Navy under a different program. And what was interesting

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Speaker 1: about that effort was that the federal judge came back

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Speaker 1: to them and said, you need to explain why you

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Speaker 1: shouldn't be you being the lawyers, need to explain why

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Speaker 1: you shouldn't be thrown off of this case because you've,

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Speaker 1: in essence, violated a local rule in that court that

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Speaker 1: allows lawyers who are from out of state who aren't

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Speaker 1: part of the North Carolina Bar two only bring three

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Speaker 1: unrelated cases in any given year. So they were faced

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Speaker 1: with the prospect of basically having done all this work

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Speaker 1: to get all these clients this work particular law firm

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Speaker 1: since they represent over a thousand clients I mean thousands

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Speaker 1: of clients, And here's a judge saying, perhaps the only

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Speaker 1: lawyers who are going to be allowed to do this

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Speaker 1: work are those who are from North Carolina, to course,

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Speaker 1: relatively small state in the grand scheme of the US

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Speaker 1: legal system, is the lawsuit one lawsuit where sixteen plaintiffs

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Speaker 1: are asking for a class action or is it more

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Speaker 1: than one lawsuit? In that case, I believe it was

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Speaker 1: some thing like eight lawsuits. Maybe one or some of

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Speaker 1: them had multiple plaintiffs involved, but it was it was

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Speaker 1: a group of lawsuits that were brought, like I said,

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Speaker 1: by this out of state law firm. And in a

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Speaker 1: more traditional mass torque case, what happens is they all

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Speaker 1: get bundled up into one giant case that's usually called

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Speaker 1: multidistrict litigation, and you file the claims as part of

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Speaker 1: the multi district litigation. But in that scenario, it's pretty

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Speaker 1: clear that that's a related case, or you wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: considered sort of violating a rule by appearing or representing

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Speaker 1: multiple clients in this multidistrict litigation. Now, the Camp Lejune

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Speaker 1: litigation isn't a multidistrict litigation, and it's sort of unclear

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Speaker 1: administratively how it's ultimately going to be handled. Most of

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Speaker 1: these lawsuits have not been filed yet because at six

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Speaker 1: month administrative lag period is sort of still playing out

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Speaker 1: for the vast majority, if not all, the claims that

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Speaker 1: have been filed already. So this idea of a three

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Speaker 1: plaintiff limit is certainly it's not enforced yet. The judge

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Speaker 1: in that case ultimately didn't rule on how he was

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Speaker 1: going to interpret this local rule. But the attorneys who

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Speaker 1: were asked to explain themselves basically made two arguments. One was,

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Speaker 1: these cases are related similar to the way that, like

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Speaker 1: I mentioned, a multidistrict litigation would be, they should be

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Speaker 1: considered basically one appearance, no matter how many of these

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Speaker 1: similar camp lash and claims we filed. And then two,

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Speaker 1: they said there's a good cause exception for allowing them

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Speaker 1: to represent these clients in North Carolina. And for that

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Speaker 1: argument they basically said a few things, one being, look,

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Speaker 1: it's the clients who chose us, and we don't think

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Speaker 1: it's right to just guard the client's choice of who

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Speaker 1: they want as their attorney. And secondly, among a litany

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Speaker 1: of argument, they said, basically, you know, we are a

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Speaker 1: very experienced law firm. We handled many of these types

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Speaker 1: of mass toward cases. We've invested in basically a sort

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Speaker 1: of infrastructure at our law firm that gives really quick

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Speaker 1: service and responses to our clients. And on top of that,

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Speaker 1: many of our lawyers are sort of highly regarded. One

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Speaker 1: of the statistics they point out is some majority or

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Speaker 1: near majority of their partners had been US Supreme Court clerks,

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Speaker 1: which in the legal systems sort of a big deal.

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Speaker 1: In the end, would you put the courts in the

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Speaker 1: position of judging who are the best lawyers to handle

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Speaker 1: these cases? So that is a possibility, and it's one

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Speaker 1: that in some ways a couple of other law firms

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Speaker 1: have sort of into that advocating for hinted at thinking

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Speaker 1: should be the process. When the North Carolina judge asked

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Speaker 1: this law firm about why it shouldn't be removed for

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Speaker 1: violating this rule, there were at least two other firms

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Speaker 1: who came in. They weren't implicated by the order itself,

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Speaker 1: but they wanted to have their voices heard. One was

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Speaker 1: a local North Carolina law firm that said, in essence,

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Speaker 1: judges should go on a sort of case by case

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Speaker 1: basis to make sure that the sort of best law

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Speaker 1: firms are representing clients in these cases. A similar argument

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Speaker 1: was made by a law firm that's actually been pivotal

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Speaker 1: in getting this law passed. It's called the Bell Law Group.

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Speaker 1: There main partner there at Bell was one of the

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Speaker 1: first lawyers really involved in this effort. He brought a

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Speaker 1: class action years ago that was thrown out and which

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Speaker 1: ultimately led to this law that was passed last year.

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Speaker 1: His law firm made a sort of similar argument, which

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Speaker 1: was that the court should play a role in making

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Speaker 1: sure that the best of the best lawyers were involved

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Speaker 1: representing these clients. People might look at these cases and

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Speaker 1: it seems as if, especially from the ads, as if

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Speaker 1: it's almost automatic compensation. But the lawyers that you spoke to,

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Speaker 1: especially one Mona Lisa Wallace in North Carolina, said these

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Speaker 1: are more difficult than ordinary tort cases. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if she said they're more difficult than ordinary toward cases,

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Speaker 1: but she said, certainly they require a lot of work.

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Speaker 1: She has a team of lawyers working, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: sort of around the clock or ten hours a day

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Speaker 1: on these cases. They're developing expert testimony. I mean, these

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Speaker 1: are very sick clients in a lot of instances. And

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Speaker 1: she told me that they've begun to take early depositions,

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Speaker 1: basically interviewing clients about their experiences of the base and

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Speaker 1: the illnesses they've they've suffered, and they're doing it earlier

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Speaker 1: than they normally would in the process because they basically

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Speaker 1: fear that these plaintiffs won't be alive to see this

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Speaker 1: process through and so as part of that, they're opening

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Speaker 1: it states for these plaintiffs to allow their family members

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Speaker 1: to file and receive these claims. And so she was

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Speaker 1: saying that, like you say, a lot of people view

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Speaker 1: these cases, maybe because of this sort of runaway advertising,

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Speaker 1: as a sort of cash grant, but she says that

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Speaker 1: they require a lot of work and that law firms

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Speaker 1: are working. She put it a thousand times harder than

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Speaker 1: the general public recognizes. How is the question of the

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Speaker 1: outside council council outside North Carolina going to be resolved?

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Speaker 1: You know, it's really kind of up in the air

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Speaker 1: at this point. I'm not sure if it's an active

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Speaker 1: question on any sort of doc it at the moment.

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Speaker 1: It's something that I think either the North Carolina Federal

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Speaker 1: Court will have to make a decision on as a group,

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Speaker 1: or perhaps individual judges might determine how they'll handle their cases.

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Speaker 1: If these cases aren't all bundled into one. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of a symptom of the fact that a lot of

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Speaker 1: the process for how this huge, huge litigation will play

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Speaker 1: out sort of remains to be seen, and so the

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Speaker 1: question is sort of still open. I don't think a

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Speaker 1: lot of people in the legal industry would say it's

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Speaker 1: sort of best practice to limit these cases to North

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00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: Carolina attorneys, and even North Carolina lawyers such as normal

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Speaker 1: Lisa Wallace, that they're not advocating for such a blanket

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Speaker 1: rule against out of state lawyers being allowed exceptions to this.

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Speaker 1: So it seems unlikely that that would happen, of course

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Speaker 1: I could. But I spoke with one attorney who was,

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Speaker 1: you know, considering all this, and they told me, you know,

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Speaker 1: if sort of worse comes to worse, we can have

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Speaker 1: someone at this firm or this attorney themselves take the

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Speaker 1: North Carolina state bars. Speaking from experience, no one wants

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Speaker 1: to take a bar exam after they're out of school

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Speaker 1: that long. That's what this lawyer said. That maybe wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be them who did it, but maybe they can find

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Speaker 1: somebody in the firm who at the time or the

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Speaker 1: willingness to sit for it. I know you'll be keeping

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Speaker 1: track of this issue. Thanks so much, Roy. That's Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Law correspondent Roy Strom, and that's it for this edition

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Speaker 1: of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get

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Speaker 1: the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcast. You

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00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: can find them on Apple Podcasts. Spotify and at www

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00:30:56,400 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 1: dot bloomberg dot com, Slash podcast, Slash Law, and remember

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00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: to tune into The Bloomberg Glass Show every week night

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00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 1: at ten p m. Wall Street Time. I'm June Grossow,

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Speaker 1: and you're listening to Bloomberg