I just learned about the letterblogatory blog, and it’s great. From Ted Folkman of the law firm of Murphy & King (also incidentally a former judicial clerk to Ann Aldrich), it contains high-quality analysis of some really interesting international arbitration cases, among other things.

The most recent case-of-the-day reads like a caricature of an arbitration-meets-civil-procedure professor’s final exam.  Ted’s introduction to the case, Belmont Partners v Mira Mar Group (W.D.Va. 2010), reads:

The case of the day is Belmont Partners, LLC v. Mina Mar Group, Inc. (W.D. Va. 2010). It’s a perfect example of what should not happen in arbitration–the parties agreed to arbitrate, then settled, then one reneged on the settlement, then they sued each other in two countries.  The parties were both in the business of buying and selling “clean shell corporations.” These are corporations with “no sales, no liabilities, and no assets.” The idea, according to Mina Mar, is that the shares of “clean shell” companies “can be readily traded and private operating companies can merge with [them] and ‘go public.’”

Go to the site for his well-constructed analysis of the opinion. This is now on the short list of sites I’ll follow regularly.  Kudos to Ted.

MM