Hi kids, how was your weekend?

The details of mine were quite inconsequential, really.

Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles.......

So are you following the unfolding drama playing out in federal court regarding Podhurst, Nicaragua, and the pesticide DBCP?

It's a role-reversal of sorts for forum non junkies -- normally the defendants are claiming the foreign legal system is okey-dokey, and the plaintiffs are railing against the lack of justice in corrupt courts run by big multi-nationals.

Here it's the opposite -- the Nicaraguan courts have fast-tracked injury sterility claims by farmers involving the pesticide DBCP, and plaintiff's lawyers are seeking to have those foreign judgments honored in federal court in Miami.

But out in LA a state court judge, Victoria Chaney, has questioned whether the claims and plaintiffs in related cases are manufactured, and has apparently implicated Podhurst co-counsel in the Miami cases, Texas lawyer Mark Sparks:

The scam, Chaney wrote, was part of a much wider fraud in Nicaragua -- a thriving industry of manufacturing plaintiffs to capitalize on a justice system rigged against multinational corporations.

At the center of that system, she wrote, is a law passed by the Nicaraguan government in 2001 that ordered the courts to fast-track DBCP claims.

Anybody claiming to have been exposed to the chemical on a banana farm who can produce a lab report showing he is sterile is entitled to damages. Evidence presentation is limited to eight days, after which the court has three days to decide the case. Defendants, such as Dole, must deposit millions of dollars in a trust for the right to defend themselves. They generally don't bother because it is almost impossible for them to win.

As the Florida case is set to restart, attorneys for Dole have already submitted Chaney's ruling to bolster their argument that the $97-million judgment in Nicaragua was a sham.

The plaintiffs' attorneys countered that Chaney's ruling is full of inaccuracies and overly broad.

"It's amazing to me that a judge can criticize in a sweeping way an entire country's integrity and make a ruling on every individual's honesty and integrity, even those who aren't before her," said plaintiffs' attorney Steven Marks of the Miami-based firm Podhurst Orseck.

Chaney's ruling implicates Provost and Umphrey, a Texas law firm representing plaintiffs in the Florida case along with Podhurst Orseck, in the alleged fraud in Nicaragua. Chaney wrote that one of its attorneys, Mark Sparks, was present in a 2003 meeting in Nicaragua at which lawyers, medical laboratory officials and a judge set out a plan to manufacture evidence and bolster cases in the Nicaraguan courts.

In court filings, Sparks and his firm denied he ever attended such a meeting, and argued that Chaney's ruling was fundamentally unfair because it did not offer them the right to defend themselves.

The ruling was based primarily on information from witnesses whose names and unredacted testimony to Dole lawyers remain sealed under an order by Chaney, who became convinced that their lives would be in danger if their identities were made public.

In any case, the plaintiffs' lawyers in the Florida case said they had no involvement in the California cases.

Sparks and his firm released a statement saying they "are confident that our investigation, testing and diagnosis protocols were superior to other firms in this litigation."

In other words -- go pound sand, Judge Chaney.

Our interest in this case has nothing to do with sperm motility or related health issues, I assure you, but we will nevertheless be following this one closely.

Hi kids!

Is it me, or is Podhurst partner Victor Diaz looking better and better? The sharp clothes, the funky glasses, the man is just rockin' it lately.

But you won't see him buying any Velvet Elvis oil paintings:

Commissioner Victor Diaz, who has been outspoken in his desire to keep Gehry at all costs, said the city has mismanaged the project -- and mishandled the famed architect.

He said Gehry was right to be offended by the tone of comments by city officials during public meetings, including suggestions he was hard to work with and a ''prima donna.'' And he said commissioners should hardly be surprised that Gehry would prove expensive.

'It's like saying I want to buy a Picasso and when you get the price, saying, `I'll buy from the guy at the Coconut Grove arts festival, he is just as good,' '' Diaz said. ``I'm not sure that certain individuals on the City Commission understood the genius we were dealing with and treated him with sufficient deference.''

Miami Beach, carefully run by a bunch of hacks since 1915. Thank goodness Victor is there to provide a modicum of reason and dignity to that hopeless crew.

BTW, Victor you need to update your firm photo. You look great nowadays, no need to use that pic from 1985, ok?

Steven sure has generated a lot of news recently.

First, there's the $22.5 billion Bank of New York Russian customs case, which settled for $14 million (prior coverage here).

Then there was Judge Huck's ruling in the Dole matter, which has a number of facts that aren't too hot, as noted by CNNMoney's Roger Parloff:

The broad terms of Huck's ruling make its reasoning virtually certain to control the outcome of a companion DBCP case known as Herrera Rios v. Standard Fruit Co., in which U.S. Lawyers were expected to seek enforcement of another $800 million in Nicaraguan court judgments.

While Judge Huck did not reach the question of fraud, he did note, as relevant to the due process issues, that the Nicaraguan judge in the Osorio case had prevented Dole from introducing into evidence 151 birth certificates indicating that at least 32 of the 150 prevailing claimants in the Osorio case (representing $21 million of the $97 million judgment) had fathered at least one child after his last alleged exposure to DBCP.

One plaintiff, for instance -- who had been awarded $574,880 for sterility and related mental distress -- had, by his own admission, fathered at least four children after his last DBCP exposure. (Dole's evidence suggested that this plaintiff had actually fathered nine children in all, including eight after his last exposure.)

Huck also found that, even assuming the plaintiffs' medical claims were accurate -- the Nicaraguan procedures had not permitted Dole to test the plaintiffs independently -- more than half of them (78 of the 150) "suffered from injuries for which, according to the unrefuted medical testimony presented to the Court, there is no medical evidence that DBCP is capable of causing."

The average recovery in both the Osorio and Herrera Rios cases was about $650,000 per plaintiff, which is a lot of money in a country where most of the population earns less than $2 a day. According to Judge Huck's ruling, Nicaraguan labor law ordinarily requires employers to pay no more than $1,240 to compensate the family of a worker who has died or become totally disabled due to occupational hazards.

So let's see -- no forum nons to Ecuador, now Nicaragua, the list keeps growing.....

Finally, Steven just filed this interpleader action before Judge Gold involving disputed fees arising from the Siber Air settlement.

Boy, I sure hope he checked the redaction box, we don't need any more issues coming up this week.

Roger Parloff, senior editor at Fortune Magazine, has penned this odd ode to Podhurst lawyer Steven Marks:

The good news is that a Moscow judge adjourned Tuesday's scheduled pretrial hearing in Russia's dubious $22.5 billion suit against the Bank of New York Mellon to allow the parties to pursue settlement talks. The agency bringing the suit, the Russian Federal Customs Service, had requested the talks in a short letter that the bank's lawyers received Friday.

The bad news is that an anonymous "Russian government" source has been quoted in the Russian newspaper Kommersant as suggesting that $800 million would be a reasonable figure for resolving the suit.

On top of many other reasons why Russia's suit, which has extortionate overtones, must not be permitted to succeed -- see my September feature story in FORTUNE, "Bank of New York's $22.5 Billion Headache" -- there's now a capper. Last October the bank, at the U.S. Treasury's bidding, accepted $3 billion in TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) money.

Are taxpayers now going to watch more than a quarter of that money go to Russia to pay off a fishy-smelling suit? And even if taxpayers could stomach that, are they prepared to then see 29% of the $800 million -- $232 million -- pass through to American lawyer Steven Marks of Miami's Podhurst Orseck, who represents victims in many airplane crash cases and who has been Russia's contingent-fee trial counsel in the weird case? Court records show that that's what Marks's retainer agreement calls for him to receive. Marks did not return emails seeking comment.

No, I think the public would rather see BoNY-Mellon blow all the money on bonuses and corporate parties!

BTW, it's a private contract that calls for Marks to accept huge risk for uncertain or perhaps no reward -- I thought this was to be encouraged? I also love how Parloff acts as if the Bank had to be begged -- "at the U.S. Treasury's bidding" -- to accept the TARP money.

Oh you're a funny man, Mr. Parloff.

Putting aside the merits of the suit (which does look somewhat weak), you still have to be amazed at Parloff's entire premise -- that by filing the action in Russia, Marks was attempting to make use of a corrupt foreign legal system that favors the entrenched and powerful, instead of filing in America where all sides have an equally fair shot.

Not exactly the type of argument you'd expect from a Fortune 500 macher.

Indeed, isn't that the 900-pound gorilla in the room whenever the court deals with a forum non motion by a large corporate defendant? You know, when the corporation swears that the legal system in some small backwater where it happens to control the economy and all the levers of power is perfectly suited to adjudicate some poor schmuck's claim?

Please Fortune -- don't tell us what you and your readers really think of foreign legal systems. You're gonna shoot my Kinney analysis all to hail!

What do you know -- I'm going to Court this morning! And that means lots of lawyers on the other side, a judge, a court reporter, and a courtroom.

If I'm lucky maybe there'll even be some law involved. It's state court, so who knows?

Congrats to the DBR for their new redesign -- I was at the unveiling at the Havana Club last Tuesday, and I like it alot. What do you all think?

In other news, the arts festival was a lot of fun but not really a success, Carlton Fields rubs it in, and here are two words you don't say together often enough:

Alex Rundlet and marine hoses.

Have a good day everybody!

We've previously written about the $22.5 billion RICO suit that Podhurst's Steven Marks brought in Russia against the Bank of New York Mellon, which involved an expert affidavit by none other than Michael Hanzman.

Forbes previously reported that the plaintiffs were looking at something like $800 million as a reasonable settlement figure.

Looks like that didn't go too well:

The Bank of New York Mellon has reached an agreement to settle a $22.5 billion lawsuit by the Russian government for $14 million, after the two sides made a separate deal for a trade-financing pact, a senior Russian government official said Wednesday.

Alexei Kudrin, the Russian finance minister, told legislators that the giant American bank will cover legal costs incurred during the two-year suit, which was tied to a late 1990s scandal in which a bank executive was accused of secretly moving $7.5 billion out of the country.

Mr. Kudrin said that the Russian Federal Customs Service, which brought the suit, had “insufficient” evidence to win the case, which was being heard in Moscow Arbitration Court.

So the $14 million covers Steve's fees and costs, and that's it?

Ok, maybe that's not a bad result after all.