Justice Ginsburg Stays Chrysler Sale

There was a bunch more activity on this over the weekend, which I neglected to post about. (A good roundup of information is here.) The short version is that the Second Circuit approved the sale. It was to go through after 4pm today...but several petitioners, including the Indiana pension plans, appealed to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay.

Justice Ginsburg is the justice who gets the stay motions from the Second Circuit. Just minutes before the 4pm deadline, she issued a temporary stay.

What happens now? She decides whether to grant the stay until the full Court gets a chance to look at the petition.

Keep in mind that this is only temporary and this is the very last appeal. It would take the votes of five justices to actually stop the deal from going through. I'm not holding my breath that the Court is ready to stand up to the blatant power grab of the Obama Administration.

The hold-up could be as simple as one justice writing to dissent from the denial of stay. On the other hand, it could be the justices wanted more time to examine the issues. We won't know until the Court bestirs itself and that could be any time.

The only true deadline of interest is June 15. That's when Fiat has the option of backing out.

Thanks to Mike S. for the tip.

From that SCOTUSblog link above, I'll tell you what Ginsburg may find more pursuasive than the Indiana pensions:

A third application to delay the Chrysler sale has been filed at the Supreme Court, on behalf of a woman who is suing Chrysler for damages, claiming that her husband died from lung cancer due to exposure to asbestos while working on auto brakes. Her lawsuit in state court in California will be scuttled if the sale occurs, she argued.

It has the hallmarks of a Ginsburg grant: (1) woman; (2) in distress; (3) man (or The Man) to blame.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 03:32 PM

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