No Tyler cases in today’s orders before the Supreme Court of Texas. So, just for fun, here’s a great quote from a Blawgletter post on a 7th Circuit banking scam case in which the court made plain its disdain for scammers who tried a defense that they couldn’t be guilty because they themselves have been scammed by their ringleader (who was not a party to the case, and who had taken the lion’s share, but not all, of the loot):
One is reminded of the highwayman’s case. Everet v. Williams (Ex. 1725), belatedly reported in Note, “The Highwayman’s Case,” 9 L.Q. Rev. 197 (1893) . . . . One highwayman sued another, claiming that he was entitled to a larger share of the loot from a series of joint robberies. The suit was dismissed, both were hanged, and the plaintiff’s lawyers were fined for having brought a suit “both scandalous and impertinent.”
The case, SEC v. Lyttle, serves as a good jumping-off point for research on two principles: 1. Guilt can be inferred when someone takes the Fifth in a civil case, 2. Even a person’s state of mind can be established as a matter of law and resolved via summary judgment (for non lawyers, that means the proof can be so clear that the case doesn’t need to take up a jury’s time).
