Forty-nine minutes of contempt (Argentina edition)
The briefs have been filed in NML v. Argentina (a complete set here), and the Second Circuit has revised the hearing schedule, expanding the time for oral argument on February 27 to a total of 49 minutes. The new schedule grants some time to Bank of New York Mellon and the exchange bondholders (7 minutes each) and gives NML a bit of extra time to compensate. This is a positive development, no matter how you think the case should come out. The most challenging legal issue relates to the scope of the district court's injunction, especially to whether BoNY, as trustee under the exchange bonds, can be held in contempt if it passes funds along to the exchange bondholders. If oral argument means anything, the extra argument time should held the court better address these questions.
BoNY's potential exposure to contempt sanctions comes down to what it means to be "in active concert and participation" with a party who willfully violates a court order. BoNY's argument, in a nutshell, is that it can't be held in contempt unless its purpose is to help Argentina evade the injunction. Just transferring funds, BoNY says, doesn't satisfy that standard, because it would simply be carrying out contractual duties incurred before the injunction. (Readers interested in more detail might want to check out Shearman and Sterling's summary of the arguments here.)
Initially, I thought BoNY clearly had the better of the argument on this question, but I'm increasingly uncertain.
The exchange bonds are structured to keep funds away from holdouts like NML. That's why the bonds rely on a trustee in the first place. When funds reach the trustee, they belong to the exchange bondholders and are no longer Argentine assets capable of being seized by creditors. Even if BoNY's legal argument is correct, isn't the very purpose of the trust indenture to stiff holdouts? And if that's so, why should it matter that the trust indenture pre-dates the injunction? If Cleary Gottlieb had a duty to advise Argentina under some pre-injunction contract (it doesn't, so far as I know), no one thinks it could help Argentina violate the court's order without risking contempt. So why is BoNY different?
W. Mark C. Weidemaier
Assistant Professor of Law
Mark Weidemaier is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on how contracts evolve in response to legal changes and the behavior of intermediaries. Current projects, for example, use archival research to uncover the origins of terms used in international financial contracts and trace how these contracts evolved in response to government policies and changes in public international law. Other work focuses on contractual dispute resolution mechanisms such as arbitration, examining the influence of litigants, lawyers, and arbitrators. For example, his scholarship has explored how arbitrators use precedent, and at times create it, and how institutional providers of arbitration services shape arbitration contracts. Representative publications are available for download on the Social Science Research Network and the Berkeley Electronic Press. At UNC, Weidemaier teaches Contracts, Commercial Arbitration, Complex Civil Litigation, Advanced Litigation Practice, and Foundations of US Common Law.
After graduating first in his class from the University of Minnesota Law School, Weidemaier clerked for the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced law in the complex commercial litigation group at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia and worked at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, MN.
Curriculum Vitae
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Show All Publications
Book review (reviewing ANNELISE RILES, COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE: LEGAL REASONING IN THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKETS (2011) __ POL. & LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY __ (forthcoming 2013). [K1100 .R55 2011 ]
How Markets Work: The Lawyer's Version (with M. Gulati). __ STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY __ (forthcoming 2013). [SSRN]
Obsessed by Contracts: Sovereign Debt Reform in the Eurozone, __ J. TRANSNAT'L L. & CONTEMP. PROBS. __ (forthcoming 2013).
Reforming Sovereign Lending Practices: Modern Initiatives in Historical Context, in SOVEREIGN FINANCING AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE UNCTAD PRINCIPLES ON RESPONSIBILE SOVEREIGN LENDING AND BORROWING (Oxford Univ. Press forthcoming 2013).
Judging Lite: How Arbitrators Make and Use Precedent, 90 N.C. L. REV. 1091 (2012). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein]
Origin Myths, Contracts, and the Hunt for Pari Passu (with B. Scott & M. Gulati), 38 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY __ (2012). [SSRN]
Contracting for State Intervention: The Origins of Sovereign Debt Arbitration, 73 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS., Fall 2010, at 335 (2010). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis,SSRN, Hein, BEPress, Document Link]
Toward A Theory of Precedent in Arbitration, 51 WM. & MARY L. REV. 1895 (2010). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
Disputing Boilerplate, 82 TEMP. L. REV. 1 (2009). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN,Hein, BEPress]
Arbitration and the Individuation Critique, 49 ARIZ. L. REV. 69 (2007). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, BEPress]
http://www.law.unc.edu/faculty/directory/weidemaierwmarkc/
I'm no expert on the law of contempt (or related matters, like UCC Article 4A, which governs funds transfers) and would welcome feedback from more informed readers. But this is one aspect of NML v. Argentina that has significant implications outside the sovereign debt context. As I have noted in other posts and articles, I'm not a big fan of the court's interpretation of the pari passu clause. Once you accept that interpretation, however, the case gets quite a bit harder. Under US law, courts do have the power to issue an injunction against a foreign sovereign. And while courts have little power to sanction a sovereign for non-compliance, they certainly can enforce the injunction against many third parties. So where to draw the line? The Second Circuit could still punt on these questions by revisiting the meaning of pari passu or the propriety of the injunction, but it has given no sign of such an interest. So if you see a bunch of puzzled-looking sovereign debt lawyers wandering the New York streets on February 27, it may be because they have just taken a 49-minute crash course in the law of contempt.
W. Mark C. Weidemaier
Assistant Professor of Law
Mark Weidemaier is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on how contracts evolve in response to legal changes and the behavior of intermediaries. Current projects, for example, use archival research to uncover the origins of terms used in international financial contracts and trace how these contracts evolved in response to government policies and changes in public international law. Other work focuses on contractual dispute resolution mechanisms such as arbitration, examining the influence of litigants, lawyers, and arbitrators. For example, his scholarship has explored how arbitrators use precedent, and at times create it, and how institutional providers of arbitration services shape arbitration contracts. Representative publications are available for download on the Social Science Research Network and the Berkeley Electronic Press. At UNC, Weidemaier teaches Contracts, Commercial Arbitration, Complex Civil Litigation, Advanced Litigation Practice, and Foundations of US Common Law.
After graduating first in his class from the University of Minnesota Law School, Weidemaier clerked for the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced law in the complex commercial litigation group at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia and worked at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, MN.
Curriculum Vitae
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Show All Publications
Book review (reviewing ANNELISE RILES, COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE: LEGAL REASONING IN THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKETS (2011) __ POL. & LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY __ (forthcoming 2013). [K1100 .R55 2011 ]
How Markets Work: The Lawyer's Version (with M. Gulati). __ STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY __ (forthcoming 2013). [SSRN]
Obsessed by Contracts: Sovereign Debt Reform in the Eurozone, __ J. TRANSNAT'L L. & CONTEMP. PROBS. __ (forthcoming 2013).
Reforming Sovereign Lending Practices: Modern Initiatives in Historical Context, in SOVEREIGN FINANCING AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE UNCTAD PRINCIPLES ON RESPONSIBILE SOVEREIGN LENDING AND BORROWING (Oxford Univ. Press forthcoming 2013).
Judging Lite: How Arbitrators Make and Use Precedent, 90 N.C. L. REV. 1091 (2012). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein]
Origin Myths, Contracts, and the Hunt for Pari Passu (with B. Scott & M. Gulati), 38 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY __ (2012). [SSRN]
Contracting for State Intervention: The Origins of Sovereign Debt Arbitration, 73 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS., Fall 2010, at 335 (2010). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis,SSRN, Hein, BEPress, Document Link]
Toward A Theory of Precedent in Arbitration, 51 WM. & MARY L. REV. 1895 (2010). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
Disputing Boilerplate, 82 TEMP. L. REV. 1 (2009). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN,Hein, BEPress]
Arbitration and the Individuation Critique, 49 ARIZ. L. REV. 69 (2007). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, BEPress]
http://www.law.unc.edu/faculty/directory/weidemaierwmarkc/
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