‘All Business’ GM Bankruptcy Judge Snaps at Joking Lawyer

fed up
Jun 2, 2009 10:38 AM CST

Thank you Judge Gerber, it is about time someone took an “all business” approach to GM.

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tim
Jun 2, 2009 11:38 AM CST

What’s disgusting is that only the legal profession will make money off government motors bankruptcy.  Everyone else gets screwed.

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George Patsourakos
Jun 2, 2009 2:25 PM CST

Lawyers need to realize that a courtroom hearing is not the right place and time to offer a joke. The judge was correct in scolding the lawyer who made the joke.

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AndytheLawyer
Jun 2, 2009 6:03 PM CST

Remember the classic line from the film “. . .And Justice for All”—“Bailiff, take this man out behind the courthouse and shoot him”?  Judges can’t do that with lawyers who appear by phone.  That’s why they get crabby.

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associate
Jun 3, 2009 9:18 AM CST

#9, Why reward the UAW?  They got exactly what they bargained for; a bankrupt company.  The ones REALLY getting railroaded here are the bondholders (i.e., secured creditors).  If the judge had any cajones, he would scrap the prepackaged agreement and give everyone the share that they’re actually entitled to.

Before you say something about screw the rich, I have friends that used to work for GM as engineers and such, and it was a badge of honor to hold GM bonds.  These people are by no means rich, but are by every account screwed.

Handling cases based on empathy and who we want to screw instead of what the LAW is will have disasterous results for our economy in the near future.  Many businesses (and investors’ money) almost entirely because they believe in the fairness (i.e., predictability) of our system.  Where does that leave us when we abandon that predictiability?

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Catherine Graves
Jun 3, 2009 11:56 AM CST

I am a GM bondholder whose remaining quality of life will be largely determined by Judge Gerber’s opinion.  I am searching for hope that he is deserving of the power he holds in his hands., and appreciate hearing that he is very, very serious.

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BIG 3 CEO
Jun 5, 2009 5:47 AM CST

Why shouldn’t the attorneys fly first class?

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silencedogood
Jun 5, 2009 6:36 AM CST

#9 Sorry, but anyone can do manual labor.  The fact that the UAW had inflated wages, benefits, etc. was one of the major reasons GM is in the situation they are in—they’ve been going bankrupt for 30 years.  Management made stupid decisions too, partly because they felt that government would bail them out.  But there is no justification for the UAW being rewarded at all—all they did was lose the jobs of their members.  In fact, the bankruptcy is the only fighting chance GM has to restructure without the burden of its union contracts into something that resembles a profitable enterprise.

Of course, the real question is why did the government put any money into GM?  There was no avoiding its bankruptcy.  Funny how that was a nightmare scenario a few months hence yet now that they are in fact bankrupt the sky has not fallen. 

We are all out a lot of taxpayer money to achieve the same result all for the sake of Bush and Obama’s desire to look presidential.

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sue
Jun 5, 2009 7:09 AM CST

#15

you don’t have to for long.  the same “greedy” union who lost their job will be lol when the “greedy” lawyers billing at $1,000 lose their jobs to attorneys in India billing $10 an hour.

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B. McLeod
Jun 5, 2009 7:49 AM CST

Sue is really feeling her oats this morning.  I like a feisty girl whose name is a verb.

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Mass Lawyer
Jun 5, 2009 8:03 AM CST

Mitt Romney was right…

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JFK
Jun 5, 2009 8:32 AM CST

#4, it’s not just the legal profession that’ll make money off GM.  There is also the UAW; Obama delivered the company to his union buds to repay a campaign debt.  Besides the legal profession, all the higher ups in the union with access to union slush funds will make lots of money.  They’ll also have extra for campaign contributions to Democrats.  Consumers and taxpayers, of course, are screwed.

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blame should go around
Jun 5, 2009 10:48 AM CST

Seems to be a lot of anger at the UAW here.  Why?  GM is the one who set the wages in the first place, and who designed the cars (designers and engineers who were not UAW, by the way) that landed them in this mess.  It’s like complaining about how much money professional athletes make, while forgetting that someone is more than happy to write them that check, since they’re making even more money than the athletes.  I agree the UAW caused some problems, but they were not the biggest cause of GM’s demise.

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joe
Jun 5, 2009 11:17 AM CST

GM"s lawyers also went along with the crappy deals.  Just goes to show you Big Law doesn’t care about the business side of the deals it works on.  it just papers bad deals and takes the money and runs/.

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Cars People Don't Want - Nothing New
Jun 5, 2009 11:32 AM CST

#27, “Now GM will make cars that people don’t want.”

It was already doing so, and had been to some degree since the 1980’s.  That’s why it’s in the state it’s in now.  And you can give all the incentives you want:  if the product is inferior (or even perceived as being so), no one will buy it.  I remember when the Big Three complained in the 80’s about the japanese car companies, and the federal government put price restrictions on them, so that the Big Three could compete on price.  What the Big Three immediately did was raise their prices to just below the japanese cars prices, rather than leave their prices where they were and use their even greater cost advantage as a selling point.  Big Three sales did increase, but the appetite for japanese cars did not abate, because of their quality and reliability.  At this point, I have no sympathy for anything that happens to GM, although I do feel for the workers, both UAW and non-UAW.  They weren’t the ones who put profit above innovation and forward thinking.

In the interest of fair disclosure, two years ago I purchased my first American car, after years of buying japanese cars.  It was a Saturn Aura.  I like it, and I bought it because it had styling that appealed to me, and appeared to be a good product for the price.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the car.

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F.C. Gibbons
Jun 5, 2009 12:45 PM CST

Good for the Judge.

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Adamius
Jun 5, 2009 1:52 PM CST

Humor is a shifty subtle business.  You have to have a feel for your audience.  And a tense situation doesn’t rule out its appropriateness, necessarily.  It might have been better received by the judge if it were a parting shot at the end of the case after a successful resolution to the case, rather than at nine in the morning on the first conference call on the first day of the case.  I absolutely disagree you can’t show any humor before a judge does, but you have to have discerning perception and be able to tell it will be well received.  We don’t cease to be human when we become lawyers, but when we are acting as lawyers we will always be more effective if we don’t come off as annoying.

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B. McLeod
Jun 5, 2009 6:42 PM CST

I think the auto executives who flew to DC in the private jets probably considered the matter much more carefully than the public believes.  Chances are, if they had piled into cars made by their companies, and tried to drive to DC, they never would have made it.  The media would have had a field day with the caravan collapsing as the ticky-tacky pieces of crap broke down one after another.

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cmd
Jun 8, 2009 12:08 PM CST

#37 & #10: Why should we protect secured bondholders above anyone else? All investments involve RISK, however minimal some might seem at the time of purchase. It’s a shame they’ll be losing out, but that’s the nature of investing. If they’d instead buried the cash in the yard, it’d still be there today.

As for all the comments about the UAW - last time I checked, they had absolutely nothing to do with GMAC’s wildly unscrupulous lending policies, which is also a large contributor to this mess.  I agree that the worker’s union held too much sway in this instance, but I think it’s hilarious to see who comes out of the woodwork with pitchforks in hand when the average joe actually wins one for a change. It’s become acceptable—and to some people’s way of thinking, preferable—to give the corporate overlords a free pass when they exploit workers in new and increasingly cruel ways, but _how_dare_ those insolent serfs engage in the same type of unchecked pillaging when given the opportunity?

I can’t say that I like what’s going on at GM - I’d prefer the company were liquidated at firesale prices so I’d never have to see the debut of *sigh* another boring, overstuffed, road-hogging, sight-blocking behemoth of an SUV debut on the auto-show circuit. But I positively love it when I see investors and bankers getting a dose (albeit small) of their own medicine.

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