ducati998

First day back was fine. Didn’t see that many from the previous year, but this was an elective that may not have been that popular, which was Insolvency Law.

The lecturer, not the most electrifying lecturer that we’ve ever had, but that’s just the nature of the beast.

One of the class [that we know of] needs to re-sit Criminal Law. I can commiserate with that, it was a hideous exam last year. I was very relieved to have passed it myself.

Assignments are coming on thick and fast, a very interesting on is in Legal Ethics, which concerns itself with morality, specifically, Aristotlian, Kantian and Benthamite.

First day back of the fourth and final year.

GOOG trade a winner. Returns 74%. Nice.

One of my employment cases is concurrently running as a criminal case.

I am helping the Barrister who is running the criminal case with drafting various documents: affidavit and memorandum for discharge without conviction.

Obviously I’m not drafting these documents without any guidance, the stakes are too high for that, although the charges are at a lower level.

But by undertaking the drafting, costs are kept lower. At $500/hr, you want to try and keep time consuming, but relatively routine paperwork to a minimum….enter the law student.

After yesterday’s monster rally and today’s strength, the short position while still in the money is definitely looking vulnerable.

To work, it needs to have a weaker day today.

*Update

Closed out the position and reversed with a Long position in GOOG.

Short SPY trade still working nicely.

Donald Trump won again. By a lot — again.

As soon as the Republican presidential caucuses closed in Nevada on Tuesday evening, almost every major news outlet projected a Trump victory, his third of the four nominating contests thus far.

Though candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have attempted to carve out voting “lanes” in the Republican presidential primary, entrance and exit polling Tuesday night showed Trump winning by massive margins among almost every major demographic within the Republican electorate.

The surveys delivered a clear theme: Trump’s dominance of every major category of voter.

He won across the board with Republican primary voters, easily winning young and old voters, voters of both sexes, and both voters who identified as moderate as well as those who identified as conservative.

The Trump bandwagon keeps on rolling.

I have now received the written determination. If I harboured any residual doubts whether to appeal this case, they are summarily dismissed after reading this determination.

The positives are really straightforward, there are ample grounds to appeal this on a point of law [several actually].

There is an appeal as of right, either on points of law, or as a de novo hearing. My preference at this point is on a point of law.

All three grounds provide ample legal challenge.

I have 28 days from [today] to file an appeal. I have already obtained the correct forms. I shall complete them over the next couple of days and file them with the court.

The short trade in SPY is currently working well. Still plenty of time for it to go wrong of course, but with a pretty tight correlation to oil and the Saudi’s refusing to cut production, oil will probably be weak for a few days, thus, SPY weak for a few days.

So yesterday I was in court. Cutting straight to the chase, it did not go well, I lost on all three grounds.

Do I agree with the decision [in law]…no I do not and will file an appeal.

The writing was on the wall almost immediately with the Judge [who is the Authority Member, but who I’ll simply refer to as the ‘Judge’] being very hard on the complainant, who was the witness. By the time she had finished with him, he was a very confused witness.

Some examples;

“Feel free to disagree with me if you feel that I am being unfair….”

” I disagree…”

“Really?  Why? Be specific.”

These were not questions on the evidence, more questions on the law, which in a breach of contract case will be technical and sometimes quite subtle.

Anyway, we eventually got through his testimony relatively intact considering the intensity of the questions.

I had a chance to re-examine and bring the evidence back on track. Things went reasonably well until we came to an important word in the clause that the Judge had spent almost 15 mins of her time trying to elicit a very precise answer.

The word was ‘recurring’.

I had addressed this word at length in my submissions. It was a technical argument. I led the witness [without appearing to lead] through the definition that we wanted the court to construe the word in the contractual clause.

The Judge was not happy. She questioned me more specifically on the interpretation of the word and I provided her with the same example that I had used in my submissions.

She ‘hurrumphed” and said, “good luck with that!”

At that point, if any remaining doubt existed, I knew that this was going to be a long day.

The day continued with my cross examination questions to the respondent’s witnesses being answered largely by the Judge.

It concluded with an oral determination, read from a written determination, that she [the Judge] had prepared in 2.5 hrs.

No surprises, I lost all three grounds plead.

However, possibly due to the quickness of writing the determination, the legal arguments put forward were not strong reasons for dismissing the case. I will receive the written determination later today and carefully read the reasons provided.

If my initial reaction to yesterday’s oral determination remains unchanged, or changes for the worse, I shall file an appeal into the Employment Court on a point of law, rather than pursue a de novo hearing.