New on PACER
I saw where another poster on Yahoo referred to additional settlement conferences being posted on PACER so I looked for myself. There were indeed three additional settlement conferences entered into the docket on October 5th. The conferences themselves occurred Aug. 21st, Aug. 29th, and Sept. 14th. The docket indicates that, just like the one held on Aug. 6th, each of these additional “Settlement Conferences” was held “before Magistrate Judge Susan K. Gauvey.” So in a little less than 6 weeks, 4 separate “settlement conferences” occurred in the presence of Judge Gauvey.
So what do we know?
1) A two day settlement conference was originally scheduled for the 21st and 22nd of August.
2) We were all surprised to learn that a settlement conference occurred on August 6th, over two weeks earlier than anticipated.
3) Now we discover that a conference also occurred as originally scheduled on the 21st of August and that two more supervised settlement conferences occurred over the next three and a half weeks.
To me, this level of dialogue indicates that some serious discussions were being conducted. If RJR was participating with a hard-nosed “go away or else” attitude, there would NOT have been much to discuss. If Star was just a nuisance case, then what was there to talk about?
Since there were 4 separate supervised conferences, there were probably dozens (if not hundreds) of phone calls between the parties and quite possibly some meetings without the judge present. IMHO, the fact that there were 4 Settlement Conferences CONDUCTED by Judge Gauvey is an indication that something major has transpired.
The shorts would have us believe that these 4 settlement conferences occurred in the presence of the judge and then Star threw in the towel and walked away with nothing. I think that is EXTREMELY unlikely. I also think that the shorts are in for quite a surprise because for STSI, this is going to be GOOD…
