More emails to Duke professors

From: RDShatt
To: james.sheldon@duke.edu, james.emery@duke.edu, james.anton@duke.edu
Sent: 11/30/2009 5:37:21 A.M. Central Standard Time
Subj: Email to Professor McGovern about class action lawsuit

Dear Professors Sheldon, Emery, and Anton ,

I have previously emailed Professor Francis McGovern at the Duke law school and numerous other law and business professors at Duke, and you may wish not to read further in this email based on that information.

I am a citizen activist against class action lawsuits, and I emailed Professor McGovern because of his involvement as an expert in a class action lawsuit (presumably for a fee), of which lawsuit I had received notice that I was a member of the plaintiff class (and arguably a source for payment of Professor McGovern's fee). (My email to Professor McGovern is appended below.)

I believe that Professor McGovern and other professors ought to be willing to express, for the benefit of the public, their opinions about significant policy questions in the realm of their expertise, such as that which I have inquired about of Professor McGovern in my email to him. This is particularly true in a situation in which a professor has received a fee for providing expertise in a narrow way, and a citizen activist/paying party, such as myself, asks the professor to state his views about a bigger picture of that which the professor has chosen to participate in and provide support to by that participation.

I hope Professor McGovern replies to me. He may not feel he is in a position to reply because to reply may improperly undercut what he was paid to do in the case.

The reason I am emailing you is that your respective courses of Legal Environment of Business, Ethics in Management, and Managerial Economics are indicative of expertise that is relevant (my basic contentions being that class action lawsuits (i) undermine business ethics, (ii) result in a waste of limited corporate resources that could be better deployed in other ways to promote ethical corporate behavior, and (iii) improperly distort risk assessment and result in the adoption of costly and uneconomic "defensive" corporate practices (like the practice of "defensive" medicine which is currently in the national spotlight as a driver of escalating health care costs that the United States is trying to control), which contentions are explicated in part by this article of mine Does the Civil Liability System Undermine Business Ethics? ).

To solicit your views may smack of guilt by association. If it does, I hope that only registers how objectionable I find the exploitation of the public that I believe is going on.

Thanks very much if you have gotten up to here in this email.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck




From: RDShatt
To: McGovern@law.duke.edu
Sent: 11/21/2009 7:54:46 A.M. Central Standard Time
Subj: Currency conversion fee litigation

Dear Professor McGovern,

Your faculty profile http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/mcgovern/ reveals very impressive work in the alternative dispute resolution arena, and you were retained as an expert in this currency conversion fee litigation http://www.ccfsettlement.com/, of which I received notice in 2007 that I was a member of the plaintiff class.

In 2007 I objected to the class action lawsuit in the form of this letter http://robertshattuck.blogspot.com/2007/11/september-2007-credit-card-currency.html that I wrote to Judge Pauley.

I understand that the litigation is now on appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

I continue very perturbed about this class action litigation.

I would like to ask you, if you would, to read my letter to Judge Pauley and to make comment to me as to whether I, more as a citizen than as a class member, have legitimate grounds for my objections, and the extent to which you agree or not with my objections.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck