We all have heard of “the Statute of Limitations.” (Actually, we attorneys and law professors signal our insider status by referring to the “Limitations statutes.”) The theory of limitations statutes is that there has to be an outside limit on how long a plaintiff has to bring a legal action for redress. As time marches on, witnesses move, get hard to find, even die. Over time, documentary evidence gets destroyed, even accidentally, gets lost, gets eaten by the dog. And human memories fade. Side by side with those concerns, there is a public policy that even wrongdoers at some point have a right of repose. That is, it is plain wrong to allow a prospective plaintiff to hold something over a pending defendant’s head for years, even decades: “One of these days I will sue you for all you’ve got, but I first want you to suffer for years and years, always worrying about when the lawsuit will come.” So we push plaintiffs: bring your case with some promptness, or lose your claim.
The reality is that no one can just walk into a courtroom a week or two after a massive fraud has taken place and just lay all the fraud on the table. It takes weeks, months, and years to unpack this stuff.
On the other hand, though, the law recognizes that a case takes some time to put together. The more complicated the facts and complex the law, the more challenging it will be to uncover all the evidence and make a case stick. We all know that lawsuits typically take a year or more to resolve themselves. Two years is not unusual, nor even are three years. If you ever have had a simple car accident case, you know that it can take a year or more to go to trial or to reach settlement. The sands of the law grind slowly.
And investigations. Ask yourself: How long does a serious fact investigation take to uncover shenanigans? Well, think to the Mueller Investigation. Here was a Special Counsel with an unlimited budget and a legal team as numerous as a football squad, and they still needed two years t...
No hoodwinking or hornswoggling here.
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