Miami lawyers Scott Srebnick and Jose Quinon to represent Michael Avenatti...

...in one of his three federal criminal cases, the Nike indictment.  He’s lucky to have them.  From the client himself:

“Timing is everything.”

That’s Judge Rosenbaum in this case involving Club Madonna, a strip club on Miami Beach.  More:

People often say that timing is everything. Hitting a home run? Timing.1 Comedy? Timing.2 Winemaking? Timing.3 Relationships? Timing.4 Politics? Timing.5
And of course, timing is also important when it comes to Article III justiciability. File before the facts underpinning the claim have been sufficiently developed, and a court must dismiss the claim because it is not ripe for the court’s review. But wait until the claim has been resolved and the court can offer no further relief, and a court must dismiss the claim because it is moot. Yet if a well-pleaded claim falls in the sweet spot between ripeness and mootness and is otherwise justiciable, it states a “case or controversy” that the court must entertain.
Here, Appellant Club Madonna, Inc. (the “Club”), a fully-nude strip club in the City of Miami Beach (the “City”), filed several claims against the City, challenging administrative action it had taken against the Club, the laws authorizing that action, and ordinances the City later enacted that regulate the fully nude strip- club business. The district court dismissed all sixteen of the Club’s claims, six because they did not state a claim and ten because they were not yet ripe for the court’s review.
The Club appealed the district court’s dismissal as it pertains to all but Counts I, II, and part of Count VI. We agree that Counts III through VI failed to state claims. We also agree that one of the remaining claims was not ripe. And we affirm the district court’s dismissal of one more of those claims because the Club lacks standing to pursue it. But we conclude that the eight remaining appealed claims were ripe for the district court’s review and therefore reverse and remand to the district court for further proceedings.

All those footnotes at the beginning of the opinion make for fun reading:

1 Babe Ruth said that a great hitter didn’t “swing any harder” or “with any longer arc than the poorer hitters” but had “perfect timing sense.” George Herman Ruth, Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball 178 (University of Nebraska Press, 1992) (1928); see also Nate Scott, “The 50 Greatest Yogi Berra Quotes,” USA Today Sept. 23, 2015, available at https://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/09/the-50-greatest-yogi-berra-quotes (last visited May 24, 2019).
2 According to Bob Hope, timing is “the essence of life and definitely of comedy.” William Robert Faith, Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy (Da Capo Press, Inc. 2009). Asked to comment further, he reportedly paused and said, “We don’t have time for that.” Dena Kleiman, “Bob Hope Gives a Lesson in Comedy,” New York Times, April 30, 1986, available at https://nyti.ms/2HLa4Mi.
3 Timing’s importance in winemaking was central to the Paul Masson advertising campaign from the late 1970s, which featured Orson Welles informing the viewer that the company would “sell no wine before its time.” See Orson Welles for Paul Masson Wine (April 2, 1979), YouTube (May 14, 2009), https://youtu.be/oSs6DcA6dFI, (last visited May 24, 2019).
4 Just ask Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher. They married in 2015, over a decade and a half after their first kiss—as actors in the pilot episode of That ‘70s Show. Stephanie Petit, “#TBT: Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher First Kissed on That 70’s Show,” People (July 21, 2016), https://people.com/tv/mila-kunis-and-ashton-kutcher-recall-first-kiss-on-that-70s-show/ (last visited May 24, 2019).
5 Pierre Trudeau is credited as saying that timing was the “essential ingredient” of politics. See The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations 439 (Connie Robertson, ed.,Wordsworth 1997).

Summer court closures

Have a great Memorial Day on Monday.  Courts are closed.

Federal court is also closed on July 5 per this Order from Chief Judge Moore.

While I'm on the Administrative Orders page, I saw these new magistrate judge pairings for the new district judges:

ORDERED that effective May 6, 2019, when Judge Ruiz begins receiving case transfers
from other District Judges, he will be paired with Magistrate Judge Barry S. Seltzer for all Fort
Lauderdale cases; Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Becerra for all Miami cases; and Magistrate Judge
Bruce E. Reinhart for all West Palm Beach cases.

AND

ORDERED that effective April 11, 2019, when Judge Altman begins receiving case transfers from other District Judges, he will be paired with Magistrate Judge Patrick M. Hunt for all Fort Lauderdale and Miami cases; and Magistrate Judge Dave Lee Brannon for all West Palm Beach cases.

“It has taken all of us many years to learn the rules of procedure and you’re going to have to study that and learn that yourself.”

That was Judge Roy Altman telling Yujing Zhang, the accused Chinese spy, that she shouldn't represent herself. Her response:

“If necessary, I might do some study in terms of this,” Zhang acknowledged.

“A trained lawyer would defend you much better than you could represent yourself,” Altman replied. “I strongly urge you not to represent yourself. ... I’ve been a lawyer for a very long time and I think this is a very bad decision.”

The Herald has more here.

One interesting issue that is happening more and more is a reporter reporting on overhearing a conversation between lawyer and client in the court. The Herald reported on such a conversation here calling it an "intense heart-to-heart."

Gorsuch joins "liberal" wing of Supreme Court on Tribal issue

This is the second time he has done so.  The holding:  Wyoming’s statehood did not abrogate the Crow Tribe’s 1868 federal treaty right to hunt on the “unoccupied lands of the United States”; the lands of the Bighorn National Forest did not become categorically “occupied” when the forest was created.

Justice Sotomayor wrote the opinion, which can be accessed here.