Whittier Law Trustees Vote To Shutter School; Faculty Sue To Enjoin

Faculty is suing to keep the only law prof job they are likely to have. Doubt they would care if they thought they could easily find employment at another school.

Who thinks the TRO will be granted?

I have long predicted that when the first "respectable" college closes law school, it will be seen as validating closure as an appropriate solution for numerous other law schools and this will trigger a wave of closures. I am also of the view that it is law schools that are affiliated with larger institutions, who can realise some value from the closure – reusing the law school facilities, or selling off the campus, that are likely to move fastest. Whittier College is ranked in the middle of the pack of Liberal Arts Colleges nationally, that are ranked (a lot are not) so US News ranks it at 132/239 and is decently regarded in California too, while the law school is not even ranked and very much in the 4th tier – so it is a decided drag on the College's reputation. Frankly, this brief is the final element in showing that Whittier exactly meets these criteria.

I think a lot of other Colleges and Universities in California and across the US will notice this decision, and put serious thought into closing their law school if it is uneconomic, has poor student outcomes and is becoming a net drag on both the college/university's reputation and mission – and particularly if there is an effective gain to be had by say repurposing the law school facilities or selling off the campus.

If those teaching at Whittier think they have a cause of action to require this (by all accounts) failing school to remain open, then it's no wonder their students are failing to pass the bar and get jobs.

The suit linked above should not be "settled" under any circumstances. The complete adjudication of these claims should be an imperative.

Reading the complaint, it is clear: the outcome for students at this law school is completely beside the point for these valorous litigants. The issue: money. Performance? Just read the way the allegations handle the prior probation for unacceptably dismal bar pass rates! And employment prospects for graduates?

No, dear readers, this law school and others (see, especially, Golden Gate) has been allowed to continue for too long, and the complaint in this action dispels any notion that the reason for this continuance has been to benefit students.

One doesn't know the extent to which the suit linked above represents the view of the entire outgoing faculty. However, all the debates here in the FL about the responsibility of faculties for law school failure now come into sharp relief. If members of a law faculty are so oblivious and unwilling to accept responsibility for quite obvious failures and inadequacies, and the harm done to others as a result, then IMHO that debate is resolved.

The complaint linked to above is a piece of work that heaps shame on those who have filed it. It should be enshrined as a classic example of arrogance and greed in the face of blatant and obvious failure.

I am absolutely disgusted by this! So what these professors are saying is we should ignore the fact that Whittier requires students to build up massive amounts of debt in order to get a law degree that will neither assist them in passing the bar or finding a job — instead we should keep this horrendous school going just so they can keep getting a paycheck. Unbelievable!

I know that most of them lack the traditional qualifications for a law professor and, thus, are unlikely to get a job anywhere else, but this lawsuit is one of the most selfish, shameful acts I've seen in a long time!

This lawsuit is primarily about how much the tenured professors should be paid for loss of tenure. If they can make the argument effectively that the Whittier Law did not have to close, then they can seek to attach a monetary value to their tenure. The law school cannot recover from the announcement that it is closing, but the College has $14 million or more to devote to settlement.

The perverse aspect of this is that the law professors, to maximise their claim, will need to debunk and attack the very idea that they could make millions in private practice, and even argue the terrible economic outcomes of their students, so as to maximise the value of their tenured as compared to you know, a typical local lawyer, like say their own graduates. Their own graduates terrible employment prospects matter in getting a bigger settlement.

Ironic, after arguing so many into going to law school, they now have to argue that it's a lousy choice…..I am so looking forward to certain law professors making the same argument … there is one at Santa Clara which will be utterly hilarious if it happens.

Brackets

Great insight!

Add that law professors who produced such abysmal results, who avoided (and escaped) sanctions for so long but who won't take even a bit of responsibility for the failure of this law school, wouldn't appear to be good candidates to teach elsewhere.

Then again, self aggrandizement and delusions of grandeur are the coin of the realm in legal academia. So, perhaps they all believe that they will recover a hefty sum, and then find tenure at higher ranked law schools.

Again, this suit should be litigated fully. NO SETTLEMENT.

This suit, appears to be so one sided and self interested as to be potentially frivolous of the merits. Perhaps the only source of those long overdue sanctions will be in the form of monetary relief against those who appear to be especially greedy and callous. Time will tell.

The faculty of Whittier Law should be applauding the decision to close the law school, and apologizing to the many whose lives they have exploited. The fruits of that enterprise should not be distributed to those who so significantly caused this failure. The College shouldn't pay a penny that isn't clearly and unavoidably contractually required.

(Remember: Law professors in the main are notorious in their general unfamiliarity with the law in practice and the reality of the courts. They will argue ludicrous positions with a haughty air of superiority and continue to do so until faced with an outcome that was baked into the situation from the outset. Again: DON'T SETTLE!)

Anon:

I hate to say this, but the 'don't settle' argument may perhaps make sense with serial litigants like say patent trolls, where a willingness to settle makes you a target – I remember pointing out to then megacorp that their settling approach made them target No. 1 for every troll.

That said, as a matter of objective law, the tenured profs of Whittier Law have a claim, no matter what our moral opinion of them may be, and that claim depends on two things – did Whittier Law have to close, or could it wholly legally have continued to rip-off Federally financed students indefinitely (like a pimp claiming that prostitution is legal, and he's entitled to a share of his girl's earnings, but hey!). Assuming they win the argument that Wittier coukd have LEGALLY continued exploiting student loan conducts ad infinitum, then there is a capital value to their right to be part of that exploitation channel.

And so the delta, the difference between what a Whittier graduate might earn and the reported $200k p.a. salary (not including benefits) of at least some Whittier profs, and indeed the no-benefit marginal income of their graduates employed as lawyers, is crucial to maximizing the value of their claim – but amusement at their arguing poor employment prospects is indecent (so I'm disgraceful) – but if a certain professor from Santa Clara tries this gambit, I'll show no mercy….. You were saying it was a great idea to go to law school, now live like a superannuated poli-sci zero with marginal lehal skills….

Forget about the whinings of a faculty that hasn't been able to help this school's atrocious bar passage rate and long term employment prospects. This is the best thing that could possibly happen for a number of students even though they probably refuse to see it that way.

I only hope that other schools follow suit, and that students can somehow get a good chunk of their student loan balances discharged.

There are plenty of other ways to help save the world and serve one's fellow human beings which don't involve racking up insane amounts of student loan debt in the name of pursuing a law degree from a bottom-tier school.

I'm going to say something at odds with my persona around here (driven as it is by a certain Santa Clara professor of law principles, a Chicago laughing stock, and the morally bankrupt Dan Filler (that'll get this post deleted – Dan hates reminders), but I don't think individual law professors are responsible for the performance if their law schools – they may be complicit if they stayed when the school was scr3wing it's students (and complicity is usually harshly treated by the bar) – but they did not chose the policies. Indeed, there is a fair point in this brief that Whittier was happy to milk the law schoo, into a serious case serious mastitis (grew up around dairy farmers, even milked cows) when the milking was good.

The professors have a point, Whittier was happy to take a share of the corrupt and diseased (if legal) milk, they need to share more with their partners in the not-quite-under-the-law-a-crime-even-if-it-should-have-got-them-disbarred…..

I'm typing this on an iPad so – well, when I suggest Dan Filler is a moral ignoramus and ethically bankrupt, or a certain Santa Clara law prof, who is, by the way, an awful human being (and a legal an political science dud, with the emphasis on the duh!) well yes, but please allow otherwise for typos.

Student loan conducts was meant to be "student loan conduits," an apochrypal description applied at certain bottom feeding law schools associated with…..

Throwaway –

I'm not sue it is tbat good for current Whittier enrollees (and I'll admit I don't have the time to research the question.).Whittier has announced a "run-off" where the current enrollees can get their JD before the program ends – the school will not close down until they graduate. I'd need to look at the law, but I think they don't get a discharge unless the school closes mid-program. I didn't look, but I'd bet Whittier and it's faculty did p kid screwed, big deal¡ we get paid, that's what matters……

iPad agin

Brackets

I mainly agree with all of your comments, save the one about absolving the faculties. This debate has been engaged here before, but I don't recall if you were posting (mainly, it was Frakt absolving the faculties, or, at least, that's the way I read his defenses.)

Suffice it to say that Whittier wasn't the only California law school put on probation around the time (as alleged in the complaint). It appears that both showed temporary improvements (or at least, got off the hook) but now show really abysmal bar pass rate failures (to say nothing of abysmal, really disgusting job prospects).

Now, faculties love to claim that they can't control the latter (they can, by doing a better job) but it seems undeniable that if, under pressure, a law school was able to improve the bar pass rate, but, when the pressure was relieved, the law school reverted right back to the failure that started the cycle, then THE FACULTY had some control over the situation. Blaming slight differences in LSAT and GPA scores is really not credible, as different law schools do better, or worse, with the same raw material.

The fact is that law professors work part time by any standard, but are paid a full time wage. (40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year?) These folks are generally very lazy indeed. In particular, as relevant to this situation, they don't use their ample vacation time to help failing students, as they should. (At the bottom feeders, it is very difficult to claim that most law professors are working their tails off producing scholarship, engaging in pro bono public service, or anything of the sort.)

As stated in the previous iteration of this debate, I have no quarrel with laziness at law schools that are performing. (Ironically, however, at better performing law schools, the faculty tend to work harder. Go figure … any correlation there?) If a law school is producing graduates who pass the bar and find LT, FT, JD required employment, then I can't dispute the right of the faculty to keep loafing if they wish to (and often do).

But, at failing schools? No!

If your associates all produced shoddy work and kept losing in court, would you take any responsibility? Or, blame the associates or "management"?

The reason this suit must go to court (after the COllege has paid what is CONTRACTUALLY REQUIRED) is to expose these connivers for what they are. It is time to bring them into a court of law and get the story under oath and on the record.

If this strategy is carried out, my prediction is that the next time a law school closes, the connivers will leave more quietly. They are often bullies, and can't and won't face a real test.

You can call me by my name – but I'm not sure if it'll make it through. I was doxxed on this website by a certain well known Chicago professor, almost certainly with the collusion of Dan (who was a pal of the doxxer), which ended up in very personal attack on me using the name and reputation of my recently deceased father. Dan responded by blocking my handle, and then came up with dubious excuses. I keep the brackets because it is utterly humiliating for him, shows what a small person he is, etc. (Hey Dan, no-one believes you (he will delete this….)

So here is the the issue. I am in fact a practicing lawyer – and as such I regularly see the tension, not necessarily for lawyers, between doing the right thing, and facing the reality of your own interests. (There are so many top-tier firms that I have seen give the obviously wrong advice in favour of the more billable hours advice.) Legal faculty are in a bind, caught between self interest – being a law professor is, let's be fair, a pretty "cushy number," compared to actual practice, and their obligations to the legal profession and to their students. So when you say "faculties love to claim that they can't control the latter (they can, by doing a better job)" well, they really can't control the latter if the law school seeks tuition dollars by admitting those who cannot really be trained to be lawyers (which is Frakts point.) That said, many have stayed when their school converted to pretty well open admissions to keep the student loan conduits open.

I'm not surprised that many have managed to rationalise their own immediate personal interest as being, well self-less and in the public interest. After all, that is what they are training many of their graduates to do, and if they went to Harvard, Yale or Stanford that is what they were trained to do. And to be fair, practicing lawyers do face the question regularly, but we don't claim to be pure.

I can broadly agree with the need to have more minority lawyers and public interest lawyers – but not with so many law professors trying to get salaries based on private law-firm pay scales that are multiples of the ordinary story front and minority lawyers typical earnings, while pretending to some sort of sacrifice (as if they'd have survived the 80+ hour weeks to make it to partner at mega firm X.)

What makes me so angry is the utter hypocrisy, the dishonesty, the self serving BS – the tools like the professor from Santa Clara who wants to be respected, despite his personal moral bankruptcy (I can't say his name, Dan has a filter), Dan and his self promotion into a role and job few or probably none of his students have a chance at, the Chicago nightmare, whose own profession (Philosophy) has essentially disowned him (by he way Dan, denials get you nowhere.) So many supposed "decent people" have morally debased themselves, have participated in the destruction of a profession, have screwed so many young people, and think they have the right to morally posture? They are zeros, people without worth, who should find a rock to hide under, not call themselves any title of honour like professor, dean, etc.

I can look after myself. Dan, the Santa Clara jackass (Dan has his name filtered), the Chicago buffoon, they know I can, but still they persist, like a social disease. And you know, if Dan and the Chicago-buffoon had not engaged in the personal crap, I'd never have bothered even guessing who was @duren (Dan has that name filtered too), which was so terribly easy, and posting that for another doxer to use. By the way Chicago buffoon, the Canadian statute of limitations had run…

I'm tired, and I have real work to do.

I'm not so much absolving the faculties as being understanding, something you need to be as a lawyer. Being a tenured law-professor is like winning the lottery – you get to earn more than most law firm partners where your law school is situated earn, you cannot be fired unless you really overdo the fraternisation (and I knew a prof who worked his way through the 1Ls, blonde, brunette, redhead, without his civil rights enthusiasts dean mentioning it and she knew for years, he's still tenured, and that's a lot of blonds and red-heads (and everyone (if the law school were identified knows who I'm talking about) … but at the end of the day, for most of them. they hated practicing law, they hated the hours, they hated the stress – and here they are, able to posture in front of a bunch of gullible but admiring law students and yell "think like a [the] lawyer [they never were]" – why would they give that up?

It sounds awful, but think, how often do practicing lawyers here have variations on that tale, just not involving law professors? We don't judge – but law professors tend to….

[M][@][c][K] I am sure there are plenty of overpaid law professors, but speaking as one who is not, I think your view of the pay of law professors as a group is not accurate. I used to work for a large law firm, and took a pay cut when I began teaching. As to my "part time" job, between my teaching, service and writing responsibilities, I seldom work fewer than 60 hours per week – work I love, but definitely work. Summers I either write, teach or do both and continue with my service commitments.

Fulltimeprof: I think brackets description is very accurate. You may be making less now, but maybe you were a very overpaid associate at a Biglaw firm and knew that you would
Iikely not make partner, so while you make less now, it is a better deal than you would have had in practice in the long term.

In terms of working 60 hours a week, I doubt that is for 52 weeks a year, and if you are including service, that is, sitting at Committee meetings or judging Moot Court, that isn't really work. I know. I have been there.

Profs complaining that they do not make enough and are sacrificing for the benefit of their students reminds me of a story Mario Coumo used to like to tell about NYS judges who complained that they were not paid enough. He said he a list a mile long of lawyers who would gladly take their jobs if they wanted to resign. Few, if any, took him up on that
offer

It is a sad day when ANY institution of higher education closes given the dubmification of 'Murica. The Mike Judge film Idiocracy is now a docu7mentary. (I think that's a bumper sticker) The way to goose demand for attorneys is for governments to start hiring again. Look at the data. Law Schools graduate roughly 50K of us yearly. Conservatively, there are probably 25K government attorney deaths, retirements and other churn per year. Those positions are being eliminated. I have appeared in court rooms where there is 1 young prosecutor serving an entire room of defendants.

"I seldom work fewer than 60 hours per week …"

One just has to love it when this sort of comment gets posted.

Walk the halls of any law school, from 9 to 5.

The teaching packages: 6 hours per semester (that's six hours of teaching a week, folks, usually, the same course, over and over and over, until the professor has basically no prep time, other than the occasional update or new edition of the text.)

Service? To the community? Please. You know, when someone says something like that, and pretends it is the norm, the disgust meter starts going crazy. Full time, I don't know who you are or how many law professors you actually know (if any) but, please. Don't post something like that. Sure, most law professors "serve" on committees. This is largely make work and a very light load (with a few exceptions). Free lunch, anyone?

Scholarship. Oh yes, Full Time. Let's hear about the summers and all the other breaks, spent huddled over your computer producing top notch, valuable works of scholarship. ANd, again, are you pretending that is the norm at bottom feeders? If so, again, the bs meter is going off the chart.

The truth? A law school semester is 14 weeks long. MOst professors teach either six or three hours per week, for two semesters. That's twenty eight weeks a year. Throw in a few weeks for grading exams.

Most professors spend little or no time in the office. More law professors produce either no scholarship or shoddy, poorly researched scholarship that is never read and never cited. Most law professors devote ZERO time to their communities, and they have scant or no connections to the legal community: worse, they disparage and bad mouth practitioners incessantly.

Teaching ability? This is judged by student evaluations … (which are inherently unreliable) sometimes … More often, teaching "excellence" is judged based on the political sensibilities of the most vocal and militant, and thus terrible teachers are hired, promoted and retained, despite demonstrable lack of skill in the classroom.

ANd, worst of all, these lazy, part time, overpaid paragons of virtue, these selfless, public interest minded saints, spend NO TIME with the failing law students at their failing law schools (given class sizes v. faculty size these days, they could personally tutor most of the student body if they all pitched in). Instead, they blame their students for their own laziness and failure to work hard enough to make a difference.

These are haughty, nasty, arrogant people, who clothe their delusions of grandeur in a thin veneer of "collegiality." Really pitiful and disgusting. The only thing wrong with what is happening at Whittier is that it isn't happening at other law schools failing after ABA "attention" has failed, and so many others that need that attention.

Again, LITIGATE with them in Whittier. Lay down a marker. Let's see this all come out in court.

And finally, to repeat, if a law school is delivering acceptable bar pass and employment rates for its graduates, then let the faculty loaf. But, at failing, bottom feeders, which exist, as the pleading linked above makes perfectly clear, to feed greedy, overpaid, lazy individuals, while their students and graduates suffer in clearly unacceptable numbers? NO!

[M][@][c][K],

Maybe there's a better place than FL threads to deal with your issues with certain specific law professors? Just a thought.

To come to Brackets defense just a bit (I don't remember his name, thought I recall the incidents he is alluding to)

As I recall, he was engaged in a very bitter series of exchanges that led, as I recall, to some controversial actions on both sides of the "debate."

Those who run this website were to come up with a commenting policy, but, that never happened (unfortunately).

I think, however, that some lessons were learned by all.

As for the return to those disputes, I would agree with Orin Kerr above. I don't think those named by brackets are taking the same stance today, at least here in the FL.

Best then, perhaps, to let it be.

Orin, I found better places. Still, I like to keep the brackets – its a poke in the eye for Dan.

The situation of faculty in failing law schools is more complex than at least some of the posts in this thread suggest.

It is fair to point out that, compared to legal practice, being a law professor is a remarkably "cushy number." When professors suggest that they took a cut in pay to teach, many are pretending that the cut in pay wasn't inevitable, that they were not either going to be forced out in BigLaw (if that is where they were) or burn-out of being a BigLaw associate. But realistically, that was what in most instances would have happened, because that is what happens to the vast majority of BigLaw associates – and pretty well everyone posting on this forum knows this reality. And to be blunt, BigLaw associates earn more than most lawyers, even those with decades of practice experience. The other aspect is that most of us know that, in most cases, the first year or two at BigLaw consists of document review, proof-reading, and being "billing-fodder" – and little or no practical experience. I do not doubt that there are some law professors who work very long hours, I have seen a few. But I have also seen a lot of law professors who do relatively little work compared to any typical white collar worker, let alone the typical lawyer, and frankly, that is decidedly the majority.

Realistically though, law professors at schools like Whittier are likely to have a very very hard time making it back into the profession. They don't have clients (well perhaps one another), they lack serious experience of practice and they are pretty old to be associates, and may find the relationship with a managing lawyer to be difficult to adjust to. If they do return to private practice, many, especially the tenured will, in all likelihood, have to take a very steep cut in pay and benefits.

This being the case, it is hardly surprising that many want to tough it out – or litigate. Ironically, in that litigation the points I just made, plus the poor outcomes for their students are things they probably should argue, because they will be seeking to put as high an economic value as possible on tenure, and maximise their claim of loss. It is the "delta" between the security and income of tenure and the precariousness of private practice that is the substance of their claim, breach of contract the basis.

Will they win the breach of contract argument? Well that depends in part on whether the poor outcomes for Whittier students is considered relevant, or just the economic question, could the law school have continued? We can huff and puff about the morality of the faculty's position, their indifference to the outcomes for their students (which certainly are never referenced in their TRO application (but then would this be tactically wise)), but is this relevant to the case? Whittier College certainly seems to have shared that indifference for a protracted period, "milking" the law school as a "cash cow" for as long as it could – can it credibly argue that the court should now accept that the interests of students was the reason for closure, rather than a grab for the cash from the sale of the campus. It's all somewhat of a festival of venality.

I would find it hard to believe that a court would require a University to keep a law school open forever. Their best argument might be that they should be assigned elsewhere in the University.

Bruh,

One of the more surprising things taught in 1st year contracts is that a party to a contract is free to break it, provided he/she/it compensates the other party for the value of that contract. I agree that a court would be unlikely to hold that a college needs to keep a law school open forever. But that is a separate question from whether the professors' employment contacts were broken and the compensation they may legally be entitled to for the consequent loss of tenure.

Reading the complaint, the clumsy presentation makes the case for the College, albeit inadvertently.

It is not for the professors to decide when a law school should close for financial reasons. WE don't know the whole story, but this law school has a track record with the ABA of shame, and it may be facing another round of it. This may be a preemptive move to avoid that, which others like this one, e.g. Golden Gate, should contemplate and close immediately.

As for damages, I don't think it will be as loosey goosey as speculated here. This termination, if not in any breach of any contract, is just that: a termination. Law professors at Whittier, as far as is known, didn't negotiate golden parachutes.

If there is to be a trial about the "worth" of these professors tenure (and, from what is understood, the trial will NOT be on that issue) then there will be evidence of the sloth, incompetence and the contribution the professors to the failure of the law school.

Moreover, the inane argument that after selling (and leasing back) its real property the law school now has enough money to pay over vast sums to a greedy departing faculty is so disgusting that any jury, if it gets to a jury, will be revolted. All that will come into play, IMHO, will be the disgusting bar pass and placement rates, and the contribution of the incompetence of the faculty thereto. Then, we can put these pontificators to the test, and see if they can convince a jury of their self righteousness and selflessness and hard work, so easy to express in a blog.

What will be shown is the laziness that the faculty displayed as they exploited the students in a crass pursuit of cash (which the complaint above signals in no uncertain terms).

They rode the gravy train, it's time to get off and put to the test their boastful arrogant stance that they are crusaders for social justice, worth a "million dollar" premium in the legal market, who selflessly gave up these riches to become professors. (And then argue, as brackets says, their "damages" because they are losing these positions.)

Oh, we need to try this case. NO SETTLEMENT!

To all of you posters above who took a swipe at my School. Through my Earthly Agent and learned counsel, I have all of your IP addresses and instructed Liddy, Halderman, Bork, and Erlichman to go to your offices and houses and rip out your Instruments before that rat Dean figures this out. Signed, Richard E. Nixon, THE President.

Who is this [M][@][c][K] weirdo? Who is he fighting with? Why does he think anyone cares that he once made a "prediction"? Can anyone help him?

One of the weirdest parts of the TRO application is the suggestion that the law school building somehow belonged to the law school, and by selling it that money rightfully should have been added to the law school side of the ledger. Could you imagine any other academic department making that argument? "The university sold the building they housed us with? Clearly, the Dept. of Anthropology is entitled to that money!"

[M][@]ck's gripes and grudges are reasonable. I have, ahem, more knowledge than most about the transgressions of which he speaks.

twbb

Exactly! Making their claim all the more absurd, the "profit" was likely not even enough to make up the current and anticipated losses caused by the faculty failures.

If they had the guts to stand up and admit what they have done, it might be different.

As is, the naked greed is sort of disgusting.

Hopes, again, that the College refuses to be extorted, refuses to settle and litigates (after paying, of course, any amounts actually due).

A court airing of the issue of the faculty incompetence and sloth and contribution to the law school's failures (if the court ever gets there, as it is absurd to think that a faculty can demand that an entire law school stay open to just to serve their greedy self interests), will be truly an experience: to hear these professors tell their tale under oath! To test the asinine claims that they peddle in blogs and elsewhere about how hard working and valuable and self sacrificing they all are!

The level of development of a child exceeds such delusions of grandeur ("Why does it snow? For me to play in!")

If the faculty members who want to go to the mat are humiliated, and my bet would be that they will be if these issues ever go to court, then the next time a law school is closed, the faculty will more likely simply to collect what is due to them and move on. No one wants to see someone who has failed lose their job because they failed.

But, the arrogance of the suit linked above invites, IMHO, a stern and honest response. If these folks want to point the finger at others, let the finger point at them!

[A][n][o][n] –

Hi Brian, still sock puppeting I see – must be because it's all gone so well for you…..

Reading some of the coverage, the big issue seems to be that there were:

"only 40 Students Expected In Fall 2017 1L Class, Down 70% From 2016 (And 87% From 2010)"

If those numbers are accurate, the school was not viable economically. This would have become apparent as a result of the current application cycle -so it would only have become apparent between January and April-May. So the "facts" recited in the TRO, which were of the state of affairs at the end of 2016 would seem to have changed dramatically by last week.