A propos this, this latest development is rather amusing:
H. Christopher Bartolomucci, a partner at a Washington D.C.-based firm representing the UF defendants, threw a curveball. Bartolomucci, of Schaerr Jaffe LLP, told the court that “just two days ago” facts came to their attention that “should fundamentally change” how the court views this case....
“We now know,” he said, that Smith, Austin, and McDonald [the UF political science professors whose request to be expert witnesses against the state in voting rights litigation] were actively working as experts before they submitted their requests, and that they continued to work as experts after the university denied their requests. Bartolomucci proceeded to recite a number of dates on which the scholars had contributed to work on the litigation.
Yet these facts are “nowhere to be found” in the plaintiffs’ complaint or in their submitted declarations, Bartolomucci said. They have “misled” their employer, the defense counsel, and this court, he said. And their “misconduct,” he said, affects the case in several ways. For one, the plaintiffs have “unclean hands,” he said. Also, “there’s no chilling effect,” as the plaintiffs have argued, because “the policy didn’t chill them.”...
Walker, the judge, was clearly taken aback by Bartolomucci’s abrupt turn. The judge said he was “perplexed” that Bartolomucci would suggest these were newly discoverable facts when the defense had not formally asked for discovery, and the information, as far as the judge could tell, was all part of the public record. “I gotta say, I’m flummoxed.” He pressed Bartolomucci on how this was possible....
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