Stacked appeals financially exhaust opponents who lack deep resources

Evidence

At the time, Macy had thought that 25,000 would be ample. But as the commission's lawyers began to pile appeal on top of appeal, he wrote Havemeyer that, to a layman, "the ramifications of this litigation are almost beyond belief." And ramifications meant money. If Moses' lawyers were constantly filing new briefs, Macy's had to file briefs in reply. The briefs had to be printed in standard legal form, and they were running into thousands of pages. The printing bill for a single appeal ran to 3,652.63. The stenographic transcript for a single appeal cost 545. And finally, of course, there were the lawyers' fees. Lawyers like Tuttle and the experts required to handle appeals didn't come cheap. The first bill for "services rendered" was delivered to Macy on April 28, 1925. It was for 10,000. Even before the trial in Dunne’s court began, the $25,000 mark had been reached. To Macy, the idealist, the case represented something that was more important than money. When Havemeyer wrote, “This…is my limit,” Macy replied that he would carry on alone. … Appeals attorneys told him that if he was willing to press the fight vigorously, he would probably win, although the victory might not come until the case had been transferred out of the state courts and into the United States Supreme Court, which would focus on the basic constitutionality of the use by a state agency of one individual’s money to seize the property of another. … Although the case would eventually be brought before the Court of Appeals, which upheld Dunne’s decision, and an attempt was made to bring it to the United States Supreme Court—Justice Louis Brandeis brought the legal fight to an end on January 21, 1929, four years after the Biltmore hearing, by refusing to issue a writ of certiorari which would have enabled the Court to hear the case—it was obviously not pressed vigorously in these last stages, as though the case were really over already. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 949

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme across this book and Milgrom’s trade-institutions work that resource asymmetries (here legal/financial war of attrition) decide contests that formal law should decide — process costs as a weapon. — connects to: Wealthy defendants reframe cases through media access denied to poorer ones; Resource disparities between litigants favor wealthy defendants in civil cases — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1038
• QUESTION: How much of litigating against a public authority is attrition — the implicit message that even a losing case can be made ruinously expensive for a private challenger?

Broader Connections

• Wealthy defendants reframe cases through media access denied to poorer ones #complicates (0.75)