Patel moves to intervene, calls the settlement collusive, and asks the Court to enforce the order the Commissioner forgot he signed

Samir Patel, whose amicus brief argued Wednesday that the Commissioner cannot be moved, has filed a motion to intervene on the ground that the Commissioner moved.

The filing, styled a “Motion to Intervene, Objection to Collusive Class Settlement, and Motion to Enforce the Judgment of September 2,” recaptions the case with the appellant as “Withdrawn” and the appellee as “Capitulated.” Patel signs as “League Member, Absent Class Member, and Author of a Brief Nobody Needed or Received.” It is dated September 5, a chronology the Court has decided not to examine.

The statement

Patel’s account of the day is short. He spent Wednesday evening drafting “four pages of argument that the Commissioner cannot be moved,” which “was mooted by the Commissioner moving.” He adds: “Movant regrets that he was right about the standard and wrong about the man.”

He also explains the brief’s lateness. He did not file Friday because of his third wedding anniversary, “an event whose date was fixed three years ago by persons possessing even greater arbitrary authority than the Commissioner: his wife.” He declines to argue that this excuse differs from the appellant’s. “He notes only that Appellant’s excuse moved the Draft, and Movant’s excuse cost him the deadline, and that the difference between them is not the excuse. It is the tweet.”

Contempt of himself

The motion’s sharpest argument is that the September 2 order was never vacated. It denied relief “with prejudice” and commanded attendance at the original time. The Commissioner then “changed the Draft in a text, not an order,” and under The Commissioner Says So, 1 F.F. 1, “the Commissioner is bound by what the Commissioner says until the Commissioner says otherwise in the proper form.” Patel does not concede the group chat is the proper form: “Movant notes the Commissioner did not think so either, on Wednesday, when he was signing things as Presiding Justice.” He moves to enforce the order, citing Schrodinger v. Dylus for the rule that “an order remains in force whether or not its author remembers issuing it.”

On mootness, Patel joins the Court. The Commissioner’s position “is that anything can recur, at any time, for any reason, including no reason. That is not a heavy burden carried. That is a confession.”

The class

Patel’s Rule 23(e) objection is that the settlement “was negotiated by the two beneficiaries, communicated to no one, and imposes its entire cost on absent class members who were not asked.” By the appellant’s own class definition, every parent in the League is bound by a deal “that keeps them up until 1:00 a.m. so that two of them can attend a slideshow about the cafeteria.” He requests a fairness hearing, “to be held Sunday in the group chat, until someone leaves,” at which he will call David Lopez-Kurtz, “who as far as anyone knows has still not been asked.”

The merits, revised

Patel adopts his amicus brief “with one correction.” The governing standard remains the Commissioner’s feelings, but “on Wednesday, the Commissioner felt like 8:00 p.m., and said so in a signed order. On Thursday, he felt like 10:00 p.m., and said so in a text. The only intervening event was 660,000 strangers on X.” He asks the Court to hold that “the feelings of Wednesday … should control over the feelings of Thursday, which were formed in everyone else’s.”

Relief requested

Intervention, reinstatement of the September 2 order, and an 8:00 p.m. draft; alternatively 8:30 p.m. with the appellant drafting from the parking lot; in the further alternative, the fairness hearing.

The Court’s note

The motion is the third filing today to ask the Court to decide the case and the first to ask it to decide against both parties. The Court observes that the Commissioner’s amicus has become his adversary in the space of one decree, which is faster than most League alliances dissolve and slower than most trades are vetoed. The Court also notes that a second League member has indicated an intention to file in opposition to the 10:00 p.m. time, and that the parties, who agree with each other, may soon be outnumbered by the people who agree with neither of them.