Don Giovanni, opera singers, lawyers and a civil suit ordinarily would have nothing in common, but on Aug.8 at the ABA Annual Meeting, the Section of Litigation hit a high note with Don Giovanni, the Class Action.
Judge Koeltl follows along with the lyrics as they're displayed for "court."
Main characters from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni took the stand in a suit against Giovanni's estate to determine whether the 2,000-plus women seduced by his charming ways should be certified as a class. Giovanni received special clearance from hell to attend the hearing.
Opera singers trained by Martina Arroyo, a former opera singer at the Metropolitan Opera, played the witnesses and mostly sang their testimonies—excerpts taken from the original opera—on the witness stand. The plaintiffs' lawyers, Sheldon Finkelstein and Dori Hanswirth, and defense lawyers Steven Richman and Jacqueline Becerra questioned them in spoken dialogue. U. S. District Judge John Koeltl presided.
Donna Elvira, played by Eleni Calenos, sings her testimony to Jacqueline Becerra (Miami), Steven Richman (Hamilton, NJ) and U. S. District Court Judge John Koeltl (NYC)
What was Don Giovanni's charge? Intentional infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiffs' counsel argued that Giovanni planned to seduce dozens of women a day, he had knowledge of causing them harm by keeping a list, and had admitted to promising some of these women his eternal love. Also, with 2,000+ women involved, the numerosity requirement of 40 could clearly be met.
When making his closing argument to the judge, Richman noted that Giovanni "was a class act, not a class action." He went on to argue that the points made by the plaintiffs' counsel were not supported and no wrongs would be going unrighted if the class distinction wasn't made. It was further illustrated that Giovanni took nothing from any of the women involved and that there were no grounds for commonality, as it was clarified earlier that the women who he had wooed were of varying ages, body types and nationalities.
In the end, Judge Koeltl decided to reserve his decision for now so that the plaintiffs' counsel could have time for further discovery … and those who attended the session learned the basics of classic action suits, while gaining an appreciation for the opera.