Howard Bashman has a very interesting blog entitled, How Appealing. It can be found at: 

http://howappealing.law.com/index.html.  

He has an interesting post which reads as follows: 

“This is a strange case.”  http://howappealing.law.com/102711.html#043352

 So begins the opinion that Chief Judge Alex Kozinski issued today on behalf of the majority on a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Here is the entire first paragraph of the majority opinion:

 This is a strange case. Its resolution hinges on the absence, as a factual matter, of something we must accept as a legal matter. There are unlikely to be many more like it, so this opinion’s precedential value is probably limited. We nevertheless publish pursuant to General Order 4.3. While we’re at it, we offer some advice to lawyers: Don’t apologize unless you’re sure you did something wrong. And there’s also a lesson for district judges: Don’t accept too readily lawyers’ confessions of error or rely on your own memory of what happened. Trials are complicated and we sometimes misremember details. That’s why we have transcripts.

 Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, who earlier in her career worked as a law clerk for Judge Kozinski, issued a dissenting opinion.