A few quick follow ups to some recent blog posts are in order, and both involve the Tellabs case, currently pending before the Supreme Court.

First, in the "everything is related somehow category," in researching our recent whitepaper, Accountability Goes Global: International Investors and U.S. Securities Class Actions, we learned that the lead plaintiff in the Tellabs litigation, Makor Issues & Rights Ltd., is an Israeli institutional investor. We apologize for not plugging our hard work earlier.

Second, last week, we discussed the semantic debate that references to short form names for the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act engendered.

Our intent, here at SLW World Headquarters, was to poke gentle fun at the issue, along the lines of the George Gershwin song, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off. For those 7 readers that may not recall the song, the song is most well known for verses such as "you say tomayto and I like tomahto," that compare different regional dialects. Lyrics can be found here.

An alert reader pointed us to this essay by DLA Piper partner David Priebe, which vociferously argues that the preferred defense firm terminology ("The Reform Act") was not simply the only choice, but that the preferred plaintiff firm terminology ("PSLRA") was in fact Orwellian Newspeak.

Quote of note:

Referring to the Reform Act as "PSLRA" is squelching political speech and political thought. Good defense lawyers - and, I submit, the most honest objective observers - should always make certain that the name by which the statute is referred reflects and displays its reformist nature.

I consider myself both honest and objective (who doesn't?) but I can't bring myself to be forced to call a statute by the preferred terminology someone else has chosen for me, particularly when the argument is premised on a novel revolving around a totalitarian and dystopian future.

After finding our dog-eared copy of 1984, and remembering that we also owned Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, we decided that the official word of the day will be dystopia.