In his book entitled The Great Uranium Cartel, author
Earle Gray described the situation on March 26, 1980 in federal court in
Chicago, before Judge Prentice Marshall. Michael Freeborn was at the
center of the storm:
Marshall was feeling increasingly
frustrated. The appeals court had ruled that he could not proceed with
hearings to fix the damages to be paid by the non-appearing defendants.
The appearing defendants had refused to produce the documents. All
appeals to the foreign governments to relax the non-disclosure laws had
failed. The Supreme Court of Canada had just upheld the Canadian
blocking law. A new government had been elected in Canada. The
short-lived Conservative government of Joe Clark had been defeated, and Pierre
Trudeau had been resurrected from announced retirement to lead the Liberals to
another election victory.
Michael Freeborn, counsel for Noranda,
was before Judge Marshall, asking for additional time to respond to the
motions for sanctions. He also wanted time for another meeting in
Ottawa, planned for March 30, with the newly elected Canadian government, to
"make them aware of the severity of the sanctions which Westinghouse and
TVA are seeking."
Marshall declared from the bench:
My friend, I want to tell you one
thing, I am not going to change the scheduling of this case with the rise
and fall of the Canadian government or any other commonwealth
government. We have stayed our hands. We have deferred to
them. And we are not going to do it any more.
So from now on, if you want to make
that argument, put it in writing and make it on the record, but don't take
up my time with it. And you may transcribe these remarks, and you may
transmit them to the governments of Canada, Australia, Great Britain and
South Africa.
Freeborn started to respond, but did not
complete his first sentence before Marshall interrupted again.
"I hope that Trudeau has more sense
than Clark," Marshall said, "but I doubt it, because he was there
before Clark."
In one sentence, a U.S. district court
judge had questioned the sense of both the Prime Minister of Canada and the
former Prime Minister of Canada. Marshall's outburst did not enhance the
prospects of winning co-operation from the Canadian government at the meeting
that was held four days later. Ottawa was more determined than ever to
resist the U.S. courts.
Gray, The Great Uranium Cartel, 256-57
(1982).
