Hasday has supplied a rigorous, engaging treatment of intimate liesand the law. She has shed light on the gender dimensions of our practicesof lying and truth telling, and the system that supports those practices.And this important book has also offered provocative questions andpromising proposals to support a combination of trust and distrust.I have presented a framework combining affective trust and epis-temic curiosity to evaluate Hasday’s proposals and recent legal develop-ments as well as to spur innovations. Ultimately, if cognitive distrusttakes the form of curiosity, not insatiable but willing to be satisfied even-tually, then that curiosity may well support a deeper form of affectivetrust. Asking the questions in the back of their minds may better enablepartners to inhabit the trust that comes after the answers.Intimate Lies and the Law has illuminated this overlooked area oflaw and offered some promising ideas for legal reform. Perhaps thiscompelling book will also make it easier for individuals to ask hardquestions, to find out the answers, and to settle in to a feeling of securityin their intimate relationships, comforted by the legal and social safetynet that can catch them when they fall.

The reasons for courts’ special treatment of intimate lies are multi-ple. The book offers a short history of the law of intimate deception,focusing on three changes that have shaped the legal landscape. One isshifting norms that mean courts look less favorably on cases rooted insubordinating attitudes, for instance, cases involving a plaintiff who isdisappointed to learn the race of an intimate partner (pp. 116–24). Ac-cording to Hasday, those claims have “virtually disappeared” (p. 121).16A second change is the no-fault divorce revolution. According toHasday, the decline of fault divorce decreased the number of intimatedeception claims being brought — because proving fault was no longerimportant to getting a divorce — and also led some courts to be lesssympathetic to intimate deception claims on the grounds that changingdivorce laws expressed a policy against entertaining such arguments incourt (pp. 128–33).

More substantively, the prenup wrapper encourages inter-personal curiosity 292 at a moment when its opposite — “trust . . . thenjump” — is celebrated and mythologized. This may help prepare forchallenging times ahead by confronting some of those challenges witheyes wide open now. 293Moreover, the process of learning about each other and communi-cating about past, present, and future may help to build connection anddeepen the relationship in the present moment. 294 The openness associ-ated with interest curiosity, that subspecies of epistemic curiosity, maybe cultivated by such dialogue. 295 A prenup wrapper might even con-tain questions the parties intend to ask at particular intervals, or someother process for cultivating genuine curiosity about one another. 296 Re-lationships vary, and only some marrying couples would opt for thisapproach. But for those who do, the prenup wrapper could supportaffective trust as well as truthful exchange. 297 Trust . . . and ask. 298

The prenup wrapper would be conceived with the understandingthat change would occur, which is one reason not to attempt to makethe wrapper legally enforceable. “Lifestyle clauses” in prenups — whichintegrate some of the items proposed here within the four corners of aprenup — are often unenforceable, and even in states that enforce them,their enforcement is unpredictable. 283 Another reason, then, not to in-clude them in the prenup itself is so partners avoid the cost of paying alawyer to review these items. 284 Moreover, these lifestyle clauses tendto be framed more in terms of prohibitions and consequences — forinstance, limits on how much weight a spouse can gain 285 — rather thanin any more affirmative vision of shared values or intentions.

of doing so would convey nothing about a person’s intentions — beyondwhat is said in the prenup itself. 273 And of course a prenup could clarify,in a separate property state, that all property is shared and that partnersplan to take care of each other, should divorce occur, contrary to theusual self-protective, individualistic vision of prenups. 274 Prenups canalso be limited by so-called sunset clauses, shifting partners into the statedefaults after a period of years once they know each other better. 275 Forbetter or worse, though, the resistance to mandatory anything in thiscountry makes Becker’s proposal unlikely to take hold.

New Mexico eliminated the testimonial privilege nearly forty yearsago. 240 With Gutierrez, New Mexico also became the first state to endthe marital confidences privilege. 241 In the eponymous case, Gutierrezhad revealed a secret to both his first wife and his second wife, whichhe sought to suppress at his trial. 242 The secret was that he murderedhis first wife’s uncle, a few months after she told Gutierrez that the unclehad raped her repeatedly. 243 Gutierrez told her “not to worry aboutanything anymore,” and later he came home agitated, showed her thebody, and involved her in looking for a bullet casing he’d left there. 244After their divorce, he ended up telling his second wife, after his parentsrepeatedly stated that they would “send him away for the rest of hislife.” 245 Ultimately Gutierrez and his second wife separated as well, andGutierrez was indicted thirteen years after the murder. 246 At his murdertrial, Gutierrez sought to exclude both women’s testimony about hisconfessions, and on appeal the New Mexico Supreme Court decided toabolish the marital confidences privilege. 247

In the month after Oxford published Intimate Lies and the Law, theNew Mexico Supreme Court issued a landmark decision. With the rul-ing in State v. Gutierrez, 234 New Mexico became the only state with noform of spousal privilege. 235 The question of whether to exclude evi-dence based on spousal privilege is complicated, and this short sectiondoes not attempt a full weighing of the values and costs at stake. Butan attention to the need for both affective trust and epistemic curiosityadds an overlooked element to the debates.

By offering parties the possibility of compensation in such cases, un-der Hasday’s proposal or this variation on it, courts will better supportaffective trust, allowing intimates to rest more safely in their relation-ships, because the material consequences of being duped are not asgreat — as discussed earlier. 232 And courts will also be supporting ep-istemic curiosity, because pursuing an inkling that an intimate has liedmay well lead to a firmer answer and material compensation in thecourts, in at least some circumstances. Curiosity may ultimately be re-warded by more than just disappointment.

As signaled by this last example, various cases would not be heardin court under this framework. A suit alleging a breach of promise tomarry would be dismissed, even if the promisor knew he was lying ra-ther than merely changing his mind, in the absence of some materialconsequence beyond the loss of, or damage to, the relationship itself —as would a case of adultery. 229 By contrast, bigamy would be actionableas a civil suit for intimate deception because the duped partner wouldbe deprived of the legal status of spouse.

This seems sensible enough. And yet this proposal is vulnerable tothe critique, discussed earlier, 221 that it would open the courts to a floodof cases. And more than just a numerical problem, which perhapsshould be overcome if the change were warranted on the merits, theproposal must respond to the concern about courts trying to determinewho is at fault when a conflict between intimates concerns the stuff oftheir intimacy. As the critics of fault-based divorce have argued, deter-mining fault in an intimate relationship is exceedingly difficult. 222Moreover, the proposal leaves open the question of how courts are toknow when the presumption of equal treatment for intimate deceptionis overcome, outside of cases involving subordinating norms related torace or gender. 223

4. Using the Framework to Refine Hasday’s Central Proposal. —The framework of affective trust and epistemic curiosity also helps builda firmer foundation for Hasday’s central proposal, and offers a narrowerway to expand the scope of redress for intimate deception. Hasda

3. A Proposal that Runs Counter to Trust. — One secondary solutionHasday offers fails the test of trustworthiness, or threatens to do so. Shefloats as “worth serious consideration” (p. 224) the idea that, in order toclaim parenthood on a birth certificate, a person should have to take aDNA test so that they would know whether they are a genetic parentand so adult children would later have access to this information (pp.221–26). If implemented, she suggests, this policy would help preventpeople (typically women) from lying to other people (typically men)about parentage (p. 221)

his reform would help to enable the investigations that might growfrom glimmers of cognitive distrust or epistemic curiosity. Because thereform would lower the administrative burdens to conducting such aninvestigation, pursuing the inquiry wouldn’t require such sustained androbust doubt. 213 Recent work in cognitive science suggests that curiosityis enhanced by knowledge gaps when an individual perceives they havethe “skills, expertise, and resources needed to resolve the uncertainty.” 214Whereas a knowledge gap that appears more difficult or impossible toresolve may lead to anxiety and diminished curiosity. 215 Making infor-mation more readily available may not only enable, but also enhance,curiosity.

2. Proposals Supporting Epistemic Curiosity. — Hasday not onlyproposes mechanisms to protect intimates’ sense of safety or comfortablegullibility, but also offers proposals that would better allow intimates toprotect themselves. Of particular relevance to the framework I am sug-gesting, Hasday recommends creating multistate registries of certainpublic records, so that people are better able to investigate theirintimates (pp. 231–32)

could reduce the incentives to deceive citizens into sham marriages forimmigration purposes by increasing the opportunities for legal immigra-tion that are open to people who are not closely related to United Statescitizens,” but does not hold out for an “overhaul” of the current immi-gration system (p. 228). She observes the oddity, however, of the currentimmigration system’s applying identical penalties to “[s]omeone who en-tered a sham marriage in cahoots with a willing accomplice” and to“someone who duped an unwitting citizen into a marriage that the citi-zen believed was genuine” (p. 228). At the very least, she suggests, thelimited resources for enforcement should be expended on “pursuingcases where the citizen was duped” (p. 228)

If law can help create compensation for the material consequencesof being duped, that might support particular plaintiffs in their abilityto trust again, something that can be difficult after a dramatic breach. 207More broadly, the prospect of a safety net — a pathway to compensationfor financial and other injuries sustained — makes trusting a safer prop-osition for everyone (or, rather, for everyone who has the money andtime for civil litigation 208 ). A financial reward may fail to remedy anemotional injury, but it can quite literally compensate for financial orother material harm. 209

Hasday recognizes that the law’s power to deter intimate deceptionis limited: “I do not believe that the law could ever completely deterintimate deception and would never promise that the incidence of inti-mate deception would decline by a certain amount if courts adopt myproposed approach” (p. 201). She recognizes “[m]yriad factors [that] con-strain the law’s ability to deter,” such as deceivers’ ignorance of the law

1. Proposals Supporting Affective Trust. — Hasday argues for re-forms that would protect those duped by their intimates from the harshconsequences they currently face. Principally, she argues for betteraligning of the law of intimate deception with the law governing non-intimate deception: “Judges are more likely to make wise decisions ifthey start with a rebuttable presumption that the law will provide rem-edies for deception within an intimate relationship when redress wouldbe available for an equivalent example of deception outside of intimacy”(p. 200). Thus, under Hasday’s approach,

Returning to the theme of trust and intimate relationships, then, Iwant to propose a framework that combines affective trust and epistemiccuriosity. What I think the law should encourage is the ability for indi-viduals to feel safe and build bonds rooted in that feeling of safety, whilealso remaining open to and curious about information that could affecttheir well-being. Whether legal regimes can directly engender trust orcuriosity is an unanswered empirical question, but current knowledgeabout epistemic curiosity can help evaluate which regimes are bettersituated at least to enable or support affective trust and epistemic curi-osity in intimate relationships. 197

Epistemic curiosity has become the focus of a growing field of socialscientific inquiry — a site of great curiosity, it might be said. And it hasbeen subdivided into two types: “interest” and “deprivation” curiosity. 188Interest curiosity involves “a desire for new information anticipated to in-crease pleasurable feelings of situational interest.”189 This type is “associ-ated with an open, positive approach towards learning, implying abroadly optimistic outlook regarding new discoveries” 190 — or, as vividlyrendered by Professor Judson Brewer, “that wide-eyed wonder that drawsus to explore.”191 Deprivation curiosity, by contrast, involves “striving tofill bothersome knowledge-gaps.”192 Such states “are theorized to resem-ble a ‘need-like’ condition, involving unpleasant feelings of tension andperplexity, which increase until satisfactorily resolved”193 — in otherwords, “that restless need to know itch.”194 Although deprivation curios-ity has been described as more “closed,” compared to interest curiosity, thetwo forms of epistemic curiosity are correlated, 195 and both involve anactive engagement in information seeking.

Curiosity might be understood as a warm version of cognitive dis-trust. Empirical and philosophical writings on curiosity identify multi-ple subspecies. William James, among others, has divided the world ofcuriosity into “two instinctive types.” 178 The first is a kind of sensory-seeking excitability. 179 The second is the important one here: “scientific(i.e., cognitive) curiosity” 180 — or what James described as “the impulsetoward completer knowledge.” 181 In this type of curiosity, “the actualways humans conceive of objects act as stimuli and sensitize them toknowledge gaps, which, when resolved, result in feelings of pleasure andfacilitate the storage of scientific knowledge.” 182 In James’s words, “Thephilosophic brain responds to an inconsistency or a gap in its knowledge,just as the musical brain responds to a discord in what it hears.” 183Similarly, John Dewey described intellectual curiosity as the “interest inproblems provoked by the observation of things and the accumulationof material.” 184 Empirical investigation confirms that curiosity does ap-pear to comprise several subspecies,185 including cognitive curiosity orwhat Professor Daniel Berlyne called, in his classic article on the subject,

Even if we can begin to find avenues to support the prospect of adynamic tension between affective trust and cognitive distrust, the mereword distrust seems to cut against the feeling of trust. An alternativeand better frame for cognitive distrust, then, may be curiosity.

One difficult question is whether it’s possible to hold these two po-sitions — affective trust and cognitive distrust — at the same time.Keats tells us that “Negative Capability” — which has often been inter-preted to mean the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in productivetension 176 — is characteristic of the “Man of Achievement,”

The two in combination overlap with what Professor Carol Rose de-scribes as semi-rational trust — “a trust that asks for assurances andmonitoring.” 172 But disaggregating the emotional feeling of trust fromthe cognitive thinking of trust (or distrust) enables a departure from thehierarchy of real and unreal trust that Rose sets up. For Rose, charac-terizing the common view, “‘real’ or ‘true’ trust is a kind of confidencethat does not even ask for good grounds” and so “there is no such thingas rational trust.” 173 Her semi-rational trust — which is “a doubting orsuspicious trust” — “is something less than this ‘real’ trust.” 174 By con-trast, I want to propose that emotional trust and cognitive trust exist onequal footing and can be present or absent in various combinations.

We would do well to combine affective trust with cognitive distrust.Although the distinction commonly drawn between feeling (affective)and thinking (cognitive) is inadequate if not entirely artificial, 168 thesecategories provide a useful heuristic to organize and describe experience,as this section will show

Think again of John Dahl and his sister Dorothy Zauhar whobrought suit against the man who accepted Dahl’s kidney donation,while engaged to Zauhar, then promptly cancelled the wedding. Brotherand sister were both alleging a painful betrayal — emotionally for each,in different ways, and physically for Dahl. 136 The need to build trust aswell as gather facts would be — or should be — apparent to a lawyermeeting with these plaintiffs. As Hasday reports, individuals whoseintimates have lied to them in consequential ways often report the chal-lenge of trusting again (p. 91).137 “Many people have stressed how dev-astating losing trust in a deceitful intimate can be,” she writes (p. 90).In one victim’s words, a betrayal can be “trust-shattering” (p. 90).138

more sympathetic to claims of intimate deception, is not urging a revivalof these suits. Getting courts out of the business of bolstering civil suitsgrounded in racial subordination is progress. But pulling the law thatsupports discrimination out of these areas is likely to have limited im-pact in actually supporting interracial intimacy, given the multiple waysthat our relationships are shaped by legal architecture, as discussed ear-lier. The legal architecture of intimacy factors into interracial trust bothwithin and beyond intimate relationships. 128

The disparate access and racialized impediments to trust remain apressing and unresolved problem in the middle of this discussion of trustand the law. The subject also points toward a lacuna in the frequentpublic rhetoric about increasing trust: scholars and politicians of manystripes have sought ways to build trust in the police in predominantlyAfrican American neighborhoods. 124 But as Professor Onora O’Neillsagely reminds us, “Trust is valuable only when directed to [objects] thatare trustworthy.” 125 How much good — or rather, how much bad — isdone by persuading people to trust an authority that does not warranttheir trust? Institutions must become trustworthy before people areasked to trust them. 12

Although she kept these memories to herself, Ehrenreich saved thecontemporaneous journals in which she described them, out of somesense that her inner researcher must stay true to the events as she expe-rienced them — she couldn’t destroy the facts as they came to her. 91The book recounts her decision finally to expose these memories to theworld, despite the doubts she would face, not only of her story but ofher self. She chose to risk losing her readers’ trust in favor of her ownperceptions. 92Even the boldest of thinkers may choose not to risk his reputation bysharing ideas he trusts but expects the world will not. Jeremy Bentham’s

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; areverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have noother data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loathto disappoint them. . . . A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of littleminds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. . . .Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing yousaid to-day.

I suspect that many readers of this Review know something aboutwhat it’s like to be the resident debunker. Lawyers, academics, and thosetraining to be lawyers and academics have a special relationship to dis-trust. Lawyers are often expected to be the people in the room who antic-ipate and guard against or neutralize the bad things that might happen.And academics are researchers who dig to get to the bottom of things,rather than trusting the first explanation or claim they encounter. Trustseems like a good thing, but the special need for distrust for both lawyersand researchers highlights the virtues, in some contexts, of distrust.

How does it feel to be the person at the yoga class seeking to debunkthe quotation attributions? Not great. This is generally not why youcame to yoga: to feel skeptical and doubting. Yet it happens to the bestof us. (And perhaps this response is apt, although unpleasant, whenwhat’s offered is untrue.

Definitions that reflect the object, time, and directional dimensionsare, for example, “the mutual confidence that no party to an exchangewill exploit the other’s vulnerability”73 and “choosing to risk makingsomething you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” 74 Both ofthese definitions seem to focus on the relationship to one other person,with an eye toward future behavior. By contrast, the following defini-tion from Esther Perel demonstrates that trust can also be a more foun-dational orientation of the individual: “Trust is also our ability to livewith what we will never know.”

(who or what is being trusted); the relevant time (whether trust concernsa positive or predictive matter); the scope of the trust (whether trust isabsolute or qualified 70 ); the direction of the trust (whether it is unidirec-tional or multidirectional); and the content (the what of the trust 71 ). Tounderstand the last, consider that you might trust someone to drive yousomewhere, but not fly you to the same destination; one person to re-move your tooth, but not to prepare your taxes. 7

No one should be faulted or legally penalized for acting as an ordinary per-son would and trusting his intimates. Both human psychology and socialnorms push us toward such trust, and faith in our intimates can help fosterhuman flourishing, caregiving, cooperation, and social bonds. The lawshould neither expect nor desire the end of trust within intimacy

She proposes a rebuttable presumption in favor of treatingintimates who bring claims based on deception the same way as non-intimates bringing similar claims

One cause for wariness about legal arguments faulting deceived inti-mates for being overly trusting is that the law governing deception outsideof intimacy is often more protective of the credulous — recognizing thatsuch people are more likely to be duped, essentially by definition. . . . Thelaw often views the fact that a deceiver preyed on a trusting person as astrike against the deceiver, not his exoneration.

We’re not very good at detecting lies (p. 52). 67 Our truth default isadaptive, argues Professor Timothy Levine, because we couldn’t func-tion very well if we spent our time doubting and researching everythinganyone ever told us. 68 And yet, Hasday reveals, the law expects us todo precisely that in our intimate relationships. These questions of trust,and expecting the worst, are the subject of Part II.

Thus, one further reason these plaintiffs may lose is a concern fromcourts about limiting access to the weaponry of civil suits. This suggeststhe need for a limiting principle on any reform meant to expand accessto such remedies. In Part III, I will present a framework that is reflectedin several of Hasday’s proposals for reform — and that can also offersuch a limiting principle.

If only some people can live or travel or dine in some spaces, then onlythose people will meet, connect, fall in love, and marry.54 Even thoughlaw does not affirmatively tell us whom to marry, law does shape ourchoices in this most private sphere

criticized: it can be very hard to discern who is the wrongdoer in an inti-mate relationship (pp. 107, 130–31).49 This critique of the heart balm tortscould apply more broadly to claims for deception in the intimate sphereas well. As others have observed, where the frame of a relationship isintimacy, complex dynamics shielded from the public eye are likely to benot only present but central (p. 49). Of course, courts decide all kinds ofdifficult matters, so this is not to say such resolution is impossible, or toassert any definite conclusion about it. The point is merely that such aconcern is a reasonable one, grounded in related debates.

were beyond the pale. 42 Those on the political right used the spectre ofpolygamy to threaten a parade of horribles that would follow from lift-ing the sex restriction on marriage; those on the left agreed such a paradewould be horrible but disputed the link to same-sex marriage. 43 Thesweeping opposition to multiparty relationships seemed all the morepuzzling given that, based on any available statistics, nonmonogamy inthe form of adultery was fairly common. 44 If nonmonogamy was socommon, why would people so roundly oppose open, honest, consensualnonmonogamy — sometimes called “polyamory”? This I called a para-dox of prevalence. 45 I suggested that the pervasiveness of nonmonog-amy meant that open polyamory was all the more threatening, as itforced people to confront the risk of something in their own lives thatthey didn’t want to see. 4

Perhaps courts’ rejection of such claims, then, stems from the ubiq-uity of the deceit. Its frequency may normalize it, making it almostinvisible to courts. An invisibility account seems plausible on its facebut would not explain the harsh words courts apply to those betrayedby their intimates. 40 Perhaps, then, judges push these cases out of courtbecause they don’t want to see the possibility of such deception in theirown intimate lives. This explanation could help answer for courts’ crit-icism of plaintiffs. This is a familiar dynamic: outsiders shunning andjudging harshly those who fall prey to any common calamity, wantingto distance themselves

The wide-ranging and interesting data in the book’s chapters on thesocial science of deception support the perception that such deceit iscommon. Two interrelated threads may help us to understand courts’reactions to these cases: First, people generally subscribe to a “truth de-fault,” 38 assuming what they’re told is true (pp. 53–54). Second, roman-tic relationships frequently involve deception — on the front end, whenpeople lie to lure others into relationships; and in the middle and backend, when people lie to keep others in relationships or to cover theirviolation of monogamy norms (pp. 28–32). 39

I began this project suspecting that courts might deny remedies to deceivedintimates out of a belief that intimate deception is insufficiently importantto merit judicial concern. But judges deciding intimate deception cases of-ten appear convinced that this regulatory arena is vitally important. Morespecifically, judges seem to think that it is crucial to govern intimate decep-tion in ways that maintain and reinforce current norms and practices incourtship, sexual relationships, and marriage. (p. 157)

Women are the principal losers in this story. The plaintiffs who seekvindication in court for the lies that cost them money, time, and dignityare often women. 30

The campaigns against the heart balm torts reflected a convergenceof interests 23 that may look, at least to modern eyes, bleak if not simplyugly. 24 Men who want to protect themselves or each other from womenwho might reasonably have a claim to recourse, on the one hand, con-verge with women who don’t want to associate with the kind of womenso dependent on men (that is, so willing to admit their dependency andvulnerability) that they would bring a lawsuit for disappointed expecta-tions of care and protection, on the other (pp. 107–10). The latter groupaligns women concerned with sex equality and women concerned withmorality in their shared suspicion of those women who dare to invitethe state, and the public gaze, into their intimate lives.

The fate of suits for breach of promise to marry might seem a rarecontext where the law of intimate deception is easy to explain: anti–heart balm statutes preclude the suits at issue.

The third, the decline of the so-called heart balm torts, 17 involvescomplex gender dynamics (pp. 110–16) and raises interesting questionsabout what stories people want to hear and whom they trust to tell thosestories. This is the subject of the next section

Herdefinition of “intimate” — meant to track how courts conceive of inti-macy — “includes dates, sexual and/or romantic partners, and familymembers such as spouses, parents, and children” (p. 6); it excludesfriends, therapists, and other professional relations. Hasday defines “de-ception” as “intentional acts or omissions . . . designed to make anotherperson believe something that the deceiver himself does not believe tobe true” (p. 7). Unlike her definition of “intimate,” Hasday’s definitionof “deception” is not tied to the law; instead, it is rooted in social scienceliterature (p. 7). Intimate deception, then, does not necessarily involvea legal wrong

affective trust (a feeling of safety) andcognitive distrust (a willingness to doubt and inquire), later reframed asepistemic curiosity (a drive to know14 )

Hasday argues that many of these plaintiffs should, however, be win-ning or at least have a chance of winning. Which they would, she con-tends, if courts were treating these claims the same way courts treatdeception by non-intimates (pp. 200–10). Courts not only dismiss casesinvolving intimate deception, sometimes overturning substantial juryawards in a plaintiff’s favor, but also chide duped intimates for not beingmore savvy, for not being vigilant enough to detect the deception (pp. 49,76, 181).12 These courts seem to blame plaintiffs for trusting those theylove. One woman, whose husband lied to her to hide his bigamy, financialmisdeeds, and more, is quoted by Hasday as lamenting:I trusted him, I believed in him, and yet I am branded ‘stupid’ for doing so.On top of losing everything I own and facing a future raising three childrenon my own, it is hard to know that society as a whole views me as somekind of fool. (p. 92) 1

And likemost of the plaintiffs discussed by Hasday, they lose in court.