J. Edward Lumbard

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Joseph Edward Lumbard, Jr. (August 18, 1901 - June 3, 1999) was a longtime federal appellate judge in the United States.

Lumbard was born in New York City. He was briefly expelled from Harvard as an undergraduate by its anti-homosexual "Secret Court" of 1920, but was readmitted in 1921. (Though evidence did not exist that Lumbard himself was homosexual, the "court" found that he had been "too closely connected" with those "guilty" of homosexuality.)^[1] He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School; for a time, he also attended Fordham Law School. During the 1920s and 1930's, Lumbard served several stints as an Assistant United States Attorney in New York as well as a Special Assistant Attorney General of New York. He then spent two decades as a lawyer in private practice in Manhattan. From 1953 to 1955, Lumbard served under President Dwight D. Eisenhower as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Despite a productive and successful legal career, Lumbard's youthful entanglement with the Secret Court would continue to impact his professional life. Harvard twice divulged the court's findings regarding Lumbard when he was under consideration for federal appointment.^[1]

In 1955, President Eisenhower nominated Lumbard as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, headquartered in New York. Lumbard served as an active judge for 16 years, including 12 years (1959-71) as Chief Judge. Lumbard took senior status in 1971, continuing to hear cases on a reduced schedule; during these years, he also frequently served by designation hearing cases as a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

[edit] Modern Settings v. Prudential

One landmark decision penned by Lumbard was Modern Settings v. Prudential (1991), which dealt with a dispute between an investor and a broker over allegedly unauthorized trading.

The customer agreement between the parties provided "Reports of the execution of orders and stateents of my account shall be conclusive if not objected to within five days and ten days, respectively, after transmittal to me (Modern Settings) by mail or otherwise."

Lumbard held that such a contract clause is presumptively enforceable. It is reasonable to require that a customer memorialize his objections so courts will not become a forum for endless swearing contests between brokers and customers.

On the other hand, he allowed for the possibility of the invalidity of sucha clause in some cases. "There will be instances where a disparity in sophistication between a brokerage firm and its customer will warrantr a flexible application of such written notice clauses ... Similarly, we do not foreclose the possibility that a broker may be estopped from raising a defense based on the written notice clause if the broker's own assurances of deceptive acts forestall he customer's filing of ther required written complaint."

[edit] Death and Archives

Lumbard died in 1999. His chamber papers are archived at Harvard Law School, but have not yet been processed and opened for research.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• J. Edward Lumbard at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

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