Nino Scalia, Mark Lanier, and Bambi

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was not on the bench for the Court's brief session today, and there's a good reason why. According to the blog of our sibling publication Texas Lawyer, the justice has been deer hunting over the weekend in Texas. No, it was not a reprise of his notorious outing with Vice President Dick Cheney a few years back, but his hunting partner this time is nearly as stunning: W. Mark Lanier, the prominent plaintiffs attorney from Houston.

The juxtaposition is fairly hard to imagine: Scalia, no friend of unbridled tort litigation (though not always an enemy), chowing down and stalking deer along with Lanier, the colorful trial lawyer who won the first Vioxx verdict and is known for quoting the Bible and slamming corporate America in front of juries. (See this Wall Street Journal article from 2006.)

Lanier also is the author of a friend-of-the-court brief in the pending case Wyeth v. Levine, labeled by some as the business case of the century. Lanier's brief sides with consumers who don't want state tort actions against pharmaceutical companies pre-empted by federal law.

How did the hunting expedition come about? Lanier is an alumnus of Texas Tech University School of Law, where Scalia gave a lecture on Friday. He was also scheduled to speak to students today, so in the weekend in between they went hunting at a ranch near Junction. "He's using this weekend to see if everything is bigger in Texas," Lanier told Texas Lawyer.