Thomas H. Vidal

Partner, Pryor Cashman | Trial Lawyer for High-Stakes Control & Governance Disputes | Founders, Boards & Investors

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

I represent founders, creators, investors, and high-net-worth individuals in high-stakes, trial-driven disputes that are often fact-intensive and contentious.

I use this space to share observations about litigation, trials, and how complex cases are actually decided.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

Excellent read.

[Robert Anderson @ProfRobAnderson]

Two judges. The whole thing could’ve probably been stopped if anyone in Delaware except Bill Chandler was willing to say it out loud.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@OrinKerr 🙋🏻‍♂️Even when I sign something on my iPad, I make the digital ink blue. I don’t even keep black pens around for this reason.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@jondelarroz Undiscovered Country is, bar none, my favorite Star Trek film. I’ve watched them all many times, but this one I re-watch almost annually. I especially loved that I was able to ditch Mr. Lust’s AP History class to see it in the theatre.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

Great article! I’ve read a lot of Sun Tzu and your article is the finest example I’ve ever read of someone walking through a Sun Tzu analysis of an actual war. Great work. Not for nothing, but I vastly prefer Cleary’s and Minford’s editions to Griffith’s or Giles’. But Griffith’s is solid work.

[Malco Theatres @malcotheatres]

One man’s faith ignited a revolution #AGreatAwakening starts Friday. Get tickets: https://t.co/uiPsxbylpN

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@Crey1959 @JonathanTurley Only two times you can safely ask a question without knowing the answer: you don’t care what the answer is; or any possible answer serves your theory of the case. There may be others, but they are variations of those two.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@physicsgeek We watched it. We were brought in from recess to see it.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@tomwarren Even this won’t convince either Microsoft to improve this disaster of a product or IT departments to discontinue using it.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

The .@ATT mobile app & website are a complete mess. I have lost over an hour trying to transfer my cell account from one iPad (broken) to my replacement. Can you do it from the website? Apparently, not. Is there a number to call? Not without using AI to find one. Don’t even try the pointless “virtual” chatbot. Unbelievable.

[Gurwinder @G_S_Bhogal]

“The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”

—John Ruskin

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

May 16, 1963. Gordon Cooper was orbiting Earth alone inside a capsule barely big enough to turn around in, moving at 17,500 miles per hour.
He had been up there for over a day.
Then the warnings started.
First a faulty sensor screaming that the ship was falling — it wasn't. He switched it off. Then something far worse: a short circuit knocked out the entire automated guidance system. The one that kept the capsule steady. The one that was supposed to bring him home.
Without it, reentry was nearly impossible.
Too shallow an angle and the capsule would bounce off the atmosphere back into space. Too steep and it would incinerate. The margin for error was razor thin — and every computer that was supposed to hit that margin was dead.
Down on the ground, NASA engineers watched the telemetry in silence. They could see everything going wrong. They could fix nothing.
Cooper didn't panic.
He uncapped a grease pencil and drew lines directly on the inside of his window to track the horizon. He looked up at the stars he had spent months memorizing and used their positions to orient the ship by eye. Then he set his wristwatch.
Because when you have no computers left, you become the computer.
At exactly the right moment — calculated in his head, confirmed by the stars outside — he fired the retrorockets. The capsule shook. The sky turned to fire. For several minutes, no one on Earth could reach him as plasma swallowed the ship whole.
Then the parachutes opened.
Faith 7 hit the water just four miles from the recovery ship — the single most accurate splashdown in the entire Mercury program.
The man with a wristwatch and a few pencil marks on a window had outperformed every automated system NASA had.
We talk a lot about technology saving us. And it often does.
But Cooper's story is a quiet reminder that behind every machine, there still has to be a human being who can look out the window, think clearly under pressure, and decide what to do next.
The final backup was never the software.
It was him.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

RE: The Way of War of Our Enemies

In every hot war the United States has become involved in since the Korean War, we have enjoyed absolute tactical and operational dominance over our enemies. We win every tactical engagement, overwhelmingly. Operationally we can and do dominate any theater of our choosing. No one—and I mean NO ONE—can stand toe to toe with the US military.

This has been true for decades.

We’ve talked before about the elements of national power—the “DIME” (Diplomacy, Informational, Military, Economic).

Our military power is unsurpassed. We are masters of diplomacy. We have the world’s strongest economy.

So how do we lose? The INFORMATIONAL component.

Our military opponents, from Ho Chi Minh to Osama bin Ladin, knew that the only way to defeat the USA is to demoralize the American populace such that it demands withdrawal and throws the then current Commander-in-Chief out of office. The ONLY way to defeat America militarily is to convince the American people that a war is unwinnable.

The slow dribble of IED deaths in OIF was not actually targeting soldiers and Marines—it was targeting YOU, the American people. And CNN eagerly complied with death counts running across the bottom of the screen.

The Tet Offensive? It was a decisive US victory that could have ended the Vietnam War in our favor. But Walter Cronkite instead declared the war lost, protests erupted nationwide, and the war was lost.

The Highway of Death in Kuwait? We could have taken out Saddam Hussein in 1991 and never needed to go back in 2003, but international media made the attack on retreating Iraqis look “too cruel,” so we halted just short of the finish line.

The strategic imperative of every one of America’s military enemies is to break the will of the American people with skewed information, propaganda, and extreme emphasis on America’s minor losses amidst overwhelming military victory.

But the Ho Chi Minhs and Osama bin Ladins can’t do that by themselves. They need willing partners in the American media and government.

And for Operation Epic Fury, boy oh boy do the Iranian mullahs have an over abundance of American morale killers to draw from in order to defeat America through the informational instrument of national power.

Tucker Carlson.

Senator Mark Kelly and the rest of the Seditious Six.

CNN.

ABC.

NBC.

CBS.

NYT, WaPo.

Pakistani bot armies on social media.

X “influencers” like Cerno, Candace, MartyrMade and Ian Carroll.

Every idiot claiming we are fighting “Israel’s war."

There is an entire Army of American politicians and media figures who are willingly fighting Iran’s informational war on its behalf (and in some cases, at its behest).

America is DECISIVELY WINNING the war on Iran in every measurable respect.

Yet there are so many influential Americans who are desperately determined to make you believe otherwise.

In days of old in non-US countries, such people would have been strung up for treason.

Thankfully it’s 2026 and we have a First Amendment, so no one fear being treated in such a medieval manner. But we can still ostracize and ridicule such people and sources for the irreparable harm they are wreaking upon the USA as they do the bidding (intentionally or unintentionally) of Theo-fascist mullahs who are determined to set off a nuclear bomb so that the Twelfth Imam will arise from a well in Qom and precipitate the global apocalypse.

We all need to choose sides. Are you with America, or are you with theologic-inspired, deliberate Armageddon?

And anyone who chooses the latter needs to be the target of mockery, derision and clearly-stated facts disproving their lies.

And if YOU are an American Patriot, you can fight that informational war on America’s behalf, right now, right here on social media, right there in your own living room. Your voice matters, and your voice is actually a part of the war.

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@Illuminicent @ChefGruel Per 1 quart (4 cups / 1 liter) cold water: 1 tablespoon kosher salt (15 g); 1 tablespoon white vinegar (15 ml). [Vinegar @ 1 Tbsp per quart ≈ 0.4% acidity in soak]. Scale up as needed.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@proginosko As entertainment lawyers, I assure you this is discussed a whole lot.

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@VadimYuryev @FFE_only Captain Kirk’s command chair, alternate timeline. @WilliamShatner. Not sure where you get it, though.

[MLB @MLB]

This photo. Wow. #WorldSeries

[Los Angeles Dodgers @Dodgers]

THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS ARE BACK-TO-BACK WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!

[Thomas H. Vidal @ThomasVidal]

@mgsquared @wesyang That is exactly the opposite of her point. She is saying. The obvious point is that the living constitutionalists are making precedent that don’t withstand an originalist analysis and, thus, are likely to be overturned. There is no partisan angle here at all.