Lowering the Bar

Cow Steals Milk

I assumed this was a hoax of some kind, but if it is it has fooled all the major news outlets.

Not that that's especially difficult these days.

Reports started to come in on Wednesday that a cow had stolen 26 gallons of milk from a Walmart in northern Virginia and then tried to give it away to shoppers in the parking lot. The cow's use of a cart to get the milk outside suggested that this was in fact a man in a cow suit, which police later confirmed.

A Stafford County Sheriff's spokesman said that according to witnesses the cow-man, or man-cow as the case may be, had entered the store on all fours, filled up a cart with milk jugs, and then nudged the full cart outside (again on all fours), all apparently without being challenged. After trying (unsuccessfully) to dispose of the goods, he then fled. Although I guess "fled" is not the right word, since according to the spokesman he "was last seen skipping down the sidewalk."

A deputy arrived shortly thereafter, and while he was investigating that caper he got a call about a disturbance at a nearby McDonald's. Nothing much was happening when he arrived, but his attention was somehow drawn to a particular car. "After some questioning," one report says, "deputies determined the man was the suspect in the earlier Walmart heist." Their careful interrogation, plus the cow suit next to him on the back seat, seems to have cracked the case. Walmart employees identified the man, or more likely the suit.

The suit's occupant turned out to be an 18-year-old local man, who was charged with milklifting. "I suspect it was a prank that went too far," said the spokesman. "It would have been funny," he continued, "if he hadn't taken the milk." He didn't explain how that would have been funny.

Texas Bill Would Legalize Noodling

Good news for noodlers: if a new Texas bill becomes law, it will at last be legal to noodle in that state. Noodling is going on anyway, of course. But noodlers have long wanted equal treatment and a more noodle-friendly legislature finally seems ready to sanction the practice. 

If you are somehow not familiar with noodling, here's how the committee report describes it:

Handfishing, also known as noodling, is the practice and sport of fishing for catfish using one's bare hands. The method involves locating an underwater catfish hole and using an angler's fingers and hand as bait. . . . Interested parties have expressed a desire to legalize the practice in Texas. 

That is, interested parties find a catfish hole, stick their arm in it, wait for the catfish to clamp down on their hand and then attempt to drag said catfish to the surface. Or at least they hope it's a catfish - other things also live in such holes, such as snakes and snapping turtles, and unlucky noodlers have lost fingers. But it's all worth it, apparently, to experience the joy of noodling.

The Wikipedia article on noodling claims that it is also called "grabbling, graveling, hogging, dogging, gurgling, tickling [or] stumping," and, most heinous of all, "catfisting." HB 2189, which calls it simply "handfishing," defines the practice as "fishing for catfish by the use of hands only and without any other fishing device such as a gaff, pole hook, or spear." (What part of "hands only" needed clarification?) It further provides that a person who holds (in his free hand) a valid fishing license may handfish in public waters to his heart's content. A House committee has recommended passage.

It's not clear to me whether noodling is actually illegal now or the legislature is just trying to clarify its status. Nothing in the code expressly prohibits it (yes, I read the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code), but it could be prohibited by rule. There is Section 66.003, which states that "[n]o person may place in the water of this state an explosive, poison, or other substance or thing deleterious to fish." Not only does that ban explosive fishing, the only kind I really enjoy, it might also apply to handfishing. A hand is a "thing," and if rammed down a fish's gullet it would become "deleterious" to that fish. The current bill does not amend this section, but there is still time to fix that.

There actually are conflicting opinions on whether noodling should be legal; some are concerned about the effect on the species (I'm concerned about its effect on both species) while others are less concerned and more pro-noodling. Both sides can point to evidence from other states such as Missouri and Oklahoma, which both have a high concentration of noodlers and have wrestled with the legal issues as well. With any luck, the public noodling debate will continue for years to come.

New Jersey Township Passes Chicken-Sex Rule

In a meeting Monday night, the governing committee of Hopewell Township, New Jersey, finally passed chicken legislation it had been working on for no fewer than three years. Among other things, the measure requires the chickens to practice safe sex.

The committee's unanimous action adds Section 5-9, "Standards for Keeping Chickens," to the township's ordinances. The new section provides a variety of expected requirements, such as the size of lots on which chickens may be kept and the amount of chickens that may be kept there. (If you're wondering, it's six chickens on the first half-acre lot and four per additional half acre.) Importantly, these are just chickens we're talking about - not roosters.

Except on visitation day, and then it's time to get freaky.

Mature roosters are prohibited [too noisy]; however, roosters may visit the property for the purpose of fertilization so long as there are no more than ten (10) days of visitation per parcel in any twelve (12) month period, and no more than five (5) days consecutively.

Emphasis added. Note that the ordinance doesn't allow the roosters' owners to escort them - it's all up to the roosters. Also, I assume each rooster will be screened and interviewed by a skilled TSA agent (if any) in order to ensure that said rooster is visiting solely "for the purpose of fertilization" and isn't just there to hook up.

Date night in Hopewell Township

The difficulty of ensuring that may help explain the safe-sex requirement, which was added late Monday and so isn't in the draft ordinance. According to the report, committee members expressed concerns about having a bunch of roosters making these apparently unregulated booty calls, since some of them might not be disease-free. The new provision doesn't seem to require chicken condoms, but rather some form of documentation showing a clean bill of health (although as Donald Trump will insist on telling you, documentation can be faked).

The ordinance also has a special disturbing-the-peace provision:

No Disturbing the Peace. No person owning, keeping, maintaining or harboring a chicken [are some of them fugitives?] shall permit, suffer or allow a chicken to disturb the peace or quiet of the neighborhood by creating a noise across a residential property line continually for ten (10) minutes or intermittently for thirty (30) minutes, unless provoked.

Emphasis added again. I've read that several times and I'm pretty sure it says that if the person is provoked, he's entitled to retaliate by letting his chickens get loud. And considering that up to ten (10) days a year that could involve the sound of raucous chicken sex, that should be a serious deterrent.

Man Who Sued Parents for His Allowance Instead Gets 30 Days to Move Out [UPDATED]

Well, that lawsuit didn't go quite as planned.

CNN reports that a 25-year-old Spaniard who sued his parents for not paying his allowance not only lost, but was ordered by the court to get the hell out of his parents' house and go look for a job.

According to the report, the man had been getting $588 a month from his parents, in addition to the free room and board. It wasn't clear how long he had been unemployed - or if he had ever had a job to begin with - but it could have been quite some time given that the unemployment rate in Spain is over 40 percent. Evidently he was not trying very hard, however, because his parents finally said they would no longer pay him his allowance unless he at least tried to find a job.

While it's possible to have some sympathy for his general situation because of the very high unemployment rate, the fact that he sued his parents lowers the sympathy level quite a bit. The parents don't appear to be wealthy (not that it would necessarily matter) - the report says that his mother works in a restaurant and his father works for a trash-collection firm. Also, the parents alleged that their son had become abusive, although whether this was because the money dried up or was due to pre-existing jerkhood was not clear. Either way, the judge denied his claim (mostly) and ordered him to move out within 30 days.

The parents have taken over their son's car payments, and the judge did require them to pay a $292 "monthly food stipend" for the next two years. So he will at least have someplace to live (even if it may be in el coche) and will have enough food to survive. I suspect, though, that a couple weeks of backseat living and whatever substitutes for Top Ramen noodles in Spain might prompt a reconciliation.

Update: I can't believe I forgot to include this detail, of which Neatorama just reminded me:

The judge said the man was studying law, albeit at a slow rate, and would probably not complete the degree for several years, but he thought he was still capable of finding some kind of work.

Emphasis added. Again, some sympathy is due because of the unemployment rate, but that does make me wonder whether the "slow rate" of study and the decision to sue his parents for his allowance might be related.

Correction: What's "over 40 percent" is the youth unemployment rate, which according to Bloomberg.com has recently hit a remarkable 43 percent. The overall rate is a mere 20 percent.

Assorted Stupidity #17

• The BBC reports that a Welsh police force has begun posting its responses to Freedom of Information Act requests. Among other things, its website reveals that over the past few years citizens have reported seeing 36 "big cats" or suspected big cats, 26 ghosts, 20 UFOs, 11 witches, two vampires and a zombie. (There were actually two zombie reports, but one turned out to be somebody shooting a horror movie.) The department has also been asked to report the amount of money it has spent on psychics (zero) and "secret shoppers" (also zero).

• Speaking of money, a Florida lawyer is suing a strip club for taking his. He accuses the Goldrush club of "knowingly and continuously serv[ing] plaintiff alcoholic beverages to the extent that he was rendered intoxicated, partially or temporarily unconscious, and ... had a complete loss of judgment, rational thought, or ability to enter into lawful contracts or agreements," in particular any agreement to pay the $18,930 on his tab. "[H]aving knowingly caused Plaintiffs [sic] irrational state of mind," defendant's to blame. A Miami blog asks, "Did he agree to pay for a stripper's college education or something?" Not likely. Have you looked at tuition costs lately?

• The moral of this one: if your plan for evading the police involves jumping into the Grand Canyon, fine, but you probably need to jump a little further out.

• The A&E Network and Steven Seagal have settled a lawsuit alleging that they stole the idea for the reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman, which follows Seagal in his part-time job with the Sheriff's Department of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. In other news, at least two different people are willing to claim that idea. Seagal was criticized in March for participating in a raid on a cockfighting ring, for which Seagal showed up in a tank.

• That doesn't seem like enough Steven Seagal mocking for today, so let me take this opportunity to remind you that he once accused the FBI of trying to ruin his film career, although as the chart displayed in that post suggests, that career was headed downhill long before the FBI got involved.

The People Who Sued Themselves

Over the weekend I wrote about Lodi v. Lodi, which was not a divorce but rather one man's legal crusade against himself. I was thinking about that because I'm working on a legal-ethics presentation about conflict-of-interest rules, which is a sufficiently dull topic that I need to add something strange to keep everybody (including me) awake. So my plan is to try to discuss the topic with regard to people who have sued themselves. So far, I have five such cases, and since I have been pulling these together for the presentation anyway, I thought I would go ahead and list them all in one place.

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1985: Oreste Lodi sues himself in Shasta County, California, apparently trying to obtain a judgment he can use in some way for tax purposes. After his case against himself is dismissed, he appeals, filing a brief for himself as appellant and another one for himself as respondent. The court affirms, ordering each party to bear its own costs.

2005: Emert Wyss, an Illinois plaintiffs' attorney, brings a class action against a mortgage company seeking to recover allegedly illegal fees charged to homeowners. It turns out that those fees had originally been charged by the Centerre Title Company, which is awkward because that company is owned by the same Emert Wyss. Wyss is ultimately forced to admit in a deposition that he is involved in a suit to recover fees his company charged in the first place, and is added to the case as a third-party defendant.

2006: Curtis Gokey files a claim against the city of Lodi (no relation), California, for damage caused to his vehicle when a city employee backed a dump truck into it. The driver of the truck: Curtis Gokey. Some argue that since there was no evidence it was intentional, he should technically be able to recover from the city under the doctrine of respondeat superior. The city, at least, disagrees, arguing that in essence Gokey has filed a claim against himself. It later also denies a claim by Gokey's wife, Rhonda, pointing out that under California law the car was community property.

2007: the city of Islington, England, effectively sues itself when one of its officers gives one of its vehicles a parking ticket which it then challenges by appealing to itself. After rejecting its appeal, it appeals again, but presents no evidence against itself, resulting in the ticket being voided. It then demands that it pay itself the costs of its allegedly frivolous appeal, a demand the adjudicator rejects after finding "the legal status of the two parties in this appeal amounted to one and the same."

2009: Wells Fargo sues Wells Fargo in Florida, apparently in order to try to clear title to a home so that it can foreclose on a mortgage. (I've been told that this is actually fairly common, which doesn't change how I feel about it.) Evidently concerned about a conflict of interest, it hires two different law firms, one to sue it and one to defend it.

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The Wyss case is the one depicted in the excellent Peeps diorama (right) made by Matt Crouch for the ABA Journal's recent contest. Wyss's case may not have been quite that complicated, but probably nobody really knows.

Matt, by the way, also made this short video for a Texas State Bar contest on the subject of useful contributions that lawyers have made to society over the years.

To the best of my knowledge, none of those people ever sued themselves.

The Man Who Sued Himself

There is more than one such man, actually, but although I'm aware of several cases of autolitigation (a term I'm pretty sure I just made up), and the court's opinion in Lodi v. Lodi is already in the Case Law Hall of Fame, I guess I've never actually written about this one.

Lodi v. Lodi was a 1985 California case that "started when plaintiff Oreste Lodi sued himself in the Shasta County Superior Court." (The court speculated that he did this in order to get a judgment he could somehow use for tax purposes, but ultimately his reasoning didn't matter.)

Lodi sued himself, served the complaint on himself, took a default judgment against himself when he failed to answer, and then appealed after his case against himself was dismissed. On appeal, he was of course both the appellant and the respondent, and as the Court of Appeal noted, "[e]ach party filed a brief."  (I'm going to see if I can find these, because they should be fairly interesting.)

That court affirmed, reasoning (among other things) that a cause of action requires a plaintiff and a defendant, who, presumably, have to be two different people. It also noted that under the circumstances, the result could not possibly be unfair to Mr. Lodi. In fact, "[i]t is hard to imagine a more even-handed application of justice," the court wrote, since Lodi lost but also won.

The court also said it had considered whether it should require appellant to pay for the frivolous appeal, but decided that "the equities are better served by requiring each party to bear his own costs."

Update: Okay, there is at least one prior use of the term "autolitigation," although it has also been used a couple of times to mean someone who is representing himself. I'd call that "self-representation," and reserve "autolitigation" for the rarer cases in which somebody has actually sued themselves (intentionally or accidentally). But I guess reasonable people could differ on that. 

Clown-Suited Blackmailer on a Tiny Bike Gets Prison

This story had me at "blackmailer in a clown suit," but the riding of a tiny bike moved it to the top of the list.

Frank Salvador Solorza was convicted recently of conspiracy, attempted extortion, and impersonating a federal officer, according to this post in the San Francisco Chronicle. I've done my best to interpret the story as suggesting that he tried to impersonate a federal officer while wearing a clown suit, but I don't think that's what happened. Instead, he seems to have done the impersonation from a distance and then put on the clown suit only when it was time to pick up the money.

Prosecutors said Solorza was trying to extort $50,000 from a Bay Area family by making calls and sending letters purporting to be from a U.S. immigration agent, accusing the family members of lying on their applications for permanent residence and threatening to have them deported. The messages told them that if they paid $50,000, their papers "would be good forever." The family contacted actual federal agents, who then recorded subsequent calls providing instructions in how to hand over the money. "The family was told in one call," the report says, "that a man in a clown suit and riding a small bicycle would be coming to pick up the money."

Be on the lookout

I guess there is a touch of genius to that plan, because ordinarily you don't look at a man in a clown suit riding a small bicycle and think, "hey, there goes an extortionist." But it's a pretty high-stakes plan, because it's anything but low-profile. Hiding in plain sight like this can be a good strategy, but not when the feds are already watching you.

And, in fact, agents watching the family's home in February 2009 did indeed see someone ride up to it on a tiny bike, wearing not just a clown suit but "a clown suit, a clown glitter wig, a Pirates of the Caribbean hat (complete with dreadlocks), and sunglasses." By itself that seems like pretty good circumstantial evidence that you've got your man, but they waited until he actually picked up the briefcase he thought was full of money, and then arrested him.

He was carrying the cell phone from which the calls had been made, and "a receipt from the House of Humor costume store in Redwood City," when he was arrested.

A jury convicted Solorza, and on Wednesday the judge sentenced him to three years in prison. She does not seem to have credited his story that members of the Norteño gang had forced him to try the scam. "Norteños always dress in their colors," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. "They don't use disguises, let alone engage in crimes wearing clown suits." Objection, Your Honor -- counsel has no foundation for that statement. They've offered no evidence this group's "colors" don't include glitter wigs and Pirates-of-the-Caribbean hats, and so I move to -- yes, I'll sit down.

It is possible that Solorza felt the full clown regalia was necessary to justify the makeup (that I assume he was wearing) and sunglasses. He needed to obscure his identity because he's related to the people he was trying to extort. It appears that they suspected him to begin with, though, because about two weeks earlier he had nonchalantly asked them when their green cards were going to expire.

Assorted Stupidity #16

• A woman in Vermont may be trying out a "just kidding" defense to a charge of attempted robbery, reportedly telling police that the incident at a gas station was a "joke" and a "misunderstanding." According to the clerk at the station, the woman told her to "give me all your cash, and don't try anything." Which is totally hilarious.

• Congratulations to the executives of Transocean Ltd., who got six-figure bonuses for 2010. The bonuses included large amounts for meeting safety goals that year, described in an SEC filing as "the best year in safety performance in our company's history." Since that was the same year Transocean's Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up, killed 11 people and trashed the Gulf of Mexico, those other years must have been pretty goddamn grim.

• Reuters reported this week that six people were injured (none seriously) when two German circus families got into a brawl over tent space. Police in Regensburg said guns, knives, and batons were used in the fracas, in which three members of each family were wounded. Circus folk, take a lesson from the psychic Gypsy families of Newport Beach and settle things in court.

• Following Florida's example, Minnesota is considering a bill that would make it a crime to take a picture of a farm, a move apparently designed to protect businesses from undercover investigations. S.F. 1118 would punish picture-taking at a farm or "animal facility" (including pet shops) by up to five years in jail, and it would even be illegal just to "possess or distribute" such a visual record. Possibly the greatest mystery: why anyone would follow an example set by Florida.

• Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on a study finding that judges were much more likely to grant parole after lunch. Researchers reviewed 1,112 parole hearings and found that the rate at which paroles were granted started at about 65% and gradually declined, going back up to 65% again if the judge took a break. They this may be explained by an increasing tendency to choose a "default" option - such as leaving a prisoner in jail - as someone gets tired. You might want to take this into account when scheduling your next hearing.

International Body Declares No-Wig Zone in the Netherlands

The Associated Press reported this week that at least one judge of the International Criminal Court in The Hague has told lawyers appearing before her to stop wearing wigs. There is no official dress code at the ICC, and given the wide variety of legal traditions represented there, some lawyers show up bewigged and some do not. This is bothering at least one of the judges.

At the end of a hearing on something having to do with Kenya, Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova noted the inconsistent wiggery of the lawyers before her and said that in the future, wigs should not be worn by anyone. "This is not the dress code of this institution," the judge said (which is a little misleading if it doesn't have one at all). Whether she ordered the dewigging or just suggested it was not very clear. "In this quite warm weather," she continued, "maybe it will be more convenient to be without wigs." I guess that's the kind of suggestion you treat as binding, coming from a judge.

An assortment of lawyer head-coverings were on display

"I was not aware before the proceedings of any rule that there were no wigs at the ICC," insisted Steven Kay, one of the wig-wearers on Monday. He claimed that the Registry - the administrative office of the court - had told him he had the option of wearing "Dutch lawyer's garb" (and God knows what that might be) or the English wig and gown. He wigged it, only to be told by Judge Trendafilova that for consistency's sake, no one should wear wigs in the future. Kay didn't say whether he planned to appeal.

According to the AP report, a British barrister who showed up bareheaded that day might have done so in part because he once had his wig mocked by [an alleged] Serbian war criminal. David Hooper was appointed in 2006 to represent Vojislav Seselj (described by the New York Times as a "sociologist and former warlord"), who has been on trial in The Hague for years. But Seselj, who is known for his angry and insulting speeches in court, rejected Hooper, saying he wanted to represent himself. "This man with a bird's nest on his head has been falsely introduced as my counsel," Seselj said. "He will never be my defense counsel." He has not been, and he also seems to have dispensed with the nest. 

In 2007, the Lord Chief Justice of Britain announced that lawyers there would no longer be required to wear wigs, at least in civil and family court. The fact that Kenyan lawyers are still wearing them suggests that wig reform has not yet spread to the rest of the former Empire.

Correction: Seselj is, of course, only an alleged Serbian war criminal until and unless the court rules otherwise. (Well, he is Serbian, but his war-criminal status is still unsettled.) As I wrote with regard to alleged Serbian war criminal "Girls Gone Wild" mogul Joe Francis, even creeps are entitled to due process.