Since it's almost time to start compiling "The Year in Law -- 2007," I thought I should go ahead and release the 2006 edition, which has been laying around here since February or so.
Thanks to all those who contributed to it, intentionally or not.
After an intensive evaluation process, which involved me reading things and writing down the names of the ones I liked, the top ten stories of 2006 have been chosen. In no particular order, they are:
Client in a Box
Quick thinking, or some kind of thinking, anyway, led to this creative strategy by a Pennsylvania criminal defense attorney. Worried that a potential witness might be at the courthouse for a photo lineup at the same time his client was there for a preliminary hearing, the attorney punched two holes in a box, slapped the box on his client's head, and away they went. That kept the client's face out of view, but got the rest of him (box included) pictured on the Internet.
Presidential-Bike-Crash Coverup
Documents released in 2006 showed that during the G-8 summit in Scotland the previous year, a presidential outing on Mountain Bike One had ended in tragedy when the President, attempting to ride, wave, and speak at the same time, lost control and crashed headlong into a policeman guarding his route. The policeman was hospitalized for ankle injuries. The President suffered only minor scrapes, and later graciously apologized to the injured policeman. The report speculated that news of the incident had been suppressed in order to spare all parties embarrassment.
The Saga of Judge Floro
Judge Florentino Floro became a worldwide cause celebre, and eventually a personal acquaintance, after he was removed from the bench in Malabon City, outside Manila, for a variety of unique practices including occasional conferences with three "mystic dwarves" or spirit guides, Armand, Luis, and Angel. Judge Floro appealed his removal (or "separation," under local law) all the way to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, but was unsuccessful, despite citing "Lowering the Bar" in support of his Third Supplemental Brief to the Supreme Court. In an email interview, Judge Floro argued that his mystic friends and psychic gifts should not have been allowed to overshadow his honesty, integrity, commitment, and his excellent bar exam score (on a test that he assured me was far more difficult than the one we take here in California). Now that he has more time, Judge Floro has become a prolific blogger himself, and also a frequent self-Googler, so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his repeated contributions this past year.
Mark Foley's Disgusting Emails
In September, Rep. Mark Foley abruptly resigned from Congress after questions were raised about a series of highly questionable emails he sent to a former page. The emails, which were made public by ABC News and on the Internet, displayed shocking inconsistencies in capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure, errors that were all more disturbing because they appeared in messages sent by a 52-year-old man to an impressionable minor. Foley later apologized publicly (in a run-on sentence) and announced that he would be entering a grammar-rehabilitation program.
The Face of Taster's Choice
In 2005, I wrote about Christoff v. Nestle USA, in which a man who discovered his face had been used on jars of "Taster's Choice" for sixteen years without his permission was awarded $15.6 million in damages by a Los Angeles jury. Nestle appealed, and by an odd twist of fate I was in the Second District Court of Appeal in October 2006 to argue another case on the same day the Christoff case was argued, and so I stayed to take notes. The case still has not been resolved; the court has asked for supplemental briefing and a decision likely will be delayed until summer 2007.
Developments in Corporate-Mascot Law
It appears that I'm developing a special expertise in the law applying to corporate mascots. There were a number of mascot-law stories in 2006, including: the arrest of "Benny the Bull" for an assault on an off-duty Chicago police officer; the troubles inflicted on the "Arkansas Chicken Man" by the people of Searcy, Arkansas, including attacks involving frozen drinks, Skoal cans, and a salvo of bottle rockets; the infringement of the First Amendment rights of "Lady Liberty" and "Mattress Man" by the city council of McHenry, Illinois; and the Ninth Circuit's affirmation of such rights in a case brought by "Blazing Bagels" of Redmond, Washington.
I know my partners will be thrilled to learn that I have this expertise in such a lucrative area of the law.
Lawyer Costumed as Bin Laden is Surprised by Arrest
Tip for attorney readers: it may be within your constitutional rights to dress up as Osama bin Laden for Halloween and then go out to the interstate to wave a (fake) AK-47 and sticks of dynamite at passing motorists as a "tax protest," but it's not likely to win you any big smiles from the ethics committee. Tip for motorists: Osama bin Laden is not believed likely to personally invade Maine in an attempt to disrupt traffic on I-295, and especially if it's Halloween night you might not need to be so quick to call in an air strike. I'd call for everybody to just stand down a little, but since just this week Boston was completely panicked by mysterious "devices" that turned out to be a publicity stunt using lighted signs featuring the cartoon characters of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I'm not going to bother.
Developments in the Law Affecting Jugglers and Carnival Folk
I'm also tracking developments in circus-related legal areas, of course. I'm having a little trouble finding the story on the human cannonball who was fired because he was afraid to fly, which is one of my favorites but which may have happened in 2005. There were, however, a number of other tales to tell in this area from 2006, such as: a theft of juggling equipment, including a unicycle, from the car of two men attending a juggling festival in Omaha; threats against Happy the Clown and other clowns and clown-like performers by a scary New York law firm seeking to protect its client's trademark rights; a dramatic ruling in December that playing "Hacky-Sack" did not constitute "juggling" for purposes of a jugglers'-rights ordinance in Boulder, Colorado; and a crackdown on snake charmers in India.
Ninth Circuit Discriminates Against Personal-Jet Owners
Again displaying its bias against the nation's billionnaires, the Ninth Circuit ruled in July that Ron Tutor did not have a constitutional right to land his personal 737 at tiny Friedman Memorial Airport in order to reach his vacation home in Sun Valley, Idaho. The jet weighs almost twice the limit for the runway there, but Tutor still maintained that his constitutional rights were cruelly violated by forcing him to either fly somewhere else or use a smaller plane. The district court rejected Tutor's multiple civil-rights claims, as well as an argument under the ever-popular but virtually-never-successful Commerce Clause. (Tip to law students: if you see a friend bubbling in any answer on the MBE that corresponds to the words "Commerce Clause," you may wish to consider an immediate group intervention.) The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Sadly, it did not reach the question whether aircraft weight is a "suspect classification" for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause.
DA Unconcerned About Credibility of Witness Who Sees Horned Aliens
It was tough to pick between this and Man Injures Self When Assaulting Biker Gang for Number Ten, but I finally decided on this one. It seems to be a little more closely related to the legal world, plus it involves horned aliens.
Well, it seems like it's well past time to get back to 2007, so I'll stop there. Thanks to all those who voted, those who read but didn't vote, those who were the subject of stories but didn't get mad, and those who got mad but kept it to themselves. It was a good year.
The polls are closed and results are in for the first annual Best (actually, in most cases, Worst) of the Year in Law for 2006.
Lawsuit of the Year:
Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine v. McDonald's, Burger King, et al., (C.D. Cal. 2006).
PCRM v. McDonald's scored what to me was a surprising win, beating the tale of two ninjas, Alamo v. Howard, by almost 8 points. Voters may have been convinced not only by the boldness of the PCRM’s mission – to tell consumers that it’s dangerous to eat cooked meat – but also by its boldness in describing itself as a “Physicians’ Committee” when (according to critics) 95 percent of members aren’t physicians. The PCRM’s website shows it is focused on animal rights, not human health; its other endeavors include calling on Elizabeth Hurley to stop participating in the “Got Milk?” campaign and publicizing a study called “Rodents’ Behavioral Needs Thwarted in Laboratories.” Its claim that cooking meat creates carcinogens appears to be true, but there does not seem to be much data on the level of risk, and the alternative would seem to be eating raw meat or none at all, so it’s not surprising that many voters chose to super-size their disdain for the lawsuit.
The other extremely worthy nominees finished in this order:
Legal Argument of the Year:
While the lawsuit nominees were all cases that pretty much should never have existed to begin with, at least one of the nominees for Best Legal Argument, and the winner, was quality work that showed real creativity and attention to detail:
Motion for Continuance Because of Deer Season Interfering With Jury Selection and Denying a Fair Cross Section of the Community, No. CR 06-494-4 (Lonoke County (Ark.) Cir. Ct. filed Sept. 12, 2006).
Voters loved John Wesley Hall, Jr.’s motion to continue trial on the grounds that a large percentage of potential jurors would not show up for jury duty because deer-hunting season was about to begin. Supported by data including state Game and Fish Commission records and the 2000 census, Hall’s motion convinced Judge Cole that a continuance was the only way to preserve the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights, and the motion was granted. Judge Cole’s comment that he himself had not missed the start of deer season since 1967 was of course a wholly unrelated jocularity.
Frankly, the other arguments were pretty bad. They finished in this order:
Ruling of the Year:
Finally, all the nominees for Best Legal Ruling were quality work that greatly enriched the legal community and indeed our national culture in general, and I’m not just saying that because they were written by judges. The winner was:
“Order Denying Motion for Incomprehensibility,” Factac, Inc. v. King, Adv. No. 05-5171-C (Bankr. W.D. Tex. Feb. 21, 2006) (Hon. Leif M. Clark, J.).
The Academy was impressed by Judge Clark’s ability to keep a sense of humor when faced with something called “Defendant’s Motion to Discharge Response to Plaintiff’s Response to Defendant’s Response Opposing Objection to Discharge,” by the ruling’s brief but clear analysis, and especially by the citation to a scene in “Billy Madison” in which a competition judge describes an answer Billy gives as so bad that “Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.”
The other nominees, all also excellent, finished as follows:
Thanks to everyone who voted. Next (but probably tomorrow), my own non-democratically-chosen top ten stories of 2006.
The third category I'm putting up for a vote is the Judicial Ruling of the Year. The nominees are:
Order Granting Motion to Compel Lunch (Judge Gaines, Maricopa County, AZ)
Opinion Dismissing Bunk-Bed Failure-to-Warn Litigation (N.J. App. Div.)
Order Directing Parties to Resolve Dispute by Rock-Paper-Scissors (Judge Presnell, M.D. Fla.)
Order Denying Motion as Incomprehensible (Judge Clark, W.D. Tex.)
The voting for all three categories will remain open until January 31 sometime, and the winners announced, along with my own selections for top ten stories of 2006, on Friday.
I also want to honor the most compelling lawsuit of 2006. It was particularly hard to choose between so many qualified contenders in this area, so I definitely wanted to put this to a vote. (Note: these lawsuits are ones that I reported on during 2006. They may have been filed, dismissed, or ruled upon during that year. I'm still counting them for 2006.)
The nominees in this category are:
Gokey v. Lodi v. Gokey (the second case I know of where someone's basically sued himself)
Meckler v. Old Orchard Shopping Center (claiming mall was responsible for squirrel attack)
Heckard v. Jordan (plaintiff claimed he was sick of being mistaken for Michael Jordan)
Alamo v. Howard (a.k.a. Ninja v. Ninja v. Ninja's Grandmother)
Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine v. McDonald's (warning them not to cook meat)
It's a good year for bad lawsuits when you have to leave out a case I called "Defective Hairpiece Blamed for Cardiac Arrest" for lack of space.
As January 2007 comes to an end, so also does any excuse I might have for recapping the best stories of 2006. I'll be doing that this week and am finishing up the review process. It is very difficult to make some of these choices, and so in two or three categories I thought I would experiment with putting these to a vote. Assuming this polling software works successfully, which is a big assumption, then the most popular choices will be announced by the end of the week. If it doesn't work, I'll pick the ones I like and pretend they were the most popular choices. If that system's good enough for the Electoral College, it's good enough for me.
The first category is Best Legal Argument of 2006. This category honors creative and preferably ridiculous arguments that are especially clever, especially stupid, or somewhere in between.
The nominees are (links go to the original post):
Woman Argues She Can Use HOV/Carpool Lane Because She Is Pregnant
Accused Bigamist: "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas"
Man Believes Bad Checks May Have Been Written by His Other Personalities
Motion to Continue Arkansas Trial Because Deer Season is Comin' Up
Motion for Extension of Time Because My Dog Had Puppies
The poll buttons are in the sidebar to the right.
I read the ABA Journal's eReport (that's a Report that goes out eLectronically) every Friday, and was a little surprised to see this under "Answers of the Week": "Last week we asked what inspired you to get tattooed."
That was also a little puzzling to me because I assumed that, like me, all attorneys had Title 28 of the U.S. Code tattooed onto them for easy reference, but upon review of the article it appears not.
Being attorneys, many of the respondents seem to have written with great sincerity, erudition, and ponderosity in order to demonstrate fully the elaboration of their thought processes with regard to their tats. So the article contains the following sentences, among others:
"Maybe the yin/yang does, in some way, symbolize the scales of justice, but for me, it is more than that." Not a sentence you want to hear come out of the person sitting next to you on a cross-country flight.
"A dear friend of mine had given me a small plaque when I graduated from law school that simply said, 'to thine own self be true.' . . . I had this placed on my lower back [in Kanji characters] to remind me always to remain faithful to myself and my values." Here's a tip: your own lower back is not the best place to write something as a reminder. At least not as a reminder to yourself.
"My fifth tattoo [is] on the back of my neck. It is centered and therefore does not need to be matched by anything to maintain my symmetry."
And then this:
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One of my textual tattoos is a Heraclitus fragment in Greek that reads, roughly translated, "The people should fight for the laws as they would fight for the city walls." Name withheld by request (Arlington, VA) |
The moral of that story is, don't go around showing people your Heraclitus fragment, and if you do, for God's sake don't give your name.
Happily, the guy who responded from Kansas City, MO, was a little more down-to-earth: "I have come to understand that the design that looked so appealing that day must surely be the Native American symbol for 'stupid 18-year-old.'"
Link: ABAnet.org
