Well, one of them looks like this:
According to the BBC (thanks, Harry), this guy stole two CCTV cameras on Sunday, taking his own mugshot in the process. The image was first posted on the police department's Facebook page, but that appears to be down at the moment so I don't know whether they've found him yet.
I'm generally opposed to having surveillance cameras everywhere, but will admit that they can serve as useful criminal-intelligence tests.
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A statement in a judicial opinion that isn't necessary to the holding is called a dictum (pl. dicta), and isn't technically binding (though it may or may not be persuasive). Here's a good example of that from a 1976 federal case (thanks, Daniel).
In Searight v. New Jersey, the plaintiff alleged that in 1962 the state had "unlawfully injected him in the left eye with a radium electric beam" and that since then someone had been talking to him "on the inside of his brain." Because he did not sue until 1976, the statute of limitations had long since run, and that was the basis of the state's motion to dismiss. The court noted that, although it would normally have given the plaintiff a chance to amend, here it wouldn't because it also lacked jurisdiction. Then it went on (and this is the dicta part):
The allegations, of course, are of facts which, if they exist, are not yet known to man. Just as Mr. Houdini has so far failed to establish communication from the spirit world …, so the decades of scientific experiments and statistical analysis have failed to establish the existence of "extrasensory perception" (ESP). But, taking the facts as pleaded, and assuming them to be true, they show a case of presumably unlicensed radio communication, a matter which comes within the sole jurisdiction of the [FCC]. And even aside from that, Searight could have blocked the broadcast to the antenna in his brain simply by grounding it. See, for example, Ghirardi, "Modern Radio Servicing", First Edition, p. 572, ff. (Radio & Technical Publishing Co., New York, 1935). Just as delivery trucks for oil and gasoline are "grounded" against the accumulation of charges of static electricity, so on the same principle Searight might have pinned to the back of a trouser leg a short chain of paper clips so that the end would touch the ground and prevent anyone from talking to him inside his brain.
But these interesting aspects need not be decided here.
Therefore, you could cite this case as precedent on limitations or federal jurisdiction, but not for the proposition that a plaintiff has a duty to ground himself. Personally I think the proposition is valid, I'm just saying you need to find another case.
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At the moment nobody knows, but the New York Times reports that a judge in Fort Worth is stuck deciding this question.
Oswald was exhumed in 1981 to make sure it was really him in there, and after tests confirmed his identity (or did they?) he was reburied in a new coffin. That's because the original pine coffin was not doing too well after almost 20 years in the ground, as you might have expected. So what does one do with a used coffin? Well, if it's Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin and you're the Baumgardner Funeral Home, you apparently stick it in a closet for another 30 years and then put it up for auction. (The Times has a picture of it sitting in an office near two workers' desks, and that must have been a very pleasant day for them.)
This super-neat collectible sold in 2010 for $87,468, but Oswald's brother Robert sued to block the sale. This week a Texas judge heard arguments in the case and is expected to rule later this month.
There is no question that Robert Oswald owned the coffin for some period of time after he bought it in 1963. According to the Times, the funeral home's argument is that he then effectively donated it to Lee Harvey's estate, and that the heirs to said estate, Oswald's widow (who is still alive) and his two daughters, have never claimed it. I have not yet seen the trial briefs—which I am currently trying to get—but presumably the argument is that after 20 or 25 or 30 years or whatever, the heirs should be considered to have abandoned their claim. Why the funeral home would then be entitled to it, unless it's just by virtue of possession, is not yet clear to me.
Why anyone would want it is also not yet clear to me. I suppose it would make quite a conversation piece if you turned it into a coffee table or something like that. The conversation would probably involve the phrase "what is wrong with you?" but still.
More to come on this creeptastic legal drama.
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The Court was planning to hear his case, but now it can't find him.
Of course there are lots of Bobby Chens out there, but the Court is interested in the Bobby Chen who filed this petition for certiorari (via SCOTUSblog) that the Court granted on November 7. This was already unusual, because very few petitions are granted, and the odds are especially long if you wrote the petition yourself and English is not your first language. I don't mean to be too critical of Mr. Chen's work, because (1) I've seen a lot worse, to be honest, and (2) the Court did after all grant the petition he filed. Not many lawyers can say that. I'm really just pointing out that it is unusual for a pro se petition to be granted.
It is even more unusual if, once it's granted, the person who filed it then disappears.
At least, as the Wall Street Journal reports, Chen hasn't responded to the Court at all (there are various plans that need to be made) and his main brief is due on the 22nd. The case will almost certainly be dismissed if he doesn't show up, but for now the Court is still trying to locate him. The WSJ sent someone to the address given in the papers, but whoever answered the door said Bobby moved a long time ago. (I have to wonder whether that guy was actually Bobby himself, not entirely sure why "a supreme court" was trying to find him.)
It would be a drag if the case did not go forward, because then the world would not get an answer to the question presented: "Whether, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m), a district court has discretion to extend the time for service of process absent a showing of good cause, as the Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have held, or whether the district court lacks such discretion, as the Fourth Circuit has held?" Bobby Chen cares about the answer to that question, or at least he used to, because it will determine whether he can continue with his claim that Baltimore destroyed his property without a hearing. Or, as he put it, "after he came back from a trip he found his house was demolishing and all his personal belonging had disappeared."
Grammatical or not, the petition lays out the arguments reasonably well and points out that federal circuit courts disagree about the answer to the question presented (the version above is the Court's, not Mr. Chen's). It also makes public-policy arguments, for example arguing that if deadlines can be extended and vacated without good cause, "all proceeding will become uncertainty."
It also does this in less than ten pages, which just goes to show you don't necessarily need to drone on at length or use lawyer words (like "malfeasance," "to wit" or "redress," for example) to be successful.
Because the Court takes so few cases, Mr. Chen will have no trouble finding a lawyer to help him with this one for free. So if you see him, please ask him to call the Court at 202-479-3000. The sooner the better, really.
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According to Boston.com, Ben Edelman graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, got a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a law degree from Harvard Law School, and is now an associate professor at Harvard Business School.
And yet he remains an idiot.
Not literally, of course—I'm using "idiot" as shorthand here for someone who is apparently so out of touch with reality or lacking in perspective that he would declare legal war on a local Chinese restaurant that overcharged him by four dollars.
The target of Edelman's wrath admitted that the website prices were out of date and quickly agreed to honor them, update the website, and refund the overcharge. End of problem? Well, of course not. Because as Edelman pointed out, that alone would represent "an exceptionally light sanction" for this heinous misconduct:
Thusly, said customer demanded treble damages, to wit: twelve dollars.
Rather than immediately complying with this mandate, the potential defendant made the mistake(s) of denying any fraudulent intent and wondering whether the matter was really "worth your time." This only irritated our hero, causing him to increase his settlement demand dramatically.
The order had totaled $53.35, so the half-price demand was about twice the former one. Edelman appeared to consider the enhanced sanction more appropriate for one who dares to deny his own malfeasance and/or question an attorney's use of his time.
Edelman told Boston.com that he doesn't do this kind of thing every day, but this seemed like a situation that "call[ed] for legal redress," as he put it. "I mostly look for malfeasance by larger companies," said Edelman, who appears to actually use terms like "malfeasance" in conversation, as if "legal redress" and "to wit" weren't bad enough. Harvard is great, but at least one of its graduates really needs to lighten up.
It is not yet clear whether the "authorities" Edelman alerted will take action, or whether he himself will sue. It is in fact a potential violation to advertise something at one price and then sell it at another. He's got that right. What he doesn't have is an understanding that every human dispute need not be settled via the legal system.
"I count myself fortunate to live in a state that deems [this heinous] practice unlawful," Edelman told the miscreant. Whether the state's other inhabitants count themselves fortunate that he lives there is another question.
Update: On Wednesday Edelman apologized for how he handled this interaction, and it wasn't a passive-voice "mistakes were made" or the "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" sort of apology, either. "[I]t's clear that I was very much out of line," he said in a statement. "I aspire to act with great respect and humility in dealing with others, no matter what the situation. Clearly I failed to do so. I am sorry, and I intend to do better in the future. I have reached out to Ran [Duan, the recipient] and will apologize to him personally as well." So he should get some credit for that.
And he needs the credit, because as Boston.com also reported yesterday, he's done this kind of thing before. If there was an apology in that case, the article doesn't mention it.
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So said John Huget, a brave Canadian who was forced to grapple with one in the early morning hours of May 31 after finding it in his living room. This zebra was able to grapple because it was actually a 24-year-old man who had been at a costume party and then, "confused and extraordinarily drunk," blundered into the wrong duplex.
Edmonton is probably safe enough that people don't always lock their front doors, but it's still a good idea to do that just to keep mistakes like this from happening.
Mr. Huget said he was "genuinely concerned" upon finding someone wearing "sunglasses, a baseball cap and full-body zebra costume" standing in his living room at 1:30 in the morning, and who wouldn't be? At that point you'd have no idea whether this was the end of a costume party or the beginning of a home invasion, although as home invasions go this one would probably have been pretty entertaining. Still, safer to get rid of the zebra as quickly as possible. But the drunk zebra wouldn't leave, which led to the aforementioned grappling.
The zebra "threw a drunken punch that glanced off Huget's face," and the two began to struggle. (I'm sure this was scary at the time, but I'm also sure it isn't now.) Huget was able to force the zebra outside and onto the lawn while his wife called police. A brief lull then seems to have followed, during which (1) the zebra peed on a tree and (2) Huget found the zebra's wallet lying on the lawn, got the zebra's real name, and told it to the dispatcher. This seems to have infuriated the newly evacuated zebra, which charged.
"He eventually got tired of trying to punch me," Huget said, "and started biting me." The "grappling" comment came next, apparently to explain why Huget was unable to prevent the zebra from doing that. (Tests later confirmed that Huget had not contracted anything from the drunken zebra bite.) Luckily, police arrived at this point.
Last Thursday, the zebra apologized, pleaded guilty to one count of assault, and was sentenced to time served. His lawyer said he has been "scared straight" by the incident.
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If you committed a crime in Texas and are planning to ask for leniency because you were raised in a wealthy and privileged household, you might want to hurry.
This is assuming you actually need to ask, which in most jurisdictions normally isn't required.
As you may recall, about this time last year a Texas boy was sentenced to probation after a psychologist testified he should get therapy rather than jail time because he suffered—if that's the word—from a condition the psychologist referred to as "affluenza." At first I thought people were using "affluenza" as a joke (see "Okay, I Thought People Were Using 'Affluenza' as a Joke," Lowering the Bar (Dec. 13, 2013)), but the psychologist did in fact use that term himself, it turned out. As this report put it, the psychologist testified that the boy was "a product of affluenza [air-quotes being added by me right now], where his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences." He got everything he wanted and was allowed to do whatever he wanted, in other words, and that's why he got drunk and killed four people with his pickup truck. So he just needs some counseling. (He was only 16, but still.)
While affluenza is not (yet) an "official" disorder, at least by that name, it seems to me that at least a couple of the DSM-5's official categories are, shall we say, elastic enough to include it. Both "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" and "Conduct Disorder" include parental neglect or "lack of supervision" among the diagnostic factors, although I don't see wealth specifically listed anywhere. As a layperson looking at those factors, it looks to me like approximately 100% of adolescents have Oppositional Defiant Disorder ("is often angry and resentful," "often argues with adults," "often deliberately annoys others"). Also, I think I have it.
The more serious Conduct Disorder is "a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others ... are violated," characterized by aggression ("often bullies, threatens, or intimidates others," "has used a weapon that can cause serious physical harm"), property destruction or deceit ("has broken into someone else's house"), so a lot of police departments obviously suffer from that one.
The Texas bill, HB 109, would preclude the trier of fact from considering in a sentencing phase "any evidence offered to establish that the defendant did not understand the consequences of the defendant's actions because the defendant was raised in a household that was overly permissive due to affluent circumstances." Legislatures are mostly adjourned at the moment (you didn't think they work during the holidays, did you?), so we will have to wait until next year to learn what happens with this.
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Surprisingly, not a single representative voted against H.R. 5739, the "No Social Security for Nazis Act," which passed the House 420-0 yesterday. Fourteen representatives did not vote on the measure, but probably only because their short bus got stuck in traffic. I have no doubt that they were all desperately trying to get to work so they could be on the record as not supporting Nazis, and the only real surprise to me is that the bill had fewer than 433 sponsors (it had 48).
As you may recall, the Associated Press reported in October that dozens of suspected Nazis living in the U.S., including alleged concentration-camp guards, continued to collect Social Security payments after agreeing to leave the country voluntarily. The AP said it had found four of these men who were still alive and still getting the payments. They will almost certainly be getting their last checks this month, now that members of Congress have finally found something they can agree on. Both houses took up bills that would close this loophole within a couple weeks of the AP report, and H.R. 5739 is sailing through.
That was not the first anti-Nazi-benefits bill to be introduced—Rep. Carolyn Maloney beat Rep. Sam Johnson to the punch by almost a week—but it had a much better name. The "Nazi Social Security Benefits Termination Act of 2014" is not bad, but just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Corresponding bills with corresponding names are also pending in the Senate, of course. Those are both currently in committee, but I think we all know which one is coming out soon to be approved unanimously.
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