Lowering the Bar

San Francisco Superior Court Is Victim of Hit-and-Run

Legal Pad reported yesterday that officials at SF Superior Court are trying to figure out who has to pay for damage to the courthouse apparently caused by a hit-and-run driver earlier this month.

Trust me, there is no point in trying to take out your frustrations on the building.  I have tried kicking it and that had absolutely no effect, except on my shoes.

According to the report, the court's chief executive, Gordon Park-Li, said that the damage appears to have been caused by a driver who "badly misjudged the intersection" of McAllister and Polk Streets, in front of the courthouse.  That would be some bad judgment -- it's not like the courthouse was actually in the intersection and got rear-ended or something.  This person missed the intersection entirely, went up over the curb and across the sidewalk and hit the building with enough force to cause $75,000 of damage to a stone building.  To me it seems more like a motion for reconsideration.

It's possible that somebody was late for traffic court, which as it happens is held on the first floor of the courthouse.  If so, again, bad judgment.

The claim has now been turned over to the building's insurer, but the incident is still being investigated.  Anyone who witnessed the accident, has any knowledge of it, or has seen a vehicle in the Bay Area with the words "SAN FRANCISCO" imprinted in its hood, is urged to contact the San Francisco Sheriff's Department.

Link: Legal Pad (photo by Legal Pad reporter Matt Hirsch)

The Law Accordion to Hanson Bridgett

Would your managing partner wear lederhosen for a marketing video?  If not, maybe you work at the wrong firm.

To celebrate a name change and its 50th birthday, the firm now known as HansonBridgett has put together the video below, which shows a group of lawyers at the firm marching down Market Street here in San Francisco as part of a band.  Managing partner Andrew Giacomini, who also plays bass drum in the video, said the firm "called on the creative skills of people who work here" to put the project together.  Here's what they created:

What does it mean?  I don't know (but I like it).  No one knows.  "That's the beauty of it," said partner Garner Weng in a press release on the firm's website.  "If you're wondering," Weng said, "there is a specific message we were trying to deliver -- but it's a secret."  I'd guess that at least part of the message is, "it doesn't suck to work here," and that is something that should not be underestimated.

Management of Skadden Arps, I think the ball is in your court.  What are you willing to wear?

Link: HansonBridgett LLP
Link: The firm's press release about the video

Ballot Proposal to Turn Alcatraz Into "Global Peace Center" Fails

Let's take a short break from mourning for the shattered dream of a Romney presidency and remember another casualty of Super Tuesday: the Alcatraz proposal on the San Francisco ballot.  Proposition C would have changed city policy towards the island, hoping to turn the former prison into a more uplifting kind of monument, but it failed to pass.

I voted for this proposal.  I have long thought it is a shame that, while New York City has the Statue of Liberty on its harbor island, San Francisco, of all places, has a prison.  Yes, it's historical, but why is that a piece of history we want to remember?  Sure, it's a tourist attraction, but if you enjoy vacation trips that involve cramped boat rides and being locked in a cell, Carnival Cruise Lines has a better buffet.  So I say, blow up the prison and build something there we can be proud of.

And there's the problem -- getting San Franciscans to agree on what we would be proud of.

Proposition C, unfortunately, was sponsored by the "Global Peace Foundation," which wants to turn Alcatraz into -- not surprisingly -- a Global Peace Center.  Exactly what this means was not entirely clear, and I'm not sure it was all that clear to the GPF.  While the plan did involve removing the main prison block, which I'm all for, it then involved replacing it with a "Harmonium," which I'm less sure about.

The Foundation's website (which may now be down) described the Harmonium as "an aesthetically beautiful multi-faceted geodesic dome" that would "employ advanced three dimensional holographic sound technologies and other special effect technologies which will which will [sic] promote and elicit a deep meditative, transpersonal and transcendental experience!  An Ascension Experience!!"  The sun would shine on it all the time.  There would also be a statue of St. Francis and as a nod to those who love prisons, an Alcatraz Museum.  The "jagged cliffs" of the Rock would be smoothed and "redesigned with graceful curves," and a "permanent MEDICINE WHEEL and LABYRINTH" would provide "sacred sanctuary and ceremonial spaces."

The GPF's director says that this vision came to him in "a flash, and I wasn't on any drugs, either."

The director, who goes by the name "DaVid" (or "Da Vid" -- reports vary) told the SF Chronicle the island is a "major power point" for planetary energy.  Apparently it can also generate money, because when asked who would pay the estimated $1 billion cost of the project, he said that "money will come."  He suggested the Bechtel Corporation could "create some good karma" by doing it for free.

I voted for this despite the freaky details because I like the basic idea and didn't expect it to win anyway.  Apparently, about 58,000 people felt the same way.  Proposition C failed, but got 58,750 votes (151,555 voted no), meaning that 27.94% of San Francisco voters supported this fairly loony proposition.

1.13% of them supported Mitt Romney.

Link: New York Times
Link: San Francisco Chronicle
Link: Global Peace Foundation

Car's Owner Receives Multiple Parking Tickets For Car That Had Been Stolen

San Francisco is a notoriously difficult place to park, not so much because of the hills but because of the relatively small size of the city and its downtown.  Adding to the fun is the zeal of its parking control officers.

This one may not be their fault, but it's somebody's fault.

Last September, Michelle Vuckovich's car was stolen from her home in South San Francisco.  She called police and someone was there to take her report within 30 minutes.  As you might expect, California has a system for listing stolen cars statewide, and Vuckovich's car was listed there right away.

Then she started to get parking tickets.

As SF Chronicle columnists Philip Matier and Andrew Ross reported in December, Vuckovich got a parking citation in the mail a few weeks later.  She noticed that her car had been ticketed just a few hours after it was stolen, so it was possible that the car had not been listed yet.  But then she got another ticket the next day, by which time the theft list had been updated.

Then she got another one.  Then six more.

Vuckovich got a total of 29 parking tickets from the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic after she had reported her car stolen.  Police were unsure why the parking officers had never run the plate to see whether the car was stolen, especially since at least seven of the tickets were issued in less than a week while the car was parked on the same block of Grant Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood.  (It was near Grant and Filbert, if you live in SF and want to know where at least one car thief lives and/or works.)

DPT officials said that the officers involved should not necessarily be blamed because their hand-held devices store theft information only from the San Francisco database.  (Vuckovich lived in South San Francisco, which is actually a different city and county.)   But they also did not have a good explanation for why no one ever ran the plate in the course of writing any of the 29 tickets Vuckovich got.  Nor do they seem to have investigated any of the locations where the car was parked (sometimes repeatedly), although it would be hard to link a parking spot to any particular address.

Still, Vuckovich thought she would give that a try.  She and a friend drove around the city scouting out the locations that appeared on the tickets.  It took them about three hours to find the car.  It was parked near Folsom and Sixth Streets, two blocks from a police station.  When police arrived (an hour later), they got the car unlocked and turned it back over to Vuckovich.

They lost her driver's license in the course of doing the paperwork, but at least she has her car back.

Link: SF Chronicle

Plaintiff Who Visited "Pissed Off Pete's" Alleges Beating by Pete

[Lowering the] Bar Exam Question One: if you go to a bar called "Pissed Off Pete's" and then get beaten up by Pete himself, do you have a claim?

This is not a hypothetical.  Here's the case report from last week:

Patricia [Plaintiff] v. Pissed Off Pete's et al.
1/16/2008 CGC-08-471147 (San Francisco Superior Court)

Complaint for personal injury and assault. Defendant [Pete] became enraged during an argument at his bar, defendant Pissed Off Pete's. He dragged the plaintiff to the door, pushed her to the street, threw her against the wall, up into the air, and then slammed her to the cement ground, causing bruises all over her body and intense pain.

Answer: I don't think assumption of the risk is a defense to an intentional tort, but even if it were the sign only warns (accurately, based on the comments found at the link below) that Pete will be "pissed off."  Plaintiff would not necessarily have anticipated being physically assaulted.

Give yourself full credit for any answer you gave unless you are representing one of the parties to this case.  If so, no points.

Link: Yelp.com (info about bar) (case report from Courthouse News Service)

Warrant Issued for Formerly Naked SF Mayoral Candidate

San Francisco's slate of mayoral candidates is frequently very colorful (including perennial candidate "Starchild"), and only infrequently naked.  Even less frequently are candidates naked in public, although guitar-playing is common.

Sources reported on December 21 that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Grasshopper Alec Kaplan, a candidate in the most recent election.  Grasshopper failed to appear to answer charges that he had played his guitar in the nude while sitting on top of his van outside the San Mateo County Events Center.  Grasshopper was in San Mateo on October 21 for the county's Democratic presidential straw poll.

According to a San Mateo deputy district attorney, Grasshopper told police that "he was from San Francisco and that he was extremely hot and he just got naked.  He said that type of action is encouraged in San Francisco."  I can tell you that it is tolerated, depending on the circumstances, but is not encouraged.

He had a good explanation for failing to appear in court last week, as it turned out.  Grasshopper, who in addition to being a politician is a homeless taxi driver, was already in jail in San Francisco for charges of battery and false imprisonment of a passenger.  (That type of action is also not encouraged.)  He is serving a nine-month sentence for that and could get another six for the naked strumming.

Link: Inside Bay Area (Oakland Tribune)

Ostrich Murderer Sentenced to Five Months in Jail

Timothy McKevitt, one of the two killers who murdered Gaylord the ostrich last October, has been sentenced to five months in jail.  His accomplice, Jonathon Porter, was released earlier this year after also serving five months for the crime.

As you may recall, but as I will enjoy telling you again, the ostrich slaying came after McKevitt, Porter, and two female companions trespassed on an ostrich ranch south of San Francisco after a night of drinking last Halloween.  The men startled and/or harassed the birds, causing one to attack.  It won the ensuing battle, though it ultimately lost the war when McKevitt and Porter returned with a rifle and shotgun, seeking revenge.

The prosecutor in the matter insisted on describing the motive as "all about male pride," simply because the two young men had the *&%$ kicked out of them by an ostrich named "Gaylord" while their girlfriends laughed at them.

Link: Reuters