TOP STORY: Kim Kardashian, who is famous for something, announced recently that she failed the California bar exam. She previously failed the so-called the “baby bar,” a multiple-choice test required for people who study law via apprenticeship instead of, you know, actually going to law school. Kardashian has supposedly been apprenticing for over six years now, and did pass the baby bar on her fourth try, but for now has gone no further. To be fair, the pass rate for the California bar exam is notoriously low, and many people have initially failed it but then gone on to become good lawyers. To be less fair, virtually all of those people had a law degree, which Kim Kardashian doesn’t, or at least a college degree, which Kim Kardashian also doesn’t.
Hey, did you know that ChatGPT’s Usage Policies strictly forbid using it for “suicide” or “self-harm”? They do. Did you know that some lawyers thought it would be a good idea to cite that as an affirmative defense to a wrongful-death complaint? They did. Let each of those things be a lesson to you.
Speaking of lessons, if you need a technical analysis of the load-bearing capacity of a noose or tips about how to “upgrade it into a safer load-bearing anchor loop,” ChatGPT can allegedly help you with that. Assuming you have some non-prohibited purpose for it, of course.
A co-founder of Crooked Beverage Company has been charged with felony theft for stealing more than $75,000 from the business, says this report. He took most of this after resigning from the company, a startup that sells fruit beverages that contain THC (or THC beverages that contain fruit, I don’t know). According to the report, the man “told investigators he took [the money] because he was ‘super pissed’ and believed he was owed” it, which isn’t a great defense.
The feds don’t need probable cause to conduct routine searches at the border (though you might be surprised to learn where they think “the border” is). But “nonroutine” searches must be based on “reasonable suspicion.” And while today’s DOJ is not to be trusted, agents probably did have what they needed to search Jesse Agus Martinez in October. According to this press release, “Martinez was diverted to secondary inspection after [a CBP officer] noticed a bulge in Martinez’s groin area.” Said bulge was not further described, but since it turned out to be a pair of “heavily sedated” orange-fronted parakeets—an endangered species—I am prepared to assume its appearance supported reasonable suspicion. Martinez allegedly “claimed several times that the bulge was his ‘pirrin,'” said to be Spanish slang for an object sometimes found in that area but typically not shaped like two parakeets. He was not believed.
A couple of good entries came in for the Comical Case Names page this week. The LTB Board of Directors, which is me, is currently considering whether one of them is too obscene to be included, even though it’s just the parties’ names. But Moon v. Satan, filed in D.C. on November 13, involves no such quandary. I also award bonus points on three grounds: (1) Satan is described as “a.k.a. ‘Lucifer da fallen Loser, a spiritual being … sued in his official capacity as Ruler of this World”; (2) the second named defendant is “Donald John Trump … sued in his official capacity as President of da United States of America”; and (3) the highly ornate red font used in the header of each page.
As you know, or should know, attempts to sue Satan or other “spiritual beings” typically fail for lack of jurisdiction or because the plaintiff has been unable to prove service of process on the defendant. That is likely to be the case here as well. At least for the first defendant on the list. Plaintiff presumably knows Trump’s address.
