Meathook Reality

A contract not within the Statue of Frauds as a contract to answer for the duty of another when made is not brought within it by a subsequent promise of another person to assume performance of the duty as principle obliger.

(to the tune of ‘Mr. Ed’)

A tort is a tort, of course, of course,

And one who’s been harmed by a tort, of course,

has recourse, in civil courts

if they can show intent

Ok, it’s not that simple, but we’re only two weeks into the course, of course, so we’ve not even covered negligence. Everything is done intentionally.

A Tort is basically defined as a harm done against a person. I have an entire class on these, where we discuss everything from Battery to Assault to False Imprisonment. Because these civil offenses are so old and well-defined, we have plenty of cases to work with, and spend a lot of time bringing up hypothetical situtations and examining them with an eye towards determining if an offense occurred, and what defenses can be used. Class discussion works its way into one big babble of “What If…”

When I teach this class, it will be different.

My class will be one big game of “Whose line is it, anyway?”

“You. Third row. You’re going to be party A.”

“In the back, you’re party B. Now come down here and we’re going to have A brandish a fist at B.”

“Ok, B, do you feel immanently threatened with personal harm?”

(The class votes, B feels threatened)

“Ok, B, go ahead and throw this eraser at A, back in the third row.”

(B throws eraser, but hits C, in the 2nd row)

“Ok, class. What we have here are a series of torts. B clearly battered C unintentionally by throwing an eraser. Since B was attempting to batter A, however, the doctrine of transferred intent applies. However, since B was being assaulted by A at the time, B can plead self-defense.”

I seem to do my best writing with my pants off. That’s all.

For the second time this week, I’ve found myself setting down my books and thinking “Ok, nothing more to do.” before 3:30pm. Am I getting senioritis already? Even according to the outline that Professor Contracts helped us put together, we’ve not learned a whole lot. It makes me ask why things are taking so long. It also worries me: after all the buildup about how incredibly mind-pummeling law school supposedly is, either I’m doing just fine because I’m exceptionally gifted, or I’m not only not doing just fine, but I’m doing so badly that I cannot recognize the danger signs.


In other news, I attended a meeting of PILF, the Public Interest Law Forum (mainly because they had free pizza). It looks pretty interesting, in that they raise money to pay for people doing public interest law internships with their summers, as well as for people to repay their loans, should they graduate and pursue public interest law. I honestly don’t mind that the main topic of conversation was swapping greatful dead songs, and there was only one pepperoni pizza. I do mind that the president of the group seemed to indicate that patent law had nothing to do with the public interest. It has everything to do with the public interest, in that it’s aim is to provide a method to make sure that people have reason to innovate, by allowing them a temporary monopoly on their creations such that they can recoup their initial investment before the rest of the world takes advantage of their research to compete. It’s not MY fault that the system is screwed up and has a bad rep.

For the next 7 weeks, nobody is going to live up to their promises. This should not bring you down, or make you never trust someone again. It’s just that in contract law, we usually don’t have much excitement when someone actually fulfills the contract.

This is my first Friday of law school

So far, things aren’t so bad – it’s busy and there’s a lot of new stuff, but I am beginning to wonder where all of the brain and soul-rending pressure that I had heard so much about is going to come from. Yes, there is a lot of reading, and yes, we are expected to know what we read and be able to explain it. With some decent briefing, at this point, things seem to make sense.

California - Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made a crucial decision in support of technology innovators by declaring that distributors of the peer-to-peer software Grokster and Morpheus cannot be held liable for the infringing activities of their users. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued on behalf of Streamcast, the creator of the Morpheus software, in a case that pitted dozens of entertainment conglomerates against two small software companies. The Ninth Circuit decision is based in part on the fact that P2P networks have significant non-infringing uses, and that they can help artists earn money. The ruling is similar to the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1984 Betamax case, which determined that Sony was not liable for copyright violations by users of the Betamax VCR…

Good stuff. This is why I’m doing the law school gig.

I’ve spoken up in class twice. The first time I helped close one of those big long “But is there anything else?” discussions. In the second one, my Torts professor accused me of thinking like a lawyer.

This morning, the study group pretty much agreed that we were all caught up – and we’d done it before we left school last night. I’m not sure if things are going to ramp up, or what, but so far they’re going a little slow. Of course, it is only day 3, and the only way I think I understand everything so far is by cross-checking with classmates: what do THEY know, anyway?

Suppose that a law school professor delegates their authority to post a syllabus to their secretary. Said secretary, instead of posting the current term’s material, posts the previous term’s material, which includes an incorrect reading assignment. This being the first day of classes, students have very little reason to believe that assignment is incorrect, and spend much of their weekend preparing for review of material and briefing cases.

Is the teacher liable for the time “wasted"? Is the secretary?

Do the students have any civil redress?

So, among the cases briefed this weekend was Payne v. Cave, a charming tale of the auction of a wormtub. I’ll save the gritty details and the bit about what the case from 1789 has to do with eBay’s terms of use.

My only question: what the hell is a wormtub?

(No, there do not seem to currently be any up on eBay, either)

And so, with a visit to the financial aid department, I have verified that the bills have been paid, which entitles me to a little sticker on my I.D. card. That’s a $14,000 sticker this term.

I tend to look at my long-term planning much the way that I used to navigate rapids while rafting the rivers of Southern Oregon. The least-energy path is not usually straight, but requires one to plan ahead and have the Kayak in the right place long before the rapid actually happens. There’s a lot of anticipation and fear – you can still bail out and take another route, or even jump out, wade to shore, and spend the afternoon hitching a ride back to Shady Cove. At some point, though, you’re going through that rapid no matter what. That’s when everything changes: at that level of commitment, you stop thinking in terms of “Am I really doing this? Did I get it lined up right?” and start thinking “Ok, I need to survive. I’d better have gotten this lined up right.” It is this fundimental shift between the asking of questions about one’s control over the future, and the demand that one take control over their future, that makes something embarking upon law school a scary proposition. The questions of the future become the statements of the now.

I feel as though an event horizon has been passed.

It begins, not with a bang, but with a donut. This morning’s breakfast came to me courtesey of LexusNexus, or Westlaw. The library people mentioned that one of them sponsored today’s breakfast, and the other sponsored tomorrow’s. The coffee was ok. From there, we picked up a packet containing our schedules, a pile of forms, and the ever-present bookmark from the people who manage the school loans. I now have 5 of them. We also had to pick up, and sign for, a copy of the school’s handbook. We then had to sign a paper saying that we agreed to everything within it. To be fair, they were willing to take our signature today, but would give us some time to actually read it before they demanded such things.

The day wasn’t so bad: I had expected much more disorganization. It came down to a lot of explaining that law school is not like our undergrad experience, and that we would have to work. Also, there is usually no real answer, and the journey is the reason we are there.

I look forward a little bit to tomorrow – I think things will settle down. I look forward quite a bit more to Monday, when classes formally start, and they stop packing 300+ of us intotheir largest classrooms.

Is it just me, or does this list of various blawgs almost read like a list of Culture ships in an Ian M. Banks novel?

Not just the Pink Floyd song, but today is actually my final day before orientation begins. And on Monday, classes. The day shall be spent catching up on the weekend’s backweblog and briefing a case. And a trip to Staples to replace the @#$% outlet strip that defeated my plans to keep my network up for more then a day.

A few weeks ago, after sending my last few snarky emails to the school looking for a response regarding their certifying loans that they had asked me to file four months ago that they had not followed up on, I had a sudden attack of late-night jitters. The main thing running through my head was the fact that my school loans are going to be roughly equivelant to buying a Porsche. Every year. For three years. Granted, we’re talking about the Boxter, which is the Tercel of the Porsche line, but it’s more debt then I’ve ever really considered. I even got up and put together a quick Excel spreadsheet that pretty much confirmed my fears. I’ve gotten back to sleep, but it isn’t so easy.

Just wait until I’m a 2L, like Buffalo Wings & Vodka.

The first required reading assignment for this year is A Civil Action, a very well-written account of the human side of a large and complex case involving the alleged pollution of the City of Woburn’s drinking water by two large industrial plants. Of course, I read the book a month or two ago, and I’m about to dig through it and make some reference notes (in case Day #1 starts with “Mr. Hook, please explain to the class the parties and issues of the case.") Of course, being a little bored with reading, I decided to watch the movie.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

I had been told by one of my classmates that the movie was unlike the book. He recommended not seeing the movie until after classes start, in order to avoid confusing myself. Being someone who can keep straight the difference between the book and movie versions of Starship Troopers, I figured I could handle it.

Anyway, the book is good, going into a fair amount of procedural detail. The pacing is a little slow, but since we’re talking about a case that lasted approximately from 1982 until 1998, and there’s a lot of backstory, It’s not so bad. The movie pretty much portrays Jan Schlictmann, the main character as an ambulance chaser who gets in way over his head because he gets involved in the human details, and is forced to cut his losses and bail.

In case I’ve got any loyal readers out there, and on the off chance that they’ve been assigned this book to read (and the case to brief, as I have), I would definitely recommend reading the book before seeing the movie. And if you see the movie, expect to read the book before you get involved talking about it in class.

I really don’t know how we got by without the Internet for so long. I just ran into Blawg Wisdom, which is rapidly becoming a weblog of links to hints and tips by other law-school webloggers about how to do well. There are some pretty good gems in there.

Lonestar Expat says, among other things:

Larry's Number One Law School Rule: Drink through.

Heidi, at Letters of Marque has some advice on reading cases, including the story of chicken little, and some advice on Socratic Bunny and it’s relation to dance

From Engineer to Lawyer has some advice on notetaking.

It looks like the EFF has taken up the fight for JibJab’s use of Woddy Guthrie’s song.

I am back from a vacation-induced hiatus, and should resume some posting shortly. While the plan to complete Guns, Germs, and Steel and to re-read A Civil Action was waylayed by a crazy-active vacation, I should mention that I made it quite a ways through re-reading the excellent, if somewhat tedius Illium. Unless you are already a Simmons fan, you should go back and read the Hyperion Saga. It may also be worth waiting until the release of the next half of the sequence, Olympos