News & Media
New Yorker violates cardinal rule of Las Vegas
By J. DeVoy Las Vegas has but one maxim: What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas — a boon if you live there. Hubert Blackman contacted Las Vegas Exclusive Personals when visiting the Las Vegas Strip from New York to have a dancer come to his hotel room. Blackman claims that in addition to the dance, he paid an additional $120 for a sex act. Blackman sought a refund for the next day, arguing that the dancer did not stay for the full hour he paid for, and that he was too drunk to form an enforceable contract.
Dispatch from Bizarro World: USPTO to open Detroit Office
By J. DeVoy From the “putting a band-aid over a gaping wound” file, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is bringing more than 100 positions to Detroit, Michigan. The same Detroit seen on the television show Detroit 187, a timely show about the city’s absurdly high murder rate, and the very same Michigan that has been in a one-state recession since at least 2004. For patent attorneys and would-be patent attorneys affected by the economy, this is welcome news. Over the last 5-10 years the boutique patent firm model has been folded into larger general-service firms, consolidating many clients
When feminism and art clash
By J. DeVoy “Pierce Harlan,” contributor to the False Rape Society, posts an interesting historical account about an 89-year-long feud between feminists and sculpture in New York City. A teaser from the article: What was so offensive about this statue? MacMonnies had the audacity to give vice a feminine face, and to depict virtue as decidedly male. The reaction of many women to this statue, from 1922 to today, is eye-opening.
ABA mulls dropping LSAT requirement
By J. DeVoy Once upon a time, professions had meaningful barriers to entry. The inability to participate was not a mark of personal failure for the unsuccessful applicant, but an indicia of the profession’s selectivity, a characteristic retained largely for the public’s benefit. One such guild was the ABA — until the mid 1990s. Around that time, Janet Reno put a vise grip on its balls with the DOJ, making it enter into a consent judgment that required the ABA reduce the hurdles needed to enter law school. The aftershocks to this consent decree have been clear for the last
Breaking: Sony to file TRO against notable hacker
By J. DeVoy Known in hacker circles as “geohot,” George Hotz, along with Hector Martin Cantero, Sven Peter and the heretofore unnamed John Does 1-100, is facing an ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order by Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (“Sony”) tomorrow, January 12. Here’s the filing (A Legal Satyricon Exclusive(?)). Working together, the defendants allegedly devised a way to circumvent Sony’s technological protection measures. The defendants have been distributing this information across the internet, instructing others how to circumvent Sony’s protective measures and use counterfeit games on their Playstation 3 devices, according to the motion. Saliently, Sony alleges
Twitter looks out for leakers
By J. DeVoy A common feature of criminal and civil actions against unknown defendants is the need for subpoenas, warrants, or other court orders to ascertain John (or Jane) Doe’s true identity. For a long time, these have gone unchallenged by companies seeking to mind their own business, avoid the cost and consequences of litigation – or taking a position in general – and the burden of self-defense has fallen onto individual speakers. Twitter, however, is one of few firms to stand up for its users. In civil cases, subpoenas to entities with identifying information such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft
Arizona
We are deeply saddened at yesterday’s horrific events in Tucson, Arizona. The victims were John M. Roll, 63, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona; Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, the director of community outreach for Congresswoman Giffords; Christina Green, 9; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79. Judge Roll was the judge who swore me in to the bar for the District of Arizona. We lower the Legal Satyricon flag to half mast for all of the victims. May Congresswoman Giffords recover quickly, and may the gunman, Jared Lee Laughner, suffer deeply for what
Beautiful writing
The Mount Soledad Cross case was decided this week. I am currently reading it right now, and will post on it soon. But I just wanted to share this sentence. It was completely unnecessary to the opinion, which makes it all the more beautiful. The cross was a marker of an individual grave, not a universal monument to the war dead. And tellingly, the universal symbol emanating from those foreign wars is the poppy, not the cross. Don’t worry about the context. Or the law. Or the facts. Or the meaning. Pretend it didn’t come from a legal opinion. Just
As Goes Iowa…
By Chad Belville, Guest Satyriconista Iowa, a square state in the Heartland, is one of the few states in the US that allows any two adults of legal age to marry, regardless of gender. Unlike every other state where Supreme Courts found that government should legally recognize the unions of two same-sex adults, the Iowa decision was unanimous and shot down all arguments against limiting legal recognition, including those of tradition, religious bias, and the red herring argument that removing the gender restriction of two adults to enter into a bi-lateral contract will lead to allowing persons to enter into
First Recorded SLAPP Sighting in Greece
Systemgraph, an Apple-authorized service company in Greece, has sued one of its customers for complaining. Natch, there’s a twitter tag devoted to mocking the company.
Captain Honors Update
A reader wrote this persuasive comment to my post on Captain Honors: The XO of a US aircraft carrier needs to be more than a sphynx, he must be an absolute, unquestionable authority at all times. The XO is going to be the guy who gives the order to seal the hatch on flooding compartment which will guarantee your buddies on the other side will die. Such an order must be followed immediately and without hesitation for the survivability of the ship; you do not want sailors doubting the seriousness of anything coming from the CO or XO at any
Only the ABA….
The ABA has finally acknowledged that the legal profession is in a tailspin by publishing The Value Proposition of Attending Law School. The document essentially just says that law school is really expensive, salaries are not as high as prospective law students think, and that most people who go to law school will graduate into a lifetime of being screwed. Noticeably absent the “The Value Proposition,” is the ABA’s hand in this mess. Yes, the ABA — that festering slop bucket of do-nothing bozos who stamped their seal of approval on every head injury clinic that wanted to call itself
The hazards of citing to Wikipedia
By J. DeVoy This should be obvious, but the TTAB has commented on the matter in a surprisingly important case. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s decision in General Motors LLC v. Sweeney, gave GM a dangerous warning that the Corvette brand is not to be taken for granted. GM’s counsel submitted a sparse evidentiary record in opposing the registration of Sweeney’s proposed mark, Corvoltte, under International Class 12 (for “electric vehicles, namely, automobiles”). One of those sources, comprising a non-trivial percentage of the evidentiary record, was the Wikipedia entry for Corvette – presumably the Chevrolet Corvette, as there is
Good News; Racism Solved
by Jason Fischer Regular readers of the LS know how we feel about thought control through the implementation of Newspeak. (We think it is retarded). Apparently, there are at least a few out there who have a hard-on for eradicating crimethink. In their latest effort, a newly sanitized edition of Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will be published as part of a collection that is more suitable for classroom consumption, i.e., sans all uses of the “n-word.” In its place, the publishers, NewSouth Books, have inserted the word “slave.” Also deemed too offensive for print: “injun” H/T
Your homeland security dollars at work
The Center for Investigative Reporting gives us this glimpse into our war on terror: Soon after hijackers obliterated the World Trade Center towers eight years ago, Marin County received more than $100,000 in surveillance equipment to keep its water treatment system safe from a terrorist attack. But four years after the funds were awarded, state authorities found more than $67,000 worth of the gear still boxed in its original packaging. It had never been used. It gets worse — read the whole article here. H/T: Rogier van Bakel
Honor Captan Honors – and piss on the crybabies who have a problem with him
Navy Captain Owen Honors was, until today, in command of the U.S.S. Enterprise. He made a series of raunchy videos three or four years ago. He was relieved of command today because of them. (source) But despite the official condemnation from Navy leadership, the sailors who served under Honors on the “Big E” are coming to his defense on the ship’s Facebook page, calling the controversy a witch hunt. “I too was on that deployment. Capt. Honors brought up our morale and provided well needed and appreciated comic relief. We were underway for long durations, supporting two theaters of war
Vermont Supreme Court declines to disbar attorney who caused motorcycle accident, fled scene, lied in investigation, and got his wife to lie for him.
Vermont (suspended) Attorney Melvin Neisner Jr. is a piece of trash. Here is part one of what he did. The operative facts in this case are largely uncontested and are laid out below with additional facts following in the body of the opinion.[1] Defendant, a lawyer in Rutland County, was driving to his office alone one Saturday evening in September 2007. Turning north onto the Killington Access Road, a three-lane road with two north-bound lanes, he approached two motorcycles, which were traveling slowly and occupying both north-bound lanes. Defendant moved to pass the motorcycles, pulling into the left lane directly
Latest Filing from Wolk Connects the Dots Between Incest and Banking Policy
by Jason Fischer For anyone who has been following the story of Arthur Allan Wolk, Esquire, it will come as no surprise that Attorney Wolk’s opposition to Amici, Eugene Volokh, Glenn Reynolds, Edward Whelen, and Marc Randazza, reads like a paranoid diatribe. It seems that a massive blogger conspiracy, with ties to incest, pedophilia, bestiality, and opposition to banking regulations, has taken up arms against a poor lawyer in an internet smear campaign. You can read the full text of the opposition here, if you are so inclined. On a practical note, in between the ramblings on conspiracy theories, I
Have two free hours?
By J. DeVoy Check out this review of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Yes, it is a 110-minute-long review of the crappiest Star Wars prequel, evinced by the merely 90-minute review of Episode II: The Clone Wars and 70-minute dissection of Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
WTF Wisconsin?
by Jason Fischer The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled this week that committing a sex crime is not necessarily a prerequisite for ordering a convict to register as a sex offender (source). I tried reading the opinion to figure this nonsense out, but my head nearly exploded when I read the excerpted sentence below, and I had to stop. In the present case, the parties agree that a fundamental right is not implicated . . . . (source)