May It Please The Court |
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Quote of the Day - When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
Lawyer 2 Lawyer Internet Radio Talks To Two Curmudgeonish AuthorsHarper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and John Grisham's The Firm and The Client all come to mind when thinking about classic books written about the law. On this week's Lawyer2Lawyer, please join host and Law.com blogger, Bob Ambrogi, as he inducts two more books into that "classic" category, by exploring a classic in the legal community and an upcoming book that is bound to be an instant classic. Bob talks books with Mark Herrmann, partner resident in the Chicago office of the international law firm, Jones Day and the author of The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law and one of the authors of the Drug and Device Law Blog. Bob also turns to me, his co-host and author of How to Get Sued©, to discuss my new release. Mark and I discuss how we got involved in writing, how our experience as attorneys served as a source for our books, the inspiration that led us to write and feedback we have received from our peers in the legal community. 
Dive Your Plan, Plan Your Dive - Except If You Flaunt The RulesFirst let me say I don't have all the facts; indeed none of us can because we weren't there. But there are several things that bear perhaps a more considered analysis in the behavior of the couple who were rescued after getting lost off the Queensland coast on the Great Barrier Reef. Oh, and lest we not forget, the mainstream news media, too. Perhaps a good adjective to sell newspapers, but hardly accurate. How do I know? Two reasons: first, the obvious one -- the couple was rescued. The waters couldn't have been "infested" or they would have died. Second, I speak from experience - Last year Lisa (who's a Master Dive Instructor and more perturbed about this episode than I am) and I dove the same place they dove. Sure, there are sharks in the area, but not great whites, and certainly not the kind that are going to attack. Shark attacks are rarer than being struck by lightning. Plus, sharks that are well-fed don't attack humans, and the marine life around the Great Barrier Reef is plentiful enough to feed the sharks. Finally, sharks generally attack only unhealthy prey - they're really just opportunistic feeders. It's highly unlikely they'd attack healthy divers. How do I know all this? I'm a dive instructor and dive master. Plus, I dove in the Coast Guard where they taught survival skills, both of which bring me to my next point. "They surfaced 220 yards from the boat?" Admittedly, Richard Neely claims to be an instructor, too, but here are several rules you don't break, otherwise you end up in trouble like he and his companion, Allyson Dalton, did. First, always know where the boat is. While you're underwater, you can ask. The sign used is your two hands cupped together like the hull of a boat with a slight shoulder shrug. In response to this signal, your buddy first gives a directional signal with one hand and then a relative distance measurement with both hands. Too far, and you both head back to the boat. If you and your buddy can't answer the question, then one of you stays down and the other surfaces, always staying within sight of one another. The diver on the surface spots the boat and then drops back down and informs the other diver with the same set of hand signals. You never, ever lose your perspective on the boat's location and your distance from it. Frankly, if you think about it, why would you want to stray from the boat? Nothing good can come of it, as perhaps is more than obvious now. Rule violation number one. As a second rule, stay with the group. There's not only safety in numbers, you can be assured one of the members of the group is the boat's dive master, and s/he will always know not only where s/he is at any given moment. In fact, if you think about it a bit, you'd realize the dive master has been diving the dive site so long that s/he knows all the dive site's boundaries, but will also know where the boat is, even if you don't. In this instance, Neely and Dalton obviously violated that rule, too. They dove alone, as one of the other divers on the boat reported. Rule violation number two. Finally, every dive boat, on every dive the dive master gives a briefing on deck before you get in the water. It's your job as a diver to pay attention to that briefing and follow it. The mantra is always plan your dive and dive your plan. The dive master will identify the outer boundaries of the dive site, the speed of the current outside the boundaries, where it's located and its direction. Now let's pause here for a moment and give some thought to where the dive boat was moored. It was in a lagoon. That means no current - that's the very definition of a lagoon. It's calm. And if you've been following along here, the current is where? Yep, you guessed it: outside the lagoon. Neely and Dalton were swept away by? Yep, you guessed it: the current. Which means? The reason they were found some seven miles away from the dive site? Current outside the lagoon. Where they weren't supposed to be in the first place. Where the dive master told them not to go. They claim they weren't briefed. Right. Remember that part about plan your dive and dive your plan? It's part of every dive - which you would have drilled into you, especially if you were an instructor. Rule violation number three. One last thing. "A dive whistle?" Take a look at a dive whistle. If you're going to flaunt these rules, then at least you should have a dive alert siren. Think semi-tractor trailer horn. No way the boat isn't going to know where you are with one of these things, even if you pop up 220 yards away from the boat. Rule violation number four. Talk about unprepared. Talk about sensational news media. Gives diving a bad name it doesn't deserve. They're lucky they're still alive. More HTGS: Wolf Whistle Works With Woman While Walking In WellingtonPerhaps one of the most universally understood pair of sounds (sharp but short ascending tone followed by first by a similarly high tone with an immediate lower and longer descending tone), the wolf whistle is considered flattering by most men and offensive by most women. Well, certainly there are a multitude of interpretations by men and women, but it's meaning is typically rooted as a compliment for sexual attractiveness. In case you're a historical buff (no pun intended), the first record of the wolf whistle was about 400 A.D. in only one act in Plautus' Mercator (403-408) [Mercator is Latin for Merchant and is a comedy]. In the play, Demipho says to his son Charinus, referring to the beautiful slave girl they both secretly love and whom the son pretends to have bought for his mother: "I can't permit it. She is hardly the proper sort of person to attend your mother." Charinus: "Why not?" Demipho: "Because it would cause scandal if such a beauty were the attendant of a wife and mother; when she passes through the streets all the men would look at her, leer, nod and wink and whistle (sibilent). [Latin for a type of wolf whistle.]" There you have it. Some 1,500 years of the wolf whistle. No wonder almost everyone understands it. If it was first in Latin (or Greek), it has to be old. It apparently is understood in New Zealand, too. There, an Israeli tourist tired of men constantly whistling at her, and when she walked by a construction site (you knew that was coming, didn't you?), she got fed up and gave them what they wanted. She stripped. Then she calmly used the ATM machine, and once finished, got dressed and left. Well, almost. At that point, the New Zealand authorities intervened and took her to the downtown Wellington police station. There after dealing with the woman, Police Sergeant Peter Masters told a local newspaper, "She gave the explanation that she had been ... pestered by New Zealand men. She's not an unattractive looking lady," Masters said. "She was taken back to the police station and spoken to and told that was inappropriate in New Zealand," the police officer said, apparently with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Right. That's exactly what he said. Left off with just a warning. Mmhmm. ____________ You can read more stories like this one in my How to Get Sued book from Kaplan Publishing to be released June 3rd. Humor At The Pump Does Little To Lessen The Pain
This photograph was taken by Bill Greenblatt of the United Press International in Town & Country, Missouri on May 24, 2008. According to the UPI, Shell gas station owner Pat McNamara hid the actual price of $4.09 for premium gasoline with the abbreviation for "Laughing Out Loud." More HTGS: That's More Expensive Than John Edwards' HaircutIn the annals of dumb laws, there are some pretty good ones out there. Some are apocryphal, and some are real, like this one: in Alabama, you can't play dominoes in a billiard room unless you live in a county with a population not less than 56,500 nor more than 59,000 according to the 1970 census, which probably means the state law applies in just one county, I'm guessing. I don't know; I'm not licensed to practice law in Alabama. Maybe somebody who is can help. Some laws, however, get changed when people realize that they're outdated, and some don't. Let's look at one other example down South. But first, and as an aside here, I don't mean to pick on the South. I used to live in Virginia, and the South is a lovely place to live. Feel better now? I'd point out that we have some whacko laws in California, the land of fruits, nuts, twigs and berries, but you probably already knew we were crazy out here. Just to make sure I give equal time to our lovely state, you won't be surprised to learn that you can't bowl on the sidewalk in Chico. Yep. It's prohibited by Chico Municipal Code section 9.26.010. The law doesn't stop you from setting up a rack of ten pins on the sidewalk, you just can't roll a ball at them and knock them down. Makes perfect sense. Now back to my original point. In Houma, Louisiana, somewhere south of Baton Rouge and west of New Orleans, just slightly above the bayou, you can't cut hair on Sundays or Mondays at a barbershop. In fact, if you do, you're likely facing a $500 ticket. Even John Edwards would blush at that price. The owner of such a barbershop, Clyde Scott, thought he was doing some local high school boys a favor by giving them a shave and a trim just before their Monday night graduation earlier this week. Instead, he got a ticket under the old law. Apparently someone called the police to alert them to loiterers outside the shop, and they came to investigate. According to the UPI, "Houma Police spokesman Lt. Todd Duplantis said officer Michael Toups was instructed to write the ticket ..... He said the aging ordinance was discovered by Sgt. Daniel Belanger. ... Parish Council Clerk Paul Labat said the law, which also bars barbershops from opening on Sundays and several holidays, is believed to predate the merger of the parish and city governments in 1981. ‘It was probably on the books before 1979,' Labat said. ‘It's still an active law.' " The barber will be calling his lawyer. ____________ You can read more stories like this one in my How to Get Sued book from Kaplan Publishing to be released June 3rd. Lawyer2Lawyer Internet Radio Explores the Debate on Gay MarriageOn May 15, 2008, in a 4-3 decision, California's Supreme Court ruled in favor of plaintiffs-comprised of gay rights group Equality California, almost two dozen gay couples and the city of San Francisco, who argued that the 2000 law banning same-sex marriage in the state was discriminatory. Please join me and my fellow Law.com blogger and co-host Bob Ambrogi as we welcome Tara Borelli, Staff Attorney in the Western Regional Office of Lambda Legal and Brian S. Brown, Executive Director of the National Organization for Marriage to discuss this ruling. In this show, we will get specifics on the ruling, reaction from opponents, legal issues behind same-sex marriage and explore this controversial debate on gay marriage.
May It Please The Court Listed As Finalist For Two LA Press Club Award CategoriesWith a tip of the hat to our very own Swiss Army Knife, Leigh Dierck, MIPTC was named as a finalist for this year's Los Angeles Press Club awards for website design and best individual weblog. We're up against some pretty stiff competition: The Los Angeles Times blog, Top of the Ticket, The Enterprise Report, and the LAList Online. For the website design category, we're up against Reason Online. So, the awards ceremony is coming up on June 21st at the Biltmore hotel in LA, and it's the 50th anniversary of the Press Club. Bob Woodruff will be receiving the Daniel Pearl Award. Stay tuned - we'll let you know how the awards turn out. More HTGS: Robbers Storm Australian Nightclub With Machetes; G'Day MateIt's a great thing to have undivided focus on the task at hand. Most managers would give their employees a positive write-up at evaluation time. I can see it now: "__________ (insert your name here) stays on task at all times and focuses on the job until it's done. S/he's an asset to the company." With that kind of evaluation, you'd be sure of a promotion. You're going places. But not like these two folks. They decided to rob a bar in Sydney, Australia. Here's what the Associated Press had to say: "The man and an accomplice, wearing ski masks and waving machetes, stormed into a club in a western Sydney suburb shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday and yelled at patrons to lie down as they tried to rob the cash register, police said Thursday." Remember that part about focus? On the way into the club, the two, would-be robbers missed the 50 or so motorcycles parked in a line outside. The Southern Cross Cruiser Club was having a meeting right when the two stepped into the bar. Instead of laying down on the floor, the biker gang "crash tackled" the man, but the woman escaped out a service entrance. Club members hog-tied the man and waited for police, who escorted the alleged robber to the hospital for minor cuts and bruises. The biker gang's leader, Jester, said the two probably didn't see the bikes because of their ski masks. Single-mindedness is not always a virtue. ____________ You can read more stories like this one in my How to Get Sued book from Kaplan Publishing to be released June 3rd.
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