bowlinger qua bowlinger

From Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853):

[A copyist at the Court of Chancery has died of an opium overdose, and the coroner is conducting the inquest. There is testimony that the decedent was only ever seen talking to the boy who sweeps up.]

Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Oh! Here’s the boy, gentlemen!

Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary paces.

Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don’t find no fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can’t spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can’t exactly say what’ll be done to him arter he’s dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—and so he’ll tell the truth.

“This won’t do, gentlemen!” says the coroner with a melancholy shake of the head.

Read the rest of this entry »

Doing some research on Bell v. Southwell, 376 F.2d 659 (5th Cir. 1967), I came across this:

CUTHBERT — Clara Etta Avery Dunlap Massey Taylor, 86, of Cuthbert died January 4, 2008, at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital.

Funeral services will be conducted Monday at 11 a.m. at Cuthbert First Baptist Church with interment at 3 p.m. in Thomasville City Cemetery in Thomasville, GA with Rev. Houston Perry of Americus officiating.

Mrs. Taylor was born January 22, 1921, in Iron City, GA, the daughter of the late Benjamin Franklin and Mary Lipham Avery of Thomasville. She graduated from Thomasville High School in 1939. She was Probate Judge in Randolph County filling the unexpired term of her late husband, W.B. Taylor. She also served as Probate Judge in Webster County filling the unexpired term of her late husband, Carl O. Massey. She was also preceded in death by her first husband, Aubrey Paul Dunlap of Thomasville.

In Corpse Episode, Echoes of a Grittier Time

charged with: attempted forgery, attempted possession of a forged instrument and petty larceny.

Interestingly, according to section 170.35 of the New York Penal Code, you can’t be convicted of both “criminal possession of a forged instrument and forgery with respect to the same instrument”. I wonder if that applies to attempt as well.

Why, oh why, can’t this have happened when I was in either Criminal Law or Secured Transactions?

Yesterday while I was doing research on westlaw for my paper, I needed to find the SCt opinions for those famous affirmative action cases. I didn’t have the citation, so I used the “look up by party name” function. But I called the case “Gutter v. Bowlinger” rather than the name the rest of the legal world knows it by. Of course westlaw told me “no results found…” for the name of our bowling team! I laughed silently to myself about it for, like, 5 minutes and wished one of you were around to share in the hilarity. But no one was, it was just me, so I figured I’d write about it here so you could know how pervasive our name is in my mind.

The menu: beef chili, lentil soup with ham, foccaccia, two kinds of tea

 The topic: Civil liability and fast food restaurant chains. Should fast food chains be subject to tort liability when people eat their food and become obese or have diet-related medical issues? Can we liken this kind of suit to those against drug companies, i.e. a “design defect” products liability claim? Can we compare this kind of suit to those against tobacco manufacturers, which 30 years ago might have seemed impossible for plaintiffs to win? Will civil liability not do anything to solve the real problem, and this should be purely a regulatory issue - smaller portion sizes available, healthier options available at the same cost as cheap “bad for you” products, nutrition facts made clear and available, etc. Or, is all this paternalistic and the real problem comes down to human choice and responsibility?

The best part of the evening was OB-S admitting that he actually likes eating at McDonald’s and his favorite are the Chicken McNuggets. He said, “No one eats Chicken Selects. They are just not as tasty.” And he ate the famous 7 oz. burger at Jackson Hole Burgers in NYC.

Next class: packaging and labeling concerns

Teenagers and dead deer: a winning combination!

Dead deer prank riles students at rival high school

Dead doe is put inside Comfort Deer bus

Follow up questions:

a) What kind of a high school mascot is a “Comfort Deer”?

b) Football, sure, cheerleading maybe. But since when did Texans take high school girls volleyball so seriously?

c) What’s the crime here? Anyone want to hunt through the Texas Criminal Code for an applicable offense?

The menu: baked wild salmon, mixed greens with avocado, asparagus, and roasted peppers, baguette, homemade pumpkin bread, hot cider

 The topic: Should obesity be a category that gets anti-discrimination protection under a federal scheme like Title VII? Should it qualify under things like the Americans with Disabilities Act? Are people who are not morbidly obese, but only overweight according to the over 25 BMI standard, discriminated against? As you can imagine, there were many very strong opinions on this topic. Most people felt that weight was not a characteristic like race or sex that should be included for discrimination protection in employment settings. But a few felt very strongly that people who discriminated on the basis of weight should even be sanctioned for their conduct. Most agreed, though, that what we are talking about with the obesity crisis (which some people think is a made-up or dramatized public health issue) is really related to health and not necessarily fatness.

Anyway, again, very interesting conversation, great food (that salad he makes is the same one he made for the dinner last year and it’s delicious). Apparently there were a few open spots in this class, a few people have dropped? I don’t know that he’ll let anybody new in at this point, but there were a couple new people there last night who just got added.

The menu: grilled lamb, tabbouleh, hummus, homemade falafel, some kind of delicious grilled and buttered pita, baba ghanoush, thin buttery cookies filled with melted chocolate, coffee, chai

The topic: taxing fat

The proposed plan of our “special guest”: the taxing of common fatty foods….but….wait for it…only for people who are fat! You would be required to get your BMI read and if you are over 25, which apparently is the limit for people who are normal and not obese, you would be subject to the tax at grocery stores and restaurants, etc. I kind of forget the next part, there is a card, and people who are fat get the card? Or maybe people who are not fat get the card. Anyway, there is some kind of card and that’s how the tax gets applied. So when the server comes to your table at the restaurant, everybody pulls out their card and you don’t have one, so your part of the bill gets taxed. According to our guest, this creates an economic incentive as well as a public humiliation factor. The guest likens this to cigarettes which carry an additional tax and also has the public shaming element, which includes the guest riding past you on his bike while you are smoking outside the school and him laughing and yelling at you (which sounds worth it just to try).

A two hour discussion followed involving the many disputes people had with this plan, including the discriminatory effect on the poor, the idea of American food culture as embracing of poor diet and poor exercise habits, etc. We also discussed the tax taking other forms, like higher insurance premiums and companies having to pay large class action settlements (although admittedly there were many causation and proof problems with that idea).

Overall, excellent food as usual, and fun, lively discussion and debate of a legal and yet non-law school nature, which I am appreciating more and more these days. I’ll keep everybody posted throughout the semester on this course.

… is Posner’s recent opinion in Cavel International, Inc v. Lisa Madigan. Posner reluctantly upheld Illinois’ recent law banning the slaughter of horses for human food purposes.

Some highlights to look forward to: (1) the picture of the lion eating a birthday cake on page 11, (2) Bo Derek on page 14.

PDF opinion here.

If you are going to commit a crime, do it big and make sure you can throw one hell of a party afterwards.