Why Is New York So Backward?

It seems we picked a state that's almost completely backward. If any of you have watched an episode of Law & Order and wondered why a criminal case would start out in the New York Supreme Court the answer is simple: We're hopeless backward. In most states, the state supreme court is the highest court in the state. Not so in New York, where the Supreme Court is the lowest court in the land. The highest court in the state is actually the New York Court of Appeals (with the Supreme Court Appelate Division being the intermediary court).

Furthermore, in most states members of the supreme court are called justices whereas members of all other courts are called judges. In New York, members of the New York Court of Appeals are called judges. Members in all other courts are called Justices. I thought I'd post this just in case anyone might think that I made a mistake using the title "justice" when referring to Justice Carlin.

Not All Judges Are Good Writers

You'd think good writing skills would be a prerequisite for a judge. I've certainly read my share of well-reasoned, well-written court decisions, but there are always exceptions to the rule. Take, for instance, Justice Carlin of the City Court of New York, New York County who wrote a decision for Cordas v. Peerless Transp. Co. in 1941.

It appears that a man whose identity it would be indelicate to divulge was feloniously relieved of his portable goods by two nondescript highwaymen in an alley near 26th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan; they induced him to relinguish his possessions by a strong argument ad hominem couched in the convincing cant of the criminal and presses at the point of a most persuasive pistol.

Justice Carlin was obviously a man who liked to hear himself talk. Wouldn't judicial economy be better served by simply saying "This guy was robbed at gun point." Don't judges ever think about us poor law students who have to read their long winded decisions.

Unfortunately, the decision doesn't get any better. It spans a page and a half and consists of a single paragraph. The jest of the case is that a robber jumbed into a cab after holding somebody up. The cabi slammed on the brakes, throwing the driver off balance, and hoped out of the cab leaving it in drive. The cab slowly moved forward hitting a family of pedestrains. The court said the cabi wasn't responsible because he was placed in an emergency situations.

It took me less than a paragraph to say what took Justice Carlin a page and a half.

SCRUM DOWN!

I survived my first Rugby game, although I am a little drunk right now (it makes the injuries less noticeable). We lost, badly. abut we improved. We had to borrow three players from our opponents team so that we could field a full team. And then one of them got kicked out. So we played the first half down a player.
I really enjoyed the game altought I felt completely clueless. I had a great time tackeling and our scrum rocked. We only lost one scrum out of about 20. So yeah us! Here's some pictures that his took:This is me running lines. You have to turn your hip and pass the ball backwards., Its sometiems confusing. Do you like my head band?
Yeah, it wasn't a head band. I had to get my ears taped back. Why? Because second rows (thats me) have their head shoved between a couple of thighs and run a huge risk of having thier ears ripped off.
THE SCRUM! This is the one thing we rocked at. You can kind of see me on the left. I"m the only one with white socks. Seriously, we only lost one scrum, thank you very much. We did a really good job with that. This is the only time I knew what I was doing, so scrum downs were my favorite.
This is one of the out of bounds plays. I'm right behind the girl getting lifted up. I'm still not sure why we do this, but it looks cool.

To all our loyal readers (both of you)

Please help me answer the following question:

What is the difference between an orthopedic surgeon and a puppy?

There's no right or wrong answer, but there is a prize for the answer that makes my tort professor laugh the most.

So think of something funny and witty, post it in the comments, and if I win I'll give you credit.

Thanks

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.

I'm not sure if it is because I have nothing really exciting to report, or if I just haven't had a ton of time, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I am still alive. And this might be my last chance to do that because my first Rugby game is on Saturday.

Rugby:
I just got back from practice and I am HURTIN. I have been moved back to second row and now I basically have to support a prop on my right shoulder. (The prop's are generally the largest girls on the field). So I have one girl sitting on my shoulder, I have one hand around the other second row, I have my other hand through the props leg and my head is shoved between the prop and the hooker. I'm not sure how else to explain this, it really does look as weird as it sounds. I'm pshyced for a first game, but I think I'm going to screw sokmething up. This will most likely lead to me being severely hurt.

Property Class:
I have an interesting, animated property professor who thinks that we are all idiots. And we are compared to him. In the middle of one of his rather passionate degrading sessions I suprised everyone in the class, even myself. I knew exactly what and how he wanted us to answer. I weakly muttered: "Property rights are relative?" YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! He screamed as slid down to his knees ala Brandy Chastain. So now, I'm known as the girl wo brought the prop teacher to his knees. It's a good kind of noteriety.

His & I:
Our first anniversary is coming up and we are heading on a weekend trip to Montreal. I'm so excited. We'll get to speak some French, go somewhere we've never been before and mange in a great city for gourmands. If you've been and have any suggestions let me know!

Section 9:
I have the greatest section (a group of 18 students who have all the same classes together). We all get along really well. We're all really supportive and everyone is really, really funny. To celebrate our greatness His and I are having a party for my section on Sunday. We will finally get to do some serious cooking and socializing.

Jewish Holidays and Italian Americans!
You might think that this is a weird pairing, but thanks to Yom Kippur and Columbus Day His and I have two three-day weekends coming up. The first is this weekend. We have alumni weekend at the law school, my first rugby game and our party. Should be a laid back weekend, huh?. The next weekend we will probably be doing nothing but reading and outling. So one fun weekend, one not so fun. I'll take that.

Distractions

A good slogan for law school is that it's better to fade away than burn out. With that in mind, Hers and I try to maintain some semblance of a normal life. I mean, we could spend all day in the library and, in fact, some days we do. But you can't spend every day in the library and be expected to think straight in class. So every once in awhile, we have to recharge the batteries and relax a bit. This may involve a bottle of wine or a six pack of beer depending on the circumstances. It may also involve some quality time in front of the television.

Fall isn't just about going back to school, it's also about new episodes of our favorite shows, which means The Office and Lost. The Office is, at times, painfully uncomfortable and last night's episode was one of the most uncomfortable episodes I've seen in awhile. It's a good, funny uncomfortable though.

There are several burning questions from last year's season finale of Lost. What's going to happen to Michael and his son (I can't imagine they're not coming back next season after all the hints about the Walt's "gifts.") If Michael does come back, will Hurley kick his ass? How are Jack and his friends going to escape "the others?" What exactly is Kate's problem anyway? Did Lock and Mr. Echo survive the hatch? In regards to the last question, I suspect Lock will make it back because we still haven't found out how he became paralyzed. Of course, considering that everyone on the island seems connected to one another somehow, we'll could learn how Lock got paralyzed through someone else's flashback (perhaps Jack's father operated on Lock and screwed something up). Every season, we find out that everyone on the island is more tightly connected than we thought.

Are these question as important as knowing the elements of battery? Certainly not, but thank God we have something else to think about.

We Will Survive

As of yesterday, we've been in law school for one month now. That means we're one third of the way through our first semester of law school. That also means we have another month before we begin to feel the pressure of finals weighing on us. It also means we're starting to get some practice tests in a few of our classes. In fact, I just finished a practice test in Civil Procedure. Civ Pro, if you remember, is the class that I thought was going to be the bane of my semester. Turns out I'm actually kind of digging Civ Pro. Sure it's bureaucratic and boring, but Professor Mayer does an excellent job of laying it all out and making it understandable (at least, I think I understand, but I'll find out next week when I get the practice exam back) and any class is more enjoyable when you (think) you understand it. We've finished personal jurisdiction, so I have some idea of what courts might have jurisdiction over me.

Contracts is a different story. The best thing I can say about Contracts is that we're moving slowly enough that my work load for that class is pretty light. Hopefully, when I start putting together my outline for that class, I'll realize I know more than I think.

Property is also going well for me. Again, I have a good professor for that class who does a good job of making everything clear. We just got done covering adverse possession, which is an idea that, for some reason, I love. Basically, adverse possession says that if you sit on a piece of land that isn't yours long enough and treat the land as if you did own it, you might eventually gain ownership of the land if the true owner doesn't do anything about it. We were thinking of grabbing some land up in the Adirondacks and seeing if we couldn't get ownership in 10 or 15 years (I can't remember what the New York statute of limitations is right now). Unfortunately, New York has this bothersome requirement called Claim of Right that basically says you have to believe you own the land. Blah!

Torts is always a fun class because personal injury cases, as a general rule, involve personal injury stories. Some stories are sad. For instance, one case involved a Nebraska boy who severed a foot playing on an unlocked railroad turntable. There's also the case of a mother who rolled her Volkswagen Beetle (the old school pieces of crap, not the expensive new ones). Battery acid dripped on the mother's small infant while the mother was unconscious for several hours (for some reason, back then Volkswagen thought it be a great idea to mount the battery on the floor of the passenger compartment). Some stories are a bit more entertaining. There's the old Iowa couple, for instance, who decided to rig a "spring gun" (a shotgun rigged to go off when a door opens) in an abandoned farm house they owned (note that they weren't even trying to protect their home, just an old farm house on land that the wife inherited from her family). Then there's the story of a Creighton athlete who claimed the school failed to provide him with an education. At on point, the athlete started throwing chairs out of a motel room imagining that each chair was a Creighton administrator who had done him wrong. Still sad in a way, but certainly more entertaining.

Then there's Introduction to Lawyering, every 1L's favorite class. This is the class where we learn all about research as well professional responsibility and other aspects of lawyering. Basically, you have to do a lot of work in this class and you only 2 credits for it in your first semester (next semester it's a 3 credit class).

So we have one month down and the clock is ticking toward finals. I think we better enjoy the next month as much as possible.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

OK, I know I'm not longer in Husker country, so perhaps I'm out of the loop, but can someone tell me why the Huskers got rid of Frank Solich again? If we wanted lackluster, predictable play calling, Steve Pederson could've saved Husker fans a lot of stress and aggrevation. You didn't need to be Pete Carroll last night to know that the Huskers were going to run the ball on first down. For one brief drive, Callahan broke out of his rut and the Huskers threw the ball downfield with some success. Why did it take so long?

I thought the players played well and they have nothing to be ashamed of. I just wish the coaches would've given the players a chance to win the game.

For all of you who are concerned

We haven't eaten any pre-packaged spinanch and do not have ecoli . We did however have a very tasy meatball sandwhich for lunch today and are in the processing of drinking several local brews this evening. Law school has led us to drinking.

Looking At The World Like A Lawyer

We're almost to the end of our fourth week in law school. Many students say law school changes you and it seems that's about right. There was a time when I'd hear someone say "Watch my bag for me" and not think anything of it. Now I instantly think "Gratuitous Bailment" and wonder if the bailee (the person watching the bag) will give the requisite amount of care (which, in the case of a gratuitous bailment, is only slight care). When I hear about a lawsuit, I wonder if the court has personal jurisdiction over person or company being sued. Now that we're starting negligence in torts, who knows where my mind might go.

Holy promissory estoppel batman!

It is two o'clock and I'm sitting in contracts anxiously awaiting what will be the first of many PowerPoint questions that I don't understand. When all of a sudden I see a shadow go across the projection screen. If I'm not mistaken that shadow looks something like this:

I kid you not. We had a BAT flying around our classroom. And not just any bat. This was a kamikaze bat. The thing was diving towards us. Everybody starts getting a little jittery. I'm hiding under my contracts book. (At least I'm getting some use out of it =)). And then the teacher say's the best thing I've heard all year: Class is canceled.
I must have been the only one who heard her say this, because I was the only one who stood up. And since I was now taller than the rest of my classmates and not hiding under my book of contractual poetry (seriously poetry) I drew the attention of the bat. The bat buzzed me and I sat back down quickly. After that everyone started packing up there stuff to leave. I made a mad dash for the door. Went to find Chad and his computer so I could share this little bit of excitement with you.

My final thought:
Who is liable for the intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and is the law school guilty of negligence? I would probably conclude that the owner of the bat would be responsible for negligence, but then one must determine who the owner is. In other words, "how does one occupy a bat?" The school owns that bat in as much as it was found within the confines of the school's property and will soon meet with a must definite taking of its natural liberties. In short if the school wants to settle this with me to forgo the cost of a lengthy trial, and it would be lengthy,(where exactly am I domiciled?), I would accept a settlement of a full tuition credit. Or a free cup of coffee. This line of reasoning would be quite entertaining if you were also a 1L. But since I don't know of any other 1Ls reading this, you'll just have to take my word for it.
Be good to yourselves and each other.

The poor Students Cookbook - Fried Fish Sandwiches

Those who know us also know that we love to cook. Unfortunately, like many students out there, we don't have money for good ingredients and we don't have time to cook really good meals. Occasionally, we'll post some of our favorite "student" recipies here (anything that's cheap and quick to make). We had some thawed fish on hand, some bread, and a few other miscellaneous ingredients. The result? Fried fish sandwiches.

Ingredients:
2 Fish filets (each about the size of about half a piece of bread)
2 slces of bread
Bread crumbs
Olive oil

(Optional)
Eggs
Flour
Cocktail sauce

Directions:
Start by coating the bottom of a non-stick frying pan with olive oil. Turn the heat onto medium and let the oil warm up. Turn the oven to broil. Place two slices of bread on a baking sheet and place some butter on top.

We bought a pack of frozen fish that we thawed before cooking the sandwich, but any fish filet will do. If you want, you can probably even substitute fish sticks for fish filets and skip this section entirely. Start by making sure the fish is completely thawed (if frozen). If you have eggs and flour on hand, dry the fish completely, roll it in flour, dip it in egg, and then roll it in bread crumbs. If you don't have eggs or flour, leave the fish damp and roll it in bread crumbs.

Place the fish in the hot oil and allow to cook for four or five minutes on each side. After flipping the fish, place the baking sheet in the oven. Keep an eye on the bread as it has a tendancy to burn easily. About one minute or so should do the trick.

Place the toasted side of the bread down and place the fish filets on top. If you have some cocktail sauce on hand, drizzle some over the top of the fish and place the second slice of bread over the top (toasted side up this time). Enjoy.

Why Did A Short Week Seem So Long?

Only four days this week. Seems like it should've been a piece of cake.

All first year students have to take an Introduction to Lawyering class. It's worth two credits, but it should be a four credit class for the amount of work we have to do (and I have it easier than Hers). The first week, we were asked to choose whether we wanted to represent a plaintiff or defendant in a hypothetical, semester-long case. I grabbed a folder marked "Plaintiff" on my way out the door. The file included a short memo with some basic information about the case. As it turns out, my "client" is a single mother with a daughter who was nearly three years old. The child was conceived via artificial insemination. The donor was someone the mother knew and had verbally agreed to release from any parental obligation. Now, almost three years after the birth, she wants the father to take some responsibility for the child.

Last week, we were given our first research path, which is essentially a scavenger hunt through the law library. We each received 20-pages with about 35 questions we had to answer using legal references in the library. Naturally, the questions all related to laws governing parental obligations and legal issues surrounding artificial insemination. We divided up into groups of three to work on the research path together. My group decided we'd all do the research separately and then get together to compare notes. Unfortunately, I didn't quite understand that we were supposed to each finish the project separately, so I ended up doing the majority of my research path Wednesday night. I got home about 8:00 Wednesday night.

The next day, we met to compare notes and it almost took longer to decide on final answers than it did for us to do the original research. Nothing like getting three lawyers together to argue why their answer is the right one. In the end though, I think our answers were the better for it.

The research actually wasn't too bad. The hardest part of the project was properly citing the sources. Put a comma in the wrong place and you'll lose points on the answer. We talked with the TA for the class and he told us the average for the research project is around 60%. Despite the time we've put into the first research path, we've resigned ourselves to the fact that it's going to come back covered in red ink.

Thursday night was Hers first Rugby practice. So that ended up being another late night. A four day week and two of those days we didn't get home from school until almost 8:00. Can't wait to see what next week brings.

Congratulations Lincoln!

No, not for the football game. Although it was encouraging. No our congratulations is offered to all of you that stuck with Lincoln for the past mayoral administration.
It looks like she's leaving politics behind her. YEEEEEAAAAAAAAA!
Anyway, I'm very thrilled that she's leaving because now she will have more time to devote to her cooking. I planned on linking you guys to her fabulous cheese strata recipe, but alas Time Warner wouldn't publish it. If you haven't checked out there cooking show, it is kind of cool. They talk to some local chef's in the area and get recipes. They also always throw in a Lincoln "celebrity". They went to the Mayor's house for one episode and she made this thing called Cheese strata. The ingredients:
White bread, processed ham, american cheese, frozen broccoli and cheese.
It looked delicious. In fact I would like to nominate her to take our place in our fabulous dinner group. Just kidding, we wouldn't do that to you. We miss your cooking so much =(

I'm suppose to do what to the Hooker?

I started Rugby this week. We had our first practice yesterday. I'm sitting in bed tonight instead of going out with my friends because I had practice yesterday and it kicked my butt. And everybody said it was an "easy" practice. What have I gotten myself into.
It has been decided that I am going to be a prop which means I literally "prop" up the Hooker. Which means I will probably end up looking like this guy.
I did have a lot of fun at practice. This is a totally new sport to me so I am starting at the very bottom level. We learned how to toss the ball yesterday and run a line. We learned about how to be tackled, what to do when there's a ruck, what "balls out" means (it means the balls out of the ruck) and several other things.
I also realized that I have a long way to go to get my body in Rugby shape. This is certainly going to be great stress relief for the school year.

It's not morals school...

Let me just say that I love my torts class. Our teacher, who you may have read about before, is really, really entertaining. And at 8:00 am on a Friday morning that's exactly what I need. Take today for example.
Our professor has canceled our class for the day before Thanksgiving (giving me a five day break!). We have to make up the two hours of class we are missing, so we had three hours of torts this morning. The professor gave us a 15 minute break half-way through class and gave us cookies and fruit. As a poor grad student I'll jump all over some free food.
We were discussing the tort of trespassers this morning and property damage. She asked a student (not me, I had already been grilled for about 30 minutes that morning. She was tough. But at least I wasn't the worst person in class) why the Supreme Court would make a certain decision when logically it wasn't correct. The students argument: "Well, morally it was right". And that's when she broke out with the motto of the next three years of my life:
"This isn't moral school, it's law school. Make me a legal argument".
For all of you out there who think that lawyers are nothing more than amoral parasites it's not our fault, we've been trained that way.

Blogger Bugs

Many of our friends and family are checking our blog on a regular basis, which we really appreciate. Some of our friends who check the Web site on a regular basis have mentioned that they're not seeing regular updates on the blog. Than, one day, there's suddenly three or four new updates that appear to have been posted some time ago.

The problem is that the browser saves a copy of the Web site on the computer's hard drive and instead of loading the latest version, it loads the copy off the hard drive. I've added some HTML that will hopefully take care of the problem, but if you notice that it's been a few days between updates, you might want to want to open our blog and press SHIFT-F5. This will force the browser to load the latest version from from Blogger instead of loading a saved version from your hard drive. Alternatively, you can place a question mark (?) at the end of our URL and this should do the same thing (you can add this to your bookmark if you want).

Hope this helps,

-Legallyboundblog's Technical Adviser