Lawsuit of the Day All Recorded Human History: And You Thought Biglaw Was A Black Hole
Every now and then, it’s healthy to be reminded of the triviality of your daily preoccupations. From the New York Times:
[T]wo men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii…. think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.
That’s nice to know.
[Plaintiffs] Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Alas, this valiant effort to save human civilization may be frustrated, thanks to something as pedestrian and technical as…. jurisdiction:
James Gillies, head of communications at CERN, said the laboratory as of yet had no comment on the suit. “It’s hard to see how a district court in Hawaii has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organization in Europe,” Mr. Gillies said.
And that’s the story of how, for want of personal jurisdiction, mankind was lost.
(For the record, CERN denies that what they’re doing is unsafe, citing multiple scientific reports that have evaluated their activities from a safety standpoint.)
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More [New York Times]
(65) 
Comments
Comments hidden for your protection. Show them anyway!
first!!!
Those nutty Hawaiians! Spend all weekend smoking up that Moloka'i Gold and this is what will happen.
last?
That'd certainly put a damper on Quinn Emmanuel's firm hike.
the end is near!
Wow, this summer, huh? Guess I'll take my vacation early this year.
Crap. David Brin was right after all. Just remember, at the end...blame William Proxmire!
Because Mr. Hawking has never been wrong about black holes...and because their spokesperson is clearly playing off the public's misunderstanding of QM.
That's Dr. Hawking to you, "scotch and guns."
But seriously, what's worse: the destruction of the Earth and everyone on it or an activist judge?
Personal jurisdiction is easy. This is a multi-state tort with tortious effects, and thus purposeful contacts, in Hawaii. The "other factors" analysis is dominated by the "plaintiff's interest in a convenient and effective forum." If the plaintiffs can't sue in Hawaii they're effectively foreclosed from suing at all since (I assume) they can't afford to travel to Geneva to litigate. Think McGee v. International Life Insurance on steroids. Or, you might say that CERN is "targetting" or "expressly aiming" at the rest of the world in the same way the Enquirer targetted Shirley Jones in Calder v. Jones. Super purposefulness of this sort compensates for the lack of a strong "other factors" case. There are numerous other possibilities. Never ask a "head of communications" a jurisdiction question. If his degree also is in communications it means he was in the bottom quartile of his SAT cohort and probably went to Syracuse. Come on Lat, you were trained as a lawyer. Oh wait, you went to YLS, right? Well you still should have been concerned about the hegemonic effects of an out of control particle accelerator reconstructing reality in a counter-majoritarian fashion.
9:31:
Good thing that the plaintiffs don't have you writing their response to the motion to dismiss. Your analysis is as wacked-out as their claim.
Harlan Ellison said:"The most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."
So any crackpot who comes up with doomsday theories can try to sue international entities from some remote island?
Just think: Al Qaeda sues the United States for imperialist world domination from some hidden cave in the Pakistan mountains.
Pikachu, I choose you!
How do they get CERN from that? Stupid europeans.
"And that's the story of how, for want of personal jurisdiction, mankind was lost."
Hilarious. Sounds like something Douglas Adams would write.
9:29: An activist judge.
Richard Posner takes this risk seriously. Perhaps they should have filed in the 7th circuit.
9:31 - Time to get back to outlining. Good luck on finals.
"Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermo dynamics."
First of all, 9:52, it's thermodynamics, not thermo dymanics.
Second, he was yelling it. So it would be: "Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
9:31 is the reason I do transactional work.
Is that a picture of Linda Greenhouse's reportorial objectivity ?
10:01 - sorry, I went to Chicago Law - I got dumber over the last week.
It's almost cheating to troll on this site. The combination of gullible, stupid and ignorant is almost impossible to find outside of the Syracuse alumni association.
9:43, the acronym is CERN not ECNR bc its french. it's in switzerland, remember?
it originally stood for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
On the one hand this is about is ridiculous as a claim can get. On the other, the chances of everyone dying from this Geneva-made black hole are MUCH greater than everyone dying from "global climate change."
WUSTL >>> earth-consuming black hole
9:31 -- how do you propose that the plaintiffs enforce their judgment?
Remember guys, when the world starts to disappear, you'll know what's happening!
10:19 (1) Love how you signed your post "duh" since, yeah, doesn't EVERYONE knows how CERN got it's name???? You are a total tool. Perhaps you knew that CERN originally stood for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire b/c you are French - that would explain it. Ribbit.
I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.
That would suck if all of sudden one day in August everything turned into that creepy Event Horizon scenario.
There's actually already one of these on Long Island. I forgot when it was built, but a lot of people freaked out about that one as well (though I don't think there were any lawsuits). Anyway, they've been accelerating particles for years and New York hasn't been sucked into a black hole. It is pretty interesting though . . .
Yes, 11:05, there are other particle accelerators in the world but CERN will be the biggest ever built --- the mother of all particle accelerators. Hence the concern that it might manage to shake out nastier little bits from the quantum dustbin and get us into trouble.
Now if only the plaintiffs had argued that the end of the world would disproportionately harm minorities, poor people and homosexuals, their lawsuit would have had a chance of winning. At least once it gets appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
tell you what...if the accelerator triggers a chain reaction that destroys the earth, i'll owe you a coke.
I await the day, 11:05, I await the day...
I think the balance of hardships tips strongly in the plaintiff's favor.
The US particle accelerator is at FermiLab in Batavia, IL, not, as previously reported, on Long Island. LI may have a tunnel collider, but these colliders are giant magnetized rings, and they're actually incredibly safe. The big harm is that it takes about as much power to run the FermiLab accelerator for a day as it does to run a third of the entire city of chicago. But let's not argue, after all, it's science. And that's a fact.
10:30 - care to explain?
whoa 10:50 why don't you dial down the hostility about 10 notches. maybe you're the one that needs to get laid? the duh was in reference to the fact that even if you don't know what CERN originally stands for, i would hope the great legal minds that read this site would be capable of basic deductive reasoning such as 1) cern is based in geneva, as lat's post states 2) in geneva they speak french 3) ergo, perhaps cern stands for the french name, explaining why the acronym doesn't match the english translation
And I was going to learn German... wow I deserve my TTT...
Actually folks, the plaintiffs' claims are not as bizarre as they seem. No scientist in the world will claim that there is a 0% chance that the black holes this monstrous particle accelerator makes will destroy the universe. I've worked with a few accelerators, and what this new one is capable of is unique. It will definitely create black holes, albeit very tiny ones, and they will definitely stay in existence for a scientifically significant amount of time, and although the general consensus is that the black holes *should* dissipate, they actually don't know with complete certainty.
10:50 wrote: "10:19 (1) Love how you signed your post "duh" since, yeah, doesn't EVERYONE knows how CERN got it's name???? "
Yes, it's much better to assume that people working on the cutting edge of physics can't form acronyms than that maybe - just maybe - a research center located in Europe might not have an English name.
There is no such thing as a 0% chance or complete certainty in science. 12:44 is a moron, like those filing this lawsuit.
11:51 - I believe Brookhaven Nat'l Laboratory on Long Island also has a particle accelerator.
This must be the nerdiest post ever - particle accelerators and french acronyms.
Nerds to 180!
12:51 - that's what 12:44 is saying. To paraphrase: no scientist would claim that there is no chance. It's a double negative, but if you think really hard, I'm sure you'll get it.
I agree with 10:50 that "Duh" coupled with the arrogant air of 10:19's post did merit the title of tool that 10:50 bestowed upon 10:19. I do also agree that the answer to why the acronym didnt match up seems obvious - Either way, don't see why 10:19 took offense to the "need to get laid" comment unless he/she is frigid.
The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith.
I know its a bit late, but 9:45 - you rock.
CERN's arrogance needed to be revealed. A droplet of liquid that can vaporize a half mile? And you call me mad?
Yeah, I hear Tom Hanks is slated to play Hawaiian Walter L. Wagner in the upcoming apocalyptic theological summer blockbuster.
the higgs boson will kill us all.
"tell you what...if the accelerator triggers a chain reaction that destroys the earth, I'll owe you a" Hundred Billion Quadrillion Dollars.
To everyone who thinks this is a joke, i would refer them to this website:
http://www.exitmundi.nl/blackholes_lab.htm
This is a possibility that should be looked into.
The langoliers are already here.
Finally, someone has cried wolf!
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17746
Guys in my high school used to smash protons together all the time. It was no big deal.
Has anyone notified the Jehova´s Witnesses? They might be annoyed that Armaggedon is sort of cancelled, if the Black Hole sucks everything up. No Rapture stuff... And anyway, don´t try to tell me that the Swiss are able to destroy the world. They build pretty expensive watches, cockoo clocks, and invented some funny cheese, nothing that evil. There has to be a German Nazi scientist somewhere behind all this, probably in a wheelchair, wearing sunglasses...
Ah yes, just like the manhattan project.
"We don't know what could happen if we create a chain reaction of fissile material..."
It's a good thing the project was top secret, or we'd have protracted WW2 because "sky-is-falling" tards in Hawaii take up lawsuit.
"It might chain react with all of the oxygen in the atmosphere, and we'd all die?!@$!"
This thing does not create mini-blackholes. It does not create singularities of incredible mass crushing in upon itself because of its vast gravity.
Either gravity is irrelevant at those quantum levels, or the mass of the earth would overpower it. But this is just basic "how does a blackhole work" principle.
Just use your freaking lawyerly-logic brain and realize there's a big difference between matter that converts other matter and a black hole that collapses upon itself sucking in matter due to gravitation. Small particles swallowing the earth? Give me a freaking break.
"Oh noez - duh Sky Iz Gunna Eatz you!"
7:49,
You are an uninformed idiot. There is no question that the Large Hardron Collider at CERN will produce miniature black holes-- that's what it's *intended* to do.
"But that accelerator is just shy of having the power necessary to produce what Landsberg believes will hold critical keys to the unexplained universe — miniature black holes with a mass several thousands times that of a proton. If the theory of extra dimensions is correct, the crushing speed and energy of the Large Hadron Collider, expected to go online in 2006, will produce tiny black holes at a rate as high as one a second, giving scientists their first look at these mysterious entities."
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/vol26/26GSJ10a.html
(Obviously, the LHC didn't go live in 2006 due to design delays, but the article remains accurate with respect to its intended purpose).
Hi 1:12:
That's an interesting use of the word "needing." I've never seen it used in the sense of "stupidly and uselessly relying on despite its clear fallacies and lack of object."
Cool.
a note to scotch and guns, et al:
Hawking has been in error -- by his own admission, on blacks holes before. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200410/murphy
Further note: The Cern people say Hawking radiation is what assures us this machine is safe. I'm not a physicist. Just a person who doesn't take experts' words as divine.