Cease And Desist

A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

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In case you don’t know by now, many lawyers — maybe even you — enjoy writing cease and desist letters in a foreign language called legalese. This exotic tongue often contains Latin phrases, SAT vocabulary words, and various here-and-there words (e.g., herein, heretofore, hereinafter, hereunder, thereof, thereto, therewith, thereunder, therefor, thereon, and therefrom).

A person unfamiliar with legalese may become frightened and run to another attorney for help in deciphering this mystical language of lawyerly legend. The lawyer who has been tasked with translating legalese to English may then become annoyed, and issue a scathingly funny letter in return.

For an example of how to write a great response to a cease and desist letter, keep reading…

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Non-Sequiturs: 04.04.13

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* Roger Ebert has died at the age of 70. A great critic (his audio commentary track on the Citizen Kane DVD is amazing), whose work with the late Gene Siskel basically defined film criticism for a generation. At least now we know how we will be judged when we die — a simple thumbs up, thumbs down from Gene and Roger. [Chicago Sun-Times]

* Exploring the link between baseball’s antitrust exemption and Roe v. Wade. It’s more than just saying the Royals are an abortion of a team. [Concurring Opinions]

* “Bring me the head of the person who did this”: the best closing to a C & D letter ever. [Popehat]

* A Rutgers-Camden 3L breaks down the looming sh*tstorm at Rutgers over basketball coach Mike Rice’s treatment of players. [The Legal Blitz]

* If you’ve pulled off a successful robbery, don’t taunt the victim from a traceable phone. I mean, act like you’ve been there before, man. [Legal Juice]

* It is a little funny to say that a city is looking for weaker swimmers to serve as lifeguards, but ultimately this represents the simplistic nature of the anti-affirmative-action argument: no one is saying lifeguards shouldn’t be qualified, just that a system that only privileges a strong swimming résumé will always result in affluent white kids with 10 years of swim classes getting these jobs. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Lawyers are often jerks, but this is a new twist. Help out a lawyer trying to make it in the small-batch, artisan jerky business.[Kickstarter]

* Maybe there aren’t actual Commies at Harvard Law School, but the ratio of liberals to conservatives/libertarians on the faculty is still extremely high. [Nick Rosenkranz]

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Non-Sequiturs: 01.25.13

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Me, earlier today.

* PETA sends Bebe a cease-and-desist letter over fur-free advertising. To be honest, I only understood half of what I just wrote. [Fashionista]

* Here are five reasons why editors hate lawyers. Of course, when the editors are lawyers, you just kind of end up hating yourself. [About Editing And Writing]

* Can someone explain to me how it’s constitutional for Virginia to promise not to enforce laws? [Pilot]

* Did you enjoy the South Park episode that involved proprietary towel technology? Then you’ll love this lawsuit! [Thomson Reuters News and Insight]

* I asked Professor Rick Hasen whether or not I should self immolate to prevent the GOP from legally rigging the next election, and he’s telling me to chill out because it’s gonna be okay. [Slate]

* I’ve been trying to find an excuse to link to this. It’s a guy who is blogging about news from 1913 as if it was happening in real time, in this technological environment. Here, we look at some very swift Southern-style justice. [Retro Pundit]

* I must admit, I wanted to pull out my Leonardo DiCaprio coconut drinking goblet to fully enjoy this rich-white-man fight. [Dealbreaker]

* Belated congratulations to Elbert Lin, aka Mr. LEWW, on his appointment as solicitor general for West Virginia. [Bench Memos / National Review Online]

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Quote of the Day: Kanye West Keeps His ‘Love Locked Down’ — Except for That Sex Tape

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Kanye West

Be advised that the Screen Shot, as well as the Tape from which the screen shot was taken, were illegally obtained and believed to have been stolen from Mr. West’s computer. Your posting, advertising, marketing, displaying and otherwise disseminating the stolen Screen Shot and/or other materials on the tape constitute actionable violations of Mr. West’s rights of privacy and publicity.

– Lisa M. Buckley, a partner at Pryor Cashman, in a cease and desist letter written on behalf of her client, Kanye West, with regard to a leaked sex tape featuring the rapper and a Kim Kardashian look-alike.

(Let’s check out the full cease and desist letter, shall we?)

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Cease And Desist Letter of the Day: Captain Jack Doesn’t Need Mean Lawyers

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A cease and desist letter is going viral today, and all because it’s full of a little southern hospitality.

When I think of Jack Daniels, I think of getting drunk and saying outrageous things. I think of being sad and drowning my sorrows. I think of getting loaded and losing bar fights.

I don’t think of diffusing tense situations with reason and civility.

I’m going to guess that the lawyers for Jack Daniels who wrote this cease and desist letter didn’t have any of their client’s product before sending it out. It’s way too nice. In fact, it’s probably the nicest cease and desist that anybody has ever seen….

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No One Messes with the U.S. Olympic Committee, Not Even Naïve Internet Knitting Enthusiasts

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It is not necessarily uncommon for special interest groups of all stripes to invent their own “Olympics.” The Hipster Olympics went viral a few years ago, during my undergraduate years a sorority hosted the Mud Olympics (that was always fun to watch), etc. etc.

But beware, the U.S. Olympic Committee does not take kindly to those who allegedly usurp their trademark. Last year, we wrote about the Redneck Olympics getting shut down by the committee, and this week the organization is at it again, bringing the hammer torch down on an unofficial knitting “olympics.” Oh the humanity!

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Cease-and-Desist Letter Made For Etsy User Is Riddled With Handmade Errors

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I used to have nightmares about the red pen, until I started drinking before bed.

As regular readers of this website will note, my grammar and spelling is not too well. As regular readers of this website will also note, this is a blog, not a legal document or a court filing. When I wrote legal documents for a living, I also had legal secretaries who would fix some of the liberties I’d take with the English language. Even without that help, no document leaves a Biglaw office until it has been looked at by a bunch of people. A typo emanating from my desk would have had to escape the notice of at least three other people before making it out of the building.

I could not have survived in the small-firm or solo practitioner environment. Without people who dot an “i,” and cross a “t,” and say, “I have no earthly idea of what you are trying to say, because your sentence has three subjects and no predicates,” I’m in a bit of trouble.

I’d probably end up looking a lot like Howard Roy Schechter — a California lawyer who seemingly sent out a cease-and-desist letter that could have been written in crayon for its childlike attention to detail….

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A Top Law School Tells a High-End Fashion House Where to Stick Its Cease and Desist Letter

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If you enjoy fashion, check out our sister site, Fashionista.com.

Fashion law is a quickly-growing specialty practice area — a place where lawyers can aspire to dress stylishly while honing their legal skills in the glamorous world of haute couture law. You may never see all of the models and bottles a career in law once guaranteed, but you might get to work on their contracts.

A lawyer working in the business of beauty can expect to do a great deal of intellectual property work (after all, trademark law is sexier when you’re doing it in designer duds). An IP student group at a leading law school took that to heart, and decided to hold a symposium on the topic of fashion law.

The students pulled out all the stops for the event: they got Biglaw sponsorship, they created an eye-catching flyer, and they lined up some of the greats of the fashion law world to speak. Needless to say, they expected a great turnout.

What they didn’t expect was to be on the receiving end of a cease and desist letter from a high-end fashion house….

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Dad v. Mean Girls

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I’ve said before that I think that parents need to teach their kids coping mechanisms to deal with bullying from their peers. But it might be foolhardy to expect Baby Boomer parents to instill any kind of internal strength in their children.

Instead, it’s much more likely that the only thing kids these days will learn from their parents will be how to sue those who annoy them. At least, that’s the message one Houston man is teaching his daughter. After a group of middle-school girls apparently posted some nasty comments about his daughter on YouTube, the father — who is also an attorney — sent the girls a cease-and-desist letter. When he didn’t receive a response to the letter, he sued the mean girls for defamation.

For those playing along at home: mean middle-school girls bully other girl, so father uses the law to bully middle-school girls. The only satisfactory ending to this story would be if the fathers of the three defendant girls went over to the lawyer’s house and hoisted him on a flagpole by his underwear….

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Cease and Desist Follow Up: Check You Calendar

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Chris Webby

As many of you figured out, the cease and desist letter from Chris Webby, claiming ownership of the hashtag #webby, was an April Fool’s hoax. This week’s sign that the apocalypse is upon was a hologram launched by the Webby Awards people. Here’s the official reveal.

Really, we thought a few more of our loyal readers would see through it. The firm that purportedly sent the letter, Baxter, Butler & Associates, doesn’t exist. This commenter got it. But I guess most commenters don’t fire up Google unless an attractive girl is involved.

You can see why the Webbys weren’t able to get a real law firm to participate in this prank. It might have been a joke today, but the first hashtag infringement suit is surely just around the corner.

Happy April Fool’s Day. I’m going to go back to drinking heavily now.

Earlier: Cease and Desist Letter of the Day: Who Owns Your Hashtag?

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