Torts

Man Armed With Ice-Cream Cone ‘Terrifies’ Law Students During Torts Class

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In today’s age of gun violence at schools, anything and everything can be construed as a precursor to the next classroom shooting. Wearing a trench coat? You might be hiding a gun under there. Got a crazy look in your eye? You might be plotting a mass murder. Eating an ice-cream cone? Oh my God, drop the weapon!

But if you think that you can get away with eating an ice-cream cone and wearing a trench coat with a crazy look in your eye in a law school classroom, you’ve got another thing coming — especially if you allegedly proceed to flip tables, leap over desks, and run up and down the aisles like a wild man while blathering incoherently.

And, perhaps most fittingly, this happened during a torts class….

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Non-Sequiturs: 02.25.13

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* Ben Weiss suggests that the third year of law school be replaced by special certifications in practice areas. He calls these “O’Wendells.” I like the idea, but the name sounds dirty. If he really wants to keep with the SCOTUS theme, he could just call it a “Bushrod.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

* A guide to the legal landscape surrounding high-frequency trading (the new fad of super-fast, computer-driven trading algorithms swapping stocks in split-seconds). Good, because I like my trading like I like my women: capable of collapsing economic markets at any given notice. [New York Law Journal]

* In fairness to this judge accused of “inappropriate conduct” with an inmate, the Miami Correctional Facility is considered the most romantic correctional facility in America. [RTV6 ABC]

* Calvin and Hobbes impart an important lesson in International Law. [Invisible College Blog]

* Professor Howard Wasserman examines the economics of the infield-fly rule. There’s not even a jokey blurb here; this is intriguing. [Sports Law Blog]

* Man suing a church and some of its staff after being invited to a service and then allegedly being accused of demonic possession and beaten. In fairness to the church, if the man was really the devil, filing a lawsuit is the most logical means of revenge he could employ. [Legal Juice]

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Quote of the Day: Watch Out for Batted Balls Wieners

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[T]he risk of being hit in the face by a hot dog is not a well-known incidental risk of attending a baseball game.

– Presiding Judge Thomas H. Newton of the Missouri Court of Appeals (Western District), writing for the majority, and noting that a fan cannot be said to have assumed the risk of injury via flying hot dog by attending a baseball game.

(For some background information, in 2009, Kansas City Royals fan John Coomer’s retina was torn and detached after he was hit in the face with a foil-wrapped hot dog that was thrown by the team mascot.)

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Lawyers Made Your Kids Fat, Fearful, And Bored

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Plastic! Safe! A perfect training ground for future lawyers.

Mmm… Tort Law. All you need is a J.D. and a dream to get in on the action.

But have we gone too far? No, I’m not talking about the general accusations that tort lawyers make things more expensive for consumers (and the mega-companies they buy things from). I’m asking if our tort regime is crippling our future by hobbling our children. New studies suggest that our children’s playgrounds may be too safe.

Hehe. That’s right, parents who sue schoolyard bullies for saying on Facebook that your kids are stinky heads. It turns out that your totally sanitized, tetanus-free, no-skinned-knees zone might be making your kids the very kind of chubby, neurotic weaklings who will need to keep their lawyers and shrinks on speed dial for the rest of their lives…

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Lawyer of the Day: Assaulted By Red Bull And Vodka?

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Before there was Four Loko there was, and still is, the Red Bull and vodka. You can pour nearly any amount of vodka into a glass and just a little bit of Red Bull will cut the taste enough so that you can drink it like water. Plus you’ll get an energy kick. Back in my day, when Red Bull was still made with ephedra, that kick was damn noticeable.

Red Bull and vodka is a great way to start a night. It’s a great way to extend a night. It’s a terrible way to end a night. At the end of the night, you don’t need all that alcohol and energy. You need a cab and a glass of water.

One lawyer in D.C. learned that lesson the hard way. He had a Red Bull and Vodka right before closing time, and ended up “bleeding all over Georgetown.” Now he’s suing the bar for giving him that last drink.

And, you know, cutting off his finger…

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UNC Law Prof Sends a ‘Rather Embarrassing’ Request, Asks Former Students to Help His Online Rating

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With the proliferation of online rating sites, an aggrieved consumer of pretty much anything has a surprising range of avenues to express his or her discontent.

Whether you have a complaint about your neighborhood coffee shop or an allegedly unfaithful ex-boyfriend, the average Joe has a surprising amount of power through these sites.

Rating sites apparently even have the power to bring a well-known UNC Law professor to his electronic knees.

It’s not every day that a torts professor sends his former students a “rather embarrassing request” to repair his online reputation. It’s also certainly not every day that the students respond en masse….

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Nude Pictures: The Best Way to Help Students Study for Finals

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Our law student readers are well aware that finals season is underway. People have already started camping out at the library as they meticulously prepare and organize their outlines and note cards. They’re double- and triple-checking their professors’ slides to make sure they haven’t missed any important information. And for the average law student, poring over pages and pages of text can get mind-numbingly boring very quickly.

Apparently one controversial professor at a D.C. law school figured that out, and decided to add a bit of excitement to his lecture slides. Because nude pictures are great study aids….

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Lawsuit of the Day: Good Samaritans Sue Woman They Rescued

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Who will help the injured Good Samaritan?

Before you’ve been through 1L Torts, this story is shocking. After you’ve been through 1Ls Torts, it’s not that surprising.

In 2009, two Good Samaritans saw a Hummer crashed off the side of the road. The car was on fire. The two men sprang into action, ran down a snowy embankment, and pulled a woman from the burning wreckage.

They saved her life.

Which is interesting, considering that it turns out the woman was allegedly trying to kill herself.

The men suffered injuries, and now they are suing….

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InJustice: Tort Reform’s High Cost Documentary Infomercial

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In Above the Law’s last film review, we spoke about Hot Coffee, a documentary film about the evils of tort reform in America. The film, which received rave reviews from publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, was produced by former trial lawyer Susan Saladoff.

Now, just two weeks later, InJustice, a documentary film that is being hailed as the “anti Hot Coffee,” made its small screen debut on the ReelzChannel — a channel I’d never heard of and do not receive. Luckily enough, in the two weeks since we reviewed Hot Coffee, I had earned enough street cred to get an advance copy of the film.

While Hot Coffee presented the plaintiff’s side of the tort reform debate, InJustice attempts to present the defendant’s side in a more favorable light by exposing the evils of lawsuit abuse and the greed of attorneys involved in “America’s lawsuit industry.” Those are some pretty high aspirations for the film’s producer, non-lawyer Brian Kelly.

All that being said, I have no idea why I waited to release my review of InJustice until after the film had aired, because I’m not sure if anyone was even able to watch it. And if they had been able to do so, I’m pretty sure they would have changed the channel pretty quickly….

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Hot Coffee: Spilling Our Way to the ‘Evils’ of Tort Reform

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You mean to tell me that this coffee is going to be hot? Are you kidding me?

Most people associate the Liebeck v. McDonald’s case, better known as “the hot coffee lawsuit,” with the very worst of our justice system: namely, frivolous actions brought by greedy plaintiffs with the hopes of winning the lawsuit lottery.

It is commonly believed that the plaintiff in Liebeck was a young woman who decided to sue Mickey D’s because while driving, she spilled her drive-thru coffee all over herself and sustained minor burns. This woman is usually not thought of as the sharpest tool in the shed, because she needed to be warned that her hot coffee would actually be hot and would burn her.

This woman was somehow able to convince a jury of her peers (who apparently weren’t that intelligent, either) that she didn’t realize her hot coffee would be so hot, so they decided to award her with a $2.7 million verdict.

This is the story that most people believe when they think of the hot coffee lawsuit, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. And thanks to this widespread misconception, Hot Coffee, a documentary film directed by Susan Saladoff, explains how corporations were able to promote the “evils” of tort reform….

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