At the end of [a recent] skit [on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien"], in a line Mr. O’Brien insists was ad-libbed, he mentioned… www.hornymanatee.com.
There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, no such site existed. Which presented an immediate quandary for NBC: If a viewer were somehow to acquire the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site, the network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it.
In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159, after the taping of the Dec. 4 show but before it was broadcast.
Congratulations to NBC on its latest acquisition. If you develop any comedic material inspired by the meme of the horny manatee, please email it to conan AT hornymanatee DOT com. So This Manatee Walks Into the Internet [New York Times] HornyManatee.com [official site]
A quirky and fun story in the Saturday New York Times (which nobody reads except us) describes the legal crusade of one John Lagana. He’d like to ride his WaveRunner around the shores of East Hampton, but can’t, thanks to the wealthy beach town’s ban on water scooters.
So like any good American, Lagana is taking the matter to court. And he has an interesting historical argument:
The case is now pending in state appellate court, where a panel of judges must decide if an obscure 17th century charter known as the Dongan Patent does indeed protect a man’s right to buzz around the waterways on a machine its signers could hardly have imagined.
When King James II deeded the eastern tip of the South Fork — which now includes East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk — to a group of settlers in 1686, the governor in chief of the province of New York, Thomas Dongan, drew up the patent, granting “freeholders and inhabitants” of the area the right to “enjoy without hindrance” recreational activities like “fishing, hawking, hunting and fowling.”
The legal power of such deeding documents, which exist throughout Long Island and in other early-settled places, has been upheld by courts including the United States Supreme Court.
Lagana buttresses this with constitutional contentions:
Among Mr. Lagana’s arguments is that a passage in the federal Constitution prohibiting the creation of “any law impairing the obligation of contracts,” and a provision in the original New York State Constitution protecting “grants of land made by the authority of the king,” gives Dongan power in perpetuity. “If you’re going to ignore the Dongan Patent, you might as well throw out the Constitution,” he said.
The tony town has several counterarguments. Their main point is that “the patent is too vague and out of date to govern a modern municipality.” But they also have historical contentions of their own:
[Gary] Weintraub, the town’s lawyer, pointed out that if East Hampton were to live by the centuries-old patent, it would have other obligations, including the annual tax to the king of “the Sum of one Lamb Yearly and fourty shillings, curant money.”
Assuming East Hampton was not in arrears at the time of the American Revolution, that would amount to 230 lambs and 9,200 shillings the town owes, payable to Queen Elizabeth.
If you woke up this morning with this thought burning a hole in your head, guess what?
Today’s your lucky day. Tax Prof Colon [TaxProf Blog]
P.S. Congratulations to Professor Caron on his clean bill of colonic health.
* How crazy are bedbugs, exactly? [CNN]
* Which of your personalities is the arsonist?. [CNN]
* Yo quiero to sue Taco Bell. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Chinese Gitmo detainees say the same evidence being used to detain them was used to clear five others. [Jurist]
* Maryland Court of Appeals considers same-sex marriage. [Jurist]
Clearly there are some very sick people out there:
A man pleaded guilty in the deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s four small kittens, which were tossed into a fire pit after the couple argued.
Robert Tomlin, 22, of Smithsburg was sentenced Monday to 1 1/2 years in jail for aggravated animal cruelty. Washington County Circuit Judge John McDowell suspended the sentence except for the 134 days Tomlin has served since his arrest….
“Taking defenseless animals as you have, and destroying them … there is no excuse for that,” McDowell told Tomlin.
This “news” broke earlier in the week. But we were distracted by more important developments. Like the Britney Spears-Kevin Federline divorce. And that whole “midterm elections” thing.
Anyway, here it is:
A Turkish Internet celebrity is so convinced he was the inspiration for Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” character, he’s traveling to London seeking an apology and a way to get paid from the film’s surprise success.
Mahir Cagri, 44, became a cyber celebrity after posting a personal Web site in 1999, featuring unintentionally amusing photos of himself playing pingpong or the accordion and sunbathing in a skimpy bathing suit. Fans were captivated by his broken English and hilarious invitation to women: “Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate … She can stay my home.”
No lawsuit yet from Cagri, but given the financial success of Borat — it earned $26.5 million domestically in its opening weekend — one can’t be far behind. And, of course, look for other purported “Borats” to emerge from the woodwork.
In the interests of judicial economy, let’s make this a Rule 23 class action. The plaintiff class: every horny, buffoonish Near Eastern male, who speaks English with an awful accent.
Very niiiice. Internet celebrity claims to be the real-life ‘Borat’ [Associated Press]
Last week we asked you for funny Halloween-related stories, including descriptions of wacky costumes or festivities. We were disappointed by your responses.
So we had to turn to our neighbor to the north. These days, Canada is ascendant. Canadians are beating out Americans for jobs at top U.S. law firms. They have Supreme Court justices cool enough to take nude cruises.
And now they’re winning the Halloween costume arms race. Check out this photo:
Who are these people? Why, they’re none other than the costumed clerks of the Tax Court of Canada. An explanation of their attire, from TaxProf Blog:
Back Row (from left to right): Captain Income Splitting, Canada Revenue Agency Collections Agent, the Proposed Tax Credit for Child Fitness, Scientific Research Deduction, and Farmer Gunn (of Gunn v. R., 2006 FCA 281).
Front Row (left to right): Valuation Day 1971, Tax on Royalties, and the Competent Authority for the Canada-Barbados Tax Treaty.
The principal of Park High School returned to school Tuesday after a six-day suspension for giving a student a “wedgie.” The Livingston School District Board held a special meeting Monday and approved Superintendent Hannibal Anderson’s recommendation that Principal Eric Messerli be allowed to return to work.
“It has been clearly recognized and stated that the behavior is inappropriate, unprofessional and unacceptable,” Anderson said.
Plainly inappropriate. But people may be getting their tighty-whities in a wad over this:
Messerli cried Monday as he read a statement to the board and the public. “I’ve made mistakes in my life, but none have had the impact that this one has had,” he said.
He cried? Wow. That chafing must have been really bad.
Here is Tom Elia’s take:
Unnamed legal sources claim that the suspension would have been at least double if the plain ‘wedgie’ has been accompanied by a ‘pink belly,’ or had risen to the level of ‘atomic wedgie.’
There was some debate about what the penalty for administering ‘noogies’ should be, however.
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Near the top of the NYT “Most E-Mailed Articles” list sits a piece entitled So This Manatee Walks Into the Internet. And, oddly enough, there’s a legal angle to the story:
