Ignorantia Juris

Since I started law school a year and a half ago, something has happened a few times.  Some thing I’ve read, or some comment, will cause me to delve deep into cloudy memories of high school when my honors government teacher showed us 12 Angry Men.  I do this because something makes me think “Hmm, from what I recall, that would mean that Jimmy Steward was improperly swaying the jury.  One of these days, I’ll have to go back and watch that movie.”   The movie is still great, but expanding perspective on my part makes me want to go … Continue Reading

Now when most people don’t like the sermons at their local church, they find a new one. This guy had a different plan. First he called and complained on the priest voicemail. The priest took the high road, and played the voicemail for the congregation. So the offending parishioner sued.

I don’t recall “wrongful sermon” being a tort, but I may have missed that day.

The best part of the article, discussing a New Mexico suit for the aforementioned “wrongful sermon”:
The judge wryly noted that churches have been “talking about sending people to hell for many a … Continue Reading

Chicago man sues the Blue Man Group for allegedly forcing a camera down his throat.  Via Boing Boing.

Win a trial?  Get a sword!  Via the WSJ Law Blog.

Washington Post via TruthDig.

Beware the annoyance that is WashPo’s registration process.

I’m intrigued by the concept of crowdsourcing, and how it might apply to the legal profession. Crowdsourcing is taking a task, and assigning it to an undefined group of people on the internet. An example is the Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Outsourcing and contract work is well accepted within the legal profession, firms will contract out document review, or bring in a specialist when the situation calls for it. But the idea of tapping into the accumulated abilities of the internet, which sounds a wee bit far fetched, is something that doesn’t happen.

I’m just trying to figure … Continue Reading

A potential new lucrative branch of law, determining ownership of polar areas.  Learn about the Law of the Sea, climate change, and Inuit custom.  Via Boing Boing.

Judge holds a lawyer in contempt for reading Maxim.  Via The WSJ Law Blog.

Following up, New Jersey appellate court has upheld the order requiring a man who is proven not the father to continue paying child support.

Every day, I peruse a wide variety of law blogs (blawgs?) for post fodder.  I’m pretty discriminating, which is why occasionally posts are few and far between. One good source is Overlawyered, written by an AEI fellow and unabashedly in favor of tort reform. Now, my inclinations run in the opposite direction, but I still enjoy the site’s posts regarding overbearing laws and craaazzzy lawsuits.

But the second I start reading the latter, Overlawyered’s clear bias jumps up and smacks me. They claim they are not against litigation per se, but they don’t seem to be … Continue Reading

This is perhaps the best title for a law post I’ve yet read:

Reefer employment-litigation madness on the horizon in California?

UPDATE: 5 to 2, the Supreme Court has said that workers can be fired for smoking medical marijuana. 

When only 20% of those summoned for jury duty showed, Weld County Court staff started handing out summons to people walking down the street.

Extra bonus, read the comments of the Denver Post article to see people talk about ways to avoid jury.  The first choice being jury nullification.

In England, measle immunization rates are falling. This has partly been ascribed to a study positing that autism is related to those vaccines.

Guess where the money for that study came from? A fund set up by lawyers trying to pursue a case against the manufacturers of the vaccine. They failed, by the way.