A divorced black woman tries to rent an apartment in NY and the landlord refuses her. Oh, it's not because she's black or divorced or female, he says. It's because she's a lawyer and he "prefers to rent to passive people who are not attuned to their legal rights." Oh, ok. Well, at least you're not a racist.
This happened in 1977 and the landlord won because, while it was illegal to discriminate based on race, creed, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or marital status... there's nothing in the legislation protecting your profession.
In 1986, perhaps in light of more cases like this one, NYC passed a law prohibiting discrimination based on profession after lawyers (among others) complained that landlords refused to rent them apartments.
As if I didn't already have enough trouble finding housing...
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Noses... big noses.
So here’s an interesting case from only 15 years ago.
A man was working at a Rib House in West Virginia as a dishwasher and admittedly, he’s got some problems. According to the case:
“He suffers from chronic depression (dysthymic disorder), an obsession with his nose (body dismorphic disorder), and borderline personality disorder. The defendant’s father shed some light on his nose fixation. He stated that dozens of times a day the defendant stared in the mirror and turned his head back and forth to look at his nose. His father estimated that 50 percent of the time he observed his son he was looking at his nose. The defendant repeatedly asked for assurances that his nose was not too big. This obsession began when he was approximately seventeen years ole. The defendant was twenty-nine years old at the time of trial”
That’s a lot of space in my book dedicated to writing about this guy’s nose. Why? Well, one day he was washing dishes as usual with another guy and the other guy began to tease him. Slapping with him with the dishtowel and such, trying to lighten the tense mood in the kitchen. But then he slapped him on his nose. Bad idea.
Defendant freaks out, removes a knife from his pocket, and STABS HIM IN THE NECK.
As the co-worker falls to the ground he cries “Man, I was just kidding around!” to which Mr. Big-nose replies “Well, man, you should have never hit me in my face!”
Oh, homicide. Even if you’re terrifying, at least you’re amusing.
A man was working at a Rib House in West Virginia as a dishwasher and admittedly, he’s got some problems. According to the case:
“He suffers from chronic depression (dysthymic disorder), an obsession with his nose (body dismorphic disorder), and borderline personality disorder. The defendant’s father shed some light on his nose fixation. He stated that dozens of times a day the defendant stared in the mirror and turned his head back and forth to look at his nose. His father estimated that 50 percent of the time he observed his son he was looking at his nose. The defendant repeatedly asked for assurances that his nose was not too big. This obsession began when he was approximately seventeen years ole. The defendant was twenty-nine years old at the time of trial”
That’s a lot of space in my book dedicated to writing about this guy’s nose. Why? Well, one day he was washing dishes as usual with another guy and the other guy began to tease him. Slapping with him with the dishtowel and such, trying to lighten the tense mood in the kitchen. But then he slapped him on his nose. Bad idea.
Defendant freaks out, removes a knife from his pocket, and STABS HIM IN THE NECK.
As the co-worker falls to the ground he cries “Man, I was just kidding around!” to which Mr. Big-nose replies “Well, man, you should have never hit me in my face!”
Oh, homicide. Even if you’re terrifying, at least you’re amusing.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Going into reverse gear with Stephen Colbert
Some thoughts from Stephen Colbert:
"Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick."
I prefer my hands to a sharpened stick, but I like where Colbert is going.
The host of the Colbert Report took over Maureen Dowd's New York Times column on Sunday and had other bits of wisdom to share as well. Full of truthiness and good old fashioned liberal bashing.
"Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick."
I prefer my hands to a sharpened stick, but I like where Colbert is going.
The host of the Colbert Report took over Maureen Dowd's New York Times column on Sunday and had other bits of wisdom to share as well. Full of truthiness and good old fashioned liberal bashing.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
With liberty and justice for all?
Read Lawrence v. Texas today - the supreme court case of 2003 deciding the validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. Happily, the court overruled precedent and said the statute was no longer valid. Unhappily, Scalia wrote a nice long dissent arguing that "homosexual sodomy" is morally wrong and that invalidating a law against it would cause a "massive disruption of the current social order". Also, in his agreement with precedent Scalia makes note that prohibitions against homosexual sodomy do not implicate a fundamental right under due process since someone's right to engage in anal sex is not "deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition."
Can we just pause for a moment and realize how ridiculous that is. Honestly.
So, what do you think? Has the social order been massively disrupted since 2003? Now that people have a little more freedom in their sex lives I guess the apocalypse DOES seem nearer. Maybe that's just me.
Grahh. I hate arguments defending prejudice under the guise of morality.
Can we just pause for a moment and realize how ridiculous that is. Honestly.
So, what do you think? Has the social order been massively disrupted since 2003? Now that people have a little more freedom in their sex lives I guess the apocalypse DOES seem nearer. Maybe that's just me.
Grahh. I hate arguments defending prejudice under the guise of morality.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
criminal but funny
I read a lot for criminal law this week on causation and group criminality. The topics aren’t that important for the purposes of this entry – what IS important is how random and/or nonsensical some of the details in these cases are. For instance:
In a disturbing rape case from the 1930’s in which the defendant abducted a woman and sexually assaulted her including infliction of severe bite marks (!?!) the woman was somehow able to leave the hotel they were staying at and, accompanied by a random man we are told is named ”Shorty", goes to buy a hat. A HAT. Oh, also, while she is buying the hat she buys 6 tablets of bichloride so that she can try to kill herself and then she returns to the hotel! The issue the case raised was whether the defendant was liable for her later death in part because of her (semi-failed) suicide attempt. The issue that I want to raise is – why the hell did he let her go out with Shorty to buy a hat? Am I missing something here?
In a case that examined the relationship between the liability of parties, a man (we’ll call him A) propositioned another (B) to burglarize a store, not knowing that B was actually a relative of the store owners and wasn’t too psyched about the idea of stealing from them. So B goes along with the plan in an attempt to arrest A and lets the store owners know of his big plan. On the night of the burglary, A and B go to the store together, A opens the window for B to climb in and B “handed out a side of bacon” and that was all they stole.
I reread that sentence a couple of time. “Handed out a side of bacon”???? Was this lingo from 1891 that I was not following? Turns out – nope! They really did steal bacon. It seems to me that if you are going to rob a store, it makes more sense to go for something a little more valuable like say, I don’t know, diamonds or even very nice silverware. But bacon???? I guess people have different interpretations of what breaking the law is worth.
In a disturbing rape case from the 1930’s in which the defendant abducted a woman and sexually assaulted her including infliction of severe bite marks (!?!) the woman was somehow able to leave the hotel they were staying at and, accompanied by a random man we are told is named ”Shorty", goes to buy a hat. A HAT. Oh, also, while she is buying the hat she buys 6 tablets of bichloride so that she can try to kill herself and then she returns to the hotel! The issue the case raised was whether the defendant was liable for her later death in part because of her (semi-failed) suicide attempt. The issue that I want to raise is – why the hell did he let her go out with Shorty to buy a hat? Am I missing something here?
In a case that examined the relationship between the liability of parties, a man (we’ll call him A) propositioned another (B) to burglarize a store, not knowing that B was actually a relative of the store owners and wasn’t too psyched about the idea of stealing from them. So B goes along with the plan in an attempt to arrest A and lets the store owners know of his big plan. On the night of the burglary, A and B go to the store together, A opens the window for B to climb in and B “handed out a side of bacon” and that was all they stole.
I reread that sentence a couple of time. “Handed out a side of bacon”???? Was this lingo from 1891 that I was not following? Turns out – nope! They really did steal bacon. It seems to me that if you are going to rob a store, it makes more sense to go for something a little more valuable like say, I don’t know, diamonds or even very nice silverware. But bacon???? I guess people have different interpretations of what breaking the law is worth.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Music break
So this has nothing to do with law but I think it's a really interesting experiment. Actually, a few weeks ago we read a case for property about a company similar to napster and whether their business violated copyrights. This experiment that Radiohead is doing really makes you think about those laws AND about how much you'd be willing to pay for an album if it was totally up to you...
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