The relevant facts

I love it when a case begins like this:

"The relevant facts are undisputed... All agree that Lake Tahoe is "uniquely beautiful," that president Clinton was right to call it a "national treasure that must be protected and preserved," and that Mark Twain aptly described the clarity of its waters as "not merely transparent, but dazzingly, brilliantly so."

I'm glad we all agree.
I also have to note that when you turn the page there is a full blown glossy color picture of Lake Tahoe (or so I assume because there is no caption). There has never been nor are there any other glossy pictures in my book. Though sometimes there are other random pictures, like a woman with her cat or, more recently, a full page portrait of Justice Holmes. Is this actually funny or have I just been reading casebooks for too long?

I wish I could say that it's things like this that get me through property. Unfortunately, it being finals, nothing gets me through anything anymore. MRwahhh.

What not to watch

I haven't written anything in a while. I know. Turns out there is a negative correlation between how funny cases seem and how close finals become. I just got home from attempting to find warm places to study all over this city (seriously - I sat in 5 places today) and I turned on the tv to zone out for a few minutes while I cooked some dinner. Even when I try to watch something dumb, the law finds me. This is the advertisement for a holiday movie that came on. You may think I am joking. I swear I am not.

Flashes of Melissa Joan Hart and Mario Lopez on screen. Marissa looks happy but in a crazed way that sort of says "I may still be a witch." Mario looks frightened yet confident in a "I am cooler than Zach Morris any decade" way.
Voiceover: "She's holding him hostage but he's stealing her heart!" Flashes of Melissa kidnapping Mario, smashing his cellphone so he can't call anyone, and locking him in a room. If there wasn't this upbeat music in the background you would think this was a new slasher flick. Flashes of her looking out the window lovingly at him playing in the snow, a la Belle in Beauty in the Beast when she cannot BELIEVE she is falling for a monster (Remember "there may be something there that wasn't there before?" Classic. What? What's there mama? I'll tell you when you're older, Chip! Sorry, Disney tangent).
Then we hear Mario joke "You know, a federal offense puts you on the naughty list this year!" Nevermind his phone has been smashed and he's locked out in the snow and he is stuck with Melizza Joan Hart. Alone.
Final Voiceover: "This Christmas, don't miss the ABC Family world premiere of Holiday in Handcuffs!!!"

Seriously.
Holiday in Handcuffs.
I'm speechless.

Puzzlemania

It recently dawned on me that if you didn't know much about law school and my blog was your only foray into the legal world, you might think "Wow, law school doesn't seem so bad! These cases are pretty interesting and so entertaining! What are all those "sleep deprived" students complaining about?

In preemptive response, here is an excerpt from my civil procedure reading from this week. You'll notice that none of the cases I have discussed to date have anything to do with civpro. This might explain why.

"This controversy questions the constitutional sufficiency of notice to beneficiaries on judicial settlement of accounts by the trustee of a common trust fund established under the New York Banking Law, Consol. Laws. c. 2. The New York Court of Appeals considered and overruled objections that the statutory notice contravenes requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment and that by allowance of the account beneficiaries were deprived of property without due process of law. The case is here on appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1257."

Hopefully this has not driven you to never read this blog again. Sorry for inflicting my pain on you. But when you are stuck in the library reading 80 pages of this stuff for the week, you sort of start to lose it. At first I though civpro was going to be like a puzzle and that yeah, it was tough at first but once we got more pieces it would all start to come together. What has happened though is that we HAVE gotten more pieces (too many) but those pieces are all upside down - cardboard side up. And every time you THINK you may have fit two of those pieces together, along comes a child or a dog, or another chapter and messes the whole thing up.

I could go on with this analogy. It's a lot more interesting to me than long arm statutes. But my puzzle calls...

Death by silverware

More trouble in the neighborhood. This time, we're looking at a criminal case, not just a dispute over property. The Abbotts and the Scaranos of New Jersey shared a common driveway. The Scaranos were having their driveway paved and Abbott obtained some asphalt from the paving to keep his door from swinging onto his neighbor's property. I thought this was pretty nice of him. But Nicholas, son of the Scaranos, did not see things from my angle and suddenly he and Abbott are in a fist fight.
If this was it, the case would still be pretty random. A fistfight over some asphalt? Calm down, boys! But it gets better. Nicholas's dad sees the fistfight and then came at Abbott with a hatchet. Nicholas's mom followed, "armed with a carving knife and a large fork." Can you imagine that procession? Hatchet, carving knife, large fork. Where did they get their weapons, a garage sale???

And do you know what happened in the end? ALL THREE SCARANOS were hit by the hatchet! That'll teach you from wielding cutlery at your neighbors over asphalt. GRahhh.

These are the people in your neighborhood...

This morning I am learning about easements, estoppels, and other incredibly exciting property concepts. In one case, from 1938, neighbors are (again) fighting because of a sewage drain that runs under their respective properties. The case makes note that the plaintiff is upset that her basement flooded with 6-8 inches of sewage and filth from the pipe that runs under his property. Ok, that sucks, but it's not like his neighbors were actually coming onto his land personally and dumping sewage right?
Not according to the footnote!
"Professor Vetter reports that several residents of Chanute have told him stories about [the plaintiff] and [defendant] dumping buckets of sewage on each other's front porch."

Enjoy your breakfast.

Mother Goose strikes again

Reading a lot of cases for my legal memo in the hopes that one of them will provide better insight than I currently have on non-competition covenants in NY contracts. Anyway, I am in the middle of reading one about an executive at MTV who may have breached his contract in attempting to switch over to Fox Kids and here is an excerpt:

Once Cronin signed the contract with Fox Kids, after having been warned [...] not to sign, he had irreversibly breached his employment agreement with MTVN. In other words, "All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again."

Was the judge trying to be cute? You'll notice it's quoted but there is no citation listed. I want to know the edition of the nursery rhyme book he got that from. but more importantly, where the hell did that reference come from? What a strange way of saying that an executive irreversibly breached his contract. Not done with the case yet, but I am definitely crossing my fingers and hoping for some more good mother goose references. Like maybe, if he decides to abandon the whole thing, the court can say - In other words, "Along came a spider (lawsuit) and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away."

Will the sun REALLY come out?

An excerpt from my amazingly dry theory reading for torts:

"Fleming James articulated this loss-spreading goal in terms of the marginal utility of money, which he explained with his 'bottom dollar' thesis."

Apparently, one's 'bottom dollar' is that person's most valuable dollar and every dollar thereafter has decreasing value to that person. All this time I've been listening to Annie sing 'Tomorrow' and I never knew that she had any concept of economic theory! There she was, in the middle of the depression, telling everyone to go ahead and bet their most valuable dollar that the sun would come out the next day. Literally, there are very strong odds for this. Figuratively, which I think is the way that the little orphan meant, she was running a lot more risk with her betting than she maybe should have been. People betting their most valuable dollars is not a way to end a depression.

This, of course, was not at all the thrust of my reading and I am just as lost now as I was before, but my professor is 15 min late to class and i have showtunes stuck in my head. Happy friday.