Sometimes Lawyers Get It Right

Jeopardy time, everybody (regular jeopardy, not double jeopardy...that's unconstitutional).  Category: "All of these things are just like the other"

Answer: "Felons, atheists, infants, mental incompetents, spouses, and financially involved persons"



*****Sing yourself the jeopardy song now...********





















Question: Who are witnesses excluded from testifying at common law?  Obviously.  I hate it when opposing counsel calls my mentally incompetent atheist felon infant wife to testify about our financial holdings.

Losing

"Equitable waste consists of injury to the reversionary interest in land which is inconsistent with good husbandry and is recognized only by the equity courts, but it does not constitute legal waste."

I don't know what that means

WINNING!!!

One of these things is not like the other...

Hey all, just thought I would poke my head up to share this gem with you:

At common law, four elements must be established to prove the offense of "kidnapping": there must be the

1. unlawful
2. restraint of a person's liberty
3. by force or show of force
4. so as to take the victim to another country.

I'll let you dig the history of that one out on your own.

A Time Out for Reality

Contrary to popular belief among lawyers, admission to the bar is NOT the same as going to the bar (i.e. it's not a license to run around like an obnoxious asshole doing whatever you want).  One of the limitations is the dreaded Federal Rule of Civil Procedure #11, or "Rule 11."  Getting Rule 11-ed results in sanctions for bad lawyer conduct, like bringing a claim before the court that the lawyer knows has no factual basis and is only made to harass the defendant.  It's basically a judicial  kick in the groin.

Two other relevant but tangential points:

1. The unofficial rule of thumb for Rule 11 compliance is the "Straight Face Test."  In short, if you can make your argument without cracking your poker face, you're probably with the bounds of Rule 11.
2. Assault is the intentional creation in another person of the fear of imminent harmful physical contact.

That said, I would most certainly NOT want to be the prosecutor bringing this case:

Coor's Light Can Go To Hell

How many bars do you think are blue down there, you pretentious purveyors of potable poisons?  (Yes, I find that ad campaign incredibly irritating...)

Speaking of hell, the Rule Against Perpetuities...

Way back in the day, King Arthur got pissed off at his knights for writing wills that dictated who would get their seat at the round table after their deaths for hundreds and hundreds of years.  Arthur wasn't much for blind dates, so he decided to create the Rule Against Perpetuities.  Merlin foretold that every law student would curse his name for all eternity, but the idea of being forced to dine with girls with masters degrees in the Kardashians was sufficient motivation to ignore the warning.

The Rule Against Perpetuities reads something like this:

No transfer of an interest in land is valid unless that interest must vest, if at all, within 21 years of the end of a life in being at the time of the transfer.

Translated into English, it effectively means that if you try to control who owns your property, and it is POSSIBLE that by your efforts someone could potentially come into a right to the property more than 21 years after everyone you know is dead, your efforts are legally invalid.  As Arthur intended, the rule prevents inordinate "dead hand" control over land.  He may not have intended the other consequences, however.

If you know a law student, chances are he has a knee-jerk reaction to the words "fertile octogenarian" that includes murderous impulses.  Reactions to "unborn widow" tend to be equally vehement.  (As an aside, ponder the nature of "unborn widows" for a moment...)  Consider the following:

The Fertile Octogenarian
Irene Ihatemylife's husband dies, leaving a will describing how he would like his property in Hell, CA to be disposed of.  He instructs that the property is to be given to his 89-year-old wife, Irene, for the duration of her life, and upon her death to the first of her children to reach the age of 25.  In so many words, Irene is screwed.

Now imagine the possibilities for a moment if 89-year-old Irene has a child.  Sadly, immediately after the birth all of Irene's other children are murdered by invading alien hoards.  Overcome with grief, Irene herself expires, leaving her generational-gap-suffering infant behind, ostensibly to inherit her property in Hell when he turns 25.  However, Irene and all of her other children--the "lives in being" when the will was created--have all just died.  It will take the child more than 21 years to turn 25 and vest his right to the property, thus violating the Rule Against Perpetuities.  So because this ridiculous scenario is POSSIBLE (even though it is unlikely), Irene's husband's will is invalid and Irene does not inherit land in Hell.

The Unborn Widow
Danny Damnit decides to will his property to his son Dangit for the duration of his life, and upon Dangit's death to his widow, and thereafter to their descendants.  Danny then dies, and Dangit wants to inherit the property.  No dice, Dangit.

Suppose the day after Danny died, Little Debbie was born.  Although she is just an infant, Dangit is immediately enamored and arranges their marriage.  17 years and 364 days later on Little Debbie's 18th birthday they are wed.  Sadly, Dangit is (a legal illustration and thus) weakly constituted, and his overjoyed heart literally bursts at the reception, killing him instantly.  Little Debbie then joins the Russian Cosmonauts and departs on a manned mission around the sun that takes precisely 21 years and one day.  It goes well, but problems arise upon reentry and Little Debbie is incinerated.  Now her childrens' right to the property vests per Danny's original will...but this happens more than 21 years after Dangit (the last life in being when Danny's will was made) died.  Rule Against Perpetuities violated = Will Invalid.  Sorry kids.

The Precocious Toddler
Finally, consider the case of Fanny Fertile.  She leaves her property to her sister for life, and thereafter to her sister's grandchildren who are then living or are born within five years of her death that reach the age of 25.  Once again, this transfer is foiled by ridiculousness.

It is possible that the day after receiving Fanny's property, her 70-year-old sister has a baby.  Owing to a rare sliver of logic, complications due to late-life pregnancy purchase Fanny's sister a ticket for her last train ride.  Unfazed by her late mother's passing, however, and perhaps ruined by her lack of a strong female role model, the infant quickly becomes the trollop of the nursery.  Before she is even healthy enough to leave the hospital, she has been knocked up by the stud from the crib across the aisle (this is possible, I assure you...trust me, I'm a doctor).  Similar to its mother, the infant passes away during childbirth due to complications of babies having babies.  When the baby's baby is born (within five years fo Fanny's death), it will have the potential to vest its rights to Fanny's property by turning 25.  However, this too will occur more than 21 years after the deaths of the lives in being, and Fanny's will is invalid.

Now the rub:

In 1961, a San Francisco lawyer named Hamm was sued for malpractice.  The gist of the case was that he had written a will for one of his clients.  In writing the will, however, Hamm glazed over a few technicalities and violated the Rule Against Perpetuities, causing some of the will's intended beneficiaries to be disinherited.  Obviously upset, the disinherited beneficiaries filed suit against Hamm.

Despite Hamm's obvious fault, the case went all the way to California's Supreme Court.  In one of the most brilliant pieces of lawyering I've ever heard of, Hamm's attorney's articulated an elegant argument.  In adjudicating a malpractice action, a court can only find a lawyer liable if he acts in a manner inconsistent with the way a reasonable lawyer would act in a similar situation.  Hamm's attorney's argued --and the Supreme Court held--simply that no reasonable lawyer understands the Rule Against Perpetuities!  So although Hamm was at fault for writing the will that disinherited the plaintiffs, the rule the will violated was so complicated that he was excused from liability.

Slow clap here.  King Arthur, or whatever dope is responsible for the Rule Against Perpetuities, as well as every imbecile who continues to enforce it, has created a monster that even those who have studied it cannot comprehend.  This monster perpetually terrorizes colonies of law students and occasionally makes off with an inheritance or other interest in land...well done, ladies and gentlemen.

Pop Quiz

Didn't realize there was going to be a test, did you.  Don't worry, it's multiple guess, and only one question:

#1.) Which of the following is a tort?

A

B

C

If you answered "All of the Above," you're right!! (Sort of...technically "B" is a torte)  For those of you who have heard politicians tossing off talking points about "tort reform," you may have wondered what a tort was, and why we need to reform them.  Allow me to cast away the mystery with a quick breakdown of American law (or Common Law, generally).

"The law" is bifurcated into the categories "criminal" and "civil."  If you're in court because Uncle Sam is mad at you, you're involved with criminal law.  If you're in court because your neighbor is mad at you, you're in civil court.  

Civil law, in turn, is divided into two sections:  Contracts and Torts.  As my paying subscribers are aware, contracts are essentially agreements between parties giving rise to legal rights, and are used for hornswoggling.  For example, if LeBra James decides he's a big pouting sissyface and decides not to play the rest of the series because he's tired of Dirk beating up on him, most likely he's in breach of the terms of his contract with his South Beach posse.  They can therefore take him to court and sue for damages (unless the contract has an arbitration clause, but that's a different story...)

Torts, on the other hand, are everything you can sue somebody for that isn't a contract.  The silly-looking Asian gentleman above is handsomely demonstrating both Assault and Battery.  Answer choice C is a splendid specimen of Libel.  

Generally, analysis of torts involves four elements: A duty one person owes to another, a breach of that duty, damages must result from the breach, and the breach must have caused the damages.  If any one of those elements is wanting, a person is not liable for the tort in question.  For example, I owe Mr. Hixson a duty not to libel him, but I wish him well trying to prove my above statement caused him any damage.  Case dismissed.

Once again, lawyers have taken this opportunity to demonstrate their true colors.  In our cowboy republic, the rugged individualist ethos has manifested itself, or rather not done so, in the legal system by not imposing any duty on a person to rescue another.  To illustrate, consider Attorney Asshat, who is walking along a set of train tracks.  He happens to come across an infant lying on the tracks, and well aware of the local train schedule, decides to settle in for some cheap entertainment.  Although he is irritated that the train is behind schedule by nearly 20 minutes, after some delay his dastardly diversion occurs as one might imagine.  Upon learning what happened, the poor child's mother sues Asshat.  The case is dismissed, because Asshat owed the child no duty to rescue him.

            ***As a footnote, the townsfolk then dragged the lawyer to the train tracks, where he was repeatedly run over by lengthy trains.  No compliant was filed.

There are exceptions to the general rule that Americans have the right to be scum to their neighbors, however.  Some relationships are deemed "special," and give rise to a duty to rescue.  Common examples are parent and child, or husband and wife.  In one piece of brilliant lawyering, it was adjudged that drinking buddies, or rather "social co-adventurers" owe each other a mutual duty of rescue.  So while I can watch small children suffer horrendous injury for my own amusement, I am in trouble if I watch Mr. Hixson stumble drunkenly into the street for a nap and don't at least roll him onto the sidewalk.  Thank you, men of the bar, for protecting the men of the bar. 

Also, Joe, that means you have to get me off the railroad tracks.

Damn It, Jim! I'm a Doctor, Not an Engineer...

I acknowledge few, if any, persons who have a more reverent admiration, profound respect, or awestruck adoration of this great nation's Founding Fathers than my own.  Aside from my own mother, I am challenged to think of anyone whose slandered honor would inflame my passions to the point where my reasonable, ordinary, law-abiding self would be induced to do violence to my fellow man.  That said, the Founders made one catastrophic mistake: after laying out a revolutionary (if flawed) framework for a nation, they retired (slash died) and left the actual implementation of that plan to lesser men.  The result has been a marvel of engineering...less from the subsequent additions' contribution to America's greatness, but more so from the fact that those contributions have yet to compromise the integrity of the Founders' marvelous skeleton.  Allow me to illustrate my point by dispelling a few commonly-held misperceptions regarding American criminal procedure.


First of all, imagine yourself getting arrested.  Is Officer Friendly reading you your rights?  "You have the right to remain silent.  If you waive this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.  You have the right to an attorney.  If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you.  Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?"  If he is, he is probably lying to you.  


Now permit me to direct your attention to the Bill of Rights, specifically the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.  Certainly the First Amendment guarantees any person in America the right to free speech, which includes the right not to speak.  On the other hand, a person doing so while being questioned by police does so at his own peril.  First of all, in a very real sense, police officers operate as agents of the state empowered to use forcible means to achieve their ends; antagonizing them unnecessarily is thus a hobby in which reasonable folks typically decline to partake.  From a more philosophical perspective, the Fifth Amendment provides only that

No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

Subsequent judicial decisions have clarified that this protection against self-incrimination applies only to testimonial statements made during interrogations by state agents while the person in question is in custody...so if the cops ask for your name, just tell them.


But more importantly (to the future employment of my fellow soul-wanting beings), consider the Sixth Amendment.  Our Forefathers had the foresight to provide that 

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right...to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. 

For those of you who think you speak and/or understand English, allow me to enlighten you.  When a lawyer sees that the accused in "all" criminal prosecutions is entitled to the assistance of counsel, he understands that "all criminal prosecutions" does not actually include all criminal prosecutions.  Suppose a person much like myself were indicted for a crime.  As I reside in California, let us choose a realistic example, and call the crime "constructive jaywalking," which consists of walking anywhere in the public thoroughfare that a police officer deems unscrupulous, punishable by $10 Billion in fines and Eleventy-thousand hours of community service.  As it turns out, I have no right to be provided a public attorney for my defense (although I probably have claims to overturn the statute).

On the other hand, let us say I had been charged with, say, "blogging silliness regarding the law too late at night," which is punishable by 15 minutes detention in the county jail.  Alas, I still have no right to an attorney provided at the public's expense.  However, once I am convicted and sentenced to my detention,  I suddenly inherit that right!  As luck (and/or the brilliance of judicial decisions since the founding of our nation, I leave it to you to decide) would have it, the right to assistance of counsel afforded at public expense is predicated upon being sentenced to confinement to a government facility...but is not acquired until that sentence is imposed.  So while I don't have the right to an attorney during the trial, once I am convicted I get the right to have had an attorney during the trial, and thus my sentence can be appealed and overturned.  Evidently no lawyer has ever seen a horse cart.

Playing a Hypocritical God

Generally in the criminal law, a person's state of mind is among the most important factors in determining whether his conduct constituted a criminal act.  For example, any unlawful killing of a person is a "homicide."  But as those familiar with Law & Order will tell you, homicide is an umbrella term covering a variety of flavors of wrongful death.  For instance, a person whose reckless acts result in the death of another will be found guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter.  Even if he intentionally kills the other person but does so "in the sudden heat of passion" after being provoked, his offense probably only rises to the level of Voluntary Manslaughter.  Our hypothetical homicide-happy human cannot be branded a murder unless his killing is accompanied by "malice;" even then, his mental state--specifically whether after deliberation and premeditation he had formed a specific intent to kill--will determine whether he is guilty of First or Second Degree Murder.

On the other hand, my fellow juris doctors have not adhered entirely faithfully to this maxim that mentality governs criminality.  When accused of a crime, one may attempt to defend himself by claiming that it was "impossible" for him to be guilty of the offense.  Impossibility, like most legal doctrines, has been fragmented and re-defined in order to allow lawyers a greater control over life as we know it.  In this case, impossibility has been divided into "legal impossibility" and "factual impossibility."  

Legal Impossibility is an aberrant phenomenon in criminal law.  Under this doctrine, a person's state of mind is irrelevant to criminality.  Effectively, the legal impossibility defense stands on the fact that you can't be convicted of attempting something that isn't a crime.  Suppose I came to be under the impression that California enacted a statute making it a capital offense to eat ice cream cones without wearing a shirt on Tuesday afternoons.  Being the anti-social mayhem-loving anarchist that I am, I decide to "stick it to the man" and spend all of my Tuesday afternoons walking around shirtless double-fisting ice cream cones and gloating at the top of my lungs how I am California's most notorious and nefarious criminal.  Despite my criminally-inclined mindset, I cannot be convicted of my ice cream crime, which of course does not exist.  

Factual Impossibility, on the other hand, is no defense at all.  This version of impossibility arises from plain, simple reality.  In short, if circumstances unknown to a would-be criminal prevent his crime, he still may be convicted.  A classic example involves dim-witted death dealers.  Suppose now I came to be under the impression that my landlord was the person responsible for outlawing my favorite manner of ice cream consumption.  Naturally I could not abide the existence of such an individual, so I set in motion a plan to break into her home and murder her in her sleep.  Death, who also favors Tuesday afternoon shirtless ice cream consumption, decides to help me out and visits my landlord that evening, and she passes peacefully in her sleep.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the memo, and I break into her home and shoot her corpse.  Although I have just attempted to kill a person who was already dead and thus could not possibly have done so, I am still liable to be convicted of attempted murder!

The long and the short of it is, lawyers have no use for facts and reality.  Those minor-league, kiddy table details can be left to God.  The greater lawyering community would rather construct our own fantastical world in which we are free to follow or ignore our own rules as we see fit.

Humility

Keep it...always.  Because even when you think you know what contracts are, you know because someone taught you.  And when you have a contract with that person to teach you, they will use it to hornswoggle you.

Correcting Misconceptions

Contracts present one area of law that the "common man" frequently interacts with.  No doubt each of my millions of readers is currently contractually bound to all sorts of obligations, most of which he or she is unaware.  Unfortunately, contracts are largely misunderstood by non-lawyers.  From what I recall of life before law professors corrupted my mind, a layman might think of a contract as a written agreement between people.  Websters defines a contract as "a written or spoken agreement, esp. one concerning employment, sales, or tenancy, that is intended to be enforceable by law." I am here to tell you that anyone promoting these views is blowing sunshine where it doesn't belong. If I were to write the unwritten definition of a contract used by lawyers, it would read:

A contract is the preferred method used to swindle, defraud, cheat, scam, hornswoggle, or otherwise obtain one's objectives while complying with the law while evading its mandates. 

Allow me to support my allegations with a few examples. Like everything else lawyers do, those in charge have erected a wonderful inky curtain separating those who have traded their souls to join the bar club from the rest of the soul-having population. The curtain, comprised largely of false statements meant to deceive as well as the defecation of male bovine, operates to create unique rules to govern separate situations.  In a stroke of genius, once those rules are established they are immediately circumvented.

One method by which this is accomplished is defining terms in ways that defy logic. For example, the Uniform Commercial Code governs the sale of "goods," while the common law regulates transactions involving services or other non-goods. Goods, in turn, are defined as "moveable objects." Think of the store you go to when money is burning a hole in your pocket.  Everything on the shelf there is a good.  But then, evidently some lawyers are also engineers, or else have definitely earned their title of doctor.  Other "goods" include the unborn offspring of livestock, growing crops, and live timber.  I am rather surprised no enterprising lawyer has yet patented the methods involved for relocating these goods.

Another brilliant example comes from the law governing what constitutes an "offer." This is important, because the legal effect of an offer is the creation of the power to accept that offer in the person to whom you made it.  Luckily, lawyers have removed this area of law from rational thought as well.  To illustrate, if I were to jokingly offer to sell you my house, but not tell you I was joking, I have legally empowered you to buy my home.  On the other hand, if I publicly offer to sell something at a price that is "too good to be true," like brand new HDTVs for $5.99, no offer has been made at all.

I thus offer, or maybe don't, 10 Bonus Points to anyone who knew what "hornswoggle" meant without looking it up.

Fork Lifts v. Baseball

I'm still in question-based review (for the rest of the week)....today, Evidence.  And while the test writers again have me musing on social phenomena, at least today they have me chuckling.  If you recall, or will trust my word for it, so-called "intelligence" tests had a period of controversy due to assumed cultural knowledge.  The result was test scores showing rich white kids are more intelligent than poorer, more color-prone children.  As an aside, this problem persists, but now for different reasons.  The examples typically involve sports like rowing or croquette, the sorts that 1920s Ivy Leaguers would participate in.  Evidently our writers are striving to be more culturally sensitive, but I'm afraid they missed the mark.

Yesterday, one of the contracts questions hinged on the value of "opening day" in baseball.  George Steinbrenner had contracted with a hatter to provide 10,000 Yankees hats for fans on opening day of the season; but the hatter delivered Mets caps.  The crux of the question was whether the hatter should have time to remedy his mistake by replacing the hats with Yankees hats.  Normally he would get that chance, but because opening day is a big deal in baseball, Steinbrenner doesn't have to let him.  But nothing in the question indicated that opening day was different than any other day of the year...so I am thinking that unless you are a baseball fan or a clever test taker, you probably struggle with that one.

On the other hand, today they made sure they didn't leave anybody out.  Question 36 involved a company purchasing a new fork lift, which would later roll over onto one of their employees "causing massive internal bleeding and life-threatening injuries" (how pleasant).  They go on to note that "A forklift is a heavy duty machine used for the hoisting and transporting of heavy objects by means of steel blades inserted under the load."  Not only is all of that entirely irrelevant to the question, which was about whether statements the worker made to doctors at the hospital were admissible in court, but I'm pretty sure I was more confused about what a fork lift was after I read that than before.

So kudos for the effort and sentiment, my test writing friends...but try harder.  Or less hard.  I'm not really sure.

How Are Lawyers Like Sperm?

Our reintroduction to Contracts today was again a "question-based review," which afforded our self-indulgent exam writers another opportunity to expose more universal truths to all of us.  I was particularly inspired by this gem, which I can't help myself but reproduce in its entirety (and hope Kaplan's lawyers don't take notice and/or offense):

A lawyer lived in an exquisite home located in a fashionable neighborhood.  He had known a gardner for many years.  One day the gardner was walking down the street when he ran into the lawyer.  The gardner said to the lawyer, "I will landscape your garden for $200."  The lawyer replied, "That seems like a good deal."  Thereupon the lawyer's brother-in-law walked by.  The three individuals then started conversing about the stock market.  Nothing further was said about landscaping the lawyer's garden.  The next day, the lawyer telephoned the gardener and said, "I accept your offer."  The gardner replied, "I can't landscape your garden because last night I contracted to landscape your neighbor's property."

The lawyer sues the gardner for breach of contract.  Who will likely prevail?

I honestly don't even know where to begin with this one...not so much in the answer to the question, but in my analysis thereof.  I guess first I'll answer the question...the lawyer is completely in the wrong.  The most fundamental legal reason is that the gardner's offer was terminated at the conclusion of their conversation, and therefore was not open for the lawyer to accept as he tried to do the next day.  And as a lawyer, he should have known and not been a jerk.  Good to know he's holding down the asshole name for us over $200.

Moreover, let's look at reality.  If this lawyer is living in "an exquisite home located in a fashionable neighborhood," he's probably doing pretty well in his practice.  The jag bag can afford to pay his long-time friend more than $200 to do his garden, could hire someone else to do it, or just let the whole thing go.  But instead, he went down to small claims court and paid $150 to try to recover $200 from his landscaper buddy.

At the risk of being branded a racist, I would further point to the fact that odds are good that the lawyer is a white man, and even greater that his friend is brown (be honest...were you picturing something else?).  He has a fair shot at being a migrant worker, and may or may not speak English as a second language. Now his lawyer "friend" is suing him for trying to be nice in a conversation, and he pretty much has three choices: cave in to the lawyer's demands, go pay some other asshole lawyer more than the case is worth to find out that he is actually on the right side of the law and shouldn't worry, or else have wicked stones and go head to head against the lawyer in front of the judge.  Lesson: don't be friends with lawyers.

Also, it is mostly law professors who write bar review questions.  Evidently they hate lawyers and law students as much as anyone...Question 29 kicks off with another motivational premise:

A student had failed the bar exam three times.  On her fourth try, she hired a tutor...

Thanks Prof.  I needed that just now.  Those butt holes also love coming up with the most convoluted, ridiculous, never-going-to-happen-but-would-cause-interesting-legal-situations-if-they-did kind of scenarios.  For example, Question 7 (paraphrased):

Hod, God's little brother, was slightly less omnipotent than his older sibling.  Mostly he could just put ideas in people's heads and liked to cause trouble.  One day he decided to mess with law students studying contracts and/or water fountain law.  He makes a water fountain manufacturer send a letter to a retailer, offering to sell him 100 water fountains at $200 each.  At the exact same time, he makes the retailer write a letter to the seller offering to buy 100 water fountains at $200 each.  What is their legal relationship?

Eff it.  I'm done.

Because about one in a million turns out to be a human being.

How are lawyers like nuclear weapons?

Once one side has one the other side has to get one; once they're launched, there's no calling them back; and when they arrive, they screw things up forever.

Welcome Wagon

Greetings ladies, gentlemen, and those of you with nothing better to do!

Allow me to explain myself:  Today is Day 1 of Bar Review.  For the next 10-ish weeks, a team of lecturers are going to try to force three years of education into my brain.  To be quite honest, I have no idea what the result will be, although as you may suspect from my title I rather anticipate a steady degradation into decrepitude.  Regardless, it is my intent to chronicle here my thoughts as I proceed through the bar exam preparation process.

It's been some time since I took a non-law school test.  As I recall, it is a universal character flaw in exam question writers to consider themselves witty and clever.  For example, one question for today involved the greatest basketball player to every play the game, Jordan Michaels of the Chicago Cyclones.  As it turns out, when those writers are lawyers their corrupted souls and twisted minds often produce disturbing results.  Let me begin this blog by sharing with you some of the torts questions that I answered this morning (paraphrased, because I have a sneaking suspicion the exam prep people's lawyers would not appreciate my re-publishing their material):

#32) A private construction crew is using dynamite to blast a foundation for a ski resort into a mountain.  The noise scares the animals on a nearby mink farm, causing many of the mink mothers to eat their young. Will the rancher win if he sues the construction company?

#44) Some jerk is talking about his "friend"who is a doctor behind his back.  For which of the following statements will he be liable?
(a) Don't let your daughter date him; he rapes his girlfriends.
(b) Don't go to him for treatment; that quack doesn't know how to diagnose anything
(c) Don't let him visit your mother; he would have stabbed his own mother to death last week if she hadn't died in a car accident first
(d) Don't go to him for emergency treatment; he's a drunk and once couldn't treat a patient because he was too wasted.

#46) Governor Douchebag grabbed a pina colata and escaped to Venezuela to visit his mistress while his wife was out of town.  When the mistress found out the Governor was married, she called to berate him. When she got his answering machine, she left an angry message in Spanish insinuating that the Governor had given her a venerial disease to upset the Governor's wife.  The Governor listened to his messages on speakerphone with his wife present.  When his wife asked what the mistress had said, the Governor lied, "Happy Birthday."  If Governor Douchebag sues his mistress for defamation of character, will he succeed?

#48) With her family away, a married woman with several children went to a local hotel to rendezvous with her illicit lover.  While the adulterers were in the throes of passion, a fire was started and burned the hotel to the ground.  The lovers escaped the flames in their bathrobes, and we unknowingly photographed by a newspaper photographer.  The photo was published on the front page of the next day's paper, leading the woman's husband to file for divorce and to the woman's general shame and humiliation.  If she sues the newspaper for publishing the picture without her permission, will she win?