Remember the PreCrime Unit in the movie "Minority Report"? Set in 2054, the film's PreCrime Unit relied upon the future visions of by three "precogs," mutated humans with precognitive abilities, to stop murders. Now, 42 years early, a real pre-crime unit may soon be rolled out in East Orange, N.J.
The Associated Press reports (via Infowars) that East Orange plans to begin using a combination of surveillance cameras and powerful red-beamed spotlights to highlight suspects before any crime is committed. The equipment will be mounted throughout the city on streetlights, allowing police to monitor hundreds of video feeds. If police observe suspicious behavior -- such as a mugging that is about to take place -- they will direct the red spotlight at the suspects to send a message to criminals that "we're observing you, the police are recording you, and the police are responding." William Robinson, Police Chief for East Orange, calls it a "light-based intervention system."
East Orange is funding its pre-crime efforts with federal grant money that has also permitted it to add other crime-fighting technology such as squad cars that automatically scan the license plates of all passing cars and cross-check the plates against databases of people on terrorist monitor lists, or with unpaid parking tickets or outstanding warrants. Infowars reports that East Orange police are then permitted to "pull over vehicles that match watch lists, even if the driver has committed no violations to draw attention from the patrol vehicle."
Bottom line: If you find yourself in East Orange, N.J., suddenly bathed in red light, be good!
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 10, 2012 at 02:09 PM | Permalink
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Lawyers reading this probably recall the topic of "adverse possession" from their law school course on Real Property. In short, in most states, if you openly and exclusively occupy someone else's property, keeping out others, and using it as if it were your own, you can actually acquire title to that property after a fixed statutory period of time passes. The statutory period required for adverse possession is usually quite long -- a decade or two needs to pass before adverse possession occurs. See my 20-year-old memory of adverse possession law; see also this cite on Wikipedia.
I'm no expert on adverse possession by any stretch, but it usually occurs when someone builds a barn or something like that a few feet over the property line, and then uses that barn for 20 years. After those 20 years, the land on which the barn is built may belong to the person who built the barn rather than the original owner under adverse possession.
There is more to it, but the description above is a quick summary of what adverse possession is. Now, let me tell you what adverse possession isn't: it isn't when someone else's house goes into foreclosure and is sitting vacant, and you somehow get into the house, put your couch in the living room and declare it to be yours under adverse possession.
And yet this foreclosure scenario keeps coming up lately. In Flower Mound, Texas, last year, neighbors on Waterford Drive were perplexed when Kenneth Robinson started living in a $300,000 home on the street that had been left vacant after a foreclosure. Robinson said he was not a squatter because he was using "adverse possession" after somehow finding a key and entering the home legally. He claimed that "an online form he printed out and filed at the Denton County courthouse for $16 gave him rights to the house." News of his $16 house also prompted many other people in Texas to claim rights to homes based on "adverse possession," some of whom were promptly charged with burglary. Alas, Bank of America finally foreclosed on the home last month and a judge ordered Robinson to move out by Feb. 13.
Similarly, in Denver, CBS4 News recently identified (via Consumerist) about a dozen cases where wannabe "adverse possessors" moved into vacant houses under foreclosure. At least one of these people thought she had bought the house from someone when she gave the "seller" a used pickup truck in exchange for a house and a "document of adverse possession" that declared her to be the owner of the house. After she was contacted by CBS4, the woman consulted an attorney who told her the document of adverse possession was "a piece of trash. This isn't real. It's not real.”
Bottom line: people need to stop trying to get a free house via "adverse possession." It is not going to happen.
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 9, 2012 at 04:31 PM | Permalink
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On the Abnormal Use blog Tuesday, editor Jim Dedman suggested that lawyers may need to start asking themselves the following question: "Will My Advocate Opponent Impeach Me With My Own Legal Social Media?" "Might some of our opinions or blog posts come back to haunt us?" he asked "Might an Internet savvy advocate quote our own posts against us in some future case?"
The article cited in the post was focused on the risk of an adversary scouring and scrutinizing a law blogger's posts "to see if her opponent has ever taken a position opposite to the one advanced against her in the case at hand." Today on Abnormal Use, a guest blogger named Stuart Mauney offered a real-world example of how one opposing counsel tried to use his Facebook "friendship" with Mauney to undercut Mauney and Mauney's client.
Mauney writes that he uses Facebook and has around 400 friends, rarely turning down any friend requests he might receive. Recently, he was engaged in a mediation with a plaintiffs attorney who sent Mauney a request to be his friend on Facebook about a month before the mediation session. Mauney accepted the request.
During the mediation, Mauney writes,
the Plaintiff's lawyer opened by saying that he did not think we were taking his client's case "seriously." In apparent support for that position, he actually projected onto the screen one of my very recent Facebook posts about my plans to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. (Yes, I recently turned 50.) The Plaintiff's lawyer said, "Maybe he was ready for this mediation last Wednesday before he started celebrating his weekend birthday, but ... " His sentence trailed off as if to suggest his doubt. He also commented that I had not been to any of the depositions in the case, as if sending my experienced senior associate to the depositions was in poor from. The associate was handling it under my close supervision. ...
Perhaps not unsurprisingly after this silly Facebook ambush, the mediation ended unsuccessfully. Mauney also "defriended" the plaintiffs lawyer.
What do you think? Is this a good example of the "perils of social media"? Or is this simply some bizarre, one-off behavior by plaintiffs counsel?
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 8, 2012 at 04:33 PM | Permalink
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Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere.
1) Question: The judge hearing the domestic violence case against me just ordered me to get my wife some flowers, get dressed up, pick up my wife, take her to Red Lobster and then go bowling with her! Can he do this?!
Answer: I'm afraid so. Try the Four Course Seafood Feast. (Sun Sentinel, Flowers, dinner, bowling -- and counseling -- ordered by Broward judge in domestic case)
2) Question: The psychiatrist testifying at this competency hearing is wearing a two-foot tall cone-shaped hat that is imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. He also has an 18-inch white beard and insists on punctuating crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand. I asked him why he is wearing/doing this and he swears it is required under New Mexico law. What is he talking about?
Answer: The psychiatrist is mistaken. The bill requiring the hat, beard, wand, etc. passed the New Mexico Senate but did not pass the House. (io9, In 1995, New Mexico voted on a bill requiring psychologists to dress as wizards)
3) Question: My wife just confessed that she was arrested last week for "Super Drunk driving" in Michigan. That does not sound good -- what is it?
Answer: It is not good. In Michigan, "Super Drunk driving" means you are driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.17 or more. Convicted Super Drunk drivers face stiffer penalties, including a one-year breath alcohol ignition interlock requirement, higher fines and costs, and possibly more jail time. (WXYZ.com, Ferndale police arrest 2 for 'super drunk' driving; blood alcohol levels between .33 & .35)
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 8, 2012 at 01:18 PM | Permalink
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The ethical treatment of animals sounds like a reasonable thing that people should support. And it even seems logical that there would be an entire organization of reasonable people who are dedicated to promoting the ethical treatment of animals. You could even call it People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Or something like that.
Of course, there is an organization called PETA with that name and mission, but why does it seem like so many things that PETA does are completely over the top? For example, as I wrote back in September 2011, PETA is now finalizing a soft-core porn website on the new ".xxx" top level domain. PETA says that its PETA.xxx site will not be hard-core porn, but will be "erotica," i.e., nudity and "sexually suggestive content." Why does an animal rights group need to have a soft-core, triple-X porn presence on the Internet? Supposedly because it will be "triple extra effective in helping us bring our important issues of animal rights and eating a vegan diet to a greater number of people." Umm, OK, then.
More recently, PETA has moved on to suing SeaWorld because, it claims, the killer whales that perform at SeaWorld are being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment's ban on slavery. Read that back again. Whales ... SeaWorld ... slavery? As they say on NFL Monday Night Countdown, "C'mon Man!"
PETA’s lawyer said a hearing held in the case this week was a “historic day” as it was the "the first time a court considered the question of whether animals can be enslaved," U-T San Diego reports (via How Appealing). SeaWorld's lawyers say the case crosses the boundaries of "legitimate constitutional debate” and is "utterly lacking in legal merit" because the 13th Amendment specifically refers to "persons," not animals.
I guess if its primary goal is get attention, PETA is doing the right things by promoting porn and the cause of ending "whale slavery." Otherwise, I must admit that I just don't get it.
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 7, 2012 at 04:30 PM | Permalink
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Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere.
1) Question: That does it. I am broke, disillusioned and have pretty much had it with this country! How do I renounce my U.S. citizenship?
Answer: If you are broke then you're going to need to save up your money before renouncing your U.S. citizenship. That costs $450. (New York Daily News, State Department boosts passport fees, sets cost of citizenship)
2) Question: Why am I being arrested for DUI after supposedly failing a sobriety test for not being able to walk a straight line? What part of "my boobs are too big for me to balance properly" don't you understand?!
Answer: Big breasts are no defense to DUI charges, sorry. (FOX News, Florida woman blames her 'big breasts' for failing sobriety test)
3) Question: Police at the NFL game I'm attending are about to toss me out of the stadium for using profanity in an argument with another fan. Don't I have a First Amendment right to drop the F-bomb at the game?
Answer: It looks like you may well have such a right. (Deadspin, A Man Is Suing To Assert His Legal Right To Scream "Fuck You" At Chargers Games)
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 7, 2012 at 11:58 AM | Permalink
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You might think that after Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 8, Volume 9, Volume 10 and Volume 11 of Things You Can't Do on a Plane, that we'd have exhausted the list of things you can't do on a plane. Nope! The list grows daily.
Here are three more things I've recently learned that you cannot do on a plane:
- Stuff a dirty diaper down the airplane's toilet. Passengers may not throw dirty diapers away in the airplane's toilet, as it may result in a suspicious smell requiring the termination of the flight. CONSEQUENCE: Aircraft will be diverted and make a precautionary landing, passengers will be removed from the plane by a forklift and switched to a new aircraft.
- Smoke pot in the airplane's bathroom. Passengers are prohibited from smoking weed mid-flight in the airplane bathroom. CONSEQUENCE: Passenger will be arrested upon landing and charged with possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
- Begin to smoke a cigarette while onboard the plane and then become combative when told to put it out. Passengers may not become combative and disrupt the flight when asked to refrain from smoking onboard a plane. CONSEQUENCE: Passenger will be charged with "interfering with a flight crew" and possibly required to be examined by a psychiatrist.
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 6, 2012 at 04:21 PM | Permalink
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I spend a lot of time in the world of securities litigation and SEC enforcement. One of the best bloggers in that corner of the blawgosphere is Kevin LaCroix, the author since 2006 of an excellent blog called The D&O Diary. Today, Kevin wrote about developments in a case brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. against two former IndyMac executives that all lawyers should take note of, even those who have zero interest in the underlying case.
In the course of defending themselves against the FDIC, the IndyMac executives aggressively attacked the FDIC for its failure to preserve certain documents. In court papers seeking sanctions, counsel for the defendants accused the agency of a "stunning display of incompetence" for failing to preserve documents. "The breadth and depth of the government's document-retention failures are staggering, and violations of this magnitude rarely occur," they argued. "It is a stunning display of incompetence from an agency that is supposed to be the expert at seizing and managing banks."
On Jan. 30, Central District of California Judge Dale Fischer held a hearing on the defendants' motion seeking sanctions, dismissal of certain counts of the lawsuit and an adverse instruction to the jury based on the government's failure to preserve evidence. As reflected in this transcript of the hearing, Fischer was not all pleased with the exaggerated rhetoric employed by counsel for the IndyMac executives. The judge stated:
... I also want to tell you, I don't know why lawyers do this, and there's a lot of them in the room so take heed, all of you, language like failures are staggering, violations of this magnitude rarely occur, stunning display of incompetence, bitter irony, breathtaking dereliction of duty are not only unpersuasive, they're somewhat annoying. I don't have time for rhetoric. I'm really, really busy.
After an aside in which she wondered why anyone would even want her job of federal judge, the court further scolded defense counsel on their approach to the matter, adding
I don't know whether you stay up nights trying to think of clever phrases, but trust me, no judge that I've ever spoken to has ever said, Boy, can that guy turn a phrase. They only say, Boy, why didn't he get to the point. So, please, in future pleadings, remember that.
Returning her attention again to the specific rhetoric in defendants' brief, the judge offered a reminder to counsel that "I've been around awhile both in practice and on the bench, so I suspect I've seen a few more cases than you, and really, it's not all that staggering and it's not all that great a magnitude, so when your experience and mine differ, it just takes all of the punch out of those comments."
Bottom line: After scolding counsel for a bit in the hearing, Fischer denied the defendants' motion. And as Kevin LaCroix (now an executive with OakBridge Insurance Services) observed after reading the transcript's account of the tone and temper of the parties' pleadings in the case, his "own decision years ago to walk away from the active practice of law seemed more and more like a really smart move."
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 3, 2012 at 03:02 PM | Permalink
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Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere.
1) Question: Where can I go in New York to meet top business executives and political figures? I'm trying to think outside of the box a bit here.
Answer: Try the Midstate Correctional Facility. It is reportedly "amazing" for that type of networking. (New York Daily News, Rapper Ja Rule, serving two years for gun possession, finds new posse behind bars)
2) Question: I'm one of the best high school linebackers in the country. I was deciding between scholarships offers from Clemson to Auburn, and ultimately chose Auburn because when I visited Clemson they had no Chick-fil-A on campus. But after I signed my National Letter of Intent saying I would attend Auburn, I learned that there was, in fact, a Chick-fil-A on the Clemson campus. D'oh!! Is my Letter of Intent binding?
Answer: According to the NCAA, your NLI is, in fact, binding and if you breach it and attend a different school you will lose one season of competition in your sport. On the bright side, you have a Chick-fil-A in your future no matter what you do! (Dr. Saturday, Cassanova McKinzy spurned Clemson because he missed the Chick-fil-A)
3) Question: I'm a documentary filmmaker and I'm attending a congressional hearing looking into EPA's investigation of potential water contamination from natural gas drilling. Can I film it?
Answer: Only if you don't mind getting arrested for "unlawful entry." (Politico, Josh Fox arrested at hearing)
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 3, 2012 at 01:40 PM | Permalink
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Here are today's three burning legal questions, along with the answers provided by the blogosphere.
1) Question: I would like to make a donation to my law school and possibly have something named after me. My donation will be generous, but not enough to get my name on a whole wing of a building or anything like that. How about a Men's Room?
Answer: That is a novel idea, but just know that if you went to Harvard Law School, the Men's Room naming rights are already taken. (Above the Law, True Story: Harvard Law Sells Naming Rights to Its New Bathrooms, and a Berkeley Law Professor Couldn't Be Happier)
2) Question: I just got my welfare check. Time to hit the strip club -- who is with me?!
Answer: Not so fast. (CBS News, House bans welfare recipients' money from strip clubs, liquor stores)
3) Question: Here is the plan. I will take about five tons of ice from a glacier in my hometown in the Patagonia region of Chile (nobody is using it, trust me). Then we'll ship it by a refrigerated truck to Santiago and make designer ice cubes out of it for cocktails. Brilliant! Approve?
Answer: No. Sorry, but you cannot just help yourself to tons of ice from local glaciers in Chile. That will get you charged with theft and possibly with "violation of national monuments." (The Guardian, Glacier thief arrested in Chile) (via Consumerist)
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Posted by Bruce Carton on February 2, 2012 at 04:27 PM | Permalink
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