At an unusually scheduled Sunday morning meeting today, the American Bar Association’s Council of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted not to approve Miskatonic University School of Law’s accreditation application. The administration of the Massachusetts-based law school, named for the nearby river of the same name, learned of the decision this morning via a two page facsimile. Following on the heels of the somewhat controversial accreditation denial of Tennessee’s Duncan School of Law, Miskatonic Law’s dean, Dr. Henry Armitage, III, expressed his disappointment at the decision and noted that the institution may challenge the ruling in the immediate future.

A centuries-old conservative institution steeped in tradition, Miskatonic Law is known for its significant dedication to historical (sometimes ancient) jurisprudence, the study of ecclesiastical law, and its extensive library collection.

“We have met all of the standards set forth by the ABA, and the academic credentials of our students and faculty are unequaled,” said Miskatonic Law’s Dean of Students Ward Phillips IV. “We believe this is an unnecessarily punitive act simply because our institution has declined to adopt a number of novel curricular norms which have permeated legal education for the past several decades.”

Contacted today by Abnormal Use, the Council of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar had no official comment. However, some associated with the committee are speaking privately about the denial.

“Something just didn’t sit right with us about this place,” said one ABA Council member who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the accreditation process.

According to reports, the ABA Council objected to the lack of faculty diversity at Miskatonic Law.  Said one ABA Council member, who also wished to remain anonymous:  “Most of the professors at Miskatonic attended Miskatonic, and the supermajority of them are children or grandchildren of prior Miskatonic Law professors.  We simply did not see an appropriate diversity of faculty credentials at this university.”

Said another Council representative: “As you know, we look to the make-up of an institution’s student body when making an accreditation determination. Although their grades and LSAT scores were more than adequate, Miskatonic Law’s incoming students did not have the typical backgrounds that you would expect in a more familiar law school setting.  There were almost no business or political science majors among the applicants and first year students; rather, the law school student body is composed of former archaeology, anthropology, and parapsychology majors. Quite frankly, many of them had studied unfamiliar disciplines which we had to research further to identify. There were a good many that had the prefix paleo- preceding the field of study, as well.”

“There are an unusual number of evening classes at Miskatonic,” said an ABA staffer familiar with accreditation proceedings.

Despite the denial, representatives of the ABA’s Council of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar specifically commended Miskatonic Law’’s “impressive collection of old volumes” in its many libraries, a factor which would ordinarily earn an institution significant points in the accreditation process.  But apparently, according to one source, its library only contains “old and archaic volumes and had no access to modern legal databases.”

Armitage, whose grandfather once served as the University’s librarian, remarked, “Harvard is not punished for its early editions of Blackstone’s Commentaries, and that’s a much newer set of books than many we use on a daily basis.”

“We are a different type of law school, to be sure,” said Armitage. “Certainly, our students seek a more specialized understanding of a very remote subset of law. But we should not be punished and denied accreditation because of that. Despite the fact that their backgrounds may be different than those students seeking admission into a Harvard or Yale, our students love the craft of the law.”

Rumors of a lawsuit challenging the accreditation denial abound.  In addition to various antitrust causes of action, the administrator may assert a curious freedom of religion claim.

Armitage has scheduled a press conference to be held later today at the law school’s Asenath Waite Memorial Hall.

Although though we were perplexed to see a federal court address the issue, we can’t say we disagree with today’s opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of South Carolina, which found that the three Star Wars prequels were “unreasonably dangerous and defective” as a matter of law. See Kurtz v. George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd., and Indus. Light & Magic, No. 2011-1138-THX (W.D.S.C. April 1, 2011). After hearing cross motions for summary judgment, the court denied the Lucas Defendants’ motion for summary judgment and granted the Plaintiff’s motion finding no genuine issue of material fact as to the films’ defects.

The facts were these: In 2007, Plaintiff Danny Kurtz found himself at his local video store in Seneca, South Carolina browsing through the racks of new DVDs. His young seven year old son, Milo, pleaded with his father to buy him some action movies. Dutifully acquiescing to the request, Plaintiff bought him the prequels: 1999′s The Phantom Menace, 2002′s Attack of the Clones, and 2005′s Revenge of Sith. At the time of the purchase, neither the Plaintiff nor his son had seen the films. (“Somehow, I made it through the last decade without seeing those movies,” the Plaintiff testified at his deposition, although he later acknowledged his familiarity with the films’ generally poor reviews.). Although the purchase was “against his better judgment,” he relented only because of the joy he felt his child might experience in being introduced to the Star Wars universe, a delight the Plaintiff recalled from his own youth in the early 1980s. After a marathon weekend viewing of all three prequels, the Plaintiff and his son experienced nausea, confusion, light-headnesses, shortness of breath, tinnitus, and a “foreboding sense of ennui.”

Plaintiff brought suit individually and on behalf of his minor son against George Lucas and several corporations, asserting various tort theories, including negligence and strict products liability. Plaintiff also asserted a novel “tortious interference with childhood memory” cause of action on his own behalf, arguing that the release of the prequels had destroyed his ability to reminisce his own younger days and his youthful enjoyment of popular culture. (The alienation of affection claims of Plaintiff’s spouse, Carrie, were settled for an undisclosed sum.).

In their joint answer, the Lucas Defendants asserted the affirmative defenses of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, unclean hands, and equitable estoppel, essentially arguing that Plaintiff knew or should have known of the films’ lack of artistic merit and was thus barred from asserting any tort claims based upon his viewing of same. See In re: The Last Airbender, 523 F. Supp. 2d. 147 (N.D. Ga. 2010); In re: Ishtar Litig., 111 F.2d 102 (9th Cir. 1988).

In denying the defense motion for summary judgment, the court rejected the Defendants’ reliance on In re: Bob Dylan Live Performance Litig., 867 F.3d 539 (S.D.N.Y 2006), in which that court held that a once talented artist can devolve and become so well known in the community as a disappointment that damages are not recoverable as a matter of law. See also Shyamalan v. United States, 543 F.3d 129 (6th Cir. 2008). In distinguishing Dylan, the South Carolina court observed that while Bob Dylan’s decline had been gradual over a period of years, the decay of the Star Wars franchise was sudden and immediate (and preceded by nearly two decades of engendered good will prior to the prequels’ release in 1999).

The court then granted the Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, noting in a single paragraph order that the films were “unreasonably dangerous and defective as a matter of law.”

The case is also notable for a few other procedural rulings made by the court:

• The court quashed the Defendants’ deposition subpoena to actress Natalie Portman, who the court decided had “already suffered enough.”

• Finding the issue nonjusticiable and incapable of resolution by the judiciary, the court denied Plaintiff’s request to issue a declaration that Han Solo had, in fact, shot first.
• Earlier in the case, the court had dismissed Plaintiff’s state law Unfair Trade Practices Act claim which was premised upon the casting of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker in the second and third prequels. In so doing, the court noted that the Unfair Trade Practices Act claim was merely an attempt to assert an improper negligent casting cause of action, a claim which the South Carolina Supreme Court had only last year abrogated in the Watchmen litigation. See Moore v. Snyder, 572 S.E.2d 492, 652 S.C. 19 (2009).
• The court denied the Defendants’ request to consolidate the case with a similar North Carolina matter arising from a Charlotte family’s viewing of 2008′s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.