Behold, the cover of The Batman & Robin Adventures #6, published not so long ago in the halcyon days of 1996. But at that time, things were not going so well for the Boy Wonder.  The cover depicts a copy of a newspaper, The National Insider, the headline of which exclaims, “Batman Fires Robin.”  We wonder if Robin sought any advice from an employment lawyer following this report.  For one, who told the newspaper that Robin was fired? Surely not Batman.  Alfred, maybe? Perhaps there’s a potential defamation claim there.  We’re trying to imagine Robin completing a complaint and submitting it to the EEOC.  Can you imagine that pre-investigation mediation?

Friend of our blog Jeff Richardson, himself of the famed iPhone J.D. blog, notes that we are just a few days away from the release of the iPad 3.  Make certain you are reading Jeff’s site next week for all iPad related news.

Eric Goldman has a post over at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog that you’ve got to read to believe.  We know we say stuff like that all the time, but here’s the headline: “Facebook, Google and Lexis-Nexis Get 47 USC 230 Immunity in a Bizarre Case Involving a Missing Sex Toy–Gaston v. Facebook.” Um, okay. How about that? Let’s hope that one makes the case books some day.

Don’t forget!  Today is Texas Independence Day!

The legal blogosphere is consumed with talk of the Washington, D.C. based federal judge who this week struck down the proposed federally required labels for cigarette packages.  As you will recall from our post here, the proposed new label were icky and gross. The district court basically agreed with our assessment.  See here for Findlaw’s Courtside blog’s post on this new development.

And, yes, if you must know, we here at Abnormal Use remain crestfallen that we were unable to catch the Radiohead concert last night in nearby Atlanta, Georgia. (Our editor has seen the band live four times!) We are recuperating – or attempting to – from this existential issue. Here’s the set list from last night, if you must know. Sigh.

This weekend will, however, be dedicated to another musical group, The Monkees.  As you know doubt heard, Monkee Davy Jones died this week in Florida at age 66.  Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. So, for the foreseeable future, we’ll definitely be listening to “Daydream Believer” and “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You” on repeat. Rest in peace, Mr. Jones.

If you frequent this site, you know we try to showcase legal themed comic book covers on Fridays. Let us tell you this: that gets more and more challenging each week! So, depicted above is Infamous: Lindsay Lohan #1, published not so long ago in September of 2011 by Bluewater Comics (which often produces quickie celebrity bio titles like these).  On that cover, we see the troubled former starlet taking her mug shot about as seriously as she likely takes everything else in her difficult, difficult life. Whatever the case, we doubt the folks in California would allow a prisoner to be so cavalier during the mug shot process.

As you may recall, in the past, our own Frances Zacher has written a bit about the legal issues involving driverless cars.  In a post called “Autobots – First Casualty,” the author of the Living the Meme blog attempts to pick up where Frances left off and explore the issue in further detail.  Check it out.

Get this!  Accordingly to The Lariat, Baylor Law School – our editor Jim Dedman’s alma mater – recently hosted a “People’s Law School.”  At that event, there was a section dedicated entirely to the McDonald’s hot coffee case! Had we been in Waco that day, we would not have missed it!

Speaking of our editor, last week he was hanging out in Philadelphia on a vacation of sorts and he met and hung out with Max Kennerly, the author of famed Litigation & Trial law blog. It was a great time, we hear.  However, if you had overhead their conversation about blogs, Twitter, and BBSs, you would have thought they were huge nerds.

Oh, and you may remember that we’ve been hinting for a while that we have some big plans in store for you, our dear readers, in 2012.  Today is the last Friday in February.  In just a few weeks, in mid-March, you’ll see our first such  blogging project of note.  Be forewarned: it’s a doozey!

Way, way back in the early 1970′s, there was once a television program called “The Young Lawyers,” which starred Lee J. Cobb, Judy Pace, and Zalman King (who passed away earlier this month at age 69). At some point during the show’s run, Dell Comics published the comic book above dedicated to the program. Its tagline for this issue reads: “When a bomber strikes, who is to blame?” We would suggest that the person to blame is likely the bomber. (Maybe they young lawyers never took Crim Law.).

Max Kennerly of the Litigation & Trial law blog offers this great post entitled “The Real Risks of Writing a Legal Blog.”

As you know, we here at Abnormal Use go to great lengths to chronicle the hot coffee litigation.  Some have accused of us of trying to relitigate a long dead issue (or is it beat a dead horse?).  However, it seems these issues may be more relevant than even we realized.  Just last week, at the local Starbucks drive-thru right here in our own Greenville, South Carolina, we overheard:  ”Give me a Venti Americano, two Splendas, and . . . make it extra hot!  I mean, really hot!” Contributory negligence, perhaps? Assumption of risk?  Or something more sinister? Perhaps this zealous customer was seeking a golden payday.  Stay tuned to Abnormal Use to find out.

Here we go again!  According to this report by Jon Campisi at Legal News Line, “[a] Philadelphia woman who claims she became burned by a hot cup of coffee at local Burger King is suing the fast food giant in state court.”  The incident occurred on Valentine’s Day 2010, two  years ago this week, and the Plaintiff alleges that “[t]he lid had not been properly placed on the cup, causing the hot coffee to spill on [the Plaintiff]” when the fast food employee handed it to her at the drive thru.  We’ll be following this one.

Hey, deponents, don’t call your 88 year old grandmother “The Creeper” at your deposition.  Okay? Thanks.

Behold! Above you’ll find an image of an old Dell comic book featuring Disney’s own Mickey Mouse! It appears that our hero has donned the garb of a private detective, and he’s even gone so far as to post an advertisement hawking his services as a “Private Eye for Hire.” Perhaps he is even assisting local law firms investigate their clients’ potential claims and defenses. Let’s hope, though, for the mouse’s sake, that he has complied with all state regulations and properly secured his state-issued investigator license.  We can certainly imagine a situation where Mickey Mouse is deposed and vigorously cross examined about his failure to comply with the state’s licensing scheme.  Poor Mickey.

In response to yesterday’s post observing the tenth anniversary of our editor Jim Dedman’s graduation from Baylor Law School, friend of the blog and Baylor lawyer Eric Nordstrom sends in this YouTube movie clip noting the significance of the passage of a decade.  It’s a clip from the 1997 flick Grosse Pointe Blank,  a film we couldn’t love more, so we direct you to itww. on this day.

Earlier this week, we ran not one, but two posts on the perils of social media and how your advocate opponents might use it against you in the future. As you may have seen, our editor Jim Dedman had a general piece on the issue, while guest author Stuart Mauney offered a real life example of his own Facebook posts being used against him at a mediation by an opposing attorney. These posts prompted some discussion in the legal blogosphere. We’re happy to report that Bruce Carton at Law.Com’s Legal Blog Watch picked up on the story. We encourage you to visit his post and peruse his readers’ comments.

Don’t forget: You can follow Abnormal Use on Twitter at @gwblawfirm and on Facebook here. (In fact, check out our GWB 2.0 website for all of our social media endeavors as a blog and law firm.).

If you’re reading this site, you already know that we here at Abnormal Use are huge Internet nerds, and of course, that love of such things extends to Twitter. (An aside: Don’t forget, you can follow up on Twitter at @gwblawfirm). Well, our editor had his 15 minutes of Twitter fame this week when one of his tweets was read on national television on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” You see, at some point last week, the online team for “This Week” asked the show’s viewers to submit questions for the show to be read by Mr. Stephanopoulos (who was vacationing last week and replaced for the day by ABC’s Jake Tapper). Viewers were encouraged to ask questions relating to the issues of the day and use the hashtag #askgeorge. Well, our editor couldn’t resist, and the most important question he could muster was the one you see above: “Why isn’t George F. Will on Twitter?” And as you see above, this past Sunday, “This Week” broadcast that tweet on national television!  Not only did they do that, they took the question to George Will, whose reply is below:

Said he: “I don’t think in 140 characters, but in 751 word chunks.”

He’s, of course, referring to newspaper column link, but interestingly, as some observed, his reply was less than 140 characters.

You may not think this is as cool as we do, but if you do, you can watch the episode in question on the ABC News website. Click here for the online version of the 1/29 episode and fast forward to 46:45 in the video. You’ll then see the tweet itself and the discussion thereof.

And, alas, if you’re bored with today’s discussion of Twitter and political talk shows, don’t worry, we’ll return to legal themed comic book covers next week.

So, we thought we would escape from the world a bit this past weekend and revisit Superman Returns, the 2006 reboot of the Man of Steel film franchise directed by Bryan Singer and starring Brandon Routh as Supes.  Well, before we even reached the halfway point of the film, we bristled at a very basic legal mistake.  Villian Lex Luthor is a free man because Superman “missed a court date.”  Well, that’s an interesting procedurla twist.  Specifically, though, a character remarks that “the appellate court” called Superman as a witness, and Superman – whose extended absence from the Earth is a key plot point of the film – didn’t appear when summoned.  Thus, Luthor goes free.  But appellate courts don’t call witnesses!  (Note: We’re obviously not the first ones to point this out, but we are the most recent bloggers to be irked by it.).  By the way, that’s the cover of the DC Comics Superman Returns comic adaptation depicted above.

The wonderful, wonderful Etta James will be missed by us.  May she rest in peace.

Katherine Frye of the North Carolina Law Blog asks: “Should I Delete My Facebook Account?“  She’s not asking whether she, the lawyer, should delete her own Facebook account, but how she, as an advocate, should address her clients concerns about their own social media profiles.

If you follow Zoey Deschanel’s litigation choices, then you must see here.

Read this 1985 letter from Roger Enrico, the chief executive officer of PepsiCo, on the release of New Coke. (Hat Tip: Letters of Note).

Depicted above is the cover of Batman Gotham Adventures #27, published not so long ago in 2000.  Here’s our question: If Batman has been, as the cover suggests,  “wrongfully accused” and jailed, why have his jailers permitted him to remain in costume? Surely it is a violation of the Gotham City Detention Center’s policies and procedures to permit a criminal defendant to remain in costume.  We suspect that Batman ultimately escapes this predicament, but we also surmise that if he had been revealed to be Bruce Wayne during his confinement his flight from justice would have been much, more difficult.  By the way, this is not the first time we’ve looked at a cover from this series.  See here for a similarly puzzling cover.

According to this tweet by our own Stuart Mauney, the South Carolina Bar House Delegates debated the rule against perpetuities yesterday.  There’s something we never thought we’d hear of again.  What next? The rule in Shelley’s case?

For years and years, we’ve loved The Onion.  This week, that satirical paper published a piece entitled, “Supreme Court Overturns ‘Right v. Wrong.’“  That’s big news.

Lawyerist asks its lawyer readers: “Is Facebook ruining your life?” We’ll get back to you on that one.

Jeremy Grabill of The Product Liability Monitor pauses to comment upon the release of Susan Saladoff’s “Hot Coffee” documentary on DVD.  Grabill notes: “[F]or every sympathetic plaintiff that Ms. Saladoff (the film’s producer/director) presents, there are no doubt an equal (if not greater) number of truly frivolous claims that could be chronicled, especially in the mass tort context.” As you know, you can follow our continuing coverage of that film and the fabled Stella Liebeck McDonald’s hot coffee case here.

Behold, the cover of Justice League of America #81, published way, way back in 1970.  Five members of the Justice League have apparently been involuntarily committed by none other than the Man of Steel himself. On the cover, Superman tells a institution guard, “I had to put them away! They – They’re hopelessly insane!,” referring to his super colleagues The Flash, Batman, Hawkman, Atom, and Black Canary.  Here’s our question: Wouldn’t they be placed in proper asylum garb somewhere between their initial confinement and the commitment hearings? The warden of the asylum is letting them continue to wear their costumes? Do you think Batman got to keep his utility belt, too, as well as his cowl? Where did they get a tiny straight jacket for the Atom? (And for that matter, how effective are those prison bars against the Atom, who can obviously walk through them?) What kind of asylum is this?

Lawyers are always talking about quality of life issues and work/family balance.  As attorneys, we all must find ways to ameliorate the stress of jobs in our daily lives, right? You can’t go to a CLE these days without hearing the topic which is, of course, important and worth discussing. That issue leads us to our recently received screener of NBC’s “The Firm,” the new television legal drama based upon the John Grisham novel and the 1993 film adaptation starring Tom Cruise.  It premieres this Sunday on NBC at 9/8c. If you’re concerned about your mental well being and the calm tranquility of home life after a full day of legal toil, don’t watch this new series. It’s too frustrating to watch due to all of the grievous legal errors and nonsense.  We only made it twenty minutes into the pilot before switching it off.  We couldn’t handle any more than that.

Starring Josh Lucas as Mitchell McDeere (the character originally played by Tom Cruise), the series chronicles his exploits years and years after the events depicted in the film.  It’s been a long while since McDeere worked at Bendini, Lambert, & Locke, the nefarious Memphis firm whose downfall McDeere prompted in the film.  In fact, as the new narrative begins, McDeere is a solo practitioner. It’s not until later in the pilot that he joins a new firm.

Whereas the original film had some nice touches for lawyer and non-lawyer viewers alike, “The Firm” is the sort of hokey legal television show that we’ve seen a million times before with all the overly familiar stereotypes. McDeere is the vexing  type of television lawyer who only seems to represent innocent defendants and reasonable, careful plaintiffs wronged by some evil multinational corporate conglomerate.

In the first few scenes, McDeere casually discusses a potential products liability case with his assistant, Tammy (Juliette Lewis, the same character played by Holly Hunter in the film).  Apparently, one of McDeere’s clients had a “defective stent,” which prompts discussion between McDeere and Tammy about “thousands of plaintiffs” and this being McDeere’s “biggest tort case of the year.” (They never cause to consider the Plaintiff’s pre-existing medical history. Of course the product must be defective!). Pausing to assume that the corporation is, of course, sinister, Tammy  remarks: “I’m sure they’ll settle; the last thing they want is a trial.”  Right, of course. McDeere’s brother, Ray, (played by Callum Keith Rennie here and by the far better David Strathairn in the film), is now an investigator for McDeere’s solo outfit.  Decrying his inability to find dirt on the drug company, Ray says, “The company knows better to leave a paper trail!”  Of course they do! More tired cliches about nefarious corporate defendants, just like so many other lawyer shows these days. Sigh.

“The Firm” also exists in a universe where lawyers are summoned to court solely to be appointed to a new pro bono case by a judge.  (Apparently, it doesn’t occur to court administration to send such appointments through the mail.). McDeere appears in court – twenty minutes late – for what he thinks is a hearing in one case; the judge, however, called upon him to appoint him to represent a new criminal defendant, a teenage boy wearing a bloody shirt.  McDeere and his new client then go to a conference room in the courthouse to discuss the case. That’s right.  In this universe, the defendant is allowed to meet privately with his lawyer while still wearing evidence before it’s collected by the police and crime scene investigators.  (McDeere even tells the defendant the police will ultimately want to collect the shirt later!).  Spoliation, anyone? Wouldn’t the police have already collected that evidence? Why would the system allow the minor defendant to get all the way to the courtroom for a pro bono legal appointment while still wearing the same bloody clothes in which he allegedly committed the crime?

Maybe these issues were resolved later on in the pilot, but we couldn’t bear to watch any longer. We understand that McDeere once again ends up at a large firm which seems like a dream job, which of course, actually is not.

In the end, “The Firm” is yet another lawyer show written by writers who know nothing about the legal process except from what they’ve seen on television on other bad lawyer shows. There are enough of those already.

For a far more professional television review of this program, see this piece by noted television critic Alan Sepinwall.

Today, marks the last day of 2011 blogging for us here at Abnormal Use.  With that also comes our last humble request for you to vote for us in the 2011 ABA Journal Blawg 100.  As we previously mentioned, we here at Abnormal Use were honored by being named to the 2011 ABA Journal Blawg 100 for the second year in a row.  We have been placed in the Torts category with five other excellent blogs.  The editors of the ABA Journal have asked that their readers vote upon their favorite blogs in each category, and today is the last day of voting!  

If you enjoy what we do here at Abnormal Use, we would greatly appreciate your support and humbly request that you cast your vote for us.  Here’s how:

Plug this website into your browser:

http://www.abajournal.com/blawg100

You will be prompted to register with the ABA Journal website.  It’s takes just a moment, as all you need to do is create a username and  password.

Once you have completed the registration, you will be taken to a page with a large logo at the top with twelve categories of blogs listed below it.

Click on the category labeled “Torts.”

Scroll down and find the entry for Abnormal Use.  Click the “Vote Now!” next to the Abnormal Use logo entry.

We’ll let you know how that turns out for us. In the meantime, we hope that you have a Happy New Year!

Rather than link a series of Christmas themed legal news stories, today, we here at Abnormal Use thought we would explore something a bit more cheer inducing and suited to the holiday at hand. So, to celebrate the occasion, we asked three of our contributors to share their thoughts on the movies they cherish most during the holidays. (We tried this once on Halloween, so we thought, why not for Christmas?)

Steve Buckingham: There are two movies that stand out in my mind as perennial feel-good classics: A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life.  One is the story of a bad man’s redemption; the other is a story of a good man’s redemption.  And what could be more inspirational around the holidays than that?  It’s a dynamic duo of warm-fuzzies.

But I’m not really a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy.  So why am I drawn to these stories?  I think it’s because I see so much of myself in both Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey.

Some of you may be thinking, Whatever, Buckingham.  Don’t flatter yourself.  You’re not interesting enough to be a character. Fair enough.  But I have this theory — it’s more of a working hypothesis — that Scrooge and George have a lot in common.  So much in common, in fact, that it was the same basic personality trait that led to each of their downfalls: Duty.

You can see it in Scrooge’s early life.  As a young man, Scrooge was engaged to a lovely young filly.  The relationship eventually fell apart because Scrooge was working all the time.  Some may say that Scrooge’s ambition was his downfall.  But I think that misses the mark.  If we could talk with Scrooge, we would learn that he pushed himself so hard because he felt the weight of being responsible for not only himself but potentially for a wife and kids.  Scrooge believed it was his duty to be self-sufficient, and if he had a family, to be a provider for them.  But Scrooge was not willing to take on the responsibility of family until he was financially secure.  Instead, Scrooge ended up in social isolation.

We can also see duty at work in George Bailey.  All his life, George made decisions with others in mind, even if his choice came at great personal sacrifice.  George’s duty was to serve his community, and at times, to save his community.  This, of course, resulted in George bearing the weight of responsibility for not only his family, but also his friends and neighbors.  That weight had been accumulating for years, and then suddenly, it became crushing.  To the point where George thought that the world would be better off without him.

Most men, if they’re being honest with themselves, will admit to feeling the very same pressures, sometimes just as strongly.  Our identities are hard-wired to the concept of duty, and more importantly, to the belief that we have done our duty, whether to our friends, our families, our jobs, our communities, whatever.  It is a wretched thought to think that we have not lived up to those expectations.  And so we can look at George and think, Man, I’ve been there.  I know exactly what he’s going through.  Or we can look at Scrooge and say, I’m not that bad, am I? But with either character, it can be like looking into a mirror.  Sometimes you like what you see; sometimes you don’t.

The enduring lesson of A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life is that our fulfillment comes from the relationships we build and the good that we do in the time we have.  In the midst of life’s pressure, it’s hard to keep that truth in mind.  But what better time than the holidays, when you’re surrounded by folks you love and who love you, to remember why it was we worked so hard this year and why we’ll do the same the next.

Nick Farr: No Christmas is ever complete without a screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Aside from its comedy, what makes the film truly special is how it resonates with viewers.  While you may have never had a Christmas filled with quite so many shenanigans, you can relate to the Griswalds.  We all appreciate the stress of planning the perfect family holiday gathering.  We all have that one crazy family member you question how he cross-pollinated with the family tree.  We all struggle with putting aside external pressures to enjoy a little family time at home.  Above all else, we all know that at the end of the day somehow it all works.

Many Christmas movies have been made depicting the archetypal Norman Rockwell family.  Those films fail to show all of the hard work that goes in to making the perfect Christmas.   What makes a real family is working through all of the chaos to get to the family photo. Christmas Vacation, while taking the chaos to the extreme, reminds us why we work so hard to try and make everything perfect.  Family.

Jim Dedman: Buckingham goes for meaning, Farr goes for laughs. But they’re both wrong. There is only one truly perfect Christmas film. As a matter of law, the best Christmas movie is, quite simply, Die Hard. Summary judgment granted. Happy holidays, everyone!