Quick! How can we seek exclusion of Superboy’s statement on the cover of Superboy #151, published way, way back in 1968.  Wouldn’t this cover, without any accompanying text, make for a good law school exam question? Is his confession admissible? Is this a custodial interrogation?  Has he been Mirandized? (Apparently not, as the police officers seem to surprised by the hero’s arrival to have already read him his rights.). We suppose it’s a good thing that Superboy is making that declaration during the last days of the Warren Court.

Today is Friday the 13th.  Beware.

Remember last month, when we here at Abnormal Use published a piece on the Christmas classic, “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”?  If you don’t recall, you can revisit that holiday themed article here. Well, get this. Yesterday, Sam Favate at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reported on a federal judge’s refusal to dismiss a copyright arising from a version of that song.  See here for more information on that proceeding. Everything ultimately gets litigated, we suppose.

Friend of the blog Steve McConnell of the Drug and Device Law blog will be a part of a free CLE webinar on January 25.  When we saw his name as a presenter, we thought that the CLE would be a gritty analysis of the legal themes of Springsteen’s immortal “Darkness of the Edge of Town” LP, but actually, it’s about the duty to warn in the digital era.  For details, see here.  And remember: it’s free!

Rachel WIlkes Barchie of the Law Law Land blog has a post with a great title: “Creepy Tweeters Have Speech Rights Too.” Fortunately, there are no references to Abnormal Use in the piece.

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.

Yesterday was our second blog birthday, and we got some great news!  After all the votes were tabulated, Abnormal Use won the popular vote for the Torts category in the ABA Journal‘s 5th Annual Blawg 100.  You’ll recall that back in early December, we were named one of the top 100 legal blogs by the editors of the ABA Journal, and as a part of that, we were placed into a category with five other well regarded Torts blogs, including our friends Walter Olson of Overlawyered, J. Russell Jackson of Jackon on Consumer Class Actions and Mass Torts, and Jim Beck, Will Sachse and Steve McConnell of the Drug and Device Law blog.  It was a privilege just to be included in that list.

But then came the campaigning. The editors of the ABA Journal asked that their readers vote upon their favorite blogs in each category.  So, for most of December, readers could vote for their favorite Torts blog in our category, or their other favorites in other categories.  The polls closed on December 30. We learned yesterday that we won the popular vote for the Torts category, and we couldn’t be more honored. You can see the final results in each category here. (We also congratulate friends of the blog Kevin Underhill of the Lowering the Bar blog and Jeff Richardson of the iPhone J.D. blog, for winning the popular vote in their “For Fun” and “Legal Technology” categories, respectively.).

We couldn’t have won it without the support of you, our dear readers.  Thanks again for voting for us, and of course, thanks for continuing to read our site!

We here at Abnormal Use celebrate our second birthday today. That’s right, dear readers! Our very first post – our mission statement – was published two years ago today! We’ve greatly enjoyed bringing you products liability litigation commentary over the past two years. Ordinarily, this might be the time for pensive self-reflection.  It might also be a good time to retell our origin story. But we’ve done that all before (including as recently as last November, on the occasion of our 500th post).

So, today, dear readers, you get a brief preview of what is to come from this site in 2012. No spoilers, but we have some big things in store for you this year. You might think we’re getting overconfident in our old age (two is pretty old in blog years), but we’ve hatched some ambitious plans for this year, so stay tuned and wait for what we have in store for you.

To see our first birthday post, click here.

Okay, dear readers.  It’s early January, and you are just now returning vacation, and unfortunately, you are probably not reading your favorite products liability law blog.  So, today, we’ll talk about something frivolous:  our recent attempt at a pop culture interview (although one somewhat related to the practice of law).

As you recall, last month, our fearless leader Mills Gallivan authored a post commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the great 1981 film, Absence of Malice.  Mills remarked upon the film’s greatest scene, the one featuring Wilford Brimley as the U.S. Attorney cleaning up the mess the other characters made throughout the film.  Mills rightly noted that the scene is the film’s best. He also explained why that scene continues to resonate with lawyer viewers even three decades later.

But, as you know, we here at Abnormal Use occasionally like to spice things up with interviews with our favorite pop culture figures, particularly when an anniversary is involved.  Way back in March of this year, we interviewed the writers and producer of the 1991 film Class Action (which you may remember starred Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as father/daughter lawyers on opposite sides of a products liability case).  In preparation for Mills’ Absence of Malice piece, we sought interviews with some folks associated with that film.  First, we contacted Kurt Luedtke,  the screenwriter, who declined our request.  (We should note for the record that Mr. Luedtke declined personally, not through his representation, and did so in perhaps the most polite fashion we have ever encountered here at Abnormal Use.)  Next, we requested an interview with Brimley himself through his representation.  We thought it might be fun to ask the actor who created the film’s most memorable role.  As sometimes happened, we sent several requests to his representation and heard nothing back – not a single response.  This is not unusual, and quite frankly, not unexpected, as we are just a two year old law blog on the East Coast and we doubt Hollywood agents and PR officials consider us of much value to their clients’ careers.  However, we have had some limited success in the past and thought we would give it the old college try.  But after a few unreturned attempts at contact, we gave up.

Then it happened.

You wouldn’t believe what happened.

One day I returned to my office from lunch and found a voicemail waiting for me.  There’s nothing quite like the feeling of walking into your office and seeing the red light on your phone lit, as that could mean many things, not all of them good.  But, at the end of the day, there’s nothing unusual about a voicemail, so we picked up the receiver and dialed our password.

And we listened to the one voicemail that was waiting for us.

From Wilford Brimley.

In his unmistakable voice.

And in the voicemail (now lost to history), Brimley related that he had gotten a “letter from you people” and was calling in response our request.

Although the voice was most certainly that of Brimley, we couldn’t believe it.  We thought that perhaps one of our colleagues or Abnormal Use writers was playing a joke on us and impersonating the actor.  (Prime suspect:  Steve Buckingham.)  However, our investigation led to the inescapable conclusion that the voicemail was in fact from Brimley himself.  Apparently, his representation or agent or whomever had forwarded our request to him, and he called us directly.

But he did not leave a number.

There was not a way to contact him back because he did not leave a number.

Attempts to reach him again through his agent were unsuccessful.

If only we had been at our desk on that particular day we could have done an impromptu interview with Brimley himself.

But it was not to be.

Alas.

Well, it’s now 2012.  How about that?  This is a big year, featuring both a presidential election in the United States and the impending end of the world (if you believe in the latest apocalypse theory).  Also, interestingly enough, two of the last three years – 2010 and 2012 – have served as the titles of major motion pictures.

We are not sure what to think about all of that.

As the first business day of the new year, and just a day after New Year’s Day, it may be tough to be motivated, if you find yourself in the office at all.  (We may not be here at all; we wrote this post months ago and queued it to run some time ago.)  So, on this day, we direct you one last time to our favorite posts of 2011, a year for which we are already feeling some level of nostalgia.

Hey, that’s just us.

Wow.  2011 has come and very nearly gone.  That’s the cycle of life, we suppose. But we must pause to confess that we here at Abnormal Use and Gallivan, White & Boyd, P.A. have had one heck of a year.  On the blog front, we hit 500 posts. We were named by the ABA Journal to this year’s ABA Blawg 100 and also named one of the Top 25 Torts Blogs by the LexisNexis Litigation Resource Community. We were cited by The New York Times, Scientific American, and National Public Radio. We caused a stir with our many (some say too many) posts on the infamous Stella Liebeck McDonald’s hot coffee case. And, as per usual, we interviewed a whole host of law professors, practitioners, and pop culture celebs.

On the law firm front, it was also a significant year with many big changes.  We began 2011 as a law firm with a single office in Greenville, South Carolina.  We end 2011 as a larger, more regional firm with three offices in two states.  This past spring, we opened an office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then, just a few months later, we opened an office in Columbia, South Carolina, just a stone’s throw from the state capitol building.

So, as you can see, it’s been quite a year for us here, both at the blog and within the firm.

Here’s hoping that 2012 is just as exciting.

As 2011 draws to a close, we here at Abnormal Use have looked back on the year and shared with you both our favorite posts of 2011 and the Abnormal Interviews we published in the preceding twelve months.  One thing that we have not yet addressed is our great fondness of your reader comments and feedback.  We have received all sorts of comments this year, from congratulations, to praise, to vitriol.  (We certainly opened a can of worms with our discussion of the McDonald’s hot coffee case and our review of a plaintiff’s attorney’s documentary on same).

So, in the coming year, we humbly request that you please keep your thoughts and comments coming.  Even if you disagree with us, we hope you will share your opinions and observations (and judging by the past year, none of you are shy about doing so).

We also remind you that there are several ways to get a hold of us.  We are all into this social media thing and offer such outlets.

The blog itself:  First and foremost, you can comment and communicate with us directly right here on the blog itself. Don’t forget, too, that in the right hand column we feature a complete list of our writers and contributors. If you click on one of those names, you will be taken to that individual’s official biography on our law firm’s website, where you contact that writer directly via email if you wish.

Twitter:  We here at Abnormal Use love Twitter, and we tweet links to each blog post. We also try to interact with our friends and legal colleagues in the Twittersphere.  You can reach us on Twitter at @gwblawfirm.  So, if you like Twitter as much as we do, tweet us!

Facebook:  This year, we finally set up a Facebook page for Abnormal Use.  If you are a sporadic visitor to our website, but a frequent visitor to Facebook, you can follow our updates there without ever having to leave your favorite social network.  Click here to reach us there.

Now that you know all of the ways to reach us, please drop us a line in 2012!

We here at Abnormal Use and Gallivan, White, & Boyd, P.A. wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. May your day be filled with joy, family, and good cheer. And yes, that another cover of Christmas with the Super-Heroes, published by DC Comcis, way back when. (Click here to see which Christmas theme comic book cover we chose to run last 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!