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.

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.

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!

For the second week in a row, we feature the cover of She-Hulk, this time issue #19, published not too long ago in 2007.  On the cover, we see the supervillain known as The Leader, clad in a business suit and lodging an objection, properly no less! Behind him, we see two others, presumably lawyers, and we think the one on the right may be Jennifer Walters, the alter ego of She-Hulk. The Leader seems to be taking his objection very seriously.  We would probably sustain it!

Big news this week at Gallivan, White, & Boyd, P.A.!  Congratulations go to Cory Ezzell, who was elected partner of the firm last week.  Also, partner and Abnormal Use editor Jim Dedman will be moving to GWB’s Charlotte, North Carolina office, which opened earlier this year. (Don’t worry; he’ll still be blogging).

Josh Camson at Lawyerist offers this post entitled “Three Lessons Lawyers Can Learn from The Muppets.” But what can Muppets learn from lawyers?

The South Carolina Supreme Court has ended associate membership in the South Carolina Bar.

Don’t forget! You can still vote for Abnormal Use in the ABA Journal Blawg 100!  If you like what we do, please consider voting for us. You can do so here. Voting ends on December 30, so we encourage you to cast your vote before you leave for the holidays!

We’ve previously mentioned here and here that the Marvel Comics character She-Hulk is a practicing attorney. We’re not entirely certain what is occurring on the cover of She-Hulk #21, depicted above and published not too long ago in 2007.  It appears, though, that She-Hulk has found herself in an argument with another lawyer in a conference room, perhaps at a mediation, perhaps at a deposition. We wonder if there are any local court rules that deal with confrontations with superheros at such events, though, and whether superheros are permitted to wear their costumes to court functions in lieu of more formal attire.

We here at Abnormal Use dig old pictures of court buildings. You might recall that we once recommended the Shorpy photo blog, which posts hi res photos of scenes past, usually a century old.  This week, that blog posted a photograph of the Pulaski County Courthouse in Little Rock, Arkansas taken in 1905. Check it out here. If you like what you see, you’ll enjoy losing yourself in that site and seeing all the old photograph in its impressive archives.

Don’t forget! You can still vote for Abnormal Use in the ABA Journal Blawg 100!  If you like what we do, please consider voting for us. You can do so here.

Many thanks to Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the founder of the Overlawyered blog, for speaking in both Greenville, South Carolina (the location of the Abnormal Use home office) and Charlotte, North Carolina (home of another of our offices) this past week.

Finally, if you’re on Twitter, come say hi to us there! You can chat with us on that site by going here.

We are very honored to note that yesterday we received two prestigious awards in the legal blogsophere. First, we were named by the ABA Journal to this year’s ABA Blawg 100.  We’re very pleased to be included in the Torts category with such blogging greats as Eric Turkewitz of the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, Walter Olson of Overlawyered, Bill Marler of Marler Blog, J. Russell Jackson of Jackson on Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts, and Jim Beck, Steve McConnell, and Will Sasche of the Drug and Device Law Blog. As you may recall, we were also named to this list last year, and one year later, we couldn’t be happier to be recognized in this fashion once more.  It was a big day yesterday here at AU HQ.

But that’s not all. We also learned today that Abnormal Use has been named one of the Top 25 Torts Blogs by the LexisNexis Litigation Resource Community.  We are in some prestigious company among those nominees, as well, and we’re very pleased and honored to be included as a part of that list, as well. As we said, it was a big day.

We’ll talk a bit more about these honors in this coming Monday’s post, but we wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you, our dear readers, for your support. We plan to give you all another year of this blogging thing in 2012, and we’re looking forward to doing so. Special thanks must go out to our contributors Steve Buckingham, Nick Farr, and Frances Zacher, as well as alumni Mary Giorgi and Laura Simons. We simply could not do this without them. If you follow the links to both the ABA Journal and Lexis Nexis Litigation Resource Community’s pages, you’ll see that both sites are calling for votes for your favorites of those listed.  We’d very much appreciate it if you would consider us for that additional honor.

Subject change: Apparently, there is a rapper named “Lawyer Mike.”  See here for a video.

Quote of the week: “I’m very disappointed in the fact that somebody riding their bike in February crashes on the ice and gets $100,000. It absolutely reminds me of the case involving the lady who ordered hot coffee at a McDonald’s and spilled it on her lap. That’s pretty much it. You know it’s hot coffee when you order it. And you know riding a bike at night, in winter, is a little dangerous,” John Cornish, the president of the Florence Park District said in this piece by David Erickson of The Missoulian on November 29.

We here at Abnormal Use hope and trust that you had a splendid Thanksgiving yesterday. Today, though, is all about shopping, isn’t it? We understand that there are lots of sales and deals to be found. You’d best get to the store and buy holiday gifts (unless, of course, you’re already in line at the store reading this site on your mobile device, and in that case, we applaud you both on your commitment to consumerism and your dedication to our fair website). Oh, and that’s the cover of Ha Ha Comics #60 depicted above, published way, way back in 1948.

Speaking of the gift giving season, be certain to check out The Hytech Lawyer‘s “Holiday Gift Suggestions for the iPad Lawyer.”

Christie Foppiano of the North Carolina Law Blog offers a Thanksgiving themed piece entitled “Of Mashed Potatoes and Mediation,” in which she formulates “some questions that may be helpful in preparing your client for mediation.”

Another week, another news report on a hot coffee lawsuit.  The Telegraph reports about two potential hot coffee lawsuits soon to be filed in Melbourne, Australia.  Here’s the twist: The two potential Plaintiffs – both of whom were on airline flights at the time of the spill – claim that a flight attendant spilled hot coffee on them during the flights.  (One of the potential Plaintiffs was on a flight to Bali, the other on a flight from Hawaii to Australia).  These cases are, of course, different than the infamous Stella Liebeck McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case, wherein the Plaintiff spilled coffee on herself.