Above you’ll find the cover of Batman Gotham Adventures #35, published not too long ago in 2001. There Batman stands behind the judicial bench, gavel in hand, with some type of governmental shield in the background. The bench itself is even emblazoned with the scales of justice. “Crime and Punishment,” reads the tagline on the issue’s cover. This cover begs the question: What is Batman doing in a courtroom? Why is he the judge? Was he appointed by the president? (We’d love to see that confirmation hearing). Or is this state court? Why isn’t he out catching bad guys?

By the way, you might recall our humble appeal a few weeks back to nominate us for this year’s ABA Journal Best Blawgs Award. Well, today is the last day that the ABA Journal is accepting those nominations.  The deadline is finally upon us! We’d sure appreciate it if you would consider nominating us for the honor, and we thank you if you have done so already. For information on how to make a nomination, please see here.

If you’re a South Carolina lawyer, turn to page 30 of this month’s South Carolina Lawyer bar magazine to see an article written by GWB associate and former Abnormal Use contributor Mary Giorgi.  It’s title: “Admissibility of Expert Testimony and Scientific Evidence / It Must Be Required to Be Desired.” Good reading, to be sure, and if you’re feeling nostalgic, check out Mary’s past blog posts here.

In this recent post, Kevin Underhill of the very funny Lowering The Bar law blog remarks upon news reports of an Iowa man sentenced to ten days in jail for failing to timely return materials checked out from his local library.  What got our attention, though, was Kevin’s linking of a past piece on the President George Washington Library Book Presidential Scandal. We’re stunned. Agog, even.

Last but not least: Orangutans use iPads! (Hat tip: iPhone J.D. blog).

Above, you’ll find the cover of Secrets of the Sinister House #17, published way back in 1974. As you can see, the prosecutor has called the murder victim himself to the stand to identify the criminal defendant as his killer. Is there precedent for that, we wonder? We suppose there is no confrontation clause issue if the defense lawyer gets to cross examine the dead guy.  However, everyone in the court room appears shocked by the testimony. Why is that?  They all just observed a  spectral figure walk into the courtroom, take the stand, receive the oath, and provide all of the relevant background information prior to the courtroom identification. Presumably, the corpse had to sit in the courtroom and wait while some other witnesses testified, as well. What’s so shocking about this particular moment taking place after all that? Oh, well.

Our own Frances Zacher’s recent post regarding legal issues prompted by driverless cars is getting some play in the blogosphere.  Max Kennerly of the Litigation & Trial Blog responded here, while friend of the blog Alan Crede of the Boston Personal Injury Lawyer Blog – whose original post here prompted Frances to respond – replies here. Want to hear something off topic but cool? In his post, Alan called us “the darling of The New York Times, National Public Radio and Jackie Chiles” and recipients of “well-deserved blogospheric celebrity.”  Aw, shucks.

Remember back in May when we remarked upon the controversy surrounding Superman’s renunciation of his U.S. citizenship? Well, according to this report, in the final issue of Action Comics – the series in which Superman first appeared in 1938 – Superman addresses the issue yet again. Click here to see the panel in question while you can read a review of that issue here. Oh, well. (By the way, Action Comics is ending its run of more than 900 issues and more than 70 years because DC Comics is rebooting its universe and relaunching all its series).

Well, we’ve previously mentioned that you can now access our blog content on Facebook, right?  Well, guess what? We’ve now got a fancy personalized Facebook URL! How about that? Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/abnormaluse and if you’ve not yet become a fan of Abnormal Use on Facebook, now is your chance.

Harvey Dent, also known as Two Face, is a Batman villain but also Gotham City’s district attorney. Wrap your head around that. You may recall that the character was played by Billy Dee Williams in 1989’s Batman, Tommy Lee Jones in the 1995’s lesser sequel Batman Forever, and more recently, Aaron Eckhart in 2008’s excellent The Dark Knight. Above you can see him through in his office on the cover of Two-Face: Year One, published not so long ago in 2008. What does it say about Gotham City that one of Batman’s fiercest foes is also the city’s chief prosecutor? You’d think the Gotham City Bar Association would have taken some sort of action against Mr. Dent by now, no?

Michael Wells, Jr. of the NC Law Blog advises us of the “10 Things You Should Know About The Law and Social Media.”  No mention of Friendster, though. Now, compare that list to “The Seven Sins of Social Media” by Josh Camson over at Lawyerist. There sure are a lot of lists out there about lawyers using social media.  Our thoughts? Be yourself to keep things interesting and follow our profession’s ethical rules just like you would in any other endeavor.  The rest should come naturally.  But maybe someday we’ll make a list, too.

If you have friends or children starting college this month, you might direct them to the rather amusing blog post, “The League’s Guide for Incoming Freshman,” written by friend of the blog Ryan Steans of The Signal Watch.

Yes, in case you’re wondering, we here at Abnormal Use did feel the earthquake at our home office here in Greenville, South Carolina.  Apparently, at least some folks in our Columbia and Charlotte offices also felt some type of minor tremor. It’s a bit disconcerting to feel one’s building vibrating, even slightly, when one finds him or herself on the 14th floor of that building. Yikes.

Above is the cover of The Perry Mason Mystery Magazine #2, published way back in 1964. We’re not entirely certain what is occurring on the cover of this issue, but we suspect there might be some questionable “lawyer as witness” issues presented to the court. In fact, if that’s Perry Mason kneeling over the body before the police arrive, then might Mason himself be a suspect? Wouldn’t that be the perfect crime? No one would suspect him, primarily because he’s Perry Mason! We’re just supposed to take his word that he’s an innocent passer-by? (See our previous mentions of Perry Mason here and here).

University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler of the Osler’s Razor blog digresses from the discussion of law to talk about something far more important: Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith and their “Because The Night” collaboration. (In other Springsteen news, a fan recently paid $611 for the first issue of the Springsteen fanzine Backstreets, first published in 1980. Finally, in yet another Springsteen news story this week, it appears that Springsteen and Billy Joel may be able to reclaim ownership of some of their songs from the 1970s.).

Back in July of 2010, we remarked upon the Vampire Weekend lawsuit. Remember that? The band’s second album, Contra,  featured a 1983 photograph of a very preppie model on its cover, but apparently, there was an issue of whether the model ever signed a release for that photograph. Litigation ensued.  Well, according to reports, the band settled out of the case, although the band still maintains a claim against the photographer in the suit. We bet they won’t be using a cover model on their third LP.

In case you were in doubt,  you cannot win punitive damages against a dead person in Iowa.

If you like old photographs of forgotten places and times, you’ll love the Shorpy photoblog, which posts high resolution photographs, usually 100 years old or older. Most of the time, there are lots of photographs of New York City and Washington, D.C. and place like that. However, this past week, the site posted a photograph taken in February 1913 in Bluffton, South Carolina, just a few hours from our Columbia office. Take a look here to see what it was like to toil in the oyster business in South Carolina 98 years ago.

The bloggers at The Pop Tort are taking a vacation for the remainder of the summer. Alas.

Kudos to our own Luanne Runge, who was recently elected as the 2012 Chair-elect of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce. She will serve as Chair in 2013. Congratulations also to our own John T. Lay, Jr. (of our new Columbia office, in fact), who was recently appointed Chair of the Business Litigation Committee for the International Association of Defense Counsel. For more information, please see here.

Don’t forget! You can now access Abnormal Use on Facebook.  To do so, click here.

There are some problems with the events depicted on the cover of Justice League of America #69, shown above and published way back in 1969.  Green Arrow is informed simultaneously that he has been both charged and convicted – apparently in absentia – with murder.  There’s nothing really just (or American, for that matter) about conducting a criminal prosecution in that fashion, although that’s apparently the way the Justice League of America rolls.  Shouldn’t Green Arrow have been properly arrested, appointed counsel, indicted, and tried to verdict? Nevertheless, the members of the JLA – even Superman! – add insult to injury by unanimously displaying turned down thumbs to the crestfallen arrow-slinger. You’d also think they would have disarmed Green Arrow before sharing this news.

Brian Comer discovers the Stiletto Heel Warranty in South Carolina. Who knew? It’s apparently in the statutes somewhere.

Congratulations to the Charleston School of Law for receiving full accreditation from the American Bar Association. More details here. (Hat Tip: The Faculty Lounge).

In a post entitled “Golden Retriever Takes Stand in New York Criminal Trial,” Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy recounts how, well, a dog recently “testified” in court in New York. There’s much that can be said about this development. However, we here at Abnormal Use can say only one thing: there is a precedent for this.

Did we mention that our firm’s new marketing director, Cortney Easterling, has joined Twitter? You can follow her at @CortEasterling.

There’s a bit of a scandal in the legal blogosphere this week.  Apparently, a law professor, sick of the “scam” he has found legal education to be, has started an anonymous law blog to lodge his presumably many complaints.  He goes by the pseudonym LawProf and has named his blog Inside The Law School Scam. Here’s a sample from his first post:

I can no longer ignore that, for a very large proportion of my students, law school has become something very much like a scam. And who is doing the scamming? On the most general level, the American economy in the second decade of the 21st century. On a more specific level, the legal profession as a whole. But on what, for legal academics at least, ought to be the most particular, most important, and most morally and practically compelling level, the scammers are the 200 ABA-accredited law schools.  Yet there is no such thing as a “law school” that scams its students — law schools are abstract social institutions, not concrete moral agents. When people say “law school is a scam,” what that really means, at the level of actual moral responsibility, is that law professors are scamming their students.

We’ll be watching this would be Howard Beale of American legal education, if only to keep abreast of the burgeoning scandal. By the way, we wouldn’t ordinarily link the name Howard Beale to its corresponding Wikipedia entry, but you must understand that most junior associates were born -after- the release of Network. (Hat Tip: PrawfsBlawg and Volokh Conspiracy).

After last week’s more wholesome legal themed comic book cover, today we return to something a bit more hard-boiled: Justice #6, published way, way back in 1948. Note the actions of the crestfallen mother as she hears the judge sentence her son to the electric chair. The defendant’s sister, however, has little sympathy. A cynical news reporter asks “When will these craven criminals ever learn that at the end of the trail of crime nothing is waiting but heartbreak – and tears!” (Why that newshound is lurking near the judge’s bench rather than the spectator’s gallery is unknown). Curiously, there do not appear to be any actual lawyers in this courtroom, or at least none we can see. One thing is for certain: there is a whole lot dialogue on this cover.

As promised, Steve McConnell of the Drug and Device Law blog has posted his magnus opus on Star Wars. (Don’t expect too much about pharmaceutical litigation in that post.). We encourage you to read it. Of note, Steve properly reserves some disdain for the recent prequels, as any reasonable person should.

Speaking of which, in last week’s edition of “Friday Links,” we directed you to our 2011 April Fool’s Day post, “Star Wars Prequels Unreasonably Dangerous and Defective, South Carolina Federal Court Finds,” suggesting that it was “the one post this site [had] dedicated to that series of films.”  But guess what? That’s not entirely true. Nerds that we are, we’ve referenced Star Wars before! We searched our archive and discovered this June 2010 post in which we quoted a number of courts who referenced the Star Wars trilogy. You know you want to know which judges referenced the trilogy.

Friend of the blog Jay Hornack a/k/a Panic Street Lawyer has an interesting blog post on U2’s recent Pittsburgh concert and the 14th Amendment. Somehow, he manages to connect those seemingly unrelated things together with his mighty prose. Check it out. We have not yet had the opportunity to write about U2, but earlier this year, we did do a pretty thorough post listing songs about lawyers and judges.

The State offers this account of yesterday’s memorial service for U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Perry, Jr., who passed away last week at 89.

This week, we welcome two brand new bloggers to Abnormal Use! Starting this week, be on the lookout for posts from our two new associate contributors, Steve Buckingham and Childs Cantey Thrahser. Steve (whose first post ran earlier this week) serves on our Business and Commercial Law Team in our Greenville office, while Childs, also on our B&C team, works out of our brand new Columbia office. We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank retiring blogger Laura Simons, an associate in our Greenville office, for her 18 months of service on the blog. She’s definitely earned a break after being with us since our initial founding in January of 2010, and we wish her a happy retirement from this fateful enterprise.

South Carolina Lawyers Weekly reports on Mills Gallivan, our boss, being appointed to the South Carolina Bar Dispute Resolution Section. Note: You can now follow Mills on Twitter at @MillsGallivan.

We’ve decided to go wholesome with this week’s legal themed comic book cover simply because one of our fellow lawyers here at our firm complained that last week’s comic book cover was not entirely work appropriate. We’re crestfallen. We’re agog. The last thing we wanted to do was incur the animadversions of one of our colleagues (one, in fact, whose office is right next door to this site’s editor’s office). Alas. So, today, dear readers, you get Archie’s Girls Betty and Veronica #92, published way, way back in the safe days of 1963, just before the counterculture rose and began to shock us all into submission.  We particularly like how Archie himself is tagged as Exhibit C which, we suppose, means that he will be taken back to the jury room for deliberations.  Betty, pro se, appears to be delivering her opening statement, which makes it all the more unusual for Veronica to be in the witness stand. Oh, well. It’s wholesome, right?

But that’s not all, dear readers. Another lawyer in our office gave us grief this week for saying “We here at Abnormal Use . . . .” as a preface to certain posts. We explained to him that it was our hip way of communicating our opinions, but he wasn’t buying that nonsense. “They know you’re from Abnormal Use,” he exclaimed. “They’re already on the blog.” Well, in the end, we just like saying that, so don’t expect us to abandon that statement, however superfluous, anytime soon. It’s our trademark. Or something.

Rumor has it that Steve McConnell of the Drug and Device Law Blog has written a Star Wars themed post set to run sometime next week. In the mean time, please revisit the one post this site dedicated to that series of films. Make certain you pay attention to the date it was originally published.

Law professor Mark Osler (who we once interviewed for this site here) has an interesting, though brief, post about bad job interview questions at his blog, Osler’s Razor. Our favorite: “I have stolen a pie. Have you ever stolen a pie? How about something else?” We’ve never heard that one before.

Chad Bray at The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports on Marvel Entertainment, L.L.C.’s victory in federal court in a suit brought by the heirs of famed comic creator Jack Kirby.  Writes Bray: “On Thursday, a federal judge found that Kirby’s creation, along with Stan ‘The Man’ Lee, of characters like the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four was “work-for-hire” under the Copyright Act of 1909 and Marvel owned the rights to those characters.” Interesting news.

We here at Abnormal Use have previously mentioned that She-Hulk, the Marvel Comics character, is a lawyer and litigator, and our friends at The Law & The Multiverse recently analyzed the issue of She-Hulk’s disbarment. With that prompting, we revisit the super heroine. Depicted above is the cover of She-Hulk #7, published not so long ago in 2006 and featuring She-Hulk sitting on a bench which happens to feature an advertisement for her alter ego Jennifer Walters’ personal injury practice. We wonder if it complies with the lawyer advertising rules of the Marvel Universe. (Interestingly, although the advertisement asks potential slip and fall Plaintiffs to call her for representation, there does not appear to be a phone number on the ad.).

Dave Lake of Seattle Weekly’s Reverb music blog offers a list of interest: “The 11 Most Notorious Rock & Roll Crimes.” Our question: Shouldn’t Bob Dylan’s latest string of live performances be included on any list of musical crimes? Or even his albums from the 1980s? Those things Mr. Lake does not address.

Well, it’s not a hot coffee lawsuit (and we bet you’re tired of hearing about those on this site!), but McDonald’s has now been sued in federal court in California over its advertising, which the Plaintiffs in that case contend is designed to “lure” children into the fast food company’s restaurants. How specifically, pray tell? The Happy Meal. That’s right. There is a class action lawsuit pending in federal court over Happy Meals. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if McDonald’s presented Grimace as its 30(b)(6) witness?  (More here from Reuters).

There’s a new blog dedicated to lawyers using iPads. It’s called IPAD4LAWYERS, and it’s run by Tom Mighell. We’ll have to add that to our list of daily legal technology reading which, of course, starts with the iPhone J.D. blog. (Hat tip: Cocky Law Blog).

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

Depicted above is the cover to America v. The Justice Society #2, published way back in the halcyon days of 1985. We don’t recall this series all too well, although Wikipedia tells us that the narrative was set in an alternate universe and centered around the fabled Justice Society being placed on trial for treason for crimes committed during World War II. (The alleged crimes were apparently brought to life after the discovery of the diary of Batman who, in that universe, had been murdered). Note the apparent bailiff in the foreground drawing his weapon as the The Spectre threatens to disrupt the proceedings. The judge, not wearing a robe, holds his gavel while pondering his options.

Jared Wade at the Risk Management Monitor has a post of interest entitled, “No One Knows If Texting While Driving Bans Have Prevented Car Crashes.” Sure, it makes sense that they might (assuming motorists follow the law), but apparently, after a lengthy study by the Governors Highway Safety Association, no one found evidence in support of the proposition.

In light of the unveiling of Google+ (Google’s attempt to compete directly with Facebook in the social networking realm, for those of you not yet in the kn0w), Denise Howell of the Bag and Baggage legal blog analyzes its terms of service (as well as those of Google’s Picasa service) in this helpful piece. She ultimate concludes: “I’m not personally put off by the license Google asks users to grant, but it could use some clarification and adjustment on the issues of third parties and promotional use.”

Adam Waytz at Slate asks: “Will Americans be able to adapt to the autonomous car?” Back in October of last year, we here at Abnormal Use addressed the driverless car problem and what happens when technology outpaces the law. See here for that apparently forward thinking piece.

Oh, my. The Austin American Statesman reports: “The University of Texas filed suit today against actor Ryan O’Neal in an effort to seize a portrait of Farrah Fawcett by Andy Warhol that the university says was bequeathed to UT by the late actress.” We’d love to see the depositions that might be taken in that lawsuit.

We here at Abnormal Use like to think we have no fear.  Apparently, however, the pressure of opposing viewpoints has scared us into being “fair and balanced.”  According to Plaintiff’s attorney Ronald Miller, Jr. of the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, his criticism of our recent Hot Coffee commentary resulted in our lack of praise for the Chamber of Commerce funded documentary, InJustice.  Maybe Miller is right and we did feel pressure to exhibit our best Fox News impersonation?  Or maybe we just felt the need to note the film’s obvious biases?  We will let you decide.

Above, you’ll find the cover of Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre #4, published sometime in the mid-1990s before the series’ name was changed to Supernatural Law. Note the tagline: “Beware The Creatures of the Night – They Have Lawyers!”  We must confess a general unfamiliarity with this series and the characters who appear therein, though according to Wikipedia, they’ve been around since the 1970s. Who knew?

PHM at The Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog feels compelled to “put anything that includes the phrase ‘tort reform’ in quotation marks,” including The American Tort Reform Association. Sure, it’s an advocacy group, but we don’t put the Plaintiffs’ bar group, the “Association for Justice” in quotation marks because that’s what they’re actually called.  It’s like using the phrase “so called” when something is actually called that. Oh, well.

We don’t discuss constitutional law much here at Abnormal Use, but after learning of last week’s ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, in which the Supreme Court struck down a California state law restricting the rental or sale of violent video games to children, we may have at least one comment on the subject. Like most, our first thought was, “How many sitting Supreme Court justices have actually played a video game?” And then we skimmed the opinion. But today, we direct you to this article by friend of the blog and Pennsylvania lawyer Jay Hornack (a/k/a Panic Street Lawyer), who analyzes the ruling in far more detail.

We here at Abnormal Use have been called many things, but it’s been a while since someone said we were silly. Alas, Ronald V. Miller, Jr. at the Drug Recall Lawyer Blog did so last week, chiefly because he didn’t like our recent post calling for Reed Morgan, the Plaintiff’s lawyer in the Stella Liebeck McDonald’s hot coffee case, to release the transcript. Ouch! Oh, well. All we want to do is read the transcript! Is that so wrong? McDonald’s isn’t talking (nor have they done so much on this case since ’94), and the courts sure aren’t likely to have a 17 year old trial transcript. So, that leaves us with the the Plaintiff’s lawyers who represented Liebeck. Considering that many, many Plaintiffs’ lawyers spent much of last week praising Susan Saladoff’s “Hot Coffee” documentary and clamoring for the real “truth” behind the Liebeck case, we thought Liebeck’s lawyer might naturally want to serve that interest and release the transcript for posterity. What better way to expose the truth? But I guess that’s just silly. (In other news, the ABA Journal referenced some of our work on the hot coffee case, as well. You can see that piece here.).