We’re taking a break this week from court related comic book covers to bring you the above, one of our favorite closing arguments from television sitcom history. That’s right, depicted above is the closing argument of Jackie Chiles, representing the main characters of “Seinfeld,” on charges that they violated a good Samaritan law, in the series finale of that program.

Maybe this guy’s got the right idea? Walter Olson at Overlawyered reports on a recent Indiana lawsuit in which the Plaintiff sued a local retail establishment, claiming that they prevented him from buying a lottery ticket, and of course, he would have picked the winning numbers, so they thwarted his win. How could they do that to him?

KC Johnson, who through his blog Durham in Wonderland, reported on the Duke lacrosse case several years ago, is now blogging the tragic Virginia lacrosse-related murder case. For his two most recent posts on that topic, see here and here.

If you haven’t already, check out this guest post by John A. Tartaglia III at the Drug and Device Law blog on “attempts in Congress to strip manufacturers of FDA premarket approved medical device manufacturers of their hard-won preemption defense.”

Oh, alright, we’ll do a comic book cover this week for good measure. Depicted below is Mr. District Attorney #65, originally published in 1958. We think that the defendant may have a good confrontation clause objection here, but then again, we’re not criminal lawyers.

We couldn’t resist revisiting one of our favorite Friday topics: the courtroom, as depicted on old superhero comic book covers. Above, in Detective Comics #240 (which was published way back in 1957), Batman, the defendant, is apparently on the witness stand being questioned during a robbery or burglary trial, all the while hooked up to a polygraph machine. (Gotham must not be a Frye jurisdiction.). Also of concern is the fact that Robin appears to be up to something, and we’re not certain that the bailiff can handle a melee with a superhero, even a sidekick. (But then again, perhaps the Boy Wonder is simply leaning in to taunt Batman and suggest that even Hawkman could have beaten the lie detector.). The simplest solution may have been for Batman to take George Costanza’s sage advice:

When it comes to jury service in federal court, you’d best not mess around.

Earlier this week, our intrepid blogger Kevin Couch took on the law of Mardi Gras, going so far as to analyze the old tossed-coconut fact pattern. Walter Olson at Overlawyered links Kevin’s post and also directs our attention to some other Mardi Gras coconut posts.

If you happen to find yourself in Columbia, South Carolina this evening, and you dig live music, be certain to stop by The Elbow Room to see the South Carolina Bar Young Lawyers Division’s Justice Jam. Seven bands, each with at least one attorney member, are on the bill, all for a good cause: raising money for Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands. For more information, see here. (By the way, if you’re not following the South Carolina Bar on Twitter, why aren’t you?)

• Over at the Sui Generis blog, Nicole Black has a very interesting piece about a recent opinion by the New Jersey Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics and the Committee on Attorney Advertising, which found that a “virtual office” is not a “bona fide office.” Black scoffs at the ruling and suspects that “New Jersey continues to dig its heels firmly in the 19th century, presumably requiring its attorneys to ride horses and buggies into work, while also requiring them to comply with [the bona fide office requirement.]” Yikes.
• Robin Wheeler at the South Carolina Access to Justice Blog notes that the results of the February 2010 South Carolina bar examination will be released this afternoon. In so doing, she recounts her own experience with the bar and the harrowing experience of waiting for the results to be released. (That experience, apparently, was the proximate cause of her decision not to renew her subscription to Martha Stewart’s Living magazine. See her post for more details.).
• There’s just a week left to enter the State Bar of Texas 140 Character Novel contest. Details are here, and the contest is open to all U.S. lawyers from any state.
• “People make mistakes.” Conkright v. Frommert, — U.S. —-, 2010 WL 1558979 (April 21, 2010). That’s the first sentence of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and released for publication on Wednesday. That opinion dealt with ERISA plan administrators. (In fact, for the record, the second sentence of the opinion, actually a sentence fragment, reads: “Even administrators of ERISA plans.”). However, we think this statement may have a more universal application and we may revisit it in the future.
• According to Lawyerist, social media gets you on the golf course quicker.

• Whew. We survived Tax Day yesterday. To celebrate, we direct your attention to the above video of George Harrison and Eric Clapton playing “Taxman” (from the 1966 Beatles album, Revolver) in Japan sometime, we suspect, in the early 1990s.
• Over at Osler’s Razor, law professor Mark Osler asks the age old question, “What should be required in law school?” A good question. (Incidentally, this coming Monday is Osler’s “Last Lecture” at Baylor Law School before he heads off to a new post at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota).
• We here at Abnormal Use love ABC’s “Lost.” We really do. We realize this makes us both law nerds and sci-fi nerds. SPOILER ALERT: This past Tuesday, on that show, Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick) accelerated his vehicle in a school parking lot and crashed directly into wheelchair-bound John Locke (Terry O’Quinn). In Desmond’s defense, he may have done that just to awaken Locke to the notion that they are all living in a possibly sinister alternate reality, but that’s neither here nor there. In real life, though, Dr. Justin Sattin, Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, has criticized the portrayal of the accident, claiming that the manner in which Locke reacted to the accident was not exactly accurate. Far be it for us to criticize the realism of a show about a magic island with time travelers. But when we watched that scene, the most unrealistic thing to us was the fact that 10 different Plaintiff’s lawyers didn’t show up with business cards immediately after the accident. (Hat tip: TV Tattle.).
• And finally, why do we never get trials like the one depicted below, in which Superman, apparently, is prosecuting Lois Lane for the murder of his former sweetheart, Lana Lang. (Note: Superman probably has one of those Lawyer as Witness ethical conflicts.). It seems Batman is defending Lane from the criminal charges. Click the image to enlarge.
Incidentally, in case you were wondering, that comic book is Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #99, originally published in February 1970. No word on who actually won the trial.

Several weeks ago, we here at Abnormal Use had some fun with Mr. District Attorney #53, in which the title prosecutor performed a direct examination of a canine eyewitness during a criminal trial. Well, today, we turn to the following issue of that epic comic book series, Mr. District Attorney #54. Take a look at the cover pictured above (and click to enlarge) and you’ll see the bizarre contest that the District Attorney is engaged in with some nefarious criminal. At first glance, the fly on the sugar cube gambit seems puzzling, but upon reflection, it may be more effective than mediation in some cases.

We’re not certain whether to chuckle or wince at last week’s post at Change.org called “Friday Unwind: 5 Ridiculous Lawyer Ads.” Maybe we’ll just cry. (Hat tip: Overlawyered).

Finally, someone steps up to respond to allegations that the iPhone is not secure enough to serve as the communications device for lawyers. Ben Stevens, a practitioner in our neighboring city of Spartanburg, South Carolina, and author of The Mac Lawyer blog, offers his treatise on this topic in a post entitled “The Truth about iPhone Security.”

The South Carolina Women Lawyers Association’s Blog: The Briefcase has posted a transcript of South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Kay Hearn’s recent speech to the SCWLA’s Midlands Region chapter. It is entitled “Judicial Independence.”

Above the Law notes in a post this week that the 2010 graduating class of the University of South Carolina School of Law has it right with respect to its chosen class gift.

Eric Goldman over at the Technology and Marketing Law Blog summarizes and comments upon an interesting Fourth Circuit case, Robinson v. Wix Filtration Corp. L.L.C., — F.3d —, No. 09-1167 (4th Cir. March 26, 2010). At issue was the Plaintiff’s failure to respond to a motion for summary judgment; Plaintiff’s counsel indicated that their firm’s computer system suffered a viral infection which, among other things, caused them to temporarily lose their Internet domain name and access to their email addresses (which, in turn, meant that any electronic filing notices from the federal district court would not have been received by them, including notice of the filing of the summary judgment by the Defendant in that wrongful termination case). The Fourth Circuit found that the Plaintiff had no remedy in this situation, although the opinion did draw a strong dissent. The lesson: If you have computer problems, you’d better login to PACER and monitor your federal cases. Any other option is fraught with peril. (See additional news coverage of this opinion here.).

The Third Circuit has ruled that defective sperm is not the proper basis for a products liability suit. We are grossed out by this jurisprudence. (See news coverage here.).

We greatly enjoyed the opportunity to engage in a bit of a hoax with yesterday’s April Fool’s Day post about a fake verdict from a non-existent Texas court arising from the consumption of an unsatisfactory Snickers bar. Surely you were tipped off by the “reasonable degree of confectionary certainty” standard and the “nougat defense.” Thanks to all those who linked the post, and for those of you who wrote in asking for a copy of the opinion, we won’t tell. In sum, we haven’t had this much fun since our chicken sandwich post (which, actually, was about a real court opinion).

Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, apparently sued Duke University over his being removed from the school’s golf team. This, he argued was some type of breach of agreement which deprived him both of team membership but also life time use of the school’s golfing facilities. This week, however, a federal district judge dismissed his lawsuit. Really, with this one, you just need to come up with your own golf pun. We’re fresh out. (See additional coverage of this opinion here at the Findlaw Courtside blog, here from the WSJ Law Blog, and here at Overlawyered.).

Over at the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association’s Blog: The Briefcase blog, you can find a post entitled “Eight Simple Ways to Lose Your Law License by Email.” The article, written by Barbara M. Seymour of the South Carolina Office of Disciplinary Counsel, concludes with a series of email usage tips for attorneys.

Richard Goldfarb at the Food Liability Law Blog offers his preliminary thoughts on the food labeling provisions of the new health care bill.

Sara Turner at DRI’s For the Defense blog comments upon speculation that Apple’s new iPad may be “the hot new technology for trial.” The associates writing this blog will need to forward that link to the shareholders in the procurement department. After all, how can one not have the latest in trial technology?

• Last week, we commented upon our fair city of Greenville’s attempt to woo Google to bring its fiber optic initiative to town. The search engine giant plans to choose a medium sized city in which it will offer Internet service up to 100 times faster than that currently available from traditional Internet service providers. Thus, cities across the nation are actively attempting to convince Google to select their locale to be the site of the Google’s new initiative. Above, you’ll see Greenville’s entry into the fray: an aerial photograph depicting thousands of glow stick wielding Greenvillians spelling out Google’s name in lights. For more photographs (aerial and otherwise), please see Greenville’s We Are Feeling Lucky website. We here at Abnormal Use greatly applaud this effort. If you’re on Twitter (like we are), you can follow news of Greenville’s quest with the hashtags #GoogleOnMain and #LuckyGVL. We offer our congratulations to the event’s organizers, who apparently organized the enterprise in less than two weeks time. Below, you can see a bird’s eye video of the scene:

• Foreign manufacturers should take note of some new law in New Jersey. In a recent piece entitled “Buy Globally, Sue Locally for Products Liability,” J. Russell Jackson of The National Law Journal notes that a recent New Jersey case significantly expands the concept of personal jurisdiction in products cases. That case is February’s Nicastro v. McIntyre Machinery America, Ltd., 987 A.2d 575 (N.J. 2010), and it may ensnare a number of foreign manufacturers, even those who do not purposefully avail themselves of the benefits of the forum. Jackson, of course, is also the author of the Consumer Class Actions and Mass Torts blog, long a staple of this site’s blogroll.
• On Wednesday, former circuit court judge John C. Few of Greenville was sworn in as the new chief judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. See here for the Greenville News report of the investiture.
• Here’s another interesting post. In a piece entitled “Toyota’s Embedded Software Image Problem,” Michael Barr of Embedded Gurus opines: “It remains unclear whether Toyota’s higher-than-industry-average number of complaints regarding sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) is caused (in whole or in part) by an embedded software problem. But whether it is or it isn’t actually firmware, the company has clearly denied it and yet still developed an embedded software ‘image problem.’ They’ve brought some of this on themselves.” Check out the full story for the rest of his thoughts on that topic.

• That’s right; it’s all about the cosmic rays. Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal reported this week upon speculation that cosmic rays may be the cause of the sudden acceleration issues in Toyota vehicles. Of course, cosmic rays have prompted all sorts of problems in the past. In 1961, they caused four would-be astronauts to evolve and become the superhero group, the Fantastic Four (as indicated above). We’re wondering, would Reed Richards testify for the Plaintiffs or the defense in the Toyota cases on this issue?
• Tim Smith of the Greenville News reports on a recent presentation by South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal in which she indicated the following troubling news: “Your court system is $11.5 million down at this time and about to run out of money. We can’t continue to operate like this.” Toal plans to work with South Carolina legislators to resolve the issue by increasing filing fees for complaints and motions.
• Defending an auto wreck case? Check out the For The Defense blog’s post “Investigating an Auto Accident Case.” Written by Francisco Ramos Jr., the piece offers some tips for the investigation of such claims in light of recent advances in technology.

• If you happen to find yourself here in downtown Greenville, South Carolina tomorrow, be sure to stop by the Google on Main event. Greenville is one of many mid-sized cities attempting to woo Google to its location as a part of the search engine giant’s fiber optic broadband experiment. Apparently, Google plans to pick one city, establish itself as an Internet service provider, and then offer service at speeds 100 times faster than that to which users are now accustomed. But which city will Google choose? We here at Abnormal Use officially endorse Greenville, whose citizens clearly support the technological endeavor. In the video above, you’ll see one local man was so supportive of the City of Greenville’s bid for the project that he had the Google logo shaved into his head.
• As a reminder, you can receive Abnormal Use posts directly in your email box by entering your email address in the “Subscribe Via E-Mail” box in our blog’s right sidebar.

Certainly, in our time, we have seen some trial witnesses fare worse than Shep the Wonder Dog, the canine eyewitness depicted above on the cover of the comic book, Mr. District Attorney #53, published way back in 1956. (Click to enlarge the cover and see it in all its glory!). Shep’s tale must be damaging to the defendant, as the bailiff seems posed to pounce upon the accused, who appears to be rising in response to Shep’s expected testimony. You’d think they would at least wait to see how Shep fared on cross before beginning to worry. Is there an optional completeness objection based upon the fact that Shep’s board does not include all 26 letters, thereby limiting his testimony? Rumor has it that Shep was prepared to give an impermissible lay opinion: Evolution provided the defendant with opposable thumbs but not sufficient wits to outsmart a dog. (For a full summary of this issue, see here.).

The Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia offers this interesting account of how that state’s courts have dealt with one vexatious litigant (who happens to share the name of the main character on a popular NBC sitcom). Says one jurist: “Within the memory of the incumbent judges of this court, the court has so designated only four people over the past fifteen years [as vexatious litigants]. The petitioner is the most persistent and vexatious of the four.”

Just think. This is what they were saying about law school 72 years ago: “American legal education is blind, inept, factory-ridden, wasteful, defective, and empty . . . [I]t blinds, it stumbles, it conveyor belts, it wastes, it mutilates, and it empties.” Karl Llewellyn, On What Is Wrong With So-Called Legal Education, 35 Colum. L. Rev. 651, 653 (1938). Wow.

The South Carolina Bar has joined Facebook.

Only in a nineteenth century marital property case involving the enhancement value of mules would you find a gem like this: “[T]he erratic mule standeth apart, like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.” Stringfellow v. Sorrells, 18 S.W. 689, 689 (Tex. 1891) (quotations omitted). Back then, we suppose everyone knew without being told that the author of the opinion was referencing Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Speaking of Texas, its state bar is sponsoring a contest of interest. Several writers here at Abnormal Use plan to someday write the great American novel, but we fear that such an enterprise might detract from our billable hours. Perhaps the State Bar of Texas has a solution, though, as it has announced what is surely the first 140 Character Novel Writing contest. Inspired by the popularity of Twitter, the competition is open to all lawyers licensed in any state in the United States. (That’s a lot of lawyers.). Check it out:

Ernest Hemingway reportedly considered his best work to be his most succinct — a six-word novel he came up with to settle a bar bet: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Our contest challenges lawyers to write a short form novel, Twitter-style, in 140 characters or less. All U.S.-licensed attorneys are encouraged to enter.

One grand prize winner will receive an Apple iPad. The grand prize winner and runners-up will receive special recognition at the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting on June 10, 2010, at a breakfast presentation featuring LexBlog, Inc. CEO and Twitter expert Kevin O’Keefe (@kevinokeefe).

For details, see here. The contest is open until May 1.

• Northwestern University, at its YouTube account, has begun to post some interesting products liability related videos, including the clip above, which features Katherine R. Latimer of Hollingsworth, LLP discussing “Products Liability Law and Pharmaceuticals”at the Judicial Symposium on The Pharmaceutical Industry, held at Northwestern in May of 2009. Other clips from the conference can be found here, here, here, and here, while the school has also posted an interesting clip of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s September 2009 visit to the institution.
• Findlaw’s Courtside blog posts this piece about the recent filing of a sudden acceleration lawsuit against Toyota and a Lexus dealer in California. The report includes a copy of the complaint as well as an excerpt of the 911 call at issue.
• In this nice post, The Mac Lawyer alerts us to Tablet Legal, a new blog designed for lawyers using Apple’s new iPad. Last week, the new site’s author concluded that “less functionality in the Ipad is better for lawyers.” The associates writing the posts here at Abnormal Use have requested iPads from their supervising partners, but as of yet, they have received no response. Surely they must have missed that set of emails?
• In a post that ran yesterday, The South Carolina Family Law Blog offers this helpful tip for locating individuals using social media. Says that site’s author: “[I]t is simply amazing sometimes to see the types of information people publish about themselves and their actions on these sites. However, in today’s web-laden society, it’s hard to know where to start looking sometimes to find all of a party’s networks.” Indeed.
• We here at Abnormal Use have no meaningful preference in this weekend’s Academy Awards show. To be honest, we rarely get to the movies these days. But we, like most, are perplexed at the Academy’s decision to nominate ten films for Best Picture as opposed to the usual five. We recoiled in horror and grieved when Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction lost to Forrest Gump in March of 1995, but we remain unconvinced that Tarantino’s latest effort is worthy of such accolades. Surely Avatar will not prevail over the far, far better Up. Perhaps the Academy members wish to avoid the type of self congratulatory display James Cameron put forth in 1998 when he won for Titanic. Tune in Sunday to see.
• Finally, if you’ll peruse our side bar, you’ll notice a new blogroll dedicated to South Carolina law blogs. Although our central mission at Abnormal Use is to discuss products liability cases, we do like to keep an eye on our local legal blogsophere. Take a look, and let us know if we’ve missed any South Carolina legal blogs of interest.