So This Is What Professor Torts Was Talking About

We were discussing transferred intent in assault and battery cases when out of nowhere our Torts professor mentioned a dietary fraud case she had heard about that she just had to share with the class.

A 68-year-old US health food executive is set to begin a 15 month sentence for labelling a 530-calorie doughnut as low-fat.

The label on Robert Ligon's company's "carob-coated" doughnut said it had three grams of fat and 135 calories.

But an analysis by the US Food and Drug Administration showed the doughnut, glazed with chocolate, contained 18 grams of fat and 530 calories.

Investigators discovered Ligon bought full-fat doughnuts from Cloverhill Bakery, a Chicago company, and repackaged them as diet doughnuts.

Ligon's three-year-long nationwide doughnut fraud - which involved selling mislabelled doughnuts, cinnamon rolls and cookies to diet centres - crumbled when customers complained about gaining weight.

Quote This

"We're full, sorry." - Elevator Operator

Maybe He Knows Something They Don't

Just read this about Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in the recent Iowa debate

He generated a properly scornful laugh for announcing he would balance the federal government in "the sixth or seventh year of my term" - a statement that's an act of disrespect to voters because it presumes not only that he will be elected in November but reelected in November 2008. He looked baffled and more than a little rattled by the laughter, a deer-in-the-headlights moment from which he did not easily recover.

It reminded me of the following quote by Matt Hasselbeck made after winning an overtime coin toss in the playoffs,

We want the ball, and we're going to score.

We know what that bold statement led to, but I'll allow someone else to draw parallel conclusions.

Do I Really Need to Read This?

I've been stuck on page 524 of Knapp's Contract casebook for nearly the past hour. It's a Notes and Questions page. It has me seriously reevaluating the worth of reading the Notes and Questions section of each casebook.

Here's the thing, some professors refer to some of the material in them, others refer to them rarely if at all. Sometimes they help clarify a point being made in the principal case other times they do nothing but muddle everything up. Sometimes they add a substantive point or two that isn't found in the principal case; as in an exception or differences between jurisdictions. The one constant is that I always seem to spend way too much time on the Notes and Questions.

I guess I could skip the Notes and Questions entirely unless I'm in need of clarification and if the professor refers to a note or question, I can always go back and read it afterwards.

New Year's Resolution #2...

on everyone else's list here at school seems to be working out in the gym. Never saw the gym as crowded before and, like in most other things, though I'm probably just susceptible to noticing these people and therefore overestimating, there was a disproportionate number of Section B people among those working out.

Grades Finally Made Known IV

While I do think these grades do say something about me, I think they only say so much. They basically say how I performed for three or two hours on a test, on a given day, after going through weeks of hell. That's all they say about me so keep that in mind.

Legal Writing - C+
Contracts - B
Civ. Pro. - C+
Crim. Law - B+
Property - C+
Torts - B+

For a GPA of 2.806.

Biggest surprise for me, Torts. Biggest disappointment for me, Civ. Pro.

UPDATE: For those of you finding this because of AutoAdmit, the curve at SWLAW has recently been changed and is now more in line with most other schools.

And by the way, this GPA was not enough to crack the top 33% at the time. I was somewhere in the 40th percentile range if I remember correctly. And yes, I'm that big of an idiot.

Don't Call Me Rob Schneider

So Brian got Benilda the Happy Bunny Sign Book because her nickname is Bunny.

From now on, I will be called, The Hot Chick.

$162 Million Claimed

Got this email from Brian who was easing the misery of being back in law school:

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio (AP) -- A Cleveland woman has told police she picked the
winning numbers for the $162 million Mega Millions lottery jackpot but lost
the ticket before the drawing, according to a police report.

Elecia Battle told police she dropped her purse as she left the Quick Shop
Food Mart last week after buying the ticket. She said she realized after the
drawing last Tuesday that the ticket was missing.

The Ohio Lottery said the winning ticket was sold at the store, about 15
miles east of Cleveland.

After news of Battle's police report spread Monday night, several people
wielding flashlights walked through snow and braved frigid temperatures to
try to find the ticket in the store parking lot.

"I decided to come back to see if I could find the winning ticket," said
LaVerne Coleman, 57, who says she would keep the winnings if she found the
ticket.

Police say Battle was in tears when she came to the station Friday to file
the report and did not hesitate when asked to write down the winning
numbers.

"We don't believe that she's fabricating it, but there's no real way of
knowing other than going on her word," Lt. Kevin Nieter told Cleveland's
WEWS-TV on Monday.

Nieter said information Battle knew about when the ticket was bought and how
the numbers were picked make her story credible. She told police that the
numbers -- 12, 18, 21, 32 and 46 and Mega Ball 49 -- represented family
birthdays and ages.

The winning ticket was sold to someone who chose the numbers, not someone
who let the machine pick.

Nieter said Battle may be out of luck if someone else picked up the lone
winning ticket.

"Whoever has the ticket has the right to stake the claim to the winning
jackpot. You can file all the police reports you want but it's not going to
help," he said.

Ohio Lottery spokeswoman Mardele Cohen said that if someone else came in
with the ticket, Battle could try to get a temporary restraining order in
court to block the winnings from being paid.

The winner has six months from the drawing to claim the largest jackpot in
state history. If the money isn't claimed by June 27, it goes to Ohio and 10
other states that participate in the game.

And this morning I saw this on CNN's site

Someone turned in a valid ticket for the $162 million Mega Millions multistate lottery jackpot, the Ohio Lottery said Tuesday, a day after a woman claimed she lost the winning ticket outside the convenience store where it was sold.

Ohio Lottery spokeswoman Mardele Cohen said the winner would be revealed at an 11:30 a.m. EST press conference. Cohen would not comment on whether the winner was Elecia Battle, the woman who filed a police report saying she lost the ticket last week.

For the sake of Brian's happiness, I do hope that Ms. Battle really did lose the winning ticket, which someone else found and claimed.

UPDATE: Turns out that Ms. Battle is but a sad, pathetic fraud.

A woman turned in the winning $162 million Mega Millions lottery ticket Tuesday, saying she came forward sooner than planned because she was angered by another woman's claim that she bought the ticket and lost it.

Jemison said she was not worried about Battle's claim because she knew she had a valid ticket.

"First of all I want to clear up a few things that have come out in the press. One of them is that I've been playing these numbers for about two years," she said.

Ohio Lottery Director Dennis Kennedy said officials were sure that Jemison is the rightful owner of the ticket, saying she provided a receipt from the convenience store marking the time the ticket was sold.

Talked About This in Class

The incident was mentioned last semester in Criminal Law and the elderly man is just now being charged:

The Los Angeles district attorney's office filed charges of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence Monday against the driver of a car that struck and killed 10 people and injured 63 others at a farmers' market in Santa Monica last summer.

If convicted of all 10 counts, Weller faces a possible sentence ranging from probation to 18 years in state prison, the statement said.

The only reason his car eventually stopped, Butts said, was because a body trapped beneath the vehicle slowed it down.

"Mr. Weller was conscious throughout the collision sequence; no evidence exists that Mr. Weller attempted to take the car out of gear; there is no indication of braking throughout the entire collision sequence," Butts said.

1st Impressions of 1st Reading Assignments: Civil Procedure

Thirty pages on how a complaint should be written. Not exactly the most fascinating read. In fact, it's one of the more painful reads in recent memory. Have yet to finish the reading but so far I understand that the codes - set of laws preceding the FRCP ? - require more detail than FRCP 8(a) when writing out a complaint. Of course, how much detail is enough and how much detail is too much is a matter of debate. Also, FRCP 8(a)(2) requires that the complaint state a claim for which there is a remedy with a distinction made between absolute and conditional privilege.

More on this later if I feel up to it.

Quote This

"That's the clearest throw-up I've ever seen." - Annie

Back to Reality

Contracts and having to read 40 pages on modern pleading for Civ. Pro. tomorrow quickly dampened any hope of enjoying this semester before grades come out. We basically picked up where we left off in Contracts, which was an unwanted reminder that a semester of law school is "a long, hard slog". The Civ. Pro. reading is all about how to write a complaint and how to respond to one. from what I can tell so far. Very dry stuff. Nothing excitingly new is what I guess I'm trying to get at.

First Impression of Criminal Procedure Professor

Fun guy. Could be harsh in the way he goes about teaching the class but he displayed self-deprecating humor, knowledge of pop culture and disdain for the administration's lack of willingness to move ahead technologically. This could be the best professor of the semester.

Back to Studying

I'm at my usual spot in the library and I've noticed an increase in the number of hot chicks walking in to presumably study. Apparently, a lot of them made a New Year's Resolution to spend more time in the library, especially the blond ones.

Law School Memory #13: That One Day in Torts

It was a Tuesday. I had lunch with Benilda, Rita, Annie, Brian and PeShawn in the Tea Room that day. That day I had a grilled cheese w/chicken and fries. I remember it well because that was the day that our Torts professor got me on a case involving an Ozzy Osbourne record and a teenage boy's suicide. I ended up "confessing" to not having read the case. It was also the same day and class that Brian pushed his laptop off of his desk; Annie went before the class to tell them about BarBri; and Rita, Benilda and PeShawn all got called on in class.

That would be six people having lunch together and those same six having attention brought to them in the same class. One might think something happened at that lunch. One might think I said an inappropriate thing or two about Torts at that lunch. One might think I did so with our Torts professor sitting right behind us having lunch with her young son. One would be wrong. All I remember is laughing really loud, enjoying lunch and the next thing I know we're all playing a part in Torts that one day.

Back to School

I wanted to get a lot of things done in preparation for the second semester so I'm not overly disappointed with myself in getting only about a third of it done but still.... Anyway, this semester should be easier than the first even with what looks to be a heavier workload, two new professors in place of two really good ones, moot court and finding a job for the summer.

Easier in the sense that I now know what's expected class-to-class and how to prepare for those classes and final exams. Of course, everyone else feels that way so it will not be easier getting good grades and when grades come out I may very well be saying the opposite. But for now, I'm heading into my second semester of law school full of optimism and trying to enjoy it as much as possible before those grades do come out.

Don't Take These Picks to the Bank

Ravens over the Titans, 21-17. And the Cowboys over the Panthers, 17-14.

“My outline is updated annually, with a quarterly soft-bound supplement and bi-weekly pocket parts.”

I was thinking about when I should begin outlining for this semester and it reminded me of this post. A must read for anyone familiar with outlining and the competitiveness of law school.

1st Impressions of 1st Reading Assignments: Torts II

Some short cases and some really short cases; ten cases on twenty pages. Here's what I understand; battery occurs if the defendant intentionally - which is proven by desire or substantial certainty - causes offensive or harmful contact; whereas, assault occurs if the defendant intentionally causes reasonable apprehension in the plaintiff of imminent harmful or offensive contact. Mistake, infancy and insanity are not defenses but infancy and insanity can be considered on whether the defendant had the requisite intent.

So if the defendant doesn't touch you, or that plate in your hands, there is no battery but there very well could be an assault if you had reasonable apprehension of harmful or offensive contact that never materialized, but there could also be a battery without an assault if there was in fact intended harmful or offensive contact but you had not known that there was going to be so, yet if you had reasonable apprehension and were harmfully or offensively touched, then there was both an assault and a battery. Right?

1st Impressions of 1st Reading Assignments: Property II

The first case forces quickly back to mind estates and future interests. Not a good thing. The second case seems rightly decided. The section on leases obviously brings to mind Contracts. Also, not a good thing. No lease, no landlord-tenant relationship. No landlord-tenant relationship, certain incidents do not apply. Whatever those incidents are is surely to be learned in the further readings.

Quote This

"Are you going to pork out after you're done fasting?" - PeShawn

1st Impressions of 1st Reading Assignments: Crim. Pro.

I've started on the first reading assigments and decided to post a quick thought or two on them to get me started on thinking about them.

The reading is short and quick for Criminal Procedure, basically, the exclusionary rule is the necessary bite to the Fourth Amendment's bark. The first case applied the exclusionary rule to the federal level and the second case applied it to the state level of government.