The Law Institute --- "The Gist" [1997] LawIJV 11; (1997) 71(1) The Law Institute Journal 26

• The Gist
• Explosive Allegations
• Only in America
• Burning question
• Civil remedies
• Plumbing the depths
• Internet tales
• Legalese lambasted

The Gist

Explosive Allegations

Lindsay Ford, a partner with Marshalls & Dent, sent in this remarkable extract from a statement of claim by a landlord who is suing over the alleged breach of a lease:

The Plaintiff and/or its servants and/or agents exploded or allowed to be ex¬ploded a home manufactured bomb in the basement directly underneath the Defendants' premises.

Only in America

The New Yorker reports that there is a big lawsuit being fought in the United States between the NBC network and the National Basketball Association on the one hand, and Motorola on the other. NBC has the broadcast rights to all NBA games, which cost it US$750 million for the 1997-98 season. Motorola is selling pagers which, at the push of a button, give an update on the current score of any basketball game. (The statistics, by the bye, come from people who are paid to watch the games on television at home!) The NBA side is arguing that it has exclusive property rights to the scores until each game is over; Motorola, which has been backed by a number of media organisations, is arguing that information such as running scores is in the public domain, and therefore news.

The New Yorker notes:

"The phrase the NBA uses for the practice it wants to enjoin is `the transmission of real-time data'. This is a tough practice to enjoin, because human beings happen to be obsessed with real-time data."

Indeed we are: does anyone know what the score is in the cricket?

Burning question

Thanks to the people at Cuthberts, in sunny Ballarat, who sent in this item:

When taking instructions for a will recently, solicitor Richard Oakley in¬quired whether the testatrix wished to express a preference for a cremation or a burial. Her response was: `I think I would like to be given a surprise ... "

Civil remedies

Law enforcement authorities in the United States are turning to the civil law in their efforts to combat gang-related crime, reports American Lawyer. In places such as Pasadena and Los Angeles, city councils are taking out civil injunctions against people who are suspected of being gang members involved with drug dealing. The injunctions forbid actions which are innocuous in themselves - possessing cigarette papers, carrying a pager, flagging down a car on the street, staying out late - but are considered part of a pattern of gang activity. If the person contravenes the injunction, he (it is usually a young black male) can be arrested and charged with criminal contempt of court.

Not surprisingly, civil liberties lawyers are crying foul. The injunctions, they argue, are a sneaky way to disregard the US Constitution and impose outrageous restrictions on minorities.

However, The Gist can see some merit in the concept, particularly if it is extended to other areas of anti-social activity. For example, we could get a court order banning all practising lawyers from:

• talking on a mobile phone while sitting in a restaurant;
• using "and/or" in any document; working more than ten hours a day; and
• wearing any article of clothing in that revolting shade of lime green which is currently in fashion.

Plumbing the depths

British MP Teresa Gorman was anger¬ed by the legal bills she incurred during a battle she had with her local council over alterations to her home, reports "Scrivenor" in The Times.

She told a lunch held by the Lords and Commons Solicitors Group that the dispute had cost her thousands of pounds, and complained that solicitors did not give enough warning of the likely cost of their services, unlike her plumber.

"Several of the MPs and Lords re¬sponded by asking for the plumber's name," Scrivenor adds.

Internet tales

Also from American Lawyer comes the news that the US Department of Justice, which is currently prosecuting alleged "super hacker" Kevin Metnick, was embarrassed when some of Metnick's admirers broke into the Department's Web server, and defaced its homepage with electronic "graffiti", including changing the title to "Department of Injustice" and adorning the homepage with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler. Vandals with a similar style later hacked the CIA's Website, dubbing it the "Central Stupidity Agency".

Disparaging references to the law in literature No. 10 in a series

You [magistrates] are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs: you wear out a good forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller, and then rejoin the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves.

Shakespeare

Coriolanus, 1608

Contributed by Craig Ellis, Mildura.

Legalese lambasted

The latest issue of Ozwords, the newsletter of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, carries a letter from Ian Johnstone, a Victorian solicitor. Ian writes:

Recently I went to a conference of the Australian Society for Legal Philosophy and came home with two new words, "commodification"; (the process of turning things into commodities which aren't really commodities, such as lawyers' skills) and "majoritarian" (which has nothing to do with a pre¬ponderance of Rotarians but is a need¬lessly enlarged word for "majority").

The editor of Ozwords clearly sym¬pathises with Ian's pain at these un¬welcome new words, noting: "On such sillinesses, alas, is brotherhood built."