Short Cuts
Not all legal issues are ponderable, weighty things. Some of them are relatively light (i.e., humorous) and also light (i.e., short). A round-up of a few legal doings that don't justify longform discussion in an entire column:
• From the “I Paid for Smut, and By God, I Want *Real* Smut!” file comes the story of two Chicago attorneys who filed a class action lawsuit against Penthouse magazine. It seems that, at the time of the lawsuit, their clients paid $8.99 for a then-recent issue claiming that it featured topless photos of tennis star Anna Kournikova. Imagine their chagrin (to say nothing of the magazine's) when the woman surreptitiously photographed turned out not to be Kournikova but merely someone who looked like her.
Their lawsuit sought $8.99 in damages (the cost of the magazine) for each of the plaintiffs. And, oh yes, millions of dollars in attorney's fees for the two lawyers for, of course, the public service of making sure that when a magazine promises compromising celebrity photos, by golly, it delivers them.
• From San Antonio, Texas came the headline-making story of one David Williamson, who thought the $40 per diem paid to jurors in federal cases was paltry compensation for his time. So he did something about it. It seems that one February day, he received a summons for federal jury service, asking him to keep the month of August (i.e., six months later) clear of other commitments. (One thing about the feds — they *do* plan ahead.)
In response, Williamson sent the court a bill for $16,800, which he arrived at by multiplying the 21 eight-hour work days in August times $100 per hour. He also threatened to add interest if the bill wasn't paid by the end of March. When — not surprisingly — it wasn't, he sent another bill and added a note, “If you would like to meet and discuss this, please have his honor call and schedule an appointment.” Whoops! Bad move to jab at a federal court judge. The judge did indeed “schedule an appointment,” which was called an “Order to Show Cause re: Contempt,” directing Williamson to show up in his courtroom “to discuss this.” The judge added, “Although Mr. Williamson could live in a country which does not require jury service, such as Iraq, Cuba, North Korea or Russia, Mr. Williamson wants the benefits of American citizenship but apparently without fulfilling the responsibility. Mr. Williamson's arrogant attitude is reminiscent of the Vietnam era appellation given to those who were all in favor of war so long as someone else made the military sacrifice. They were known as `chicken hawks.'”
No word on how much free room and board Williamson received courtesy of the United States government.
• Still, in many ways Williamson's response is preferable to that of a Connecticut man, who was charged with second-degree harassment and breach of peace. It seems that, in response to being called for jury service for the third time in two years, he used the jury summons for, ahem, toilet paper. The court probably wouldn't have minded except that he mailed it back to them with, um, . . . undeniable evidence of his frustration.
Probably not a good idea to use something that has your name and return address on it for such a protest, either.
• Finding a new use for having a lifetime appointment that no one had thought of before, a group of federal judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — right here in California, of course — ordered their technology staff to disconnect monitoring software that had been installed to detect the downloading of music, streaming video, and pornography. The judges protested that they didn't like having what might be confidential judicial communications being monitored by non-judges.
And they do get all of the software piracy cases, so it's good to make sure that no one — especially the court staff — was getting confused about things like that.
• Finally, a delightful case of life imitating art. Some years back, the satirical news magazine “The Onion” wrote a fictitious story about Microsoft trying to patent the numbers “0” and “1.” (For the non-computerliterate, all actions taken by any modern computers, however complex, are ultimately just some combination of those two digits.)
Well, the New York Times reported how a German publisher of a fashion magazine called “O” brought suit against the publisher of Oprah Winfrey's magazine, also titled “O,” claiming trademark rights in that letter. In a similar case in Britain, a judge in fact ruled that the initials “WWF” were the property of the World Wildlife Fund, not the World Wrestling Federation.
One hopes that Bill Gates never hears about those latter two cases.