Class was hilarious during my first year of law school.
Class was hilarious during my first year of law school.
Jill’s top 10 moments:
10. Jill vs. Professor P.
Prof P: “Let’s see this is a very hard case… Jill let’s start with you!”
Jill (loudly): “ARGH!”
Prof P: “What was that?”
Jill : “Oh nothing!”
Prof P: “I thought I heard ‘no’, because if that’s so then I could just move on…”
Jill: “Wait, is that an option!?”
Prof P: “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
SSG Instructor: “You guys haven’t had multifactor balancing tests yet right?”
Jill: “Yeah, in legal writing last semester, but that was a disaster too…”
Professor R: “Is this an incentive for the suspect to run? Often the suspect is younger, doesn’t have heavy equipment, and hasn’t been to the doughnut shop as much…”
Jill: “There’s a middle ground! You don’t haveta shoot him! You can taser him, or beat him with a baton!”
7. Should Jill bring a catheter?
Jill: Are there any bathroom breaks during our six hour deliberations? I want to know whether I should pack a catheter …
Professor T: “So you’re eating at Café X and you crunch into a crouton, which you find out is a roach. What do you do?”
Jill: “Sign up for Fear Factor!”
Professor T: “What’s that? I’m so disadvantaged for not watching TV…”
Jill: “Oh, it’s a show where they pay people to eat bugs.”
Professor T: “And can you get paid by Café X?”
Jill: “Sure.”
Professor T: “And why are they going to pay you?”
Jill: “Because they are scared of getting sued.”
Professor T: “And what if you just saw the roach in your salad and didn’t bite into it?”
Jill: “Well, then I bite into it and then sue.”
Professor R: “I want to schedule a makeup class for April 28 at noon. Does anyone have any conflicts with this?”
Jack: “I do! I do! There is some lunch thing with potential employers on that day.”
Jill (loudly): “Don’t worry. You’re not going to get hired anyway!”
4. Sugamomma.
Professor T: “Jill, does your husband have any interest in you?”
Jill: “Besides my sugamomma status?”
Professor T: “Yes a consortium…damages.”
Jill: “But I’m irreplaceable!”
Professor T: “We all are. Well, most of us. Not all of our dogs love us…”
3. Ms. D dropped out… (a long time ago)
Professor L: “Ms. Dennel? Demmel?”
Jill: “Her name was De-mal. Sarah Demal.”
Professor L: “Yes, so Ms. Dememel? Dennel? Oh forget it! I’ll just call you Ms. D!”
(Class laughs)
Professor L: “So Ms. D…”
Jill: “Actually, I’m Jill. Jill Smith.”
Professor L: “Huh? Where’s Ms. Demmel? Is Ms. Demmel, Dannel, Dennel not here today?”
Jill: “Sarah Demal sat in front of me. She actually dropped out the first week of class…”
Professor L: “OH! That explains things! I just had a note here that she wasn’t here the last time I called on her… hm.”
Jill: “…So do you want me to answer?”
Professor L: “No. I didn’t even want to call on you! Forget it!”
(Class laughs)
Professor L: “This is literally sound and fury signifying nothing…THERE! I got a Shakespeare quote in! ”
(later)
Professor L: “Okay, let me turn to…Ms. Chang…oh, she’s not here. She didn’t drop out too right?”
Jack: “Are you looking at my rolly backpack?”
Jill: “Yes. And judging accordingly.”
Jack: “What? I got it for my birthday and I’m so excited about it.”
Jill: “That’s nice.”
Jack: “…I just got sick of carrying so much shit around. I had so many bags and I looked like a homeless person.”
Jill: “You can buy cute bags though. Note my big purse and briefcase. Or, you can try using your locker for books you don’t need.”
Jack: “And I just want my rolly backpack to be socially acceptable!”
Jill: “It never will be.”
Jill’s computer starts speaking during Professor L’s class: “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE WON!” The entire class laughs.
Professor L: “I won’t even try to exercise discipline, because the embarrassment is enough. HOW EMBARRASSING!”
Jill: “Sorry…I had to buy these tickets…and…”
Professor L: “And apparently you’ve won something! I’m sure you’re not the only one who has done such a thing in class, you’re just the only one who has done it with the volume on!”
There was much hollering going on in Arkansas…
Yesterday I took my third exam (torts).
Constitutional law and Contracts were 8-hour “take home” exams. My torts exam was a 4-hour examsoft exam.
Examsoft is a timed, basic version of MS Works, (more like Wordpad). It restarts your computer and locks you out of all other windows functions. When you finish the test, examsoft encrypts the test, reboots your computer, and uploads the test to the internet.
The exam was proctored by two intense women – “IS EVERYONE ON THE SAME SCREEN?”
Jill: “Wait! I typed in the wrong exam number.”
Proctor: “You did what? That’s never happened before… Go outside to the computer people and get it fixed. Everyone will be waiting on you.”
Jill gets her computer fixed. The proctor starts counting down to let us start… then,
Proctor #2: “Wait! Those two are sitting next to each other! MOVE ONE SEAT OVER!”
Jack: “Me?”
Proctor #1: “Yes you. You can’t sit next to someone! Move.”
The whole class watched Jack move all of his stuff over. Silence and awkwardness.
We finally get the go-ahead to start. I open the test. The test consists of one 7-page hypo: a “Department Store” employee gets trampled on Black Friday. His pregnant wife sees the trampling and has a miscarriage. He also has a heart attack that isn’t detected at the hospital.
Oh dear.
After the exam, Stella and I went to a Chinese restaurant near the Stacks. We noticed police lights outside of the restaurant as we paid. We went outside and saw what the remmidemmi was about:
Oops.
Single car accident. His airbag went off.
There’s a presumption of negligence (hah I learned something!) And the cops agreed because they had the driver sitting in the police car. Someday I might represent people like that…assuming I get employed.
I only have one more test to go – Thursday’s Civil Procedure exam. Civil procedure is my favorite class because it’s the “how to be a lawyer” course…although a lot of people seem to hate it.
I have a hard time understanding how someone can attend law school and hate the course about the mechanics of lawyering (how to file a complaint, make motions, etc.)
It’s like a car-mechanic student hating an engine repair class…or a bodybuilder who hates lifting…
Oh, and re: the cold. It wasn’t that bad! The difference between 10 degrees and -30 is akin to Rugg’s negligence distinctions:
“Chief Justice Rugg’s famous distinctions among negligence, gross negligence and recklessness as being distinctions among a fool, a damned fool, and a God-damned fool.” (Harvard Law Record, April 16, 1959.)
Although I did see someone wearing shorts. Yes. Khaki shorts and a parka.
In -30.
His legs were SO red and everyone shot him the, “…no thou didn’t!” look. A housemate pointed out that at -30, you’re an excellent frost bite candidate if you’re wearing shorts…um, yeah….Fail.
I went to Frank’s Hotdogs last night and had a chat with the owner (?) she’s a middle aged lady with several kids:
Owner: “So where ya from?”
Me: “I moved from Miami this past August.”
Owner: “OH MY GOD! You poor thing! You must think we’re crazy to live out here in this cold!”
Me: “Oh, it’s not that bad. It’s all about dressing appropriately…”
And then I wake up this morning and check the weather…
And the horror continued as I scrolled down the page…
…um.
Now there are SEVERAL problems with this.
Problem #1: The “feels like” temperature for today is -30.
I cannot fathom. Seriously. I cannot… but, I will have to because I have a torts final in an hour.
Problem #2: “Dangerous” wind chill of -40.
How fast is this wind blowing? 20, or maybe 30mph. I walk to school. Over the Mississippi. On this long-ass bridge:
Problem #3: (and this is the kicker) for tomorrow the high is -18. The description says, “bitterly cold.”
Dear weather channel.com: you’ve set me back a full 10 minutes because I have wrap my mind around this fuckery.
If -18 is bitterly cold…what the heck do you call today’s “feels like” -30?
They haven’t come up with a word have they? You sent Timmy the Intern outside to feel the -30 and he never came back! Timmy, I have your back. I’ll never forget!
Now there is a positive to all of this: I’m so preoccupied with being offended at the weather (and the weather channel.com!) that the final is not even a remote concern.
So the conversation went something like this…
Me: “I want to make a decapitated snowman like Jessie, from Boy in Suit!”
Jamie: “Uh…no. We can’t do that!”
Me: “Why not? It would be the tort snowman! Mr. Palsgraf!”
Jamie: “Too stereotypical for this neighborhood. We have too much crime….too much real blood in the snow for that to be appropriate!”
Me: “But it’s going to be ballin’ outrageous!”
Jamie: “THE FIRST SNOW MAN I MAKE AT MY HOUSE IS NOT GOING TO BE A TORT!”
Me: “Arg! Bitch, moan, plead, interpleader!!”
Jamie: “FINE! MAKE YOUR OWN SNOW MAN!”
So we went outside, and Jamie made his Snow-woman…
That’s a total Charlie Brown pose right there…
Whenever I get sick of outlining, my torts book shoots me a jewel like this:
“On the other hand there are other kinds of medical malpractice, as where a sponge is left in the plaintiff’s abdomen after an operation, where no expert is needed to tell the jury that such events do not usually occur in the absence negligence.”
Muhaha. I love it…
Anyhoot, almost done!
Well, well…
Me: “Hm. I’ve been typing for a long time. Let me save this outline before anything happens...”
I click “save” and what happens?
Computer: “GOTCHA!”
Thankfully there’s a recovery option. I try to save the “recovered” outline and the same thing happens…so I had to copy the outline into a new file…
MS Word shouldn’t mess with me while I’m outling torts. I know my rights and I can make it look like an accident…
I’m outlining Torts at Jamie’s house with my study-partner, Maverick.
A dog is the best law school study buddy ever: unlike humans, a dog can listen to tort theory for hours without actually committing a tort against the babbling law student.
Me: “So, bla bla bla, death, destruction, law suit… this is a situation of transferred intent, right?”
Maverick: “Pant, pant, bark, fart, pant-pant…yes, tell me more.”
So that’s my Friday…
From Torts:
Professor T: “Just the aroma of bucks will affect the flavor of the milk… and you thought you came to torts today…so what happens when your neighbor moves in next to you with buck goats?”
Jack: “Do they stink?”
Professor T: “As my daughter said, it smells worse than a skunk…so your neighbor moves in with goats and the goats just are doing what goats do: stinking up the whole neighborhood…”
Congrats: pay up.
Professor T: “It just so happens that the employee goes out and does something tortuous and we congratulate the employer for their liability…”
Professor T is out of control
Professor T: “So when I’m driving home today I commit a tort. Can you sue the school?”
Jack: “No. The university isn’t exercising any control over you.”
Professor T: “And you’re suggesting they have any control of me NOW? PROFESSOR T IS OUT OF CONTROL!”
“Culminating Purposes”
Professor T: “So the store manager goes off and visits his girlfriend and commits a tort en route. Is his employer liable?”
Jack: “It depends on his intent.”
Professor T: “His intent was to visit his girlfriend for cumulating purposes.”
Reprints of Love
Professor T: “So at this conference there’s this really attractive criminologist that I’ve been eying for a while. So I offer to show her my reprints (reprints are a form of intellectual seduction)… so she’s upstairs in my hotel room looking at my reprints and I behave in an “ungentlemanly way”…can she sue the University?”
Professor T goes there…with Jill!
Professor T: “So Jill, what if I put the moves on you? Is the university liable for my intentional actions?”
(Jill makes heaving motion)
Professor T: “God, what a grotesque thought! It’s like an intentional infliction of emotional distress… are they liable?”
Jill: “I guess if you have a record of hitting on students…”
Besides that…
Professor T: “What’s the most dangerous part of running a newspaper business? I mean, besides getting your pressmen chopped up in the printing machines…”
Top chef:
Professor T: “What about a restaurant with a top chef? He runs the kitchen. No one controls him – If anyone even asks the chef a question he raises a knife. And let’s say he serves a salmonella salad…”
Baby’s expensive:
Professor T: “Statistics say that to get your child from 0 to 18 costs about $200,000 – food, clothing, buying a larger house – every time your child looks at you it’s like looking at an endless money pit.”
Professor T & the Widow Makers:
Professor T: “I have the loggers clear trees on my property. The hanging limbs are dangerous. We call them Widow Makers. So I have the loggers sign a three page release. They sign it because they think “Professor T is crazy,” but I’m also the biggest target in the county because I’m the only one in the entire county that’s gainfully employed…”
Don’t piss off the officer:
Professor T: “the waiver form they have you sign before you get in a police car says: ‘not only are we not liable for any injuries that arise from a high speed chase, but our police officer can turn around and shoot you in the head and you can’t sue.’
Jill wants to know:
Jill: “Where do we draw the line?! Do I have to stay in bed for the rest of my life wearing a helmet in case I get in an accident or break a statute I’m unaware of?!”
Jill can tell.
Professor T: Are we going to let the kid sue mom?
Jill: I can tell the answer’s no, but I’m not sure why…
Professor T: How can you tell the answer is no?
Jill: I can tell because of the tone your voice…
Jill is suing regardless…
Professor T: “So you’re eating at Café X and you crunch into a crouton, which you find out is a roach. What do you do?”
Jill: “Sign up for Fear Factor!”
Professor T: “What’s that? I’m so disadvantaged for not watching TV…”
Jill: “Oh, it’s a show where they pay people to eat bugs.”
Professor T: “And can you get paid by Café X?”
Jill: “Sure.”
Professor T: “And why are they going to pay you?”
Jill: “Because they are scared of getting sued.”
Professor T: “And what if you just saw the roach in your salad and didn’t bite into it?”
Jill: “Well, then I bite into it and then sue.”
The fun in Constitutional Law continues…
Professor L: “Okay, Mr. Smith. We have the classic situation: you’re walking down the street and someone asks you to explain the doctrine of executive privilege in a nutshell. What do you say besides ‘get away from me’?”
Student: “Well, correct me if I’m wrong–“
Professor L: “Oh I will!”
The humor in my torts book is all about understatements. I’m reading Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California. It’s about a psychologist who learns of his patient’s plans to kill a young woman “because she had spurned [his] romantic advances.”
The psychologist has the patient detained at the hospital. The patient was released shortly thereafter, “Despite disagreement among the psychiatrists the final decision was that no further action should be taken to confine Prosenjit Poddar (the patient).”
And sure enough, because this is Torts…
“This judgment proved to be mistaken; two months later Poddar shot and then repeatedly stabbed Tatiana.”
The Wikipedia entry fills in some holes…
Prosenjit Poddar was born into the Dalit (“untouchable”) caste in Bengal, India. He came to UC Berkeley as a graduate student in September 1967 and resided at the International House. In the fall of 1968 he attended folk dancing classes at the International House, and it was there he met Tatiana Tarasoff.
They saw each other weekly throughout the fall, and on New Year’s Eve she kissed Poddar. He interpreted the act to be a recognition of the existence of a serious relationship. This view was not shared by Tatiana who, upon learning of his feelings, told him that she was involved with other men and otherwise indicated that she was not interested in entering into an intimate relationship with him.
As a result of this rebuff Poddar underwent a severe emotional crisis. He became depressed and neglected his appearance, his studies and his health. He remained by himself, speaking disjointedly and often weeping. This condition persisted, with steady deterioration, throughout the spring and into the summer of 1969. Defendant did have occasional meetings with Tatiana during this period and tape recorded various of their conversations in an attempt to ascertain why she did not love him.
During the summer of 1969 Tatiana went to South America. After her departure Poddar began to improve and at the suggestion of a friend sought psychological assistance. Prosenjit Poddar was a patient of Dr. Lawrence Moore, a psychologist at UC Berkeley’s Cowell Memorial Hospital in 1969. Poddar confided his intent to kill Tatiana. Dr. Moore requested that the campus police detain Poddar, writing that, in his opinion, Poddar was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, acute and severe. The psychologist recommended that defendant be civilly committed as a dangerous person. Poddar was detained, but shortly thereafter released, as he appeared rational. Dr. Moore’s supervisor, Dr. Harvey Powelson, then ordered that Poddar not be subject to further detention.
In October, after Tatiana had returned, Poddar stopped seeing his psychologist. Neither Tatiana nor her parents received any warning of the threat. Poddar then befriended Tatiana’s brother, even moving in with him. Several months later, on October 27, 1969, Poddar carried out the plan he had confided to his psychologist, killing Tarasoff. Tarasoff’s parents then sued Moore and various other employees of the University.
Poddar was convicted of second-degree murder, but the conviction was later appealed and overturned on the grounds that the jury was inadequately informed. A second trial was not held, and Poddar was released on the condition that he return to India.
We discussed Diethylstilbestrol (DES) litigation…
Professor T: “Is the subsequent occupant of a uterus unforeseeable?”
And little Sally picks up a flower…
Professor T: “So what happened to the girl in this case?”
Mike: “I don’t know.”
Professor T: “Look at the date.”
(Date of the case is 1971)
Mike: “Oh, 1971. She must have become a hippie or something.”
Professor T: “And her parents are upset that they sent little Sally who is as pure as snow into this university…”
There is a note in my Torts book* about Novelty Co. v. Daniels, 42 So.2d 395 (Miss. 1949)
8. Defendant, under an obligation to furnish a safe place to work, set plaintiff, its employee, at cleaning a coin-operated vending machine with gasoline in a small room in which there was a lighted gas heater with an open flame.
While he was working, a rat escaped from the vending machine and ran to take refuge under the heater, where its fur, impregnated with gasoline fumes, caught fire from the flame. The rat “returned in haste and flames to its original hideout,” and exploded the gasoline vapor inside the machine, injuring the plaintiff. Is the defendant liable?
*Prosser, Wade and Schwartz’s “Torts: Cases and Materials.” 11th ed. p328, note #8
Yun v. Ford Motor Co.
647 A.2d 841
*Estate of van passenger who died as result of being struck by automobile while crossing highway late at night to retrieve spare tire that had fallen off back of van brought products liability action against van manufacturer, installer which attached spare tire assembly to van, van dealership and manufacturer of spare tire carrier and negligence action against automobile service center.
Sarah: “I mean, it’s the Garden State Parkway! COME ON! You don’t run across it! People will speed up if they see you!”
Professor T: “Do they get extra points?”
Sarah: “Yeah! I mean, it’s New Jersey!”
Timmy: “Gotta love New Jersey!”
* Westlaw headnotes.
Yesterday in class:
Professor: “Rachael, are you with me?”
Rachael: “Does my face look like I’m with you?”
Redefining activism:
Professor T: “Judicial activism is a pejorative term people use to describe supreme court rulings they don’t like.”
Con Law began with this quote:
“Despite what Hollywood might have you believe, in situations like this you don’t call in the tough guys; you all in the lawyers.” – George Tenet
Haaa-CHO!
(There’s a boy in the back of the class that lets out these extra-loud sneeze-cough combos…)
Jill: “His sneezes are like an assault my senses every time…”
War Powers Resolution of 1973:
Jack: “It makes the president the commander-in-chief of a Cinderella army that disappears in 60 days.”