Wednesday Writs: Em’s Too Busy to Write Up a Case Edition
Attorney A.J. Bruner in his temporary office on Nome, Alaska beach during September 13, 1905 fire. Photo via Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain]
[WW2] Seeking to avoid becoming the site of a second Woodstock, Lagrange County, Indiana passed what was deemed an “anti-hippie law” in 1971. The ordinance was recently dropped in an effort to eliminate obsolete statutes from the books.
[WW3] Jaybird has written about Cyberpunk 2077, the new game that was anxiously awaited and then roundly disappointed. Law firms are ready to step in now, alleging the company behind the game deliberately hid defects and problems for monetary gain, essentially defrauding customers.
[WW4] The story of Trump’s phone call to extort- I mean implore Georgia’s Secretary of State to find the votes needed to declare him the winner revealed a new member of his legal team we hadn’t heard of before: Cleta Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell’s firm is not altogether pleased with her participation in the event.
[WW5] Speaking of “the phone call,” did Trump break the law? Here’s one analysis that says it probably was (but probably not prosecutable.)
[WW6] And here’s another take from @ASFleischman that says it probably wasn’t, (which for the record is where I land, as well.)
[WW7] New Year, New Laws: A round up of legislation taking effect around the country in 2021, from police reform to the environment to airport security.
[WW8] Also new: a requirement for federal law enforcement to wear name badges when responding to “civil unrest,” in response to the disturbing footage of unidentified, armed men rounding up protesters on the streets last summer. The change is part of the new National Defense Authorization Act.
[WW9] Many restaurant owners carry business interruption insurance, but a few have learned the hard way that their policies contain a virus exception– and some whose policies have no such exclusion have nonetheless been denied payouts for their claims. Insurance companies suck.
WW1: Is it just me, or does the press not bother to link to the actual text of a law that they are discussing? I see that there are some links in the CNN article from WW7.
In general, I support changing self defense laws to limit the duty to retreat, because in the actual moment, a person is not going to be thinking, “Did I retreat enough to satisfy the duty, or do I need to keep running away? What will the DA think when he’s looking over the reports from the safety of his office?”. But at the same time, we don’t want citizens to have the same flexibility the police enjoy (We don’t actually want the police to have that flexibility either, but it seems we all accept it; “I thought his cell phone was a gun, I was in fear for my life, so I shot him with my full magazine, reloaded, and kept shooting. Totally reasonable, don’t you see…”)Report
I don’t know how Ohio writes their bills. In Colorado, a bill modifying an existing law is basically a set of instructions for modifying the current text. (If you’re a UNIX person, think diff only worse.) Page after page of things like, ‘In Section 3, paragraph B, line 6, strike “fully.” and substitute “fully, except for the cases listed in paragraph D.”‘ Learning to read/write this stuff was one of the odder things about being on the legislative staff. Changes were enrolled from time to time but in a form that reflected both the prior and current text, with strikethrough, underline, and double underline.
The fully-enrolled text is available sometime after the session ends, in LexisNexis. Linking to it is… difficult.Report