TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (61)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, April 24; lik good at time of posting):

Believing they had a botched burglary on their hands, police in Hayward, California, called to a house instead found a naked man wedged in its chimney, a police officer said on Monday.

"He didn't have a stitch on," Lt. Gary Branson of the Hayward Police Department said, referring to Michael Urbano.

The 23-year-old man came home early Saturday morning and, finding himself locked out and without his keys, tried to enter the single-story house through its chimney.

"He told us he took off his clothes because as he was going down the chimney the clothes would rub up against it and slow him down," Branson said. "If it was skin on cement he felt he would go down easier."

. . . .

Officers booked Urbano for being under the influence of drugs, he added.

[Previous TGIS]

Submariners

Well, the first month of the Seattle Mariners' season is nearing its end and, much like last April, the M's are under water.

If there's a bright spot thus far, it's been the team's stellar performance on Wednesdays and Thursdays. With last night's 5-1 win over the White Sox, the M's will finish April with a nice 6-1 record on those days. Sure, they have no wins yet on either Fridays or Sundays (combined 0-6) and just one win each on the other three days of the week (combined 3-7), but why dwell on the negatives? There's a Wednesday game every week of the season except the week of the All-Star Game and a dozen Thursday games sprinkled here and there throughout the schedule -- that's 33 good opportunities not to disappoint.

With the team's current record at 9-14 and the data we have accumulated thus far, we can extrapolate a season record of somewhere between 9-153 and 148-14. Perhaps last night's win was not just a win but was instead the start of a 140-game winning streak.

It probably was, but now I've gone and jinxed it. Dammit.

Patent No. 3,557,362 on the Head Time

Happy World Intellectual Property Day to you and yours! Coming as it does so close on the heels of Passover and Easter this year, World Intellectual Property Day is bound to get short shrift, but at least George and Laura remembered.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, which runs the event, has a list of suggested activities for us. Sadly, all of their suggestions blow. As an alternative to their tired ideas, this afternoon I will be leading a parade of technology and intellectual property counsel through the streets of downtown San Jose. We will be stark naked, clad only in World Intellectual Property Day posters. Although she is not actually a technology or intellectual property attorney, Keira Knightley will be accompanying us; she looks fabulous wearing only a World Intellectual Property Day poster and the groundbreaking "reverse restraining order" I was granted recently requires her to remain within 300 yards of me at all times.

What's that, Keira? You say World Mental Health Day is October 10? Interesting.

Reuben Wept

Hope springs eternal, I suppose. Despite many prior futile attempts to find a decent Reuben sandwich here in the East Bay, I tried once again this afternoon.

• Strike One:

Clerk: "Do you want tomatoes and sprouts on that?"

Me: "I'm sorry, I ordered a Reuben."

Clerk: "Uh huh. Do you want tomatoes and sprouts on that?"

Me: [Sobbing]

• Strike Two: What is this, World War II? Why are you rationing the meat?


• Strike Three: What the hell are you doing with that microwave?

In the immortal words of Space Ghost, I am super-unsatisfied.

Update: Judicial Selection Symposium and International Clambake

A month or so ago, I linked to a post by I.M. Kierkegaard announcing a conference on judicial section and independence at Fordham Law School. I.M. recently e-mailed to let me know that the conference was a success and that links to the videos of the panel presentations are available at his site. These videos are available free-of-charge at Google Video, so let's have no complaints that you can't a-Fordham.

Vintage Brandy for Blawg Review

With Blawg Review No. 54, solo practitioner Brandy Karl takes a trip Through the Looking Glass and manages not to get cut on the shards. There's been much discussion in recent weeks concerning the nature of Blawg Review -- is it more properly a compendium of or a filter for the preceding week's legal blogging? I confess happily that my preference is for the former -- lots of linkage, presented with wit and style -- and this week's issue satisfies. It's a safe bet that next week's also will, when Ben Cowgill hosts the carnival at his SoloBlawg site. Keep an eye peeled this week for the best legal blogging and don't be shy about sharing your finds with the class. The deadline for next Monday's edition is this coming Saturday.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (60)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Thursday, April 20; link good at time of posting):

A 76-year-old man claiming to be a doctor went door-to-door in a Florida neighborhood offering free breast exams, and was charged with sexually assaulting two women who accepted the offer, police said on Thursday.

. . . .

The white-haired suspect, Philip Winikoff, carried a black bag and claimed to be visiting on behalf of a local hospital.

"He told the woman that he was in the neighborhood offering free breast exams," sheriff's spokesman Hugh Graf said in a statement.

At least two women, both in their 30s, let him into their homes and he fondled and sexually assaulted them, the investigators said.

Winikoff was not a doctor, Graf said. He worked as a shuttle driver for an auto dealership.

[Previous TGIS]

One More Thing Which Sounds Dirty But Isn't

I'm returned from a brief vacation. Did you miss me? The remainder of the clan will be back this weekend; meanwhile, the pug and I are living the bachelor life. I'm eating Rice-a-Roni and he's watching me eat Rice-a-Roni. Good times had by all.

As I left work this evening, I mentioned that, "My wife is still out of town, so I'm leaving early to feed the pug."

I'm not sure what it says about me as a person that I felt the need to go back and explain that that was not a euphemism for anything.

Blawg Review Celebrates an Anniversary in Style

There was an Esq. from Beantown
My "haiku" often made him frown
Perhaps this limerick
Will do just the trick
To bring his Review some renown


One of my favorite legal bloggers, David Giacalone, hosts the fifty-second edition of Blawg Review and does so with his trademark poetic and visual sensibilities. Giacalone's many blogging incarnations -- as general pundit, haiku guru, and ethical legal practice authority -- make his site one of the more varied and interesting reads available. In appreciation for his outstanding work this week, I'll not inflict another "haiku" upon him.

This week's host reminds us that this issue marks an auspicious occasion -- the first anniversary of Blawg Review. Congratulations are due and gratefully offered to the Anonymous Blawg Review Editor for his/her/its tremendous efforts over the past twelve months!

Professor James Edward Maule kicks off the second year of Blawg Review next week when he hosts the fifty-third issue at his MauledAgain blog.

No Twists in This Ending

The DaVinci Code trial verdict is in:

A British judge today rejected a closely watched copyright infringement claim against the author and publisher of "The Da Vinci Code," who were accused of appropriating the central theme of the blockbuster novel from the central theme of a work of non-fiction.

High Court Justice Peter Smith dismissed the claim brought by the authors of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" as virtually devoid of merit.

Indeed, he said the book, written by Michael Baigent, and Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, did not even have a discernable "central theme" that anyone could appropriate. Lincoln was not a party to the lawsuit.

"It would be quite wrong if fictional writers were to have their writings pored over in the way DVC [Da Vinci Code] has been pored over in this case by authors of pretend historical books to make an allegation of infringement of copyright," Smith said in his 71-page ruling.

The judge suggested that the plaintiffs had simply gone through their book extracting segments in order to construct "an artificial creation for the purposes of litigation."

I and numerous others had predicted (see previous posts here and here) a clear loss for the Holy Blood authors, but "authors of pretend historical books"? Ouch, judge.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (59)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of CBS' Boston affiliate, CBS4 (from Thursday, April 6; link good at time of posting):

A Providence police patrolman has been disciplined for releasing a suspect because he was tired and it was the end of his shift.

Patrolman Roland Reed was guarding a man, who was accused of assaulting another officer, at Rhode Island Hospital last month when his shift came to an end at 7 a.m. Reed didn't wait for his replacement to arrive and left. He later told superiors he was tired.

By the time the next officer arrived, the suspect was gone. The man was eventually re-arrested.

Reed, who has two years of experience, has accepted undisclosed discipline for his actions.

[Previous TGIS]

Friction Over Fiction

When I posted a couple of weeks back about the DaVinci Code litigation, I noted that the plaintiffs' case was weak in part because it flew in the face of the longstanding legal principle that one cannot plagiarize purported facts. In an entertaining op-ed piece in today's New York Times, author Joseph Finder approaches the issue from another angle, pointing out that The DaVinci Code is merely the latest noteworthy novel to "plagiarize" a factual account:

"Writers have to avoid taking material from other writers," one of the plaintiffs, Michael Baigent, has declared, unappeased by the fact that Mr. Brown's book makes explicit reference to his. "It's part of the deal, really."

Tell that to the author of "A Tale of Two Cities," who not only boasted of having read Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution hundreds of times but also credited it with having "inspired me with the general fancy of that story."

. . . .

So what's to be learned from a modern novelist whose plot involves conspiracies at the heart of the Roman Catholic church, and who finds himself accused of taking central plot elements from a previous work of nonfiction? I'm thinking, of course, of the French Nobel laureate André Gide and his brilliant 1914 novel, "The Vatican Cellars," first published in English under the title "The Vatican Swindle."

The novel revolved around a historical episode detailed in "The False Pope," by the distinguished Hebraist Jean de Pauly. In the early 1880's, Pauly wrote, a ring of con artists persuaded gullible Catholic traditionalists that Pope Leo VIII was being held captive in the Vatican cellars, while Masonic conspirators (possibly with Jesuit assistance) had replaced him with an impostor. The victims forked over hundreds of thousands of francs that were supposedly needed for a secret crusade to rescue God's vicar on earth.

Gide's detractors found their ammunition. In a nimbly insinuating article, the literary journalist Frédéric Lefèvre framed the matter this way: "When André Gide wrote 'The Vatican Cellars,' did he or did he not know 'The False Pope,' published 20 years before? Mr. Gide has enough talent that he does not need to plagiarize anybody, but there are coincidences, surprising points of convergence." So he felt obliged to address an issue of "capital importance," namely, "a writer's rights and duties in using, organizing, and transposing reality."

Turning the case of the false pope into the case of the false author, these critics were too literal-minded to see that the "reality" in question concerned a fabulation — that what drew Gide to the true story was that it was a lie. Gide wasn't writing a historical novel about a hoax. He thought the novel was a hoax. "Fiction there is — and history," Gide wrote in "The Vatican Swindle": "We are indeed, forced to acknowledge that the novelist's art often compels belief, just as reality sometimes defies it."

Either way you slice it, it seems unlikely that the DaVinci plaintiffs will get their payday in court.

[Update]

Fools Rush In

"Who's more foolish -- the fool or the fool who follows him?"
--Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars (1977)


Who's more foolish -- the fool who agrees to do the April Fool's Day special edition of Blawg Review on short notice or the fool who precedes that endeavor with a prequel post which is just as entertaining as his special edition Blawg Review? It's no contest when the fools are one and the same blogger -- George M. Wallace, last year's Blawg Review Awards winner for best personal blog by a legally-oriented male blogger.

The stakes are now raised for next week's host, haiku afficianado David Giacalone:

Review fifty-two
must have at least two prequels
for host to save face