Tales from the Green Bag

With all the grim news for lawyers these days—white shoe firms like Dewey filing for bankruptcy, unemployed recent law school graduates (I know, non-lawyers are saying, “the problem with this is . . . what, exactly??), a Justice Department that suddenly can’t seem to convict a ham sandwich—perhaps it’s time to take in the lighter side of the law with a few excerpts from the most interesting law review in America.  No, it’s not the Harvard or Yale law reviews, but the 2012 Green Bag Almanac and Reader, produced by Ross Davies and Ira Brad Mateskey.

In particular, Gregory Jacob’s “The Year in Law” review section offers some splendid recaps of legal episodes in 2011 you might not have seen in your local bar news, or in the news in your local bar, or whatever.  Such as:

March 16: Reuters reports that a passenger on a Delta flight was detained after being overheard falsely identifying himself as a federal air marshal.  His problem was mainly that he was overheard by a real air marshal, who knows (because he is one) that real air marshals don’t tell passengers they are air marshals because that would defeat the purpose of having air marshals.

April 26: Police in Buffalo say they are looking for a man who escaped from the Central District station earlier than day.  The suspect is described as tall and muscular, wearing black clothing, and likely still carrying the chair to which they had handcuffed him.  “Police think he still has the chair with him because it is missing from the station,” the report says.

June 22: Counsel for the Dallas Mavericks basketball team moves to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a shareholder who alleges that the current owner [Mark Cuban] has “mismanaged” the team.  The primary argument in the motion is that ten days earlier, the Mavericks had defeated the Miami Heat to win the NBA championship.

June 24: The House of Representatives fails to pass a resolution that would have authorized the use of force in Libya for up to one year but prohibited the use of ground troops except in emergencies.  That is, the House took up, but could not pass, a resolution that would have given the President general authority to do something he had already been doing for three months, and specific authority to do something that everybody agrees he could do without asking.

More of these tomorrow perhaps. . .

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