2001-08-30 � takin a break

I'm taking a break from my preparation for my criminal procedure class right now to update my diary. Later this evening I will have class with Comrade Pomorski. Of course, he doesn't know we call him Comrade and I'm not sure he would be amused, but he's from an eastern bloc country and has a very thick accent.

For those of you lucky people not in law school the way class works is called the case method. You read the opinions of courts when they decided previous cases and use them as jumping off places for the class discussion. It's a pretty effective method because the cases are all organized the same way. First you read the facts, then you read the rule then they take the rule and apply it to the facts then they tell you the answer.

Pomorski's actually one of my favorite professors here. I had him my first year for another course on criminal law. He could always be counted on to greet my comments in class with a curt "but how can that be in light of Winship?" (You'll have to imagine your own accent; it's hard to type that part out. Think Boris and Natasha.) I would ask, "Which one was Winship?" and then I would laugh and he would not.

It's not like I didn't read it. It's just that with all the case names I get them confused. I need a few facts to jog my memory. Winship itself has everything one could want from a case. It even has cannibalism! I swear I'm not making this up. All he would have had to say was "you know the one where they decided to eat a cabin boy AND THEN THEY DID IT! THEY ATE HIM AND WERE SURPRISED WHEN THEY GOT PROSECUTED FOR MURDER. That one." That's all it would have taken to jog my memory.

My favorite case I ever read was in torts. The setting is El Paso, Texas home of the brainiacs. The Chamber of Commerce decided that they wanted to have a western wear day and so what they decided to do was have a group of people go down town and if you were wearing western wear they would leave you alone. If you were not wearing western wear they would ROPE YOU AND STICK YOU WITH ELECTRICALLY CHARGED CATTLE PRODS AND PUT YOU IN A PEN where you were asked to BUY WESTERN WEAR CLOTHING! I swear this really happened.

So this girl is not wearing western wear and sees these guys coming for her so she starts to run and they start to chase her and then she runs through a store because she doesn't want to get stuck with a cattle prod and she runs into a glass door and puts her arm through it causing her permanent nerve damage.

A laugh riot!

The other one I liked a lot was in Missouri before the advent of sexual harassment laws. This woman worked at a checkout counter of a grocery store and it was a busy day. She'd been at her register for 6 hours and needed to go to the potty, so she said to her manager, "I'm going to the potty" and he said "get back to your register and don't leave it again or I'm going to spank you." That's right, he told her he'd SPANK her.

So she went to the potty any way, but before she could get there the manager took her over his knee, LIFTED HER SKIRT AND SWATTED HER FIVE TIMES! And at the end of the day he told her that if her drawer didn't balance he'd spank her again.

He's lucky he didn't paddle the piddle out of her.

Anyway, while I know these things happened, I can't remember the names of the cases that immortalize these events. And frankly, I'm done trying to. So tonight when Comrade Pomorski asks me to give him the facts, I'll proudly ask him "Which one was that again?"

Posted at 6:06 p.m.

previously on Soonernext on Sooner

last five entries

  • making Sense of the State of the Union -- 2
  • Making Sense of the State of the Union -- Pt. 1
  • But I'm Willing to Learn
  • Rough Draft
  • Political Action