But this was a new one, which I reprint with the permission of Mr. Dennis W. Webb of Fort Worth, TX.:

I realize you’re probably very busy, so I’ll get right to my problem. Tomorrow I’m to begin writing summaries of a local lawyer’s court cases. (Sorry, I’m not even sure what this is called.) I’ve read your “Legal Writing Tips,” which seems to be straightforward advice. Can you think of anything else that may be useful in my first day on the job?

Thanks.

Got any advice for Mr. Webb?

Judge Marlon Polk threw out Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit against the Almighty, saying there was no evidence that the defendant had been served. What’s more, Polk found “there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant.”

Contrast this result to the famous Jewish story about the Rabbis sent to a concentration camp who decide to put G-d on trial for allowing the Holocaust to happen. Not subject to the FRCP, they hold a trial on the merits, and find the Defendant guilty of abandoning them and of allowing this great evil to happen.

And then, after the trial was over, they said evening prayer.

I had planned to hold my peace, as it seems to me that there are already court committees working on all the major judicial tech issues (and, from what I can tell, doing a very good job of it too), but given the shortness of the queue I figured I might as well make a plea for three small things I’d love to see the Florida Supreme Court do.

1. Mandate web-friendly citation forms and document formats for all state judicial opinions. This would include web friendly file naming, formatting, and paragraph numbering. This would cost almost nothing.

2. Provide law clerks for the trial court judges (this would require an appropriation from the Legislature) — most states have them, our appellate courts have them, but our hard-working trial court judges don’t get their own law clerks. (Disclosure: this proposal would create more jobs for our graduates, but I think it’s a very good idea on its own merits — judges who are in court need the back-office help.)

3. (This is a pipe dream) Remove unreasonable barriers to entry of lawyers who move here from out of state. Florida’s rules are an archaic barrier to entry in a national economy and globalized world. Unlike just about every other state, there are no provisions for experienced lawyers to waive into the Florida bar. Worse, the application process for experienced lawyers requires so much paperwork that it would be struck down as a barrier to entry if the anti-trust law applied. I know the bar is against this, but I think it would serve the public interest.

The panel took notes on the first point, agreed vigorously if not particularly optimistically with the second, and were polite about the third — but I’m not holding my breath.

You can make your own comments in writing by Nov. 1, to:

Task Force on Judicial Branch Planning
Office of the State Courts Administrator
Strategic Planning
Florida Supreme Court
500 South Duval Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1900

Boing Boing, Fourth grader suspended for using broken pencil sharpener. Note that the “use” was his trying to sharpen a pencil, not threaten someone.

(found via Good as You, AFA will try to tarnish Golden Arches)

Note that I support the right of people to organize boycotts against companies whose policies they don’t like, indeed celebrate it as a valued form of citizen activism. And I also support the right of the rest of us to make fun of misguided boycotts.

(See I Am A Plaintiff for more details.)

I took option two, having calculated that I was abroad for 394 days during the relevant period. That’s a lot of days.

Bottom line: nothing is gonna change for some time.

It is reported that after the second time that a mobile phone had rung in the public gallery the Judge put down his pen, and glared across at the flustered-looking owner of the phone. “If that happens again” said His Honour, “you may discover why they are known as cell phones”.

McClatchy, Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens:

Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he’s never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack’s claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship.

“The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes,” Warziniack said in a phone interview from jail.

It’s really worth reading the whole article: no right to a lawyer, no help getting documents, no one believes the documents you get or the witnesses you find, and you have the burden of proof of showing you are a citizen — while in custody.

(spotted via Emergent Chaos, “We have to be careful we don’t release the wrong person”)