Category Archives: Law: Everything Else

Congress' General Accounting Office changed its name to the General AccountABILITY Office. Huh? Numbers don't count any more?

CORRECTION: I goofed! It's GOVERNMENT AccountABILITY Office. Scary…

Further to the law and animals theme, today's Herald has an interesting feature on what happens to pets in divorce: Divorcing couples fight like beasts over pets.

Given the number of childless people I know who call their pet “baby” or refer to their spouse as the pet's “mummy” or “daddy”—something I as a parent always find a bit startling—I bet this happens a lot.

It seems that, in Florida at least, pets are chattel property under law, so you cannot have court-ordered visitation: “Our courts are overwhelmed with the supervision of custody, visitation and support matters related to the protection of our children,'' a Florida appellate court ruled. “We cannot undertake the same responsibility as to animals.''

Update: The leading Florida case is Bennett v. Bennett, 655 So. 2d 109 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995), and as it's short and not on findlaw, I've put the text in the extended.

For commentary, see Who Gets Fluffy? Division of Pets in Divorce Cases (“a family pet is an item of personal property, and principles concerning the classification of this property apply. Once it is determined, however, that the family pet is marital property or that the court has the authority to award the family pet to one party or the other, then the court may consider who would better care for the pet and who has the greater attachment to the pet. This is really no different from the many cases that award a particular piece of property to the party who asserts a greater sentimental value to an item of property”).

Continue reading →

Even judges get fan sites? Well, at least one witty, intelligent, highly readable, and arch-conservative judge does: The Unofficial Judge Alex Kozinski Site (spotted via Tim Bishop)

What's next, a fan club?

Oh, wait, maybe there is one.

The Guardian reports that in Ireland they have their own approach to keeping financial markets clean—Irish bank boss quits over adult sites:

The Irish banking sector was dealt another blow this weekend with the resignation of the chief executive of the Bank of Ireland, Michael Soden.

Mr Soden resigned on Saturday after he admitted breaking company guidelines by accessing internet sites containing adult content. He is also expected to step down from the board of the Post Office, a role he took up after the Bank of Ireland signed a deal with the Royal Mail's retail arm.

A spokesman for the bank said directors would meet this week to discuss Mr Soden's replacement and payoff.

The experienced banking executive said he deeply regretted the embarrassment he had caused the bank by breaching its policies on internet use.

“I have made it a central part of my tenure to set the highest standards of integrity and behaviour and to do so in an environment of accountability, transparency and openness,” he said. “I now accept that accessing this material was inappropriate and would cause embarrassment to Bank of Ireland and people who work there.”

Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern yesterday said Mr Soden's resignation and a growing scandal at Allied Irish Bank had jeopardised the credibility of the Irish financial industry. “It can't get much worse.”

Perhaps Mr. Soden should look for a job in Denmark?

Charles Petit has a blog whose content is so good I read it despite the layout, which (at least on Firefox with my defaults) produces a color scheme and crowded typeface that I actually find disturbing. Here's the start of an especially good recent post:

It's alive: The Ninth Circuit gave us a true Frankenstein moment on Monday. In Thinket Ink (PDF), a panel held that

if a corporation either suffers discrimination harm cognizable under § 1981, or has acquired an imputed racial identity, it is sufficiently within the statutory zone of interest to have prudential standing to bring an action under § 1981.

Id., slip op. at 6343 (emphasis added).

Why is this a Frankenstein moment? Because by implication it means that the corporation, an unnatural person, has taken on yet more aspects from natural (real) persons: race, religion, ethnicity, and gender. This leads to some very, very interesting (and difficult) questions of constitutional and statutory interpretation; and of the relationship among law, policy, and reality; and of speculative fiction.

There's more where that came from, plus other stuff about “Law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing!) from the author's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into military affairs, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.”

Living in a country where it's a serious question of debate whether and when Employer is liable to Employee2 under an 'environmental harassment' theory for Employee1's visible consumption of online porn, it's bracing to be reminded that attitudes are different elsewhere. Consider Danes permit office p0rn. Danish IT firm LL Media found out that its programmers were wasting large amounts of office time surfing online porn, and decided to start blocking it during working hours. In an attempt to keep the troops happy after the blocking went into effect, LL Media is offering a new fringe benefit: signing workers up for a pay online porn service — but for after hours use only.

Continue reading →