Movies That Make Lawyers Think “Wait a Minute…”

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August 10, 2012

Lawyers always see the world through code sections and case law.

For anyone related to a lawyer, married to a lawyer, or dating a lawyer, their beloved attorney is constantly analyzing their surroundings. This can make a simple night of watching a movie a challenge.

Take these seemingly harmless movies and what lawyers think of while watching them:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone:

Harry Potter spent the first 10 years of his life living in the cupboard under the stairs. Where was child protective services? While the Charles Dickens style child suffrage built character for a later hero, how was that even legal in modern Great Britain?

Wizard Costume Halloween Boy — Wait a minute….they can’t make me live under the stairs…

At this point, the lawyer’s mind starts thinking about the specific language of the relevant code sections.

For example, a California attorney may stop watching the movie 10 minutes into the film to look up “child abuse” under the California Penal Code.

The attorney may focus on Cal Pen Code § 273a(a) and wonder if Harry living under the stairs meet the language of “willfully causes or permits any child to suffer.”

Would the the verbal treatment by the uncle be enough to prove unjustifiable mental suffering?

As the series continues, lawyers start thinking about other issues.

For example, whether there was any class action litigation against potion manufacturers is never addressed in the films. Would the litigation be similar to a pharmaceutical case? Lawyers start thinking about that as soon as one student falls in “love” with another due to Amortentia, Cupid Crystals, Kissing Concoction, Beguiling Bubbles or Twilight Moonbeams. On a fundamental level, how were any of those remotely legal and commercially available?

Toy Story 3 & Torture:

Did Toy Story 3 inadvertently sanction torture?

Barbie breaks Ken into disclosing how Buzz Lightyear was re-set by 1) knocking Ken out; 2) tying Ken up; and 2) ripping up his vintage clothes until Ken betrayed the dictatorial Lotso.

The lawyer who starts thinking about this might grab their iPad and look up Torture in their West Black’s Law Dictionary App. This is what they would find:

torture, n. (16c) The infliction of intense pain to the body or mind to punish, to extract a confession or information, or to obtain sadistic pleasure. — torture, vb.

The question remains, is destroying vintage clothes enough to cause intense pain to the mind to extract information to be torture?

What do jury instructions say on torture?

Is there any case law on emotional torture by destroying property?

How do I explain this fact pattern to the research attorney on the phone?

Captain America and Back-Pay?

Captain America: The First Avengers ends with Steve Rodgers waking up in New York City after spending nearly 70 years in ice.

Would Captain America be entitled to Army back-pay for nearly 70 years, adjusted for interest, inflation and cost of living increases since World War 2 under the Missing Persons Act, 37 U.S.C. §§ 551-558?

The true Geek Lawyer (and a few JAG Officers) would spend a lot of time researching case law dating back to World War 2 for the answer.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Henry F. Potter kept the Building & Loans’ money that Uncle Billy lost.

Does Potter cover up the extra $8,000 somehow?

Does the bank notice an $8,000 deposit days after the town rallied to save George Bailey?

Is Mr. Potter later tried and convicted for grand larceny?

Think Like a Lawyer

Attorneys are taught in law school to “think like a lawyer.” A side effect of such training is dissecting scenes of movies for their legal issues. Many of us have learned not spoil a perfectly good evening by asking these questions to non-attorney friends and family.

Movies That Make Lawyers Think "Wait a Minute…"

By

Josh Gilliland

-

August 10, 2012

0

Lawyers always see the world through code sections and case law.

For anyone related to a lawyer, married to a lawyer, or dating a lawyer, their beloved attorney is constantly analyzing their surroundings. This can make a simple night of watching a movie a challenge.

Take these seemingly harmless movies and what lawyers think of while watching them:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone:

Harry Potter spent the first 10 years of his life living in the cupboard under the stairs. Where was child protective services? While the Charles Dickens style child suffrage built character for a later hero, how was that even legal in modern Great Britain?

At this point, the lawyer’s mind starts thinking about the specific language of the relevant code sections.

For example, a California attorney may stop watching the movie 10 minutes into the film to look up “child abuse” under the California Penal Code.

The attorney may focus on Cal Pen Code § 273a(a) and wonder if Harry living under the stairs meet the language of “willfully causes or permits any child to suffer.”

Would the the verbal treatment by the uncle be enough to prove unjustifiable mental suffering?

As the series continues, lawyers start thinking about other issues.

For example, whether there was any class action litigation against potion manufacturers is never addressed in the films. Would the litigation be similar to a pharmaceutical case? Lawyers start thinking about that as soon as one student falls in “love” with another due to Amortentia, Cupid Crystals, Kissing Concoction, Beguiling Bubbles or Twilight Moonbeams. On a fundamental level, how were any of those remotely legal and commercially available?

Toy Story 3 & Torture:

Did Toy Story 3 inadvertently sanction torture?

Barbie breaks Ken into disclosing how Buzz Lightyear was re-set by 1) knocking Ken out; 2) tying Ken up; and 2) ripping up his vintage clothes until Ken betrayed the dictatorial Lotso.

The lawyer who starts thinking about this might grab their iPad and look up Torture in their West Black’s Law Dictionary App. This is what they would find:

torture, n. (16c) The infliction of intense pain to the body or mind to punish, to extract a confession or information, or to obtain sadistic pleasure. — torture, vb.

The question remains, is destroying vintage clothes enough to cause intense pain to the mind to extract information to be torture?

What do jury instructions say on torture?

Is there any case law on emotional torture by destroying property?

How do I explain this fact pattern to the research attorney on the phone?

Captain America and Back-Pay?

Captain America: The First Avengers ends with Steve Rodgers waking up in New York City after spending nearly 70 years in ice.

Would Captain America be entitled to Army back-pay for nearly 70 years, adjusted for interest, inflation and cost of living increases since World War 2 under the Missing Persons Act, 37 U.S.C. §§ 551-558?

The true Geek Lawyer (and a few JAG Officers) would spend a lot of time researching case law dating back to World War 2 for the answer.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Henry F. Potter kept the Building & Loans’ money that Uncle Billy lost.

Does Potter cover up the extra $8,000 somehow?

Does the bank notice an $8,000 deposit days after the town rallied to save George Bailey?

Is Mr. Potter later tried and convicted for grand larceny?

Think Like a Lawyer

Attorneys are taught in law school to “think like a lawyer.” A side effect of such training is dissecting scenes of movies for their legal issues. Many of us have learned not spoil a perfectly good evening by asking these questions to non-attorney friends and family.

The Legal Geeks Analyze Buffy the Vampire Slayer

By

Josh Gilliland

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August 9, 2012

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Attorneys Jessica Mederson and Joshua Gilliland discuss Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the possible legal issues for the fictional Sunnydale High School and highlight the creative genius of Joss Whedon. Josh also pays tribute to the geek history of his hometown, Sunnyvale, California.

High school is hell, but can Sunnydale be sued for building on top of a hellmouth?

By

Jessica_alegalgeek

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August 8, 2012

0

“From beneath you, it devours.”

High school is a rough time for most of us. Joss Whedon took this basic truth and turned it into brilliance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where high school’s metaphorical terrors turn literal. And given that high school is hell, where better to locate a hellmouth then directly under Sunnydale High?

Big deal. So there’s a hellmouth under Sunnydale High, so what? Well, for parents considering sending their children there, they should know that, while Buffy attended Sunnydale High, the hellmouth was located directly under the library and even when the school was rebuilt they decided to put the hellmouth directly under the principal’s office. And this hellmouth is not for the faint of heart. At times there were large, octupi-like demons that would reach up into the libary out of the hellmouth (for example, in The Zeppo, one of my favorite Buffy episodes ever). Later, under the rebuilt high school, the First Evil stocked up on uber-vampires known as Turok-Hans inside the hellmouth, preparing to take over the world.

Having such a hellmouth under the high school obviously has an impact on the safety (even the life expectancy) of students attending the school. The question is – can somebody be held responsible for this poor design plan? And the answer is – yes.

In California, the state in which the fictional Sunnydale High is set, a public entity such as a school can be held responsible for an injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property if you can show that: (1) the property was in a dangerous condition at the time of the injury; (2) the injury was proximately caused by the dangerous condition; (3) the dangerous condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury that was incurred; (4) and either (a) a negligent or wrongful act or omission of an employee of the school created the dangerous condition within the scope of his employment , or (b) the school had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition a sufficient time prior to the injury to have taken measures to protect against the dangerous condition.

All of the above can certainly be established for students and staff at Sunnydale High. The Hellmouth is certainly a dangerous condition that caused physical harm and/or death to many students and staff (for example, the great psychologist Mr. Platt). As for the type of risk suffered (e.g., killed by werewolves, turned into sea monsters), the law does not require that the precise nature of the accident be foreseeable – just that the general character of the event should be foreseeable. Demonic activity and bizarre metamorpheses are certainly the general types of events that could be foreseen when your school is built on top of a hellmouth. Finally, while the residents of Sunnydale were willing to turn a blind eye to dangerous conditions that existed in the entire town, an objective outsider would argue that, at least by the end of the first season, the school had active or constructive notice of the hellmouth’s existence.

In sum, Sunnydale High turns on its head the general belief held by courts that “schools are not considered to be dangerous places per se.” The matriculation rate at Sunnydale High had to be shockingly low, with many sad losses of students, staff, and faculty (although Harmony actually improved after death). And a good lawyer could have made the school pay for that…assuming, of course, that Mayor Wilkins didn’t kill her first.

The Legal Geeks Interview Gabriel Diani on Ghosts, The Selling & Lawyer Movies

By

Josh Gilliland

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August 7, 2012

2

The Legal Geeks Jessica Mederson and Joshua Gilliland interview Gabe Diani (Josh’s brother) about The Selling, a movie about selling a haunted house.

The discussion includes stories from The Selling, a review of legal cases with ghosts (note, no part of this video should be considered legal advice on selling a haunted house), Gabe’s Kickerstarter project (along with Huck Finn, Robot Edition) and a pop quiz on lawyer movies.

The Ghosts of Real Property: A Discussion of The Selling

By

Josh Gilliland

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August 2, 2012

0

My younger brother Gabriel Diani wrote and starred in a film named The Selling. The premise of the film is that an honest real estate agent has to sell a haunted house to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment.

The film has won multiple awards at film festivals, including the Friars Club Comedy Film Festival, L.A. Comedy Film Festival, Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema, and the Tall Grass Film Festival. My brother recently launched a Kickstarter project for a limited release of the film.

As a big brother, I am very proud of the way Gabe racked up Best Actor awards like they were billable hours on document review.

The legal issues in The Selling included the disclosure of the multiple ghosts in the house (plus murders and demonic possession). The story involved an open house with bleeding walls and other issues that would significantly decease property value.

Let’s review the limited “body” of case law pertaining to haunted home sales in the United States.

They’re Here

When I first saw The Selling, I was instantly haunted by memories of Property in my first year of law school. The specific apparition was the strange case of Stambovsky v. Ackley. The case might be the only time is United States legal history where a Court actually stated, “…as a matter of law, the house is haunted.” Stambovsky v. Ackley, 169 A.D.2d 254, 256 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep’t 1991).

Stambovsky centered on a home buyer who brought an action for contract rescission because the seller did not disclose the house was haunted by poltergeists. Stambovsky, at *255-256. The seller’s family had “encountered” the spirits for nine years. Adding to the failed disclosure was that the fact that the haunted house had been featured in local and national publications, including a walking tour of haunted houses in the area. Id.

The Plaintiffs lost at the trial level, based on the doctrine of caveat emptor. The appellate Court rejected caveat emptor under the facts of the case, because it conjured “up visions of a psychic or medium routinely accompanying the structural engineer and Terminix man on an inspection of every home subject to a contract of sale.” Stambovsky, at *257.

The Court held the following:

In the case at bar, defendant seller deliberately fostered the public belief that her home was possessed. Having undertaken to inform the public-at-large, to whom she has no legal relationship, about the supernatural occurrences on her property, she may be said to owe no less a duty to her contract vendee. It has been remarked that the occasional modern cases which permit a seller to take unfair advantage of a buyer’s ignorance so long as he is not actively misled are “singularly unappetizing” (Prosser, Torts § 106, at 696 [4th ed 1971]). Where, as here, the seller not only takes unfair advantage of the buyer’s ignorance but has created and perpetuated a condition about which he is unlikely to even inquire, enforcement of the contract (in whole or in part) is offensive to the court’s sense of equity. Application of the remedy of rescission, within the bounds of the narrow exception to the doctrine of caveat emptor set forth herein, is entirely appropriate to relieve the unwitting purchaser from the consequences of a most unnatural bargain.

Stambovsky, at *260.

I See Dead People

The 1914 case of De Souza v. Soares from Hawaii is part of the small body of US case law involving haunted houses and property sales.

Closet Portal — From The Selling (Photo Courtesy of Gabriel Diani)

In De Souza, the Plaintiff claimed that when she sold her house to her brother-in-law, she executed the sale of her property based on the Defendant’s “misrepresentation that plaintiff’s house was haunted by ghosts and that she could not recover her health while living there.” De Souza v. Soares, 22 Haw. 17, 18-19 (Haw. 1914).

The Court sided with the Defendant in De Souza, finding that the Plaintiff was not credible, because she “was evasive and lacked in frankness.” De Souza, at *19.

De Souza is a 98-year-old case from before Hawaii was even a state. However, there was no equitable relief as in Stambovsky, because it was not a seller who failed to disclose the “existence” of ghosts haunting the property, but a seller claiming she was tricked into selling because the buyer allegedly said house was haunted. In De Souza, the Defendant was more credible on the facts and the Plaintiff failed to show any fraud.

Grab Her?! That Was Your Plan?!

Barry Bostwick as Father Jimmy in The Selling (Photo Courtesy of Gabriel Diani).

There is very little “ghost law” in the United States, to the point where we cannot even say it is a body of law, but a spectre of cases. This is because of the unavailability of living witnesses, judicial resistance to seances in court and the entire question of proving beyond a preponderance of the evidence the existence an afterlife. It would also give new meaning to ghosting a hard drive.

With that said, we do have clear case law on disclosing a known defect in a house. If you have had TV coverage of ghosts reorganizing your closet or additional lifeless faces in mirrors besides your own, you may need both an old priest and a young priest at your open house.