2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
My mom took a great picture for the contest! As you can see, someone lost their favorite pet chicken, and he just happened to wander out to Gus’s Fried Chicken in Collierville. Now Gus is all about saving money and the price of chicken these days is just so high … sounds like an exam question right? Trespass to chattels? Conversion? — Stewart Hornor
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
This is a photo of a potential tort I spotted at the gym this weekend. The negligence of failing to close this safety pin on a locker key could result in someone losing an eye or receiving an unwanted piercing. — Sheerin Mehdian
McClurg footnote: I would go further and argue this is a defective design for a locker room key ring.
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
The size of this restroom compared to the size of its vanity in a mom and pop restaurant in my hometown of Savannah, TN, appears to me to create a danger for people who enter the restroom without paying careful attention or to those needing to get out quickly in case of a fire. — Terry VanEaton
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
Forget Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere; here’s my neighbor’s Door to Nowhere. I haven’t been able to find out why it’s there–except to tempt small children to try to fly. — Natalie Worlow
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
Stubbed my toe and about busted on the carpet in the 4th floor reading room of the law school because of this thing.
Now that we’re done with the memo, I’m hoping to get out this weekend to spot more torts. There will be a lot of Aggies in town for the Ole Miss game. To quote Top Gun, it’ll be a “target rich environment.” — Rob Clapper
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
Here are a couple of (admittedly bad and small) photos of a partially fallen tree in the west bound lane of Stage-Delano Road [in Shelby County]. Hidden from the view of west bound motorist by the fallen tree, a danger in itself, was a fiberglass bathtub. The tub is visible to east bound motorists and is shown in the east bound photo. It was in the road for at least two weeks.
Over that course of time, I noticed that the tub appeared to have been struck at least twice. I do not know if it was struck by a passing motorist. I can attest that damage to the tub increased at least twice over the course of my observations as I passed to and from the law school over the two weeks.
I am happy to report that it appears that the right of way on the street was mowed today and the tree and tub were removed. — Terry VanEaton
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
Potential tort spotted at the corner of Front and Gayoso [in downtown Memphis]. I nearly lost a Shelby County Public Defender. — Melissa Harris
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
This is the outside staircase I use each and every day at my apartment. It scares the living daylights out of me. It’s hard to tell from the pic, but the poles holding it up are leaning to the right. I like to think of it as the rusted out Leaning Staircase of Memphis. Sort of like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, only much more terrifying. — Natalie Worlow
Good news for legally inclined zombie lovers. Joshua Warren has compiled a casebook on Zombie Law that “include[s] case opinions from the over 300 U.S. Federal Court opinions with the word “zombie” (and “zombies”, “zombi”, “zombis”, “zombified”, “zombism”, etc..).” These include cases from the zombified Supreme Court (available as postcards, along with zombie law teeshirts and zombie flashdrives).
Warren explains that this is a “serious” project. From his promotional website:
The “zombie” in federal courts are very interesting. Aside from the intellectual property cases that provide some reflection on modern zombie fiction, there are also ample metaphoric uses of the word in these judicial writings. Judges have referred to “zombie precedents” and “zombie litigation”. There are zombie corporations, zombie criminals, a significant number are social security cases in which people describe themselves in zombie condition and even a recent mentions of cybernetic zombies.
Unlike other works of zombie academia, the zombies in this book are all real. Most zombie scholarship uses hypothetical zombies as tropes to create entertaining and extreme fact patterns that can be used to explain complex subject matters. This has been used effectively for neuroscience (Schlozman, Voytek), international policy analysis (Drezner), public health (Center for Disease Control), geography (Kickstarter project: Zombie-Based Learning), survival skills (Brooks) amongst other subjects (See Zombie Research Society) including also academics who focus on the fictional character itself (Mogk, Brooks).
This Zombie Law book is different because it does not use zombies as hypotheticals to teach law. It is not conjecture about what zombies are or might be. This book is a compendium of real usages of the actual word in American jurisprudence. This book is a collection of real legal cases that literally include “zombies” (or similar word) in US Federal Court opinions..
The basic outline of the book will separate most cases into issues of corporations, medications, criminals and, of course intellectual property. Major sections will be devoted to Social Security (disability) law, corporate fraud and issues of criminal intent. There are noteworthy cases referring to post traumatic stress disorder and many recent Social Security cases regarding of fibromyalgia. The intellectual property cases are about popular zombie fiction and also so-called “vicious zombi” patents. In general, the idea of zombies in a mall is public domain for copyright but particular forms of zombie products are protected by trademark.
Frequently there is a sort of double meaning in the word. In Social Security cases, the word zombie is found as a symptom of pain, depression and anxiety but also the side effect of medications prescribed for those same symptoms. In criminal law, zombie appear in victim’s description of their assailant’s behavior but also as defense argument against criminal intent. For corporations the ironic question of corporate-personhood begs the question, ‘what is a person?’, which is often the implied question of zombie studies.
For all you law professors and other legal authors who thought there was no niche left to write about, Warren shows you just have to think outside of the box, in this case, the ones buried six feet under.
2012 “Spot the Tort” Contest with my 1Ls at the University of Memphis law school:
Here’s a pic of the column holding up the front of my apartment building — resting on a few random bricks. Take my word for it that there’s no mortar between those bricks or anything physically connecting the column to said bricks. I’ll send you a pic of the outside staircase tomorrow–it scares me! — Natalie Worlow