Lowering the Bar

• Man, the California State Bar is really cracking down these days. Slip up just 810 times and they'll insist on disbarring you. Try to save them a bunch of work by stipulating to misconduct in 14 cases, and do you get any credit? No, it's all "look at these other 796 complaints." Please.

• The Canadian couple who sued Air Canada after they ordered le 7-Up but received le Sprite instead, and more importantly were not offered service in French, will have to settle for an apology. Canada's Supreme Court ruled last week that although the airline had technically violated the Official Languages Act, language-law violations are not among the kinds of lawsuits permitted by air-travel treaties. The trial court apparently had awarded them $12,000 for the outrage.

• "When the plaintiff initially presented for his colonoscopy," alleges this complaint, "he had not been wearing pink women's underwear and at no time did the plaintiff voluntarily, knowingly or intentionally place the pink women's underwear upon himself." This is way too many words to make a simple point. When plaintiff went to sleep, he was wearing his own underwear. When he woke up, he was wearing someone else's. Ergo, another party clothed him in said inappropriate undergarments. He did not do that himself, on purpose or otherwise. We get it.

• I would suggest using the extra words to explain why, although this is certainly weird, it constitutes "extreme and outrageous conduct" that "caused severe emotional distress which caused the Plaintiff to lose his employment." Believe me, I've looked over the complaint for facts supporting that last allegation, and they're not here. Please amend ASAP.

• For those of you wondering whatever happened to Manuel Noriega, former dictator of Panama, turns out that he is currently a guest at El Renacer prison in that country, having previously been incarcerated in the U.S. and in France. Who cares? No one, except that he sued Activision recently claiming that it violated his right of publicity by depicting him in the game "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" without permission. Last week, a judge dismissed the case, noting that Noriega had a very small role in the game and so his publicity interests were outweighed by the defendant's First Amendment rights. Bonus points: Activision was represented by former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

• Did Giuliani miss his chance to compare Noriega to Osama bin Laden? No he did not. He did wait until after the hearing, at least.

If I spent a little time searching I could probably find an example of a less effective robbery, but this'll do for today:

The suspect said, "Give me your wallet or my buddy will beat you up," but the victim didn't see anyone else with him, according to the report. 

Following the threat, the suspect reportedly made a gun with his thumb and forefinger. The suspect had his other hand in his pocket, but the victim believed he was just using that hand to keep his pants up.

According to the report, the victim walked on by the suspect, who appeared to be drunk or high, without giving him any money.

Strike one: invisible thug. Strike two: non-dangerous finger. Strike three: hasn't even managed to steal enough money to buy a belt. Yep, safe to just keep walking. Probably okay to roll your eyes, also.

This frankly seems too weak to have justified a police report, but I'm glad the "victim" filed one anyway.

Okay, I probably should have said "less competent robber," because arguably all robberies that fail are equally (in)effective. Here are two examples that would be on my bottom ten list, but at least these guys put a little effort into it.

As I've said before, we can't just assume everyone at the TSA is an idiot and/or a petty bureaucrat drunk on his or her semi-power. This story confirms that.

It suggests that only 40 to 80 percent of them are.

Set phasers to stupid

In an email to Reason magazine, Sean Malone reports that TSA agents at LAX stole his belt buckle, which apparently looked like this. He had it in a carry-on bag, so it's under-standable that they might want to take a closer look after a shape like this appears on the X-ray monitor. In a sane world the agent would look at it, see it's a belt buckle, and move on to the next traveler. Of course, that's not this world.

Excerpt:

He didn't seem like an idiot, but he called his supervisor over.... She said, "Listen, you can either go back out of security and put this in your check[ed] luggage (which I don't have), or we'll confiscate it."

But this is honestly my favorite belt buckle, and I'm me, so ... I looked at her and said, "You understand that this is a belt buckle, right? It is not a danger to the safety of anyone nor is it against the law to carry. I have also traveled with this belt buckle all over the country and it's never been a problem. So please explain to me how exactly you would justify taking it."

Her response was to suggest a hypothetical scenario. "What if," she postulated, "you take this object out of your bag and point it—like a gun—at a police officer? He would have no choice to assume that it was a gun, and take action against you." [Here "take action against" is bureaucratese for "shoot you."]

Now... Let's leave aside for a second that the entire premise behind this argument is that police officers are too dumb [to distinguish] a dangerous weapon from a belt buckle in the shape of a 1950s toy ray gun. I'm glad she recognized this reality, but I don't think she really processed what it says about law enforcement in America. But leaving that aside... Why in the hell would I ever take my belt buckle and point it at a police officer?

To this, she had no answer.

Normally logic will only infuriate a petty bureaucrat (don't get me wrong, we need bureaucrats, just not the petty ones), so Malone had better luck with his next tactic: appealing to a higher-level bureaucrat. That doesn't always work, but this time it did: "Eventually the woman came back, curtly handed me the buckle and said, 'Here you go. Have a good flight, sir.'" No apology, of course.

Giving the level-one guy the benefit of the doubt, then this would be a defect rate of just one in three. But this was just the outbound flight. On the way back, the same thing happened. And this time, Malone writes, he was running late and didn't have time "to argue up the chain of command" until he found someone sensible. Citing the policy against "replica weapons," the level-two agent there insisted on confiscating the ray-gun-shaped belt buckle. (So, two out of five?)

In fact, that policy prohibits only "realistic replicas of firearms" in carry-on bags. Since handheld ray guns do not exist, it seems fairly obvious that there could not be a realistic replica of one. And even if there could be, theoretically, this was not one. It was a BELT BUCKLE.

But then we are talking about people who have, on more than one occasion, had similar issues with lightsabers.

"People may not understand why," said Sheriff's Capt. Greg Bean, "but an armored vehicle is almost a necessity now."

Here's why he says he needed one:

Looks can be deceiving, though, and in any event the man, at least, certainly looks very angry. So maybe we can assume that he was considered dangerous and—

"[Bean] also said that while [he] was never considered dangerous, he was known to be argumentative."

Oh. Well, we can't have that.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (both photos by Ryan Lister), the armored car was sent as backup for the 24 armed officers that had already been sent to the not-dangerous-but-known-to-be-argumentative man's home. The reason for the commando operation: to collect on a civil judgment.

Roger and Marjorie Hoeppner live in Stettin, a tiny town outside of Wausau in Marathon County, Wisconsin. According to the Hoeppners' lawyer, his clients and the town have been litigating for years over the stacks of wooden pallets and other stuff in the Hoeppners' yard, some of which you can see above to the left of the urban assault vehicle. (Mr. Hoeppner has a pallet-repair business and restores antique tractors, the report says.) In 2010 the town claimed Hoeppner was not complying with a settlement, and took further legal action. A judge found in its favor, and after fines, legal fees, and a failed appeal, by October 2 Hoeppner owed the town about $80,000.

Neither the report nor the appellate opinion suggest that, up to this point, any of this was very unfair to the Hoeppners. They stipulated to a contempt judgment and had agreed to do certain things, and apparently just didn't. If that happens, at some point the sheriff will get called in to enforce the judgment. This is not about that.

This is about the 24 officers and the tank.

Armored car, technically, but it does have the extra-scary turret. And according to Cap'n Bean, that's why they need it: to scare people. 

Bean also said the armored truck was summoned only after Hoeppner initially refused to come out of his house. Once the truck appeared, so did Hoeppner.

"I've been involved in about five standoff situations where, as soon as the [armor] showed up, the person gives up," saving time, money and increasing safety, Bean said.

This was followed by the "an armored vehicle is almost a necessity now" quote, so this seems to be why he believes it's a "necessity." But he had already admitted that Hoeppner was "never considered dangerous," so even if that argument held water in other cases, it doesn't here. If he's saying that cops need an armored vehicle so they can intimidate even people they do not consider dangerous, well, that seems like a good reason they shouldn't be allowed to have one at all.

And remember why they were at the Hoeppners' house: to collect a judgment. The Hoeppners hadn't committed a crime, they just owed the city money. I've never actually had to try to collect a judgment, and I understand it can be difficult—sometimes you have to seize and auction assets, garnish wages, or stuff like that. But apparently the city didn't want to bother with all that:

Bean said deputies had to handcuff Hoeppner because he was not following all their instructions, but did eventually agree to pay the $80,000 judgment after a visit to a bank — accompanied by deputies.

Wait—they arrested him, drove him to the bank, and stood there while he withdrew the cash from his account? Is that legal? Somebody help me out here. Because it sounds kind of like robbery.

It's too late to vote this year in Hanover, Manitoba, because Election Day was October 22. On the other hand, if your main interest was the referendum on whether to repeal the town's long-standing ban on alcohol sales, don't feel bad, because it turns out the town never actually had a ban on alcohol sales.

Or, at least, nobody can prove it did.

Following vote, alcohol is now still not illegal here

Hanover is a rural municipality southeast of Winnipeg, comprised of about 14,000 people living in five townships and points inbetween. According to a 1982 history by local resident Lydia Penner, the area was set aside for Mennonite immigrants from eastern Europe in the 1870s, but was turned into a municipality in 1881. While some nearby communities voted to repeal alcohol bans over the next century, Hanover never did. In fact, it had held at least one prior referendum on the issue, in 2006, but the repeal measure failed by just 30 votes. The issue came up again this year because a restaurant owner had expressed interest in serving alcohol, so another referendum was prepared.

This time, somebody seems to have actually checked the existing bylaws. Noticing they did not include a ban on alcohol sales, the town hired some lawyers to check further. "We went back to 1880," said the reeve (mayor), Stan Toews, "and we could not find a bylaw that said Hanover is dry."

This was news to him and apparently everyone else. Towes, who is 63, said he had lived in the area his whole life and that the municipality had been "dry" as long as he could remember. Apparently people there have either not been drinking at all, have been traveling to the nearby safe zones to buy alcohol, or have been going to the one convenience store on the edge of town where alcohol was sold. "Municipal officials have left it alone" for decades, the National Post noted, although it turns out they have been turning a blind eye to something that was never illegal.

"It's been there since the early '70s," Towes said, "and I've often asked, 'How did this come about?' But nobody seemed to have the history." And apparently nobody thought (or cared enough) to look for it during the next four decades.

It appears that at least conservative Mennonites do not drink alcohol, so this may be where the idea originated. Penner's history doesn't mention anything about this one way or another, but does note that for decades very few bylaws existed. In fact, only five were passed in the first 30 years. Penner states that for reasons such as language barriers (most spoke only Russian or German) and "their teaching against taking fellow believers to court" (see 1 Corinthians 6), "the Mennonites of Hanover avoided the entire paraphernalia of the legal system as much as possible." In particular, as the minutes of a 1917 meeting record, "the council thinks it is advisable to pass as few by-laws as possible." Herein lies wisdom.

There still are relatively few by-laws in Hanover today, at least judging by its website. After October 22, there are now exactly the same number governing alcohol sales as there were before: zero.

(Via Neatorama.)