Mundanity from Mondale Hall

I read my profile on here and I was happy I got to change a couple things! The first is that I'm no longer assured of never getting a job. On a career path and everything. My mommy would be so proud (I hope none of my readers mind baby talk). The second is that my location changed. I'm sure you probably know this, but I'm going to law school at the University of Minnesota! I've always considered this a real possibility, but I'm actually here, in an apartment and everything. I'm back to the minimalist student lifestyle I actually enjoy. I guess that's compared to the mostly minimalist part-time lab worker, which may not be much of a distinction, but it's sure different to me. A welcome change, especially after my first week of classes reassuring me I'm in a place I want to be. The only other real thing that changed is I added a "law (I guess?)" to my interests. It probably still falls behind those other things, but it's gaining steam. (Watch out, cooking, it's coming for you...)

So here's a bit about my life:
One of the things I missed about being a student is the sleep schedule. I sleep whenever I'm tired. I woke up this morning at 5:30 having slept a long time the previous afternoon and did my reading for my civil procedure class as the light started coming in my window. My reading for my classes consists almost entirely of interesting cases. In my contracts class we are examining what it takes for a contract to be binding. When examining a case I have already been trained to "brief" it, a process where you boil it down to its core relevant facts. The format I use looks like this:

Title: who is suing who, year case occured, what type of court
Rule: the question the case is trying to answer, the precedent that gets set
Facts: a summary of relevant facts
Verdict/relevant commentary: what the judges say about why they ruled the way they did

Each of these things is surprising in its relevance. For instance: the type of the court makes a huge difference. In one of the early cases we were looking at the court found that the disict court had made a mistake, but there wasn't anything they could do about it because they were only an appellate court, which doesn't have the authority to make rules or law, just to say whether a court should take another look at the case. So they basically said: yup, that was wrong, and the decision stood anyway. The rest is pretty self-explanatory, but the smallest facts wind up having bearing on a case. The only thing that distinguished two cases I read for today was whether or not the defendant had mailed anything BACK to the plaintiff. In the case where they did, the state court was ruled to have jurisdiction because it had a reasonable expectation of being pursued in court. Basically, because they acknowledged the contract went both ways, they gave the court of the state they were mailing into the authority to hear the case. Because the corporation availed themselves of the protection of the state by directing their attention there, they give informal consent to the state's jurisdiction. The second case, where the defendant didn't respond to a client but only mailed them their monthly trust fund, they did nothing to direct their attention there in such a manner, so the court found the state (Florida) had no jurisdiction.

My first decision predicament came up today in a case where four judges thought the verdict should be against the plaintiff for one reason, two judges agreed with the verdict but for a different reason, and three judges thought it should have been a different verdict entirely!

The facts were such:
A foreign company sold a piece of heavy machinery though an American distributor, which was bought by a man in New Jersey. The man sued when he was injured operating said machinery. Naturally, be attempted to sue the company, but the company tried to get the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds. (we are dealing with jurisdiction in my civil procedure class) The company denied it had the minimum ties required to be held accountable by the court of New Jersey because it had no offices or representatives there. The first four justices agreed with the corporation, saying they had not introduced their product into New Jersey specifically, and so failed the test of availing themselves of the protections provided by that state. The fifth and sixthjustices said that there was no reason to go so far as to provide that reason for denying compensation, but instead just stuck with strict precedent, saying no court had ever found jurisdiction in a case involving a single sale. The sixth, seventh and eight all thought the guy should have been able to continue with the law suit because the foreign company, in marketing to the entire country via a distributor, took upon itself the burden of facing trial in any state. It shouldn't get out of lawsuits just because it took the step of selling through a distributor instead of establishing an office in the united states. If this last option sounds the most reasonable, congratulations! You're on the side of the liberal judges on the court.

The interesting bit of this opinion is actually how we interpret the case as far as precedent goes. First instinct for me was to just say the plurality ruled and go with the decision reached by the four judges. This, however, is not how we do it. When there is no outright majority, the court uses the narrowest construction that agrees with the verdict. So because the two judges assert the least interesting thing, there's is the opinion we use when evaluating whether a future case will have a chance of success! Weird...

In what used to be the case for jurisdictional precedent (a case called Pennoyer V Neff) a man was only able to be tried by a court if he was served with a summons in the state or if he had property in that state. This led to a case where a man was followed onto a plane knowing the plane would be passing over the state in question at a given time, at which point he was served with papers.

Anyway, in case my yammering on hasn't given it away, I'm finding my classes engaging and pretty interesting. The professors are all pretty good. It turns out that because they all have probably been lawyers, they both know what they're talking about and want to be there. In case why they want to be there isn't immediately clear, it's because they've already made money! They're done with that bit, so they're not in it to get tenure and live out their lives on a measly salary. They are still practicing if they want money. A number of them still consult on cases, so they're current and invested in the field.

I had seven cases on the jurisdiction of courts that I read for today, and I only thought two were tedious. That is a much better ratio than most other topics I can think of studying. I haven't made up my mind about constitutional law. I really like studying the constitution because I think it's an incredible document to have been written to stand the test of time. The class is off to a pretty slow start though. The professor has a method of teaching where he calls on people for the answers to questions based solely on a roster, which is fine I suppose, except that he sticks with the person he called until they say the thing he was going for when he framed the question whether they know it or not. This process of him leading them by the nose can take a long time depending on how obtuse the person is being, to the extent that he sometimes tells them the specific passage he is thinking of and waits for them to read it through before moving on. Ugh. I've never had patience for this sort of thing, and watching a girl whiff on the judiciary branch as the one with the power to interpret the constitution for five minutes was almost more than I could handle.

The last class I have is called torts. The professor has a good teaching style, and the class seems decent enough, but I haven't quite gotten as into it as my other classes yet. I'm actuall in the middle of answering a question in that class though, since we had to stop due to time while I was talking about the barometric set by a court when it comes to the care a person needs to act with in order to avoid being sued for irresponsible action. In my case a man is beating two dogs (which are fighting, so it's not just plain cruelty; it's maybe almost justified cruelty) in an attempt to separate them. In doing so, the dogs move toward him and he takes a step back and in doing so hits a man behind him in the eye with his stick. The man sues him, and the first court says he should have acted with particular care given the situation. The supreme court disagrees, saying that the standard of care is one "any man would deam reasonable in the situation as long as the action was a necessary one." Under this revised definition the case is sent back for a retrial so the jury can use this new definition in evaluating the case.

That's all the case law you can stand, I'm sure. Unfortunately, I can already go on and on and on about this stuff. And it's only been a week!

Other than classes I have had two required lectures about citation already. Apparently it's a big deal around here, to the extent that if you italicize a comma after a citation they might not let you into law review. If you abbreviate the citation though, you have to italicize the period. Just so you know. Real important.

Another reason I was excited with my change of venue is the new group of people I have to play handball with. I showed up last week Tuesday and spent the day getting used to the courts and making friends. I made sure I didn't win a single game, and just got to know people and who was notable in the group. Most of the games were close (21-19, 21-17 etc), and I didn't feel like anyone was really better than me. The courts are nice. They have eight courts with glass back walls and two of those have glass side walls. They are fantastic in that they have tinting on the inside to make it slightly more opaque, enabling me to see the ball without looking straight through to the things on the other side of the glass. This tinting can't be seen from the outside. Shots felt a bit more dead off the glass than I was expecting, which led to me letting some shots drop behind me I thought I could get and then me looking like an idiot. But whatever, right? The worse I am, the easier I am to talk to, I hope.

Sure enough, I get invited to go out drinking after handball. I decline, and also decline their invitation to the fair Thursday afternoon. In what seems to be a theme for my experience in Minnesota, I pass on easy social experiences because of my personal restrictions. So no handball on Thursday because they are at the fair. Tuesday rolls around and I show up right after my class gets out, meaning I'm an hour early. I warm up and work on my shots for forty-five minutes, and I'm feeling pretty good about things. Sure enough, I beat the best player to show up (a couple didn't come for whatever reason) 21-12, 21-3, 21-6, 21-4. We stuck around after everyone else left because he wanted to play a third match, and then he was unsatisfied with the result and demanded a quick fourth. Neither went his direction. Thursday was a different animal. Four good players showed up in addition to the people from Tuesday. I played three of them, winning two easily and losing to the third 21-20. I have an excuse at the ready though, never you fear. I forgot my eye protection! So I borrowed someone's backup pair of glasses ( I never play in glasses!), which, as they were the backup pair, were scuffed and not quite transparent. And because they were glasses and not strapped on, they had an annoying tendency to slip off my nose and hang on like an annoying mustache during some of my more ambitious shots. This was not helpful.

I played a new style of three-player game, which was kind of cool. It's one on two, game to seven. The single player serves first, and if they win, it becomes a game to fourteen instead. If they win that it goes to twenty-one. If they lose, the next player plays one on two. I liked it. It's a hard challenge as the single player and as the doubles team you are fighting for your chance to play singles, so there's a decent incentive to win quickly.

Here's a picture of some of my notes for today: