howzabout we just celebrate divorce getting drunk in a bar?

want a crazy lawyer story?

Charlotte, North Carolina.  A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.  In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires."

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued, and WON!

Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous.  The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be "unacceptable fire" and was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars lost in the "fires".

After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him
arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

rape is simple

according to justice peralta,rape is easy to remember. it´s basically just

forcible entry with illegal discharge.

NY nuns sue Pinay over 'tuyo'

NEW YORK – It may be a cultural thing, but when you're up against a congregation of nuns and your neighbors in an apartment building in Manhattan, a lawsuit would make an interesting anthropological study in ethnic tension.

The Missionary Sisters of Sacred Heart (MSSH) in Manhattan has filed a complaint against a Filipino-American couple, Michael and Gloria Lim, over a Filipino delicacy called tuyo (dried fish), and its funky cousin, the tinapa(smoked fish).

The case is now with the Manhattan Supreme Court.

Reports say Gloria was smoking fish outside her apartment window when the smell – noxious stench to the nuns, divine aroma to the Lims – of the salted fish wafted throughout the Gramercy apartment building.

The "foul smell" was too strong the nuns suspected it was coming from a decomposing body and called in the Fire Department.

According to reports, the firemen searched every unit of the building and were able to trace the source of the smell to the Lims' unit.

They knocked, and when no one came to the door, the NYFD came barreling in.

Gloria, a nurse, found her door knocked down and was obviously peeved.

It appears the MSSH leases the unit to the Lims and may have authorized the assault.

"I cook dried fish," Gloria defiantly declared to the NY Post..

The average American may find it puzzling how one can derive pleasure of the palate from dried fish. Foodie Andrew Zimmern, who has been to the Philippines and braved balut (fertilized duck egg with an embryo) and Soup No. 5 (bull's rectum and testicles soup, believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac) , might be able to share the gustatory experience.

Gloria was referring to the tuyo, a Philippine staple usually eaten with steaming hot rice and fresh tomatoes. Some eat theirs dipped in vinegar and crushed garlic paired with fried rice and sunny side up egg.

Dried fish is not a Philippine exclusive. It is an essential in the traditional Chinese and Malaysian fried rice along with chopped spring onions, garlic and chili. Sometimes, it is pulled and sprinkled on chocolate porridge or champorado.

Food with a strong salty taste like tuyo or tinapa might be too intense for the morning stomach, but many Filipinos would never leave for work in the morning without having it for breakfast.

In the lawsuit filed by the nuns, Gloria was even more adamant. She was quoted as saying that "she is causing the smell by cooking and/or smoking fish, and she is going to continue to do it."

The complaint appears to divide the apartment tenants, some finding themselves squarely on the side of the sisters who find the smell "potentially dangerous to life and health," and some defending the FilAm family's right to eat their own ethnic food in the privacy of their home.

"This is plain racist," comes a shout-out from a supportive blogger.

The complaint says some tenants closer to the Lims' unit have moved out, and that the Lims have been warned repeatedly about the smell emanating from their 16th floor apartment unit. Gloria, a 30-year resident of the US, denies this.

Which side to take, undecided tenants turn to what's stated in the housing rules: Cooking smelly food is not allowed.

The nuns are seeking $75,000 in damages. They made it clear that they have nothing against Filipinos as a people.

---------------------------------

hahaha. earlier in the article, i had an opinion... and then i got to the part where the smell of tuyo is potentially dangerous to life and health.

tibay ng pilipino ah.

A U.S. Supreme Court cheatsheet for law nerds out there

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/

it's pretty interesting. check it out.

Roe v. Wade: the Wikipedia crash course

is a controversial United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a landmark decision regarding abortion. According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision overturned all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with its holdings. Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial and politically significant cases in U.S. Supreme Court history.  Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial and politically significant cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. 

Roe v. Wade centrally held that a mother may abort her pregnancy for any reason, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable.’" The Court defined viable as being potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viabilityusually occurs at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks." The Court also held that abortion after viability must be available when needed to protect a woman's health, which the Court defined broadly in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton. These rulings affected laws in 46 states.

The Roe v. Wade decision prompted national debate that continues today. Debated subjects include whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wade reshaped national politics, dividing much of the nation into pro-Roe (mostly pro-choice) and anti-Roe (mostly pro-life) camps, and inspiring grassroots activism on both sides.

Controversy

A criticism of Roe v. Wade (though not one made by the dissenting Justices in the case) is that the majority opinion failed to adequately recognize the inviolability and personhood of embryonic/fetal human life. Some pro-life supporters argue that life begins at conception (sometimes referred to as "fertilization"), and thus the embryo and the fetus should be entitled to legal protection. Other pro-life supporters argue that, in the absence of definite knowledge of when life begins, it is best to avoid the risk of doing harm. And since it is a possibility that life begins at conception it is unconstitutional to take away a fetus' rights. While a majority of Americans believe that abortions performed in the first trimester should generally be legal, a majority also believe that second trimester abortions should generally be illegal. Every year on the anniversary of the decision, tens of thousands of pro-life protesters demonstrate outside the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. in the March for Life. Supporters describe Roe as vital to preservation of women's rights, personal freedom, and privacy.

Opponents of Roe have objected that the decision lacks a valid Constitutional foundation. Like the dissenters in Roe, they have maintained that the Constitution is silent on the issue, and that proper solutions to the question would best be found via state legislatures and the democratic process, rather than through an all-encompassing ruling from the Supreme Court. Supporters of Roe contend that the decision has a valid constitutional foundation, or contend that justification for the result in Roe could be found in the Constitution but not in the articles referenced in the decision.

In response to Roe v. Wade, most states enacted or attempted to enact laws limiting or regulating abortion, such as laws requiring parental consent for minors to obtain abortions, parental notification laws, spousal mutual consent laws, spousal notification laws, laws requiring abortions to be performed in hospitals but not clinics, laws barring state funding for abortions, laws banning abortions utilizing intact dilation and extraction procedures (often referred to as partial-birth abortion), laws requiring waiting periods before abortion, or laws mandating women read certain types of literature before choosing an abortion. Congress in 1976 passed the Hyde Amendment, barring federal funding of abortions for poor women through the Medicaid program. The Supreme Court struck down several state restrictions on abortions in a long series of cases stretching from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, but upheld restrictions on funding, including the Hyde Amendment, in the case of Harris v. McRae (1980).

The most prominent organized groups that mobilized in response to Roe are the National Abortion Rights Action League on the pro-choice side, and the National Right to Life Committee on the pro-life side. The late Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe opinion, was a determined advocate for the decision. Others have joined him in support of Roe, including Judith Jarvis Thomson, who before the decision had offered an influential defense of abortion.

Roe remains controversial; polls show continued division about its landmark rulings, and about the decision as a whole.

you know you're a law student when...

1. You consider dropping out of law school approximately every hour, but after that first semester you realized you were already in too much debt to be anything other than a lawyer.

2. Substance abuse becomes you. -beer, yosi, coffee name it!

3. The drama in your life now rivals that of high school.

4. You consider tie-dying all of your t-shirts because they are already half covered in fluorescent ink from your highlighters.

5. You no longer have an ego left to bruise...it' s already been beaten to a bloody pulp.

6. You make adverse possession jokes. (not quite, but i laughed at "you can't legislate love")

7. You wonder if that one professor who always seems angry and irritable and treats students' minds as his personal playground is actually a sociopath or just didn't get enough hugs as a child.

8. You know and understand the complicated epistemological and metaphysical differences between a conspirator and an accomplice. (almost! but you know, i'm not that good at effin' crim)

9. You know and understand the complicated epistemological and metaphysical differences between coffee and red bull.

10. You can't remember if you decided to come to law school because you wanted to help people and make a difference in the world or because you hate yourself. -a little of both, but really, i just want to be rich.

11. You think whoever came up with the Socratic method should have his face lit on fire and then beaten out with a rake. (and have his balls set upon by fire ants)

12. You can't think of any legitimate reason why a law student would need access to certain public records, but you can think of a whole lot of illegitimate ones.

13. You hear about the death of an elderly friend or relative and wonder if they died intestate.

14. You have considered changing career paths to hot dog vendor, stilt walker, or career alcoholic. (the truest thing ever. but i really just want to be a waitress)

15. You know all sorts of sneaky and creative ways to steal from clients thanks to your Professionalism and Ethics class.

16. You're pretty sure the reasonable prudent man is a friendless tool who still lives with his mother.

plus a few extras i've heard about from barristers:

17. you forget how to spell words like unforeseeable and just end up writing "cannot be foreseen."

18. you forget how to spell period. it takes you 2 minutes to unblock from one word.

19. you wonder why you decided to pay someone megabucks to harass you with cases and recits and exams, when you can just be paid to do work that never follows you home.

20. when you take a test and the procter tells you time is up, you want to bite his hand when he reaches for you paper. what does he know about giving you minus points for breaking deadline, it's your dream to be a lawyer and he better not stand in your way.