I'm Alive

Alive and possibly posting again in a few weeks.

Also, I got accepted into two schools.

The Dan Brown Cult (and this guy in Germany...)

Presumably there are people on Earth who haven't heard of Dan Brown. I certainly doubt there is a Classics professor who hasn't been bombarded with at least one question based on Dan Brown's ostensible research.

Some of the attraction seems to be that Dan Brown brings readers into a world with powerful symbols, relationships, conspiracies, and very simple sides. You know who else did that? HITLER! But there is also this guy who lives in Germany who heads this political cult who keeps on talking about how there are two camps doing obscure things in History.

The appeal seems to be the same. That as the reader gets exposed to things they have only barely heard of and do not understand, they acquire the aura of a person who is educated, knowledgeable, and in on a great secret. The drama of the storyline and the forces supposedly at play are fantastic and emotionally invigorating.

More stuff to consider in "The cult leader as bad writer".

Blogging Epstein on Torts 9th Edition: Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928)

 Blogging Epstein on Torts 9th Edition Part 2

 Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928)

Prof. Epstein excerpts a large part of the court’s upholding of the verdict which includes many of the details (editing the casebook does involve some judgment).

The basics of the situation that physically occurred reads like something out of Rube Goldberg (famous for intricate and inefficient devices whose functioning was so improbable and so complex people loved it).

A passenger (A) tried to board a moving train. Railroad Employee 1 and Railroad Employee 2 both tried to assist the passenger but one tried to pull him onto the train, the other tried to push. During the confusion, Passenger A dropped his wrapped package. Did we forget to mention the package was full of explosives?

The explosives fall onto the track. By still more bad luck, the fireworks went off and the explosion caused some scales to fall and hit a woman, Passenger B. Since she was injured, she sued the company alleging that the negligence of the railroad employees was improper and that the chain of events was a result (and thus the railroad had to compensate her).

The court and those that reviewed the case later all found the actions of the railroad’s employees, who tried to help a passenger board a moving train, negligent. That would seem to justify liability because an improper action had taken place.

Not so. One of the reviewing courts pointed out the cause of the scale falling on Passenger B was so remote and so unpredictable that the railroad should not be held responsible for something they had no way to predict.

That very much looks like a reversal of the Vosburg v. Putney case to me. Perhaps the issue is that the chain of events between action and harm is shorter in Vosburg v. Putney while it is much longer in Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R.? The court seems to have ruled that the defendant in a negligence case is liable only so far as they have acted unreasonably. A man who kicks a newspaper does not violate the body of another, not even when an unknown package of dynamite is triggered by the kick.

While the series of reversals is complex enough, the intricacy of the arguments by the judges in question is difficult for me (a man of relatively high reading comprehension). I can only hope I acquire the much needed context in Law School.

If the same principle was operating back during Vosburg v. Putney, would the case have been decided the same way? Was it actually operating back then?

Blogging Epstein on Torts 9th Edition: Vossburg v. Putney 50 N.W. 403 (Wis. 1891)

Well, it has been quite a while since I’ve posted anything here. My main activity over the past few weeks has been law school applications, writing short stories, and getting human interaction. Still, not posting something immediately when I found out about Leonard Nimoy’s death calls into question who I am as a person.

Blogging Epstein on Torts 9^th Edition Part 1

I would like to point out that I do not wish to post the content of Prof. Epstein's casebook and hope to use it in a way that will not inspire me to do a lot of rapid copyright law research and gain practical experience with filings. I intend this for educational purposes, not commercial.

Vosburg v. Putney50 N.W. 403 (Wis.1891)

The case the learned Prof. Richard A. Epstein chooses to start out with is two schoolchildren in Wisconsin.

The facts of the case are that one child kicked the other. Such a simple (but prohibited) act triggered a previously unknown bacterial infection that necessitated the amputation of the leg that had been kicked. While that seems such an unexpected outcome that the behavior of the first child (the kicker) should not be held responsible for the ultimate outcome of the second (the kickee), the circuit court that handled the case ruled in favor of the plaintiff despite the misgivings of a judge as to the reasonableness of children’s behavior being resolved by judicial means.

The principle the compiler of the casebook is communicating is that the one who engages in an improper act (even one not seemingly likely to result in harm) is liable for the outcomes (however surprising).

Prof. Epstein further communicates the point with reference to Garrat v. Dailey , 279 P.2d 1091 (Wash. 1955) where a young child pulled a chair out from where an arthritic woman was about to sit, resulting in injury. It was made clear that the intent was unlawful therefore the act (otherwise innocent) was no longer so. As the principle above is applied, the child and the parents of the child are responsible for the harm the child causes when engaging in improper behavior.

Upon discussion with an actual JD, he pointed out that the principle that the existence of a tort having taken place is objective but the extent of damage is subjective.

Something that puzzles me is that the case seems to be built upon the acceptance that the kick was intended to cause a harm (even if minor). Indeed, the jury had pointed out that the kicker had not intended any harm but still found him liable. The grounds for recovery of damages in this case seems to be that the kick was against the expectation of order and decorum in the school and thus improper. The lack of any reason to suspect that dormant bacteria would destroy the leg of a person one kicks lightly makes me inclined to see no harm to be expected. That a kicks are routinely used for quiet communication in orderly situations (business meetings, classrooms, theaters) would seem to argue (in my pre-Law School mind) that a kick would not be a violation of the expectation of order.

I feel both relieved that I was not the subject of more lawsuits as a child and curious how that relates to Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928) which is famous for whether alleged negligence on the part of multiple train employees dealing with another person could be liable for the outcome for a third party as a result of a freakishly improbable chain of events.

Putin the aspie?

Russian facial expressions have become news again as Kremlinologists have veered into the more unreliable efforts to diagnose foreign leaders. Of note, one report speculated that Putin had asperger's syndrome and there was other speculation that he had some stroke in utero.

That said, one guy did make a very valid point.






When I went to Russia, a lack of expressiveness was the norm, not the exception. It is Western (especially American) norms of smiling all the time that are abnormal for a Russian politician when the politician grew up in... Russia.

Dude! WTF!

 How does this not scream illegal and lethal pseudoscience?