Author Archive for Casebook Sherpa

Is Your Scratch-off Ticket Stale?

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 06/19/08
in News You Can Use
. 2 Comments

“It’s for the kids.” Ah, yes. The great justification for just about any government program. Of course, it’s the central justification in most states for the Lottery. Revenues are directed into the education department’s coffers for use in schools. That’s all fine and good, but the agreement the ticket purchaser enters into with the state is: I give you a dollar and you promise to give me a chance to win a prize.

Then there’s this:

After a business finance professor tried a Virginia Lottery scratch game for the first time, he became suspicious about how the game was being run. It seemed to him that the rate at which Beginner’s Luck paid out its $75,000 prizes defied the laws of statistics.

His concerns ultimately led him to conclude that the Virginia Lottery continues to sell tickets to its scratch games statewide even after all the top prizes for the game have been claimed.

Monday, a Roanoke law firm announced its intention to sue the lottery on behalf of Scott Hoover, an associate professor at Washington and Lee University who teaches applied business statistics. The letter that lawyer John Fishwick sent to the state claims the lottery has violated its contract with scratch ticket buyers by purposefully selling tickets that have no chance at all of winning a top prize.

“We estimate that since 2003, the state has sold over 26.5 million losing tickets in this way, pocketing an estimated $84.7 million in purchase prices from the shell game,” Fishwick said. “The state cannot continue to boost revenues by knowingly selling its citizens defective tickets based on hollow promises of an opportunity that does not exist.”

Basically, the state gave away all the prizes, but kept selling tickets. Talking with WAMU today, Mr. Hoover said this gives rise to multiple claims against the state, the most serious of which is fraudulent inducement to purchase the tickets.

He’s filed a claim with the state (basically a notice stage required before filing a lawsuit) alleging that the state has misled citizens and that it must rectify the situation. His lawyer told WAMU that they aren’t necessarily looking for damages, but are primarily looking for the state to acknowledge it’s doing something wrong and change the process.

The Source of the Law: What Is Your Duty To Your Fellow Man?

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 06/18/08
in Law
. 27 Comments

In light of our discussion on the FLDS case, Christopher suggested a thread on the origins of law. I liked that idea and have a few drafts started. But it struck me that it might work better as a series of questions that pull out various views of the law and its role (or source) in our society (or any society). Perhaps this can be a sort of wiki effort at developing and teasing various views of the law and its source.

Question #1: What is your duty to your fellow man (and by “man,” of course, I mean “human being”)? And from where does that duty arise?

[Full disclosure: this question is lifted from our course on Social Justice and the Law that several readers and writers of this blog are taking this summer.]

Just Answer My Question!

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 06/10/08
in Career Prospects and Law School Experience
. 2 Comments

Maybe it’s just the heat, but I’m a bit frustrated at my school. The law school cafe isn’t open during the summer. I’m still waiting on grades (just one left, though). The financial aid office hasn’t been very communicative. So I’m probably over-reacting to a minor exchange I had with the career office this week.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not seriously looking for a job. I am however trying to figure out what I’m going to do with this degree (answers range from staying where I am to working for the public defender). That means if there are chances to interview or talk with people in the legal profession, I’ll take them.

This week’s exchange with the career office left with the same question I’ve had several times since I started law school at Catholic U: Would it hurt to JUST ANSWER MY QUESTION?

We’ve been getting e-mails about fall recruiting on campus. I noticed a link to the Fall Recruiting packet during a recent login to our online jobs database. So I read through it and hadn’t seen anything about whether 2Es could participate. I returned to the database and noticed that most (perhaps all) of the employers interviewing on campus are only interviewing students who are 2D, 3D, 3E, and 4E. Makes sense, right? You want to catch students during their last summer.

I was still curious, however, as to whether there were opportunities for 2Es during fall recruiting. If there were I’d at least submit my resume. If there weren’t I wouldn’t go through the trouble of updating my resume, etc. So I emailed the career office, asking if there would be chances for 2Es to interview during fall recruiting and that I had reviewed the packet and the OCI opportunities and wasn’t sure. The answer I got was: “Follow the provided link to our Fall Recruiting packet. It contains all of the information for participation and deadlines. Let us know if you have any other questions.”

Of course, I went back to the packet and noticed that the definition of “all students” did NOT include 2Es. So I got my answer. But obviously I had missed that in my review of the packet. Would it have been so hard to just say: “Employers don’t typically interview 2Es during fall recruiting, but we’re happy to sit down to discuss options with you.”

One answer (the one I got) says: do it yourself. The other one says: here’s how we can help.

I know which one I wish I was paying for.

And For Dessert, I’d Like the Death Penalty, Please

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 06/09/08
in News You Can Use
. 5 Comments

Here’s a question for you: should someone who requests the death penalty be prohibited from receiving it?

From Friday’s New York Times:

[Khalid Shaikh Mohammed], the former senior operations chief for Al Qaeda, said he would represent himself and dared the Guantánamo tribunal to put him to death.

“This is what I want,” he told a military judge here, in his first appearance to answer war crimes charges for the terrorism attacks that killed 2,973 people and set America on a path to war.

“I’m looking to be martyr for long time,” he said in serviceable English, improved, perhaps, by five years of custody, including three in secret C.I.A. prisons.

Top 10 Things I Hate About Law School

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 06/02/08
in Law School Experience
. 7 Comments

A Top Ten list is like penicillin, the catch-all means of remedying writer’s block, and I’ve had the bird flu of writer’s block of late. So, thought I’d put together some lists of stuff I like and hate about law school, hopefully with our loyal readers adding to the random stuff I include.

So, the Top Ten Things I Hate About Law School are:

10. Classmates with long fingernails. Talk about distracting during exams.

9. The commute. One hour after a day’s work is a bit much.

8. The hostage situation that occurs with our grades after each semester.

7. Professors who confuse their own hypo by, for example, mixing up the party’s names.

6. None of the restaurants on campus being open on the weekend.

5. No real choice in registering for staple courses for evening students.

4. The law school scheduling mandatory activities during business hours.

3. The law school scheduling two exams within 48 hours of each other.

2. The law school not sending enough exams to the exam room. (this happened twice this spring)

1. Evening students quitting their day jobs while still going to evening school.

What did I miss?

Reaction to FLDS decision

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 05/30/08
in Law and News You Can Use
. 20 Comments

I’m curious to hear your reaction to the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to return the children seized by the Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) from the FLDS’ Yearning for Zion Ranch. I’ve read the court’s decision and a few news reports. Admittedly, my reading has not gone much beyond this surface level. So if you have insight that I lack, have at it…

Notwithstanding my serious misgivings about the sect and the lives children are apparently forced to lead there (expressed in this thread), I think the court’s approach strikes an appropriate balance between keeping kids with their families by applying the statutory standard to which state agencies must adhere when dealing with cases like this.

Continue reading ‘Reaction to FLDS decision’

Where, O Where Are My %$$#(& Grades?

Published
by
Casebook Sherpa
on 05/28/08
in 1L and Law School Experience
. 5 Comments

The Great Waiting continues. Much weeping and gnashing of teeth accompanies each visit to Cardinal Station, our school’s site for students to pay bills, register, and receive grades. 23 days since our last exam and 29 since our first, there still no grades.

The only grade I have so far is from Lawyering Skills and that class ended in April with our Appellate Brief. Dr. Bombay wondered last week whether other schools run on similar timelines. So, do you? Are you still waiting for Spring semester grades? When you were in school did you wait long? Did you even care how long it took to get grades back? Were you ever prevented from getting a job or internship by delays in receiving grades.

Continue reading ‘Where, O Where Are My %$$#(& Grades?’