Be nice

I’m in favor of civility. Really, I am.

I may poke fun and I may imply that some people are idiots, but I don’t think I’m being uncivil. Where do you draw the civil/uncivil line?

The State Bar of California now has a new rule requiring an annual oath by bar members that includes: “As an officer of the court, I will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy and integrity.”

No one seems to have felt the need to define those terms.

Are tuxedos required?

I do know no one is going to take this seriously — sort of like the Pledge of Allegiance — but I enjoy quibbling.

First off, it’s pretty clearly void for vagueness. (Is “asshole” a term of endearment or an insult?)

Is it an unconstitutional infringement of free speech? (Our right to say “asshole.”)

The rule says you can be “enrolled as an inactive licensee” if you don’t take the yearly oath but it leaves penalties for incivility up to the State Bar. More vagueness.

My suggestion is a swear jar.

What if you meant to be nice but someone took offense at what you said anyway? Can you be negligently uncivil? Do you take your overly sensitive politically correct victims as you find them?

And how exactly is this going to be policed? Will there be a State Bar Courtesy Patrol? Will bar members tell on other bar members? (“Daddy, he said a bad word!”)

So many fascinating issues.

I know someone is eventually going to sue over this. It will probably be an asshole.

In the meantime, be nice to your fellow bar members and litigants. You can be mean to politicians.

DEFINITION. You learn something new in litigation almost every day.

Last week in an Illinois federal judge’s ruling we learned “that blinking involves regular on-off cycling while twinkling involves varied or gradual changes in the brightness or frequency.”

I’ll let you guess what this litigation was about. Hint: It has nothing to do with spotting that special person in a bar.

BREAKING NEWS: A lawsuit was filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of a man whose confidential business records and $1 million in cash were stolen from his vehicle.

Pause to think about this for a moment.

If you’re confronted with a client who was the victim of theft by an “unidentified perpetrator,” what can you do to help?

The answer, at least in this case, is sue Apple, Inc. Apple has lots of money. It wouldn’t miss a spare million or two.

The plaintiff here, by the way, is listed as John Doe. I would have called him John Dough because of the money but he probably wouldn’t have appreciated it.

There is no explanation as to why there was a million in the car other than the plaintiff “had been transporting” it “in connection with his business.” The guy owns a check cashing business.

What the suit does say is that the thief or thieves planted a YIP Smart Tag on the vehicle to track plaintiff’s movements and that’s how they were able to pull off the heist. Fazepro, LLC, the tag maker, is also a defendant in the suit.

Apple’s FindMy network syncs with Smart Tag. Both, according to the complaint, were defectively designed because they should have alerted the vehicle owner and his family that the tag was there.

The products were “designed in a manner that facilitates the covert tracking of unsuspecting individuals.”

I’m not sure how the tag knows whose car it’s on or how it can let you know who to rob and when there’s lots of cash in a car.

I’m looking forward to some interesting rulings here.

And also a lawsuit against a car company for allowing tempting cash that can be stolen into vehicles.

Happy New Year everyone!