It is evidently cease and desist week:
A website recently received a 12-page cease and desist letter — for a fake product it launched for April Fool’s day. Seems the site calling Canned Unicorn Meat “the new white meat” infringes on the National Pork Board’s slogan, “The Other White Meat.” Being good cyberspace denizens, Think Geek publicly apologized to the pork board “for the confusion over unicorn and pork–and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn’t actually exist.” (Lowering the Bar)
Lowering the Bar also reports that Times Square’s “Naked Cowboy” has sent a cease and desist letter to a woman calling herself the “Naked Cowgirl,” saying it infringes on his trademark.
Blawg Headline of the Week: Lawyers, Start Your Billing Clocks: Financial Overhaul Legislation Nears Passage
Couldn’t have said it better myself: “IF you’ve pleaded guilty to child abuse, and IF you’re lucky enough to be sentenced only to probation (a travesty in and of itself in my opinion), it’s probably a pretty bad idea to threaten to kill a judge, the judge’s children, and the parenting-skills and anger-management instructor you’re seeing pursuant to court order.”
“A culinary argument between a brother and sister about whether to use butter or margarine turned violent, resulting in an attack with a knife-edged barbecue spatula.” The cops should probably be happy it wasn’t after numerous rounds of trying to figure out “tastes great” or “less filling.” (BoingBoing)
Drunks do the funniest stupidest things: “A drunk driver [in New Zealand] trapped in his overturned car opened another can of beer while waiting to be rescued because he had ‘nothing better to do.'” (Jonathan Turley)
I speculate many others in the legal profession in Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, etc., share the sentiments expressed by U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett in an email this week: “In my 35 years of experience in the legal profession I have almost always been considerably under whelmed by East Coast law firms. I am not impressed by inflated rates and even more inflated billing practices, 6 lawyer to take a simple deposition, a total lack of civility, obstructionist discovery tactics at every turn, poor trial skills and unsurpassed arrogance.” (I would add a thumbs down to ATL editor Elie Mystal for saying he “had to Google South Dakota” to figure out it bordered Iowa. But then, that might show a lack of Midwestern civility.)
I submit that lawyers who know how to think but have not learned how to behave are a menace and a liability … to the administration of justice.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, May 18, 1971
