Books

A chuckle-head move

I hardly ever pick up a newspaper, and when I do, I usually spend my time looking at the office supply circulars, but today I read an article. Midway through the article I found this gem:

It was such a chuckle-headed move that no one was sure whether the prosecutors had forgotten teh jduge's ruling or were trying to sneak the testimony through a back door.¹

The article discusses the recent Roger Clemens mistrial, a result of the prosecution doing pretty much exactly what the judge told them not to do. Obviously the case is bigger than the quote, but I really like the term "chuckle-head" and was excited to see it used in the NYT. If you want to read more about the case, read the article, and read this post.

This post will soon be buried in updates with the cases I've been meaning to post, so, if you don't want to read a post on books, office supplies, and other nonsense, you can stop here. It won't hurt my feeling.

Between now and the last time I wrote about what I'm reading, I picked up more books. They are:

That's it for the law books.

I also bought and read the new Erik Larson book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, and like his other books, it did not dissapoint. I know I give horrible book reviews, but they aren't really book review–more like, hey, this is what I'm reading. Before that, I read Extreme Fear, by Jeff Wise. Lately I've been keeping a list–in one of my many notebookls–of the books I want to read. It's a short list, but I think it is a good one:

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown and Hampton Sides
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
My Friend the Mercenary by James Brabazon
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin
Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin

And in the office supply department, I picked up a few Whitelines notebooks. I used to be all about the Rhodia, but now I'm torn.

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1. July 17, 2011. NYT, Sunday Review, "Why are prosecutors striking out," Maureen Dowd. I might fix the cite later.

On my kindle

It used be be what I'm reading, but lately I've been reading all my books on the Kindle. Speaking of that, you can get blogs on it, but I have to make it accessible through the Amazon site. I won't go through the hassle if nobody wants it. So let me know.

These are the books I'm reading:

The Art of Styling Sentences: It's a worthwhile read. I've noticed that much of what I write, I mean, the way I write it, is predictable. That makes it boring for me to write and you to read. So, here we are.
Bluebeard: A Novel: One of the few Vonnegut books I haven't read.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: A compilation of very depressing short stories. Reminds me of Bukowski.
The Winning Brief: Every lawyer should read this. This is my second time going through it.
Blood Meridian: I read it years ago. I've only read a few of Cormac McCarthy's books: this is my favorite.
Freedom: A Novel: I haven't started reading it yet, but I've heard good things.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: I haven't started this yet. I really liked his other book, so I figured why not.

That's pretty much it for now. I've been on a reading tear lately.

Edit: I wanted to mention a blog I ran across the other day, The Appellate Record. I like it. If you like this blog, you'll probably like it to. I wish I could remember how I ran across it. Sometimes things just pop up in my RSS feed.

The NYLJ has something special for you.

My week started off with the littlest child breaking my glasses into two. As you can see, I fixed it with a mix of crazy glue and sewing thread. Now when I wear them I look like Sloth and it makes my vision all crazy like. And today, while I was walking home I walked past an electronics store with a Pickachu statute on the outside and I swear, it looked like it was flipping me the bird. I blame that on my lack of sleep. What I can't explain is that for second, I was genuinely pissed at Pickachu.¹

And onto the law. Yesterday's Law Journal had one of those special fancy pants pull out sections: Court of Appeals and Appellate Practice. One of the sections, indeed, the most important section is, Civil Practice: Substantive Impact of the CPLR. Sure, there are other sections, but you didn't come here for them. You can here to see if I would actually fight a statue of a cartoon character and read about the CPLR.

The section covers, among other things CPLR CPLR § 205(a), CPLR § 5511, CPLR § 5304, CPLR § 901(a).

The discussion of CPLR 205(a) revolved around Matter of Goldstein v New York State Urban Dev. Corp., 13 NY3d 511 (Ct. App., 2009), a case I posted way back when. Next is CPLR 5511. The author, Thomas F. Gleason, starts with Batavia Turf Farms v. County of Genesee, 91 NY 2d 906 (Ct. App. 1998), a remarkably terse decision. From there he moves to Adams v Genie Indus., Inc., 14 NY3d 535 (Ct. App. 2010), a case I didn't post. Adams, Mr. Gleason writes, rejected the "more restrictive premise of Batavia, viz., "a stipulation on one issue (such as damages) would foreclose an appeal on other unrelated issues, because a party who had consented to an order could not claim to be aggrieved by any part of it within the meaning of CPLR 5511."²

In his discussion of class actions, namely CPLR 901(a), he refers to City of New York v Maul, 14 NY3d 499 (Ct. App. 2010), another case I managed to miss.

There's more. But you have to go read it for yourself.

Norman A. Olch, blogger and appellate guru, provides a several book reviews, including Making Your Case, by Scalia and Garner. Everyone should read it. You shouldnt need him to tell you to, but, if it that's what it takes, then fine.

Harry Steinberg has a must read section on how not to completely screw up your appeal. Part of it involves preserving the issues for appeal. A decision came out today on just that issue: Arrieta v Shams Waterproofing, Inc., 2010 NY Slip Op 06508 (App. Div., 1st 2010).

I might add some more later.

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1. I'm recycling facebook updates today.

2. For more cases discussing what it means to be "aggrieved" click HERE. I think all of them are from the Appellate Division, Second Department. Mixon v TBV, Inc., 2010 NY Slip Op 05521 (App. Div., 2nd, 2010) is the most recent and probably the most useful.