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July 24, 2015

On second thought, do see Trainwreck (with Amy Schumer) so we can face the enemy together.

Two days ago we posted about the movie Trainwreck which celebrates backfired male Metro-sexualism as well as crude, dumb, fat women getting big enough to have their own zip codes. The movie is likely the high water mark of The Great Neutering launched in America roughly 15 to 20 years ago. We urge any non-neutered Gen-X folks, all Baby Boomers and every lucid, ambulatory Silent or Greatest Generation person to see Trainwreck. Know your enemy. Reeducation of under-35 folks who worship mediocrity and androgyny is still possible.

Save the people. Save the children. Save the country.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:03 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2015

Trainwreck is right.

On Sunday I saw "Trainwreck" starring Amy Schumer at a movie theatre in DC's Gallery Place. If you're interested in seeing a romantic comedy about a new under-40 America in which women are fat and stupid, and all guys are sexually ambivalent and useless, this is your film. Even German Shepherds in this flick seem a little light in the loafers.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2015

Chicago boy continues to make good: Happy Birthday, Mr. Hemingway.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899–July 2, 1961) at the stone mansion on Whitehead Street in Key West with one of the many famous, if often deranged or six-toed, Hemingway cats.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2015

Politico's European Edition: The West's never-ending political correctness wankfest now aims to make America's lamest generation ever even weaker.

Personally, I wish I had more time to blog about certain issues but work keeps interfering. "Political correctness" is one. PC culture has turned some of my smarter liberal friends into precisely what they claim to despise: intolerant and extreme right wingers with a seemingly religious zeal to control language. They apparently believe that dictating what is safe to say and write--and not safe to say and write--will speed our progress towards a more equal and less hurtful society. And now this madness is getting woven into our 50 or 60 truly great American colleges at the level of the great books read by 18 to 22 year olds. It threatens to turn what is, charitably put, our hands down most sheltered, most thin-skinned and most anti-intellectual generation ever into even bigger half-bright wimps. With great restraint, Michael Moynihan at Politico's European edition offers us Western Lit, shot to death by ‘trigger warnings’. Subtitled: "American universities discourage reading of Ovid, Lolita and The Great Gatsby." What he's reporting here is embarrassing--but it's exactly what we can keep expecting from the West's Never-Ending Political Correctness WankFest. Moynihan begins:

Boring bien pensant opinion in Europe has long maintained that low-brow American culture--all the greasy fast food, oafish Hollywood shoot ‘em up films (often starring a muscle-bound Austrian, Belgian, or Swede), and schlock television--has done incalculable damage to highbrow European culture. And it has happened with the assent of the average European, who happily scarfs down a McRib sandwich, feet swaddled in Air Jordans, while queuing for the latest “Transformers” film.

But there is a more pernicious American cultural invasion, as irritatingly destructive as the North American gray squirrel and, unlike the Hollywood blockbuster, wholly immune from free market pressures. It was noticed in 1994 by a reporter for Reuters, who gravely reported that the scourge of political correctness, “an American import regarded by many Britons with the same distaste as an unpleasant virus, finally seems to be infecting British society.” First it poisons the local universities, then within a generation wends its way into the broader culture, wreaking havoc on the native intellectual ecosystem. It’s the most odious, implacable, and least remarked upon manifestation of American cultural imperialism.

Politically correct

And so here we are a generation after that Reuters report, with sensible Europeans now fretting over a mutated strain of that old virus. Writing in the left-leaning magazine The New Statesman, British academic Pam Lowe worried that a new fad in American academia called the “trigger warning” would soon touch down in the UK, requiring the sensible professoriate to valiantly resist the boneheaded ideas of activist students. In his new book, appropriately titled “Trigger Warning,” British writer Mick Hume warns that trigger culture has already “spread across the Atlantic,” and supine European college administrators have given in faster than Marshal Pétain.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:48 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2015

Complaints against business clients--even "bad" and poorly--grounded complaints--carry messages about problems you can address now.

Litigation against a business client--even frivolous or ill-advised litigation--will usually cast a spotlight on things you can fix now.

You don't believe me? Take a look at the last three or four complaints filed against any of your clients. Or, even better, review again that one you just received today. If you are (inside or outside) counsel, you are presented with all manner of improvements and changes a good client can and should make to its operations right away. If you are a litigator, you might be well advised to get that complaint to a non-litigator down the hall who may work on that client's day-to-day business.

Fix things now. Before you respond to a complaint. A client problem--it will usually fall in the category of "imperfections" or "operational glitches" rather than actual wrongdoing or illegality--is probably sunning itself in the filed complaint and looking up at you. Address it now, before the next order is received, before the next shipment is made, before the next employee termination, before you execute the next license agreement. Get that problem to someone who can fix it, not litigate it. Litigation almost always hands you the chance to add long-term value immediately--and solve an operations problem before you finish the barest outline of the Answer or Rule 12 Motion. So get that complaint to that geek non-litigator down the hall or on the 10th Floor.

Here are simple, pedestrian and day-to-day problem areas complaints tell us about:

1. Legal but lame or muddy contract or related terms and conditions language inherited from a predecessor company. E.g., Confusing or poorly drafted choice of law or ADR provisions, which always seem to get litigated preliminarily in an expensive opening sideshow that delays focus on the merits.

2. Legal but bad waste storage or waste handling methods which "comply"--but just barely--and makes a state or federal agency or private citizen look a little too hard and long at your client's facility next Spring.

3. Legal but bad HR practices. Consider here the repeated "un-classy" firing--a termination which is legal but brutal and will get you sued. You win handily--but fees to obtain summary judgment may exceed $100,000.

Long-term, you're not hired--as outside counsel or a GC--to have a good defense, or a "good case". You are hired to have: (a) no future issue, (b) no investigation (c) no dispute and/or (d) no lawsuit. Generally, even frivolous complaints carry messages about a client's operational problems you can act on immediately.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2015

Help Wanted: Texas local counsel in Dallas-FW-Arlington area.

Singers of songs and dreamers of plays
Build a house no wind blows over.
The CPAs—tell me why a hearse horse snickers
hauling a CPA's bones.

--Carl Sandburg (mainly) from The Lawyers Know Too Much, ABA Journal, Vol. VII, No. 1 (Jan. 1921), p. 23 (see jump below)

We usually represent corporations unfairly accused in federal courts of something bad (contract, patent, trademark or copyright issue), sloppy (spilt fossil fuel/CERCLA/drive-by littering/RCRA) or plain low-down (fraud/insider trading felony murder) by either another corporation by a government. It's defense side work and pans out best when the company has at least one sophisticated in-house lawyer who knows the difference between Rules 34 and 45. That client will be paying for two lawyers to nip the dispute in the bud and 3 or 4 lawyers to work on their case if it escalates.

But when we don't do the above, we represent plaintiff corporations. The best causes of action? Cases against CPAs or stockbrokers, hands down. There are almost as many sleazed-out mail-it-in accountants and brokers as there are lawyers of the same ilk, Jack. And suing them? Suing them is the second most fun you can have.

And this case we have both a CPA firm and stockbroker as defendants. Personally, I am licensed in California, DC, Maryland and Pennsylvania (three of which are real states or districts)--but not Texas, where I have appeared pro hac vice five times in 20 years but not in last two years.

So we need local counsel. We have a case against an accountancy and a stockbroker on behalf of a young (10 years) aggressive Texas DFW-area construction company that sounds in tort and contract. Needed quickly is a local civil litigator with great federal court chops who also knows two county courts: Parker and Tarrant. Add solid, reliable, responsive and trustworthy. Aggressive.

Respond in the comments. Thanks.

Me in 2009 with Texas CPA and Texas stockbroker. This is what Texas pros often look like. Neither here is a defendant in above case.

The Lawyers Know Too Much

By Carl Sandburg

The lawyers, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand Wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
The lawyers know
a dead man’s thoughts too well.

In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,
Too many doors to go in and out of.

When the lawyers are through
What is there left, Bob?
Can a mouse nibble at it
And find enough to fasten a tooth in?

Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?

The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.
The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
The land of a farmer wishes him back again.
Singers of songs and dreamers of plays
Build a house no wind blows over.
The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers
hauling a lawyer’s bones.

Carl Sandburg
American Bar Association Journal
Vol. 7, No. 1 (January, 1921), p. 23

Posted by JD Hull at 04:15 PM | Comments (4)

July 03, 2015

Dear Network Solutions

Email earlier today:

Network Solutions:

Can you please expedite our renewal of our main domain so we can have our website back? Please help. This has been an needlessly irritating & frankly brain-damaged process.

For 15 years nothing liked this happened. One change in point of contact should not cause this much disruption and even a temporary loss of a domain right. Call if you need anything more.

Again, please help. Pretend you're efficient.

Dan Hull

Posted by JD Hull at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)