A Legal Potpourri – The Ukiah Daily Journal

Not all legal stories are ideally suited to having a full column devoted to them because they’re, well, smaller stories. (Translated: it’s hard to write enough filler to expand them to about 750 words.) So, for those moments at your next cocktail party when the conversation drags, you can cut this out and carry it with you.

• Under the heading, “Important Things to do Today,” there’s a report from Virginia that some years back, three men filed suit against the state’s governor seeking a court order that he empanel a grand jury to investigate alien abductions, train the National Guard to handle attacks from outer space, and cover alien abductees under a state civil rights law that protects crime victims. How do folks keep thinking up such responsible ways to spend the tax money?

• “I’ve had this song running through my head all day.” It’s likewise been a few years, but a federal appeals court once upheld a jury verdict against Michael Bolton for nearly $5.5 million a few years ago because the jury concluded that Bolton’s 1991 hit “Love is a Wonderful Thing” plagiarized the Isley Brother’s 1964 song of the same name. The case turned on such evidence as what kind of records Bolton listened to as a teenager in the early- to mid-1960s, and how often the song played on local television and stations that Bolton might have watched.

Bolton thus has at least one thing in common with the late ex-Beatle George Harrison, who also was found liable back in the 1970s to the estate of composer Ronnie Mack for plagiarizing the Chiffons’ 1963 hit “He’s So Fine” with his 1971 hit “My Sweet Lord.” The jury softened the blow a little by concluding that, even if Harrison had plagiarized the melody to “He’s So Fine,” he had done so “unconsciously.”

• “Well, at least if I write the songs, they’re my own songs.” On a somewhat related note, soft-pop icon Barry Manilow once threatened to sue a Los Angeles radio station for $28 million because it ran advertisements that people should listen to the station because it didn’t play Manilow’s songs. The station agreed to stop running the ad.

No word, though, whether the station ever began playing Manilow’s music.

• “Gee, if I’d known the place was going to burn down, I’d have waited another day to cancel the insurance.” A car dealership in the San Francisco area was the victim of a fire that started at 12:48 a.m. on June 29, 1997. The company’s auto insurance had been canceled for non-payment of the premium “effective at 12:01 a.m. standard time, 6/29/97.” Because it was June and California was on daylight savings time — not “standard time” — the car dealership argued that it was really 11:48 p.m. on June 28 when the fire was discovered, so the policy still had 13 minutes to go. A trial judge ruled in favor of the dealership.

An appeals court, however, demonstrating once again that no one else thinks the way lawyers do, decided that the term “standard time” meant whatever time was “presently in use,” not what almost everyone else would assume “standard time” means — namely, the time in use (in those days) between the last Sunday in October and the first Sunday in April. So, the insurance company won.

• From the “Just give me the frosting and no one gets hurt” file, James Cooper of California brandished a gun while he stole a $1.59 can of cake frosting. He was found not guilty of the theft, but still had the distinction of becoming one of the first people sentenced to 25 years-to-life for a “third strike” conviction under California’s “Three Strikes” law because, as an ex-felon, it was also illegal for him merely to possess a gun.

One hopes it was the most delicious cake frosting ever.

• Under the heading of “Yeah, you were selfless — what does that have to do with practicing law?” three people who were taking the California Bar Exam some years back noticed a fellow exam-taker having symptoms of chest pain. They came to his aid and summoned assistance, thereby possibly saving the man’s life. The State Bar, though, refused to give them additional time on the test to compensate for the time they had lost during their life-saving work, so all three failed the exam.

• Under the standard interpretation of property law in most states, if a meteor lands on your property, you own the meteor.

Of course, in Virginia, they probably don’t follow that rule — they’ll assume that it’s an alien attack and will try to call out the National Guard.

Frank Zotter is a Ukiah attorney.