Chipped teeth, lacerated chin, cracked vertebra at a Taco Bell. Collapsing roofs, violent tractor accidents, exploding Audis, and the act of apathetically watching a man scream, flail around and drown..for half an hour.
Perhaps these are events that will fill up a screen in a new John Woo-directed film. Or some other director, I really don't care. I'm a doctor, not a film critic.
But what they truly are is the bizarre, immaculate, undeniably amusing events that have colored my law school reading thus far. If nothing else, case law has illuminated to me the seemingly endless possibilities of human incompetence, indifference and of a particularly profound brand of rancorous stupidity. It is at once depressing, exhilarating and exhausting.
I write this at my home, not at school, and these weeks have been such a whirlwind, such a wonderful shock to my functioning, that I find myself puzzled that any of it has happened at all. This high a volume of new people, new concepts, new surroundings, new lifestyles, new underwear...err....well, it all seems a little surreal right now. As if I've been simply a spectator while someone else performs in my place. But I have memories of it all, so I guess it must have been me.
I'm not used to any of this. And I am reveling in that. Perhaps I'll look back at such a blog entry 1 month, or even 2 weeks, from now and say, "You surely couldn't have been that happy!" But I was, and I am.
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Jimmy! I couldn't be more glad that you are enjoying yourself and the study of law. I think I'm most curious about the tractor accidents...or, of course, ANYTHING involving Taco Bell.
ReplyDelete-Carissa
Hi Carissa! I'm glad I'm happy too :-D
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, these cases I'm reading have certainly had some interesting stories, even if that's not what I'm supposed to take out of it...if a case makes it into a casebook at all, it has to be almost literary!
Baker v. Taco Bell: So basically a guy walks into Taco Bell, orders a drink, and promptly faints. He cracks his head and is knocked unconscious for a bit. He gets back up, says he's ok, goes to grab his drink, and he faints AGAIN, and this time cracks his jaw on the counter, cutting open his chin and cracking a vertabre in his neck!
Here's the best part: NOBODY at Taco Bell does anything. Just, nothing. He finally awakens by coughing up three of his teeth, and stumbles out of the restaraunt to get help. What a preposterous case! The point was to determine, under Tort law, if Taco Bell had a duty to help the man, but my goodness, were other people just like stepping over this guy?
Tractor: Ok, so this one isn't so much about the tractor, but this dude was in a massive tractor accident in Kansas, the thing went up in flames, etc. He dies. The case, though, was about whether a Federal court had jurisdiction in the case. His estate WANTED Fed. jurisdiction, so they tried to claim he was from Missouri because, among other things, he stopped by his mother's house every once and a while and his baseball cards were there. I mean, this is golden stuff :)
Oh my goodness - you make law school sound so interesting!!! That Taco Bell story is unreal...where was this? Evilville, USA?
ReplyDeleteClose: Indiana. :-D But yeah, that threw me off for a few days!
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