Dial 'O' for Outrage: The Sequel - new Web site Overlawyered.com - Tales from an overlawyered America

Reason, Nov, 1999 by Walter Olson

Tales from an overlawyered America

When the news came this spring that famed non-murderer O.J. Simpson had struck a deal to cut broadcast ads for a lawyers' referral service, I figured that there went my last chance to make a living as a professional satirist of our legal system. Simpson as a 1-800-number TV pitchman was a better rebuke to the state of American law than any farce or skit I could have dreamed up, and it had the extra edge of being true.

That development reinforced my resolve to stick in the future to simple chronicle. Satire, after all, achieves its ludicrous effects by way of exaggeration, and I'm not sure how one would go about exaggerating the activities of a group such as the American Bar Association, whose annual convention this summer invited Simpson defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran to speak on the subject of truth in the legal profession, presumably on the same logic by which you might ask the local Terminix man to come talk about bugs.

All summer long I assembled news clips of this sort as fodder for my new Web site Overlawyered.com, and now that I'm officially giving up on satire I think there's room for the occasional column in this space just cataloging the harvest of clips in a straightforward manner. I see no reason, for example, to add any overlay of commentary to the story that came out of Lancaster County, Nebraska, in late August, reporting that a judge had declined to order the Taco Bell restaurant chain to pay for trips to India for Siva Rama Krishna Valluru and his wife, Sailaja. The couple had been eating a rice side dish which they were assured was vegetarian and were aghast to discover partway through that it contained meat. They argued that their devout Hinduism required as expiation for this swallowing of flesh a purification ritual that involved their bathing in the Ganges River, but Judge Jean Lovell said the expenses of such a trip did not count as reasonably foreseeable to the fast-food chain.

Nor will I ask anyone to crack a smile at the interesting hypocrisies that came to light last winter when Boston's top federal law enforcement official launched a splashily publicized crackdown on the shopkeepers and bed-and-breakfast proprietors of quaint Nantucket Island, many of whom, given the high cost of local renovations and a native reluctance to tamper with historic structures, have lagged behind in constructing the ramps and wider corridors required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Ironically, as The Boston Globe reported, if the ADA enforcement actions go to trial it will be in a newly built federal courthouse that itself has been accused of massively violating standards for handicapped accessibility.

The jury boxes and witness stands in the building's 27 courtrooms, for example, can be reached only by way of steps. "We looked at the possibility of building in permanent ramps that were retractable, but it was such a burden on the budget we just couldn't do it," said General Services Administration project manager Paul Curley. The courthouse does, however, sport English oak paneling, a 45,000-square-foot glass wall overlooking the harbor, "spacious waterfront chambers for judges, and a five-story Great Hall."

Likewise, I intend to keep a sober mien when telling the story of how 27-year-old Theodore Nobbe of Clearwater, Florida, recently won acquittal from felony animal abuse charges that could have landed him in prison for five years. A fellow patron at the local Bombay Bicycle Club had reported Nobbe to the cops for allegedly dunking the head of a friend's parrot in his tequila-based drink several times, to see if it would get tipsy. Nobbe denied the Polly-in-Margaritaville charges of psittacine abuse, but an officer said the creature's upper portions seemed damp when he was called to the scene, and a Humane Society employee said when the bird was brought to the shelter it ate voraciously, a pattern consistent, she averred, with its having the "drunken munchies."

All very funny for the bird, you may think - hangover aside - but less funny for Nobbe, who'd had no previous problems with the law. Prosecutors said they had to charge him with felony as opposed to misdemeanor animal abuse because that's what the law specifies for "repeated" acts of abuse - and multiple dunkings counted as that. Animal rights advocates jammed prosecution switchboards demanding that the book be thrown at Nobbe, just as in recent years, to little organized opposition, they've successfully lobbied for increasingly stringent criminal statutes on animal abuse.

Over in Seattle, Sharon Kempler-Jones was encountering her share of animal-related legal headaches. Her troubles started one day while she was running her small consignment clothing shop, the Gypsy Trader. She noticed Chaya Amiad bringing a small, shaggy, leashed dog into the store. Taking the view that dog dander and clean clothing don't mix, she asked Amiad to leave it outside. The woman took offense and began to argue, and next thing Kempler-Jones knew she was being served with a complaint from the Seattle Office for Human Rights for disability discrimination.