Email Scam of the Day

Dear Sir/Madam,

[NAME DELETED] Financial Group always looks forward for the high security of our clients. Some customers have been receiving an email claiming to be from [NAME DELETED] Financial Group advising them to follow a link to what appear to be a [NAME DELETED] Financial Group web site, where they are prompted to enter their personal Online Banking details.

[NAME DELETED] Financial Group is in no way involved with this email and the web site does not belong to us.[NAME DELETED] Financial Group is proud to announce about their new updated secure system.We updated our new SSL servers to give our customers a better, fast and secure online banking service.Due to the recent update of the servers, you are requested to please update your account info at the following link.

[Web address deleted]

[NAME DELETED] Financial Group

Security Advisor

[NAME DELETED] Financial Group

I have labelled this "Humour," but it is not funny if anyone falls for this scam.

The Greatest Estate Litigation Case that Never Was

Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty- bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning, for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for certain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half- dozenth time to make a personal application "to purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at the close of the day's business and who can by no means be made to understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out "My Lord!" in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising. A few lawyers' clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal weather a little.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.

I have seen a few cases that have felt a little like Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The parties to a lawsuit become so immersed in it that they lose sight of their original objectives or of any rational self interest.

But my purpose today is not to moralize. It is to admire the beauty of language when written by a master like Charles Dickens in Bleak House.

Gravesite Recitals

Professor Gerry Beyer at Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog quotes a will clause here, which was sent to him by a lawyer in San Antonio, Texas, as follows:

The [Charitable Beneficiary] will have a group of people minimum of five (5), sing, anything they choose, in English, at my late wife's * * * gravesite, in the City Cemetery * * * at noon, every 27th day of the month, every month, in perpetuity whether it falls on Sundays or Holidays, for at least fifteen (15) minutes. The participants do not have to be professional singers or even be able to carry a tune.

If the group is unable to carry a tune, is this clause void as against public policy?

Do I Violate New York State's Proposed New Professional Conduct Rules?

The Disclaimer.

The full extent of my knowledge about New York law is based on a set of circumstances that occurred a long time ago when the unfortunate Mrs. Palsgraf was injured after employees of the Long Island Railroad Company pushed and pulled a man onto a train, causing his apparently harmless package to fall—a package that in fact contained fireworks—setting off an explosion, and thereby knocking down scales at the other end of the platform, onto the said Mrs. Palsgraf. This knowledge does not qualify me to write about legal matters in New York.

The Fuss.

Those who make the rules about lawyer’s professional responsibility in New York are proposing some changes, which no doubt they are entitled to do. One of the problems with their proposed changes is that if adopted the advertising rules arguably apply to any lawyer in the world who has a website or blog on legal matters. This is because computer-accessed communications fall within the definition of advertising. Furthermore, the proposed changes purport to give New York disciplinary authority over any lawyer outside of New York who “provides or solicits any legal services” in New York.

I don’t know if this would catch my blog. I don’t think of anything I do on my blog as “soliciting” legal services, and I don't direct my blog specifically toward New Yorkers. On the other hand, I admit that I use my blog to market my practice (although that is only one of the reasons I this write this blog). Nor am I vehemently opposed to New Yorkers retaining me in respect of legal issues in British Columbia.

What have they got against courthouses in New York State?

As, Larry Stratton, in his blog, Planner’s Thoughts, points out in his post "Take that, New York," one of the no no’s in New York’s proposed new rules is depicting a courtroom or courthouse in an advertisement. This is what gets me in trouble. I have, as at the date of this post, eighteen photographs and one sketch of courthouses. (I may have more by the time you click the link.)

I can understand why those who are concerned with the legal profession’s image might not be enamored by advertisements for lawyers that depict apparently vicious animals. I am not a particularly big fan of advertisements with pictures of car accidents, hospitals and ambulances (although I wouldn’t ban them). But courthouses?

To me a courthouse symbolizes the fact that in places governed by the rule of law we try to settle disputes rationally according to rules and evidence, and not out on the streets according to might. Courthouses symbolize law and justice. They symbolize respect for the rights of the individual, and they symbolize the community. They also symbolize my profession.

I decided to put pictures of courthouses on my blog to give it a little color and variety. It gives me a wedge to write posts on cities and towns, or other matters, on a law blog. I can’t imagine that depicting a courthouse on this blog, or on any advertisement, could possibly affect my business one way or the other.

Sorry New York professional legal ethics people, but I just don’t get it.

And Mrs. Palsgraf?

She lost her suit against the Long Island Railroad Company on appeal. Chief Judge Cardozo, for the majority, held that if the employees were negligent in respect of the man they tried to help onto the train, their conduct was not negligent in relation to Mrs. Palsgraf. There was nothing in the circumstances that would indicate to the employees that their conduct could harm Mrs. Palsgraf.

Epilogue.

When I decided to write this post, I remembered the Palsgraf case from law school twenty years ago, but thought it would be wise to re-read the case before mentioning it. I googled “Palsgraf,” and I found the decision in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railway Company, 248 NY 339, on the Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York website. The website has a nice section, with photographs, of New York courthouses here. Ironic.

Will links to other blogs or websites that depict courthouses be ok in New York if the proposed new rules are adopted?

"The Night Before Christmas" in Legalize

Check out Patrick Lamb's post "Good Writing: What Lawyer's Do To Christmas" on his blog In Search of Perfect Client Service. The story begins:

Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lackof stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.

And Whereas, a variety of foot apparel, e.g., stocking, socks, etc., had been affixed by and around the chimney in said House in the hope and/or belief that St. Nick a/k/a/ St. Nicholas a/k/a/ Santa Claus (hereinafter "Claus") would arrive at some time thereafter.

Funny Will Clause

One of my favorite clauses, although not one I would recommend inserting in a Will now, was quoted in a 19th century Ontario case. In Woodhill v. Thomas (1889), 18 O.R. (Ch. Div.), the court considered a Will in which the deceased had provided that when the last of his four daughters died the remainder of his estate "is to be equally divided amongst my grandchildren, provided they are not lazy, spendthrifts, drunkards, worthless characters, or guilty of any act of immorality."

I would have thought that the clause would be void as being too uncertain, but the court did not comment on this, and the judge appears to have proceeded on the basis that the clause was a valid condition. The court did say that it was a condition subsequent, which means that each grandchild would be entitled to a share until it were shown that the grandchild was lazy, a drunkard, worthless character or guilty of any act of immorality.

No, I don't know how the grandchildren turned out.