New York Law Blog

iTunes is about as ubiquitous as one can get when it comes to music, but did you know that  it also is a great repository for educational materials? Dubbed “iTunes U”, many podcasts (portable audio recordings) are available encompassing a wide variety of law topics, including patent law, copyright law and family law just to name a few. Prestigious universities are represented in the educational materials including Stanford, Vanderbilt and the New York Law School. All of the individual recordings are labeled with their specific content so that you can make an informed choice about what you would like to listen to. Take this for example from the MIT “Introduction to Copyright Law”:

This course is an introduction to copyright law and American law in general. Topics covered include: structure of federal law; basics of legal research; legal citations; how to use LexisNexis; the 1976 Copyright Act; copyright as applied to music, computers broadcasting and education; fair use; Napster, Grokster, and Peer-to-Peer file-sharing; Library Access to Music Project; The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act; DVDs and encryption; software licensing; the GNU General Public License and free software.

The Yale Law School podcasts feature “members of the Law School’s renowned faculty and distinguished legal experts and scholars from around the world sharing their views on philosophical and practical issues related to law and justice”. All of the recordings are free, and no matter where your interests lie as it relates to the law, you’ll find something to cater to that in iTunes U.

Want to take the bar exam in the state of New York but are a Mac user? Not so fast says the New York State Board of Law Examiners.  While laptops have been allowed to compose bar exam essays on since February 2003, the Board does not approve use of the bar exam software on Mac laptops. But that seems to be the least of the problems for those who are taking the exam. The specialized software used to lock the user’s laptop down so that it will only operate the exam software (no going to wikipedia for your essay answers!) also has some major issues, and the Board offers this disclaimer to those who are taking the exam:

Technical difficulties may include hardware or software malfunctions, data saving or retrieval problems, operator errors, upload or download problems, or the loss of electrical power at the examination facility. In the event any technical difficulties occur during the bar examination, you must handwrite your essay answers in the answer books provided and no additional time may be allowed. If you choose to continue to use your computer to write your essay answers after experiencing technical difficulties, or when you have been instructed not to do so, you do so at your own risk.

Malfunctions of the software have been known to happen, such as last summer when a malfunction set hundreds of users back valuable amounts of time when they found previously answered essays blank. The board was able to salvage most of the work, but 47 essays went missing. Is your future worth chancing on a piece of technology? Some don’t seem to mind, but it leaves an amazing amount up to chance.

Have you heard the term “serial litigants”? ABC.com profiles a few individuals who fit the bill and what exactly it means to be a serial litigant. Research on the subject is minimal at best, but an Australian study “found that many vexatious litigants displayed symptoms consistent with ‘querulous paranoia’."

"The central feature clinically is their complete quest for a personal vision of justice to which all else is subjected," wrote forensic psychologists Paul E. Mullen and Grant Lester.

"Unlike many deluded patients… the querulous provide a detailed and apparently logical account of the emergence of their grievances and the progress of their quest for justice," they wrote.

Many serial litigants believe that they have been wronged time and time again and are entitled to monetary compensation, however many forensic psychiatrists believe that in a lot of cases they are driven by psychological reasons, even paranoia. Their need for attention or the thought process that their “perceived suffering” will only be justified in court is a large driving factor.

"Serial litigants are ubiquitous," said Dr. Mark Levy, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. "Everybody has a right to his day in court, but some people are there for psychological rather than judicial reasons."

Frequent plaintiffs can in some cases sue hundreds of companies and individuals or spend years in court, suing increasing numbers of people related to one or many perceived injustices, Levy said.

Some states have begun throwing out cases from “vexatious litigants” and keep them from filing complaints in the future. California alone has banned 970 different individuals from filing frivolous lawsuits. An example:

One of those 970 names belongs to Jarek Molski, a 37-year-old wheelchair-bound man who filed more than 400 cases in two years under the Americans with Disabilities Act against restaurants, hotels and wineries for not complying with state and federal regulations.

In 2004, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie said Molski was a vexatious litigant who was "misusing a noble law" and engaged in a "scheme of systematic extortion."

Many serial litigants are just looking for closure to whatever their situation may be. Sadly some never find it.