Yet More Media

It's been a big media week for Law Prof on the Loose. I was in a story on the local FOX news last night. You can see it here.

The story was about all the money DC is paying out in settlements in lawsuits over alleged police and other public misconduct. As usuall, the 5-second snippet of me consists of the most contentious thing I said. They show me saying that defendants are usually happy to string out cases and maybe wear down the plaintiff. Which is true, but my larger point was that defendants, without doing anything wrong or unethical, make decisions about what to do based on cost-benefit analysis. If setttling a case is cheaper than the expected cost of going forward to trial (and bearing in mind the effect on other cases of either course of action), a defendant will settle. There are lots of considerations, but the main one is figuring out the lowest cost course of action.

Go Fish

Let me get this straight. As you're eating a filet o' fish sandwich at McDonald's, the company wants you to be thinking, "you know, what I'm eating used to be an actual fish, swimming around happily in the water somewhere. I'm eating something that used to be alive. And how would I like it if some fish were eating me?"

What else could explain the strangely macabre ad series that McDonald's is using to push this sandwich? A man buys a filet o' fish sandwich at a drive thru, but before he can take a bite, he gets a call on his cell phone from -- a fish! And the fish, which is stuffed and mounted on a wall, sings to him, "Give me back that filet o' fish! Give me back that fish! What if it were you hanging up on this wall? If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn't be getting this call!"

The man dumps his cell out the window and takes a big bite out of the sandwich, but is that what you would do? If you're not a vegetarian, presumably you've made your peace with eating fish and animals, but do you really want to think about it as you're eating?

Sheesh, what a weird ad.

Question Time

How'd you like that debate between President Obama and House Republicans? Pretty cool, huh? Republicans members of the House of Representatives got to ask any question they wanted, straight to the President of the United States, and the President answered. And the whole thing was televised. That was the unprecedented part. Presidents have gone to meetings of the opposition party and answered questions before, but ususually the Q&A session is secret. This time the whole country got to see a lively debate between the President and opposition party members. Here's some video.

Well, if you liked that, how would you like it if we had a similar session once a week? That's right, how about the President of the United States, appearing before the House of Representatives, or maybe before the Senate, once a week, with opposition members asking him questions. And why limit it to opposition members? Let's allow any member to ask the President a question, with special attention given to opposition leaders, but bringing in rank-and-file members on both sides. And the whole thing on television. The public would get a lively, weekly debate on the issues of the day.

Well, if we lived in Britain, that's exactly what we would have. Every Wednesday at noon, the prime minister appears before the House of Commons and takes whatever questions about public issues that any member of Parliament cares to ask. If the Prime Minister is out of town, the Leader of the House (equivalent to our Majority Leader) answers instead.

The Speaker of the House (who, unlike the Speaker of our House of Representatives, is a neutral, non-partisan official) moderates the debate. The Speaker calls first on a member chosen at random, then, if the first member was from the opposition, on a random member of the majority, and then on the leader of the opposition -- at which point all the opposition members chime in, "Hear, hear." The leader of the opposition gets to ask about five or six questions, then another random majority party member gets a turn, and then the leader of the largest third party (currently the Liberal Democrats) gets a couple of questions, and then it's just random "backbenchers," as rank-and-file members are called in Britain, for the remainder of the time. The Prime Minister has to answer -- well at least he has to say something, he doesn't always answer the question asked. Throughout, members chime in with cheers, hoots, catcalls, and other outbursts, which the Speaker has to repress from time to time, with his signature cry of "Order, order."

To see the weekly show, go to the House's website's video section, choose any Wednesday, and go to about 30 minutes in. You'll see a lively debate, and you'll also see how much better Parliament's website's video is than the C-SPAN archive. C-SPAN's archive is appallingly difficult to watch. With the House of Commons, you have easy access to the whole day's proceedings in one click.

I'll Take Half

I guess I feel sorry for Conan O'Brien's losing his job hosting the Tonight Show -- it was a great gig, he really wanted it, and it can't be fun to be fired. I met Conan during college -- he was a year below me -- and he seemed like a great guy and very funny. And he ended his show with a very gracious speech thanking NBC for the opportunities it's given him over his 20 years there. So I have some sympathy for him.

Still, let's not forget that he's getting paid $32 million to do nothing. And he's free to earn whatever he can at any other job starting in September.

I can confidently say that I would do nothing for half that amount. In fact, probably less.

I am reminded of the time, a few years after I started teaching at GW, that our basketball coach left the school in the midst of scandals (it was reported that he had failed to notify the school of criminal charges against one of the players and that the players had made $1400 worth of phone calls using his son's long-distance code). Even though the school appeared to have good cause to fire the coach, GW announced that it would "honor" the remaining three years of his contract, which meant that it would pay him a reported $450,000 a year to do nothing. (And he wasn't barred from working elsewhere either.) I wanted to let the university know that, if they really needed someone to do nothing, I would do it for half.

(And by the way, this happened not long after our university's then-President made a big fuss about how the law school needed to teach students that improper actions have consequences. Yeah, the consequence is that you get paid to do nothing.)

Of course, Conan hasn't done anything bad, except get bad ratings. But the element of getting paid not to work is common to both stories.

So while I do feel bad for Conan, I don't feel all that bad. Getting paid tens of millions to do nothing is nice work, if you can get it.

Network Kerfuffle

Of all the innumerable and embarrassingly public details of the infighting at NBC over its late-night lineup, the most curious to me is that Leno's poor ratings at 10 p.m. are unnaceptable to affiliates because they cause affiliates to lose viewers for their 11:00 news shows.

Are Americans really so lazy, are they such sorry slobs, that they choose their 11:00 local news based on which network had a better show on at 10:00? Can they not conjure up enough energy to click their remote controls when the news comes on? Presumably this means that most Americans will watch one local news show on Tuesday and a different one on Thursday, if they like different network fare on the different nights. Do they not develop preferences in news shows too?

I guess local news shows are just a commodity, like wheat or ibuprofen -- the product must be so standardized that it doesn't matter whom you buy it from. Which raises the even bigger question, why watch the local news anyway? Do you really need to know about every local crime and fire?

He Was It

On weekends, even law professor bloggers get to relax and think about less serious topics.

I caught Michael Jackson's new film, This Is It. What a pleasure. Not only is it your chance to see Jackson perform his greatest hits one last time, it's your chance to see a superb craftsman at work.

The film consists of Jackson and his backups and crew rehearsing for the tour he would have performed if not for his untimely death. The film shows that, once you get Jackson away from all of the hoopla, and weirdness, and scandals that surrounded his life, and put him in his true milieu, where he works on doing that for which he was celebrated, no one could match him. Even though he's not giving it his all in this movie, because it's just rehearsal, not actual performance, his dancing is still amazing -- miles ahead of his backups, who are probably more than twenty years younger than him. And he brings and intensity and intelligence to his professional work that you couldn't see in his interviews during life.

In this day of endless parades of not-especially-talented people who are celebrated for being celebrated, or for showing us the "reality" of their lives, it's a pleasure to see someone who truly had the talent to back up his fame. He wasn't the King of Pop for nothing.

Legal TV Review

I don’t watch much TV, but I will admit to enjoying “House.” “Polite Dissent,” an engaging blog by someone with medical knowledge, publishes a useful medical review of each House episode, which runs down the medicine in each show and notes the medical errors committed each week. But what House really needs is a legal review. Because really, whatever medical errors they commit, House and his team also commit almost unbelievable torts and crimes on a regular basis.

CAUTION: Many spoilers ahead.

House and most of his team belong in jail for lengthy terms. But it almost never seems to occur to anyone on the show that their blatantly illegal behavior might have actual consequences.

* A major theme of the show for a long time was how House and his whole team break the drug laws to get House the Vicodin he was addicted to because of pain in his leg. The possible consequences were at least explored over several episodes, but the whole team shows great disregard for drug laws.

* House routinely has his team break into his patients’ (and each others’) homes for diagnostic purposes. These crimes seem particularly bizarre since I expect most of the patients would consent to having their homes searched if told that a search is needed to help them, since almost all of them are in desperately ill condition. House seems to get a thrill out of doing things illegally even when it isn’t necessary.

* When Foreman was ill with a probably deadly disease that the team was unable to diagnose, he deliberately infected Cameron with it so that she would have an incentive to investigate in the way he thought would be helpful. Foreman was in a tough spot, but I don’t think he’d get out of a pretty serious criminal charge. He might not have committed attempted murder (he didn’t actually intend Cameron to die), but it was a pretty serious assault or battery all the same. And if she had died, he could certainly have been up for murder on a “depraved indifference” theory.

* On multiple occasions, House has kidnapped people in order to treat them. In yesterday’s episode, he drugs someone in his (the patient’s) own home and ties him up with duct tape. He had good motives, but you can get 50 years for that kind of thing.

* When a man with a gun takes House and numerous patients hostage to force House to diagnose him, House eventually convinces the man he has to give up the gun to get an MRI (the MRI won’t work with the metal gun inside). But then when the MRI fails to solve the medical mystery, House gives the man back his gun so that the hostage standoff can continue long enough for House to come to a diagnosis. I’m sorry, but at that moment House became an accomplice to kidnapping. Another 50 years.

* In this season’s opener, House spirits a mental patient away from the institution in which he is staying and feeds his perception that he is able to fly. The patient then jumps out of a building and is severely injured and perhaps permanently crippled. Even if this one wasn’t necessarily another kidnapping, it’s amazing that no one says to House, “wow, are you ever going to get sued.”

*Foreman, temporarily put in charge of the diagnostic team because House has temporarily lost his medical license (not for any of the above crimes!), fires his girlfriend Thirteen from the team because he feels that having her work for him, instead of with him, will be damaging to their romantic relationship. Ding ding ding! Can anyone say “Title VII violation”?

* Finally, in yesterday’s episode, Chase deliberately and with clear malice aforethought produces a fake blood test so that a patient will be treated for the wrong disease and will die, because Chase thinks that will be best for the public good (the patient is a dictator who, Chase believes, is going to commit genocide on a segment of his own population, even though the patient claims he’s taking necessary action to protect his nation’s security from internal enemies). Putting aside the question of whether Chase’s amateur diplomacy is likely to help (Chase has very limited knowledge of the actual situation in the dictator’s country, and who knows what would really happen after the dictator’s death — it might lead to peace or it might lead to even more bloodshed than if the dictator carried out his plans), it’s as clear-cut a murder as one might desire. Foreman then becomes Chase’s accomplice by destroying evidence.

Based on the preview for next week, it looks like the show is at least going to have a little exploration of the question of what should happen when one of the team commits a murder. Well, good for them, because most of the time the characters seem to live in a law-free bubble, in which they get to do anything and everything without legal consequences.

Some doctors don’t like House because they don’t like the way the show glorifies “disruptive physicians.” They claim it’s unrealistic in that regard. What really seems unrealistic to me is the way the characters commit constant crimes and torts and nothing comes of it. The show obviously has some doctors consulting on the scripts — couldn’t they hire at least one lawyer (sheesh, I’m available) to give basic advice so that the show is not so legally absurd?