Category Archives: movies

Captain America

Posted on July 25, 2011 by | 17 comments

Captain America was, quality-wise, pretty much the polar opposite of the last movie we reviewed.  There are two legal issues we’d like to touch on, both of which come up early in the movie.  Still, these are technically spoilers.

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17 Comments

Posted in criminal law, movies

Ghost Rider, the Devil, and Bearer Paper

Posted on July 20, 2011 by | 39 comments

The 2007 Ghost Rider movie was neither a particularly good movie nor a particularly good source of legal themes, but there was one interesting observation we seized on.  Spoilers ahead, though I doubt many tears will be shed over spoiling Ghost Rider.

I. The Setup

In the movie, Mephisto (one of many devils in the Marvel universe) has a habit of making Faustian bargains.  When it comes time to collect he sends his henchman, the Ghost Rider, with whom he has also made a pact, albeit one he has to enforce himself, of course.  The precise terms of these contracts vary but the practical upshot is always the same: the devil gets your soul, from which he can derive power.  The movie is centered around the fate of a particularly valuable contract for the souls of an entire town, one thousand in all, which Ghost Rider’s predecessor had hidden rather than give up to Mephisto.

So far this is fairly standard stuff.  The twist comes from the fact that there are warring factions with Marvel’s demonic community, and Mephisto’s son Blackheart wants the contract for himself.  In fact, he manages not only to get the contract but to collect the souls bound by it.  And this brings us to the interesting part.  If the contract was with Mephisto, how could just any demon who got ahold of it cash in on the deal?  The inescapable conclusion is that demonic contracts must be redeemable by the bearer.

II. Bearer Paper

For an attorney, the idea that jumps readily to mind is “bearer paper.”  Bearer paper is a kind of negotiable instrument, which you are probably familiar with in the form of checks and money orders.  You’re probably also familiar with bearer paper: you create it any time you make a check out to “cash,” for example.  As the name suggests, bearer paper is payable to the person bearing (i.e. physically holding) the bill, note, check, etc.  This is convenient, but also dangerous, since it becomes much easier for a thief (or an upstart young demon) to cash it.

So could Mephisto’s contract have been bearer paper under US law?  The first thing to consider is whether the contract could have been a negotiable instrument at all.  As defined in the Uniform Commercial Code, Article 3 (which has been adopted by most states):

“negotiable instrument” means an unconditional promise or order to pay a fixed amount of money, with or without interest or other charges described in the promise or order, if it:
(1) is payable to bearer or to order at the time it is issued or first comes into possession of a holder;
(2) is payable on demand or at a definite time; and
(3) does not state any other undertaking or instruction by the person promising or ordering payment to do any act in addition to the payment of money, but the promise or order may contain (i) an undertaking or power to give, maintain, or protect collateral to secure payment, (ii) an authorization or power to the holder to confess judgment or realize on or dispose of collateral, or (iii) a waiver of the benefit of any law intended for the advantage or protection of an obligor.

That’s a lot of text, but the basic rule is that a negotiable instrument needs 1) a fixed amount of money, possibly with interest; 2) a payee (i.e. the person getting paid, which can be the bearer); 3) a payable date, which can be “on demand” (i.e. whenever the payee wants) or a specific date; and 4) it generally can’t have any other conditions attached to it (e.g. no fair saying “Pay to the order of Bob if he paints my house.”).

And there’s the rub.  Mephisto’s contract is for souls, not money, and it plainly has some additional conditions on it (e.g. whatever it was Mephisto did for the people of San Venganza in exchange for their souls).  Of course, this is according to modern US law.  The contract was drawn up in the 19th Century.  Can we do better under the law of the time?

III. The Uniform Negotiable Instruments Law of 1896

The Uniform Negotiable Instruments Law was the predecessor to the Uniform Commercial Code, and like the UCC it was broadly adopted.  The UNIL or something like it was probably the law of the land at the time the contract was formed.  As luck would have it, its definition of a negotiable instrument is a bit looser than the UCC’s:

An instrument to be negotiable must conform to the following requirements:
1. It must be in writing and signed by the maker or drawer.
2. Must contain an unconditional promise or order to pay a sum certain in money.
3. Must be payable on demand, or at a fixed or determinable future time.
4. Must be payable to order or to bearer.
5. Where the instrument is addressed to a drawee he must be named or otherwise indicated therein with reasonable certainty.

This gets us closer.  The UNIL allows a negotiable instrument to be made for a promise rather than only money.  But that promise has to be unconditional, which means it can’t be something like “I promise to give the bearer of this contract my soul if Mephisto grants me three wishes.”  That pretty well spells the end of the bearer paper idea.  Presumably the infernal legal system is more flexible in this regard, although one wonders why Mephisto would be so foolish as to draw up such a contract in the first place.  Somebody ought to get that guy a lawyer.  One presumes he has ready access to plenty of them.

IV. Sidenote: The 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.  However, it’s questionable whether Mephisto’s contract could be voided on that basis, since the damned are dead and have no rights.  Further, US courts have been reluctant to exert jurisdiction over the Devil.  See United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (W.D.Pa. 1971).  Anyone considering entering into a pact with the Devil should definitely bear in mind that it may be difficult to obtain relief in court should the Devil prove less than trustworthy.

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Posted in contracts, movies

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Posted on July 6, 2011 by | 6 comments

The Fourth of July weekend is a fitting time for the release of Michael Bay’s latest round of cinematic pyrotechnics, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It’s better than the first two, though that’s not saying all that much. And like the first two, we’re not breaking any new legal ground here either. In fact, as seemingly befits a movie which is almost entirely derivative… there isn’t a whole lot to say that we haven’t covered already. But in any case, here’s a roundup. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in civil rights, insurance, movies, property law

Green Lantern

Posted on June 29, 2011 by | 22 comments

So there’s this Green Lantern movie out. Reviews have… not been kind. There may actually be some kind of dogpile effect going on here, i.e. Green Lantern being the movie that it’s awesome to hate on. I mean, sure, it’s bad, but it’s no Rise of the Silver Surfer, which inexplicably got better reviews. Green Lantern’s CGI was admittedly pretty dumb though. Hard to argue with that.

Anyway, what about the legal aspects? Well, there are a couple. Oddly enough, most of them don’t involve much in the way of spoilers this time around. Still, we’ll keep the actual review inside, just in case. Continue reading →

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Posted in movies

Super 8

Posted on June 20, 2011 by | 20 comments

Okay, so it’s not exactly a comic book movie, but Super 8 does come from director J.J. Abrams, and this, like most of his other work, is still in the basic genre ballpark, so what the hell.

Yes, it’s a good movie. But you can read other reviews for that stuff. Spoilers inside.
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Posted in movies, torts

X-Men: First Class

Posted on June 6, 2011 by | 24 comments

There’s a new X-Men movie out, and it’s actually pretty great. But you don’t come here for detailed discussions about the merits of the movie as a movie or about the fidelity or creativity of the adaptation. No, you come here to read about the legal implications of the various plot devices. So let’s get down to it. Given the plot, most of what we’ve got here is going to be international law, with an added civil rights / employment law bonus. As always, we’ve got spoilers.

I. Nazi Gold

In his quest to find the Nazi “doctor” that killed his mother, Erik Lensherr used an ingot of Nazi gold as a pretense to get an appointment with a high-ranking Swiss banker. This has a certain realism to it, as a vast amount of Nazi gold disappeared into European banks by 1945, and much of it probably remains there. The banker comments that possessing such gold is illegal. He’s right. In September 1946, the United Kingdom, United States, and France formed the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold with the mandate to identify those persons or institutions with claims that gold had been looted from them by the Nazis and the goal of restoring that gold to its rightful owners. The Tripartite Commission was created as part of the Paris Peace Treaties which brought about the end of the war. The Commission’s task took a long time, and it was only dissolved in 1998 with something like 65% of the claimed gold returned. Congress addressed the issue with the “Holocaust Victims Redress Act, Pub. Law No. 105-158 in 1998. The Act basically authorizes the US representative to the Commission to dispose of what assets remained in the Commission’s possession at that time.

Still, there’s one little wrinkle. Lensherr, being a Jew and victim of the concentration camps, could in theory have a valid claim to the gold in question, which would make the legality of his possession of the ingot less clear. But as this issue was dealt with on a really high level, it’s doubtful that law enforcement would care much one way or the other. The Commission was mostly concerned with the gold possessed by sovereign governments, not individuals.

II. Acts of War

First, there’s the operation to nail Shaw when he meets with the Russian general. This is a CIA-directed op, with CIA agents on the ground, leading a group of what amounts to mercenaries—other than Moira and the other agent, it isn’t clear that anyone else involved was a federal agent—in attempting to infiltrate a sensitive military compound to assassinate a high value target. Several major wars have been sparked because of the assassination of a high-ranking official, so this is kind of a big deal. Granted, in most cases where a war follows an assassination, the actual death is a pretense for armed conflict really motivated by more serious underlying tensions, but this kind of thing is dramatic enough to push things over the edge.

But the appearance of the X-Men on the scene at the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis? That might not be, because the government had not authorized them to do anything. They were not acting under anyone’s orders (or at least anyone with the authority to give those kinds of orders), and it’s far from clear that the CIA even knew what they were up to. So Professor X causing the Russians to fire on their own ship could plausibly have been disavowed by Washington as rogue agents acting without authority. The fact that the Russians had already ordered the ship to turn around means that they’d probably be willing to grasp at any excuse not to go to war, so this explanation may well have been accepted, whether Professor X was acting under orders or not.

Magneto springing Emma Frost from the CIA holding center wouldn’t count either, as he wasn’t acting on the authority of any sovereign entity. At the time, it probably would have been classified as a criminal act, because the government’s rush to classify everything it doesn’t like as “terrorism” did not really get its start until the events of 2001. But it is plausible that, if apprehended, he could have initially been charged with espionage. Granted, Magneto does not seem to have any particular interest in working with any human government, and his little trip into the facility did not appear to include the acquisition of any information. Still, he damaged a bunch of property and may have killed some agents at a highly classified facility, so the feds would be understandably upset about that. They might not be able to make a charge of espionage stick in the absence of any connection to a foreign power though: the Espionage Act generally requires that one transmit or intend to transmit something to someone. Acquiring classified information and doing nothing with it isn’t espionage.

III. Employment Discrimination

At one point in the film, Moira’s CIA boss states in a meeting that “there’s no place for a woman in the CIA.”  Today that kind of comment might well give rise to a discrimination claim, but what about in 1962?  As it turns out, an employer—even a government employer—could probably have gotten away with it because the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (specifically Title VII) had not been enacted yet.  Without those important Acts in place the courts were generally pretty tolerant of both de facto and de jure discrimination against women.  For example, it wasn’t until 1971 that the Supreme Court first struck down a state law on the basis that it discriminated on the basis of sex.  Reed v. Reed, 404 US 71 (1971).  And fully equal participation in jury service was not mandated until Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975).  So kudos to the writers for working in that accurate (if depressing) “sign of the times.”

IV. Conclusion

X-Men: First Class isn’t exactly a courtroom drama, but the legal issues that are there were treated pretty well.  We’re looking forward to the all-but-inevitable sequel.  In the mean time, check it out.  It’s a pretty good flick.

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Posted in civil rights, international law, labor law, movies

The Lincoln Lawyer

Posted on May 27, 2011 by | 28 comments

A couple of months ago we were asked about the movie The Lincoln Lawyer.  It’s not a comic book film, but it’s still close enough to pop culture that we thought people might be interested in a short post about it.  Spoilers follow, starting with the question itself.

“Benjamin Button” asks “is it feasible that any of [Mickey Haller’s] ‘legal obligations’ could prevent him from telling the courts that his client did in fact murder someone?”

In the film, Mickey Haller is the titular criminal defense lawyer.  He discovers that one of his clients (Louis Roulet) is a serial killer, but attorney-client privilege apparently prevents him from disclosing information that could free a former client (Jesus Martinez) wrongly convicted of one of Roulet’s crimes.  So the question really goes to the crux of the plot: is Haller actually in an ethical bind, and is his solution actually within ethical boundaries?

I. The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Duty of Confidentiality

The film is correct in stating that the privilege is held by the client, not the attorney, and that an attorney has an obligation to keep a client’s confidences.  In California, where the film takes place, the Business and Professions Code § 6068(e)(1) states that attorneys must “maintain inviolate the confidence, and at every peril to himself or herself to preserve the secrets, of his or her client.”  Confidentiality is a key part of being an attorney, and attorneys take that obligation very seriously, even in the face of death threats and criminal charges.  Without Roulet’s permission Haller could not testify against Roulet in court, nor could he disclose what he knew to the police or anyone else.

There are narrow exceptions to the duty of confidentiality, but they do not apply here.  In California, an attorney “may, but is not required to, reveal confidential information relating to the representation of a client to the extent that the member reasonably believes the disclosure is necessary to prevent a criminal act that the member reasonably believes is likely to result in death of, or substantial bodily harm to, an individual.”  California Rules of Professional Conduct 3-100.  Although Roulet showed signs of being a serial killer he was careful not to overtly threaten anyone or indicate a planned future crime.  Haller’s hands remain tied.

II. Haller’s ‘Solution’

Unfortunately, Haller’s solution is not free of ethical problems, to say the least.  The biggest issue is that Haller inappropriately discloses confidential information to at least two people: Gloria and Margaret.

Gloria is the imprisoned client that he uses to relay information to a known jailhouse snitch; she alleges to the snitch that if he testifies against Roulet that the prosecutor will cut him a deal.  There are several problems here.  First, there’s the breach of confidence inherent in disclosing anything that Roulet told Haller.  Second, he asked Gloria to solicit the snitch to commit perjury.  This is a violation of Rule 1-120 and quite likely a crime as well.

Margaret is Haller’s ex-wife and a prosecuting attorney.  Haller tells Margaret that his investigator, Frank, found information tending to exonerate Jesus Martinez and implicating Roulet in a prior murder.  But Frank only found that information as part of his investigation into Roulet’s alibi, and therefore the information is privileged.  Note that in many jurisdictions Margaret would be under an affirmative duty to report Haller’s ethical breach (ABA Model Rule 8.3), but California does not have a mandatory reporting rule for attorneys.  Nonetheless, she could theoretically report him, although the movie suggests that would be out of character for her.

III. Haller’s Other Ethical Breaches and Crimes

Haller commits several other ethical breaches, but we’ll limit our discussion to three of the most egregious ones.  First, he lies to a judge about the need to continue a trial by inventing a fictitious witness (“Mr. Green”) in order to extract payment from a client.  This violates Rule 5-200: an attorney “Shall not seek to mislead the judge … by an artifice or false statement of fact.”  It also violates § 6068: an attorney may not “encourage … the continuance of an action or proceeding from any corrupt motive of passion or interest.”  It’s also almost certainly a crime.

Second, Haller commits an ethical violation when he promises to recommend Val Valenzuela’s bail bond services in exchange for being recommended as an attorney to Roulet.  Rule 1-320(B) states “A member shall not compensate, give, or promise anything of value to any person … for the purpose of recommending … employment of the member … by a client, or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in employment of the member … firm by a client.”  Although it ultimately comes out that Roulet had specifically requested Haller and that Valenzuela was simply trying to secure a recommendation for his bail bond service, Haller did not know that at the time that he made the deal with Valenzuela

Third, it is strongly implied that Haller contacted the biker gang and asked them to beat up Roulet.  This is obviously a crime.

IV. The Good Stuff

We don’t want to sound too down on the movie.  It’s an enjoyable court room drama with a nice twist, and it gets many of the legal details right, even if the protagonist is ultimately a scoundrel and a hypocrite.  (Haller defends his career as a criminal defense lawyer on the basis of the sanctity of the justice system and criticizes a prosecuting attorney for going too far, yet Haller himself repeatedly acts outside the justice system.)

So, here’s some of the good stuff.  Criminal defendants often do not get nice rooms alone with their attorneys; the movie’s portrayal of conversations between Haller and his clients are pretty accurate.  Court is largely fairly boring, heated objections are rare, the jury is excused when discussing issues like whether a new witness can be put on the stand, and objections are made with reasons instead of simply by shouting ‘objection!’  Attorneys are usually collegial toward one another outside the courtroom.

V. Conclusion

The Lincoln Lawyer is a pretty good film as long as you don’t come away with the mistaken impression that Haller is just a slick attorney who knows how to work the system.  Instead, he’s a flawed, conflicted attorney who often uses morally and legally questionable means to accomplish noble ends.

28 Comments

Posted in criminal law, legal ethics, movies

Kick-Ass

Posted on May 25, 2011 by | 14 comments

So last year a little movie called Kick-Ass was released to theaters. It was moderately successful, to the point that a sequel has been rumored, though that’s apparently in limbo for the moment. At any rate, the basic plot is that an unpopular high school kid, under the influence of comic books and a healthy dose of insecurity, decides to step up and be a superhero. He even gets a costume and everything. The results are… well… not exactly heroic per se, but pretty funny. This review is organized less around specific legal issues than the characters and the legal issues they raise. Spoilers follow as always.

I. “Kick-Ass”

First off, “Kick-Ass” himself. Better known—or rather “officially”, since no one seems to know him at all—as Dave Lizewski, resident of what seems to be either Brooklyn or Queens, is a loser. Plain and simple. He spends a disproportionate amount of time either hanging out in a comic book store or local diner with his two outrageously nerdy best friends or being rendered speechless by Katie, the girl he’s got a massive crush on. A couple of local thugs have set up shop in a parking lot/alley that Dave and his friends regularly cross on their way to and from school, and the thugs have relieved them of their lunch money and consumer electronics with sufficient regularity for it to have become something of a ritual. Then, one day, he asks himself why no one has tried to be a superhero in real life. He decides to go for it, and orders himself a wetsuit from an online vendor. After a couple of modifications and some… batons? practice swords? they’re never really identified… he’s got himself a costume and a self-imposed mandate. Who does he run into first? The aforementioned thugs. Emboldened (delusional?) by his newly-discovered superhero-ness, he decides to make a stand.

The scene of a gangly, out-of-shape teenager going after two muscle-bound thugs goes about as well as could be expected. Dave—excuse me, “Kick-Ass”—surprises the thugs for a minute when he resists, and manages to land one or two decent shots with his sticks. But unlike the stories in comic books, these thugs are not easily intimidated, nor do they mess around. Kick-Ass gets knifed in the gut pretty much right away, and as he wanders off, bleeding profusely, Kick-Ass gets hit by a car, shattering just about every bone in his body. The resulting full-body x-rays reveal pins and plates throughout his entire skeleton, yielding a picture which admittedly does look like a film of Wolverine, if Wolverine’s adamantium frame were patched together piecemeal with pins and screws rather than seamlessly welded to his skeleton by design. After a few weeks in the hospital Dave returns home, little worse for the wear, except that the damage to his spine has deadened his ability to feel pain. In short, Kick-Ass’s one superpower is the ability to take an ass-kicking slightly better than your average guy, not out of sheer physical toughness, but because he’s damaged goods.

After that auspicious start, things get a bit more interesting, legally speaking. Kick-Ass gets his break-out moment when some civilians upload a video to YouTube of him fighting off a group of hooligans to save a random stranger. The superpower does come in handy, as Kick-Ass really does take a beating, but he manages to get off a few defiant quotes about being willing to die rather than watching a group of guys beat up a defenseless man while the crowd watches. And you know what? Dave, as Kick-Ass, would be entirely within his rights to do what he did there. The right to defend others is basically co-extensive with the right to self-defense in most jurisdictions, i.e. one may use reasonable force to fend off or prevent what one reasonably perceives to be an assault on another. The weapons Kick-Ass was using aren’t particularly dangerous—no guns nor knives—and there were a bunch of attackers, so even if they had been unarmed, some additional “oomph” would be justified. And he doesn’t go after them, or even really try to hurt any of them, he simply strikes out whenever one of them attacks the guy he’s defending. This is, basically, an okay thing to do.

But that’s about where things stop. Dressing up in a costume isn’t really a violation of any law, but deliberately going out on patrol to fight crime with force is likely going to be a problem unless one is a law enforcement officer.  We’ve mentioned it in comments, but some idiot was arrested and charged in Michigan last month for hanging off the side of a building in a Batman costume with a variety of concealed weapons. The cops were, to put it mildly, not amused. The stock-in-trade of the costumed hero involves trespassing, violations of weapons laws (for concealed weapons if nothing else), and disturbing the peace, if not also assault or worse. Sure, there’s plenty of crime in our streets, but at this point, it isn’t the kind of crime that we believe could not be solved by police officers if there were enough of them.

II. Hit-Girl and Big Daddy

Of course, Kick-Ass realizes pretty quickly that he isn’t the only game in town. “Big Daddy,” a former police officer with a grudge, and his precocious daughter “Hit Girl,” are as close to the real deal as one can get without having actual superpowers: highly trained and ridiculously well-equipped. Hit Girl herself is a combination of utterly hilarious and deeply disturbing, given that she appears to be about twelve, yet is the single most violent and foul-mouthed character in the movie. There are a few obvious legal problems here. Training your daughter to take bullets by shooting her constitutes “endangering the welfare of a child” (N.Y. Penal Law 260.10) if anything does, and the number of laws they violate by possessing the kinds of weapons they do aren’t even really worth enumerating. It’s so blatantly illegal that it’s beyond illegal into something else entirely. Then again, the whole movie is pretty tongue-in-cheek, and it’s arguable that part of the whole project is to point out just how absurd the whole superhero gig really is.

III. Conclusion

If you’re looking for a realistic movie, this probably isn’t it, but in taking this approach, the filmmakers do seem to capture just how unlikely the idea of real superheroes actually is. It’s worth watching for that alone, and it also manages to be a pretty hilarious movie in its own right. A sequel probably isn’t warranted at this point, but it’s definitely worth watching.

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Posted in criminal law, movies

Thor, Part Two

Posted on May 9, 2011 by | 8 comments

We’ve written one post about the Thor movie already, but there are a couple of other legal issues to discuss.  As before, spoilers follow after the break.

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8 Comments

Posted in movies, torts

Thor

Posted on May 6, 2011 by | 26 comments

So Thor is out. And it’s pretty good. I mean, it’s no Dark Knight, or even Iron Man, but neither is it The Fantastic Four (which, let’s face it, just sucked).

But you aren’t here for a review of the movie as a movie. You’re here for a review of the movie as it pertains to the legal system! At first glance, one might wonder exactly how a movie about an Asgardian major deity might have anything whatsoever to do with the American legal system. You’d be surprised! Spoilers, as always, follow after the break.

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26 Comments

Posted in constitutional law, contracts, insurance, mailbag, movies