COURTHOUSE OF HORROR

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Matt: Maybe people were just complete rubes in 1927. That's possible, because nobody expects a room with a talking skeleton in it.

0:00:17 Jenessa: Everybody who doesn't live in America and hates peanut butter for some reason, you're all wrong. All of you go to hell. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the best candy on earth. I'll die on this hill.

0:00:33 Matt: Happy Halloween, and welcome to Ominous Arguments. I'm your host, Pat Cameron, here with the one and only Dr. Jenessa Screammoor. That's right. I gave us spooky names. I didn't even run it by you.

0:00:45 Jenessa: Oh, that's so cheesy.

0:00:47 Matt: Recent survivor of the patent bar. It's the one day a year where you get to have cheesy names. Come on. Lean in.

0:00:52 Jenessa: All right. All right, I

0:00:53 Matt: This is a big holiday in our house. I don't know about you, but this is a Big Deal. This is our Christmas. Christmas.

0:00:57 Jenessa: Do love Halloween. Yeah, I'm in.

0:01:00 Matt: Well, it's a good thing because we've got all Halloween stories today. It's an oops, all footnotes kind of hour. But you know what? We deserve this. We've been talking so much about the downfall of democracy and authoritarianism and everything else. We can take a day to talk about some silly legal stories.

0:01:14 Jenessa: I'm into the scariest thing of all

0:01:17 Matt: Yeah. We will close on a serious note to talk about how you can stop this horror show in progress. But first, we're going to go through a little tour of what I'm calling the courthouse of horror. I got all kinds of fun stuff lined up. I know that you've We've got an extra fun one, a patron suggestion that I'm excited to hear about, but we've got everything to talk about from a segment I'm calling, So I Trademarked an Axe Murderer to we've got the tortious killer clowns. We've gotten testimonies from ghosts that's not from Salem. Last year, of course, we did the Salem witch trials and the spectral evidence that was introduced there. And we're going to have to follow up on a footnote from last Halloween, a very important civil case that has just been settled just in time for Halloween about how spooky your candy can get. We're all over the place. We got every corner of the law represented in today's Halloween Spectacular, and we'll be right back to get going.

0:02:08 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:02:08 Matt: Last year, we talked about the Salem Witch Trials, which is the most famous trial probably in Massachusetts history, a series of trials. And I want to talk for a few minutes about the second most famous trail, perhaps, in Massachusetts history. Depending on who you're asking. I'm calling this segment, So I Trademarked an Axe Murderer, because it is about a very bad attempt to get into a copyright dispute about who owns the name and some related marks Marks to Lizzie Borden, talking about Lizzie Borden. And you might remember the story of Lizzie Borden who is memorialized forevermore in rhyme. Just to remind everybody, Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. Classic children's rhyme for a certain kind of child. This is a story out of Fall River, Massachusetts, a place that's dear to my heart. Former mill town, very industrial kind of place. This was 1892. It's only a few years after Jack the Ripper, so people are very attuned to horrible, vicious murder. You You probably know the basic story, but it actually wasn't Lizzie Borden's mother to begin with. It was her stepmother, which is actually part of the motive, that she did not like her step mother, that her, she was concerned about the way that her father was distributing property. Her father, Andrew, had a lot of money. I think that Lizzie Borden was very much the OJ Simpson of her time. She definitely did it, I think. Not a lot to question that she probably did it.

0:03:20 Jenessa: I haven't heard like a a hot take that somebody else snuck in there and did it oh

0:03:27 Matt: Yeah, they did briefly try to pin it on a Portuguese guy, but didn't get very far. It actually could be a kind of a fun gavel gavel series at some point, because there's quite a lot of documentation from the Lizzie Jordan trial. It's a very interesting trial. A lot of interesting stuff happened. And it was extremely sensational at the time because these were wealthy people in Fall River. They actually lived in the working class part of town. They'd done very well for themselves. And this is a horrible, dramatic murder. And of course, we're putting this in our fun Halloween episode, but we are talking about one of the original axe murders.

0:03:31 Jenessa: How

0:03:54 Matt: She was 32 at the Time of the Murders.

0:03:53 Jenessa: How old was she oh

0:03:56 Matt: Yeah, she wasn't a child.

0:03:56 Jenessa: Okay somehow in my head it's like a kid like okay oh

0:04:00 Matt: So of course you've got a woman on trial for a horrible sensational murder. Her father's head was basically unrecognizable. Her stepmother was also killed pretty viciously and famously, of course, with a hatchet. And they found the hatchet, it was clearly the murder weapon. There was no other real suspect and she had all kinds of motive. There were also testimonies excluded from the trial that she had purchased poison a couple of days before. Everybody in the house had been pretty sick. There is blame on some bad mutton, but it sounds like she might've taken a run at trying to poison everybody. One of my favorite details about the Lizzie Borden trial was that she was represented by the former governor, George Dexter Robinson, a very popular man in Massachusetts. He actually had appointed one of the judges overseeing the case. And his firm still exists, Robinson Donovan PC. It still is in Springfield, Massachusetts. And I think this is one ofthe coolest things that I know about a Massachusetts law firm. They still have the Lizzie Borden file and they will not release it.

0:04:54 Matt: And I think that's super cool because attorney client privilege survives past death and they're respecting their client. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot that historians would probably like to know in there, but they're maintaining that secrecy as they should. The lawyers did a great job in this case, though. I mean, she had a fantastic legal team. She could afford it. There was some other pretty suspicious stuff about a dress that she'd burned that day that she claimed was covered in paint, very coincidentally. Her story didn't make a lot of sense at the inquest. There's some suggestion that maybe she was under the influence of morphine that they'd given her to sedate her, but it still didn't really add up. But this was a trial that people were just lining up to watch and to get into. Very big deal at the time, and she was fully acquitted by the jury. Big deal. Big, big story. And one of the trials of the century at the time, and now mostly remembered for the silly rhyme. People are still obsessed with this case that there's a Facebook group that has 4,000 people that still talk about Lizzie Borden. I know. I don't know why.

0:05:43 Jenessa: There left to say yeah

0:05:45 Matt: It's not that much of a mystery, I don't think, but I guess I haven't spent that much time on it. Again, I'd love to dig into it more because there was a lot of documentation of it, but there've been four movies and all kinds of cultural stuff. But the house, this is where we get into the relevant legal part. The Borden house was turned into a bed and breakfast. I've driven by a few times, and it was purchased by a company called Ghost Adventures, who are the plaintiffs in this case.

0:06:07 Matt: It was dubbed the most haunted house in America, which I think is a little silly, but if you want to stay there, everybody, you can, somewhere between $125 and $311 a night, you could stay there. No breakfast included in this bed and breakfast, apparently, but the reviews are very good. Yeah, I know. It's not a bed breakfast. I know, right? Well, they have breakfast. You just have to pay for it, apparently. They claim all kinds of hauntings and the reviews are awesome. It's not really my thing. I don't really understand the fascination with true crime and podcasts and all that stuff. But some people are still really into this and it's easier to be into true crime that happened many generations ago, I guess. So what happens is that Joseph Pereira opens Miss Lizzie's coffee shop just two doors down from the Borden house. You can see where this is going. And on the sign, and I have have the signs here. I'm looking at them. The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast has a hatchet on it, very tastefully. And Miss Lizzie's Coffee has a much less tasteful hatchet that has blood all over it. As the court notes, big difference in these hatchets. So you can't really say they're the same mark. But of course, the first thing you think of when you think OF Lizzie Borden is an axe, right? So this is not really sensational. This is not anything new.

0:06:19 Jenessa: What the then it's just a bed alright

0:07:20 Matt: I wanted to talk about this, especially this is a First Circuit decision. This was actually from last last November. And I want to thank Casey for pointing this one out. And she wanted to make sure we talked about it. It's a great case. And this was one of the last cases written by our very own Bruce Celia, who was a fantastic jurist who spent many, many, years on the bench as a district court judge. Actually, he was the first Jewish person appointed as a federal judge in Rhode Island. He's that old. I think he was 90 when he passed. He passed in February. I actually only found out that he passed from doing this research today. And I just wanted to pay some tribute to him because I've always enjoyed reading his work. He became kind of famous because he uses a lot of big, fancy $15 words in his decisions. And he really enjoyed finding words that nobody knew and putting them in there. And it's been suggested that's a very stupid Harvard thing to do. And I agree, but it's fun to learn new words. People should be able to read court decisions and know what they mean. And you can. His decisions are very clear. I'll read you some of what he wrote here. But I always thought he was very funny and very respectable. He was a Reagan appointee who defended abortion clinics. And he actually wrote the decision from a few where Boston City Hall was declined to fly a certain Christian flag when they had a program to have different

0:08:23 Matt: Flags flown. And that was a unanimous decision that he wrote in saying that Boston could decline whatever flags they wanted and the Supreme Court overturned it. Plenty to like about Bruce Celia, but this case written just three months before he passed really shows, you know, he went out on top of his game. I'll just read you a little bit here, but this is a trademark dispute. So that's part of the problem here is that you can't really own own the trademark to the concept of Lizzie Borden. He's saying no more than you can own Sam Adams, right? Like as a trademark, he's a historical figure. And I know that you have a background now, and of course, are a recent survivor of the patent bar. And assume that means you also know something about trademarks, probably more than I do. Probably should have had you do this one. Maybe you can set me straight on some of those. As I understand it, let me just read the setup here. The Lizzie Gordon house is located in Fall River, Massachusetts. It bears a storied history that originates with the still unsolved murders in 1892 of Lizgie Borden's father and stepmother. Prosecutors allege that Borden hacked her parents to death with a hatchet in their family home, but these allegations were never proven. In the ensuing trial of the century, a jury acquitted Lizzie of all charges. This macabre tale has not only permeated the national consciousness, but has also turned Borden's ancestral home into a destination for those with a taste for the supernatural. It is against this grisly backdrop that the case at hand arises. And now we have a pretty straightforward trademark dispute. He goes through and talks about at the standard, as I'm sure you know, for trademark infringement starts with confusion, deception, or mistake, right? That you might have two different trademarks that are too similar. So you also have to show that you have a mark that merits protection. And they're alleging here the hatchet logo and the name Lizzie Borden are their mark, right. But he points out, obviously, you can't really have a trademark that's a historical figure's name. And the hatchets are completely different. You can't mistake these two hatchets. They're trying to say in this that But there's also unfair competition, which is pretty silly because one place serves coffee and snacks and the other place gives tours of a place where a vicious murder happened.

0:10:11 Jenessa: Right the other place is a bed and breakfast with no coffee because they're not doing breakfast so

0:10:16 Matt: That's right. Yeah, right. Yeah. They claim in the suit that at least one person complained they could not take their coffee on the tour because they assumed that these were related businesses. But I don't know that you should expect to take your coffee on a tour of a historic home anyway. I mean, that's not really reasonable. But maybe it's just me.

0:10:31 Jenessa: True but it is good evidence of like, that's the kind of evidence you would want to admit if you were trying to say, look, people are confused about these businesses.

0:10:43 Matt: Right. And apparently that they had at least once. One city councilor called to congratulate them on the opening of their new business because they assumed it was related, but you can see how that would happen. But there's a fun footnote here from Celia talking about the trademark issue. Ghost Adventures attempts to minimize this distinction by suggesting that consumers may associate, quote, Lizzie Borden, end quote, with its services rather than with Lizzie Gordon herself. But the district court rejected this suggestion, finding that Ghost Adventures had not shown that its mark has displaced the story of Lizzie Jordan in the minds of consumers. Ghost Adventurers does not offer even the specter of a reason to disturb this finding. There's a lot of that sort of thing in here.

0:11:18 Jenessa: Oh, I get it now. Took me a second.

0:11:18 Matt: Yeah. Specter of a reason. Again, 90 years old, three months before he passed. This is pretty impressive. He goes through and he talks about the differences between the hatchets and about how there's really no chance of confusion between these two businesses. They're clearly doing very different things and they're located in a historic site where people are coming to learn about Lizzie Borden.

0:11:37 Jenessa: Yeah, you'd have to really show that the, it's not just that people are, yeah, an occasional person confused you, but you're not actually harming each other's business because you don't do the same business and really if if you had the mark officially registered and everything that'd be you know a different story you could stop other people from using it in their business but the problem is exactly as you're saying you can't trademark somebody else's

0:12:07 Matt: Right, a person, just a historic figure.

0:12:07 Jenessa: Name that's not that's why there's 400 tony's pizzas because you don't get to be the tony who made the pizza like it's you

0:12:16 Matt: Yeah, no, that seems pretty pretty straightforward. Well,

0:12:29 Jenessa: Do have a likeness and trademark right to if you're famous enough you have a right to your own name that other people can't use it and I think that extends into your death your estate will still be able to do that for a certain period of time I think

0:12:39 Matt: She died 98 years ago, so I think we're probably safe. Yeah. Right.

0:12:42 Jenessa: Yeah yeah for her it's it's been a while but um for most of us you know if you are like john doe you're not going to be able able to be like how dare you name your restaurant John Doe's they're gonna be like there's more than one of you you might be surprised to

0:12:52 Matt: Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. I mean, I guess I was thinking if you go to Niagara Falls and there's the Niagara Falls Baptist Church next to the Niagara Fall Strip Club, those are not the same business. Nobody's going to think that you're trying to compete, right? I just feel like the coffee shop and the ghost house can live together. I think that's okay.

0:13:06 Jenessa: Learn yeah

0:13:16 Matt: There's also a very funny thing here where the just I guess to get ahead of this allegation they put up a sign they actually taped up a line in the storefront that says Miss Lizzie's Coffee is underlined in caps not associated nor affiliated in any way with the Lizzie Borden museum or bed and breakfast next door nor any other breakfast uh they also put on their website our ghosts are totally independent and not to be confused with any other ghosts which is kind of funny, I don't think you can trademark ghosts but it's going a little too far this

0:13:15 Jenessa: Yeah all right these ghosts work for us

0:13:57 Matt: Was dismissed and celia upheld the dismissal obviously because uh they're just you know but you know nice try I guess uh so I'll just close on this ghost adventures challenge to the district court's assessment of the strength of its marks is haunted by legal confusion this is this is classic celia all the way through great decisions going to it yeah I learned a lot about trademark law just from reading this I it's fun to fun to look at but yeah there you go so I trademarked an axe murderer next up we have a follow -up from our fry story a few weeks ago this is a very exciting follow - up that you're going to be telling us about and this This is brought to us by a patron.

0:13:59 Jenessa: Oh my god he had fun yeah uh patron Patrick Walker reminded me of god my favorite not really lie detector ever. There's an article from Atlas Obscura that covers it. If you ever want to just learn about weird stuff, it is a great place to go. Listener, you must see the diagrams in this patent. We'll link to it, but you can also just look it up because patents are forever and they're out there in the U .S. record. It's patent number 1749090 entitled Apparatus for Obtaining Criminal confessions and photographically recording them which sounds extremely straightforward of

0:14:35 Matt: Oh, it's great. Love it. It sounds a lot like what William Moulton was doing with his blood pressure thing, right? Until you see the picture. Yeah.

0:15:08 Jenessa: Course this is very much not that this is a scary spooky skeleton that is going to somehow trick you into giving a confession

0:15:21 Matt: It's like 15 feet tall, right. It's, like, a very large skeleton, which I appreciate.

0:15:24 Jenessa: Yeah the present invention relates to a new and useful full gotta say that required to be patentable apparatus for obtaining confessions from culprits or those suspected of the commission of crimes and photographically recording those confessions in the form of sound waves in conjunction with their pictures I just okay the description of this thing is bananas so you've got this this giant skeleton with glowing eyes uh They go out of their way to say you could put whatever color light bulbs in there you want.

0:16:00 Matt: Oh, okay. Presumably red. It's got to be red.

0:16:03 Jenessa: And it's got to be red, right? You remove the back of the skull, which to me said, I don't know why you said remove, except that are you using a real skeleton? I don'T know. You put a camera in there watching out of, I don't know, the nose. And there's a speaker coming out the mouth so somebody can question you through it.

0:16:23 Matt: What year is this, Patton?

0:16:28 Jenessa: This patent is from 1927.

0:16:30 Matt: So, not a very advanced camera. Okay. I'm getting the picture,

0:16:32 Jenessa: No, presumably not. But it was going to take photos and audio recording while somebody in the other room was questioning you. And somehow you were supposed to be deceived by this. You would be put into a booth and all of a sudden the lights kick on. And this is how they describe that. The skeleton is arranged in front of the panel with its feet resting upon the glass in the light chamber, the lights mounted in this chamber being adapted to flood the entire skeleton from the feet up, while a second source of light mounted upon the panel over the skull of the skeleton is adapted for additional flooding from the opposite direction, the purpose being to produce the appearance of an apparition having a translucent outer or astral body and a diaphanous veiling basically they're going to put you in this spooky scary dark room and all of a sudden a giant ghostly skeleton appears and you hear did you kill someone and I don't know and I guess yeah like like I guess you know I feel like this would would either so not work that it would be comedic or the sheer terror that you would

0:17:37 Matt: Where were you? Wow. The night of October 24th. Wow. So good. Well,

0:17:56 Jenessa: Invoke in somebody I don't quite know how this was meant to actually they what you're confessing to a demon, I don't

0:18:06 Matt: My thought with this, when I saw this was maybe the first time, but for a career criminal, you're like, oh, the skeleton again. Okay. Sure.

0:18:13 Jenessa: Understand no this is why you got to change out the lights so you got different colors it's a different skeleton, right? I've seen that one

0:18:17 Matt: The yellow eyed skeleton, not the red eyed skeleton. Yeah. And again, maybe people were just complete rubes in 1927. That's possible. Possible uh they weren't eating very well but like I don't know how this is supposed and again this is a patent for something that was never built as I understand never tried at least I did find a video I will say there is a video which we should link to in which uh it's pretty funny this guy builds the whole thing like he actually for the first time ever in history built it and then surprised his friends with it who were very surprised because nobody expects a room with a talking skeleton in it

0:18:26 Jenessa: Before I Wouldn't I? Certainly not in the police department that's the part that gets me is how do you get the guy in the room without him suspecting

0:18:59 Matt: I guess you just say you're going to be interviewed in this room so just walk on in and we'll talk to you. Yeah, right.

0:19:06 Jenessa: And then and then the fog machine turns on I don't know it's very strange the

0:19:11 Matt: Who is the mad genius behind this patent?

0:19:15 Jenessa: Inventor listed is a Helene Adelaide Shelby of Oakland, California our diagrams just depict two men so I don't know I guess Miss Helene did not anticipate herself operating this I don't really know much about her except that she was some kind of mad genius I don't know I don't know why you would patent something you're not intending to capitalize on it's bizarre sure

0:19:44 Matt: I have a number of questions for someone who just took the patent bar in relation to this giant talking skeleton. And of course, reminder that when we talked about Fry, we were talking about William Moulton's lie detector, which was based on blood pressure, which is at least somewhat related to a scientific response that people have under stress. And at the beginning of the patent, She claims that this is both new and useful. I see how it's new.

0:20:07 Matt: I'm going to say it's not really useful. But as a scientist, what is your opinion of this patent?

0:20:11 Jenessa: It depends on how you define useful and useful in patent world is a lot more loosely defined you're not supposed to inquire as to whether you think it's a great idea so it certainly can't be like the classic you you fail to meet the utility usefulness requirement would be like a perpetual motion machine that can't exist that's not real that's not how physics works so you can't patent something that couldn't possibly have a use. They used to, in the past, sometimes deny a patent because they were like, oh, immoral, like a gambling machine. And that was struck down as like, you're not entitled to make moral judgments about the utility of the patent. And so it's generally held that unless literally the only purpose is to do something straight up permanently illegal, no, that's not the point.

0:20:19 Matt: Apparently. Right. Yeah.

0:21:11 Jenessa: From the manual, a rejection under 35 U .S .C. 101, which is the usefulness requirement, for lack of utility, should not be based on grounds that the invention is frivolous, fraudulent, or against public policy. So uh would this allow you to get a confession that's admissible under miranda absolutely not uh but that's no good reason to say it's not up to the patent examiner who may not even be a lawyer to determine that aspect of it could it possibly record a person saying something yes is it useful useful in that sense uh I suppose so it's uh it's a very broad definition and its utility um is also supposed to be thought of from the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art now what art specifically this is I don't quite know who the relevant expert is that one would consult um the art of halloween magic I don'T know but um yeah yeah

0:22:19 Matt: Interrogation, I guess, is the closest thing. But I have to push back, though. I do think this would survive Miranda. Miranda, because as long as you're told, you have the right to remain silent in the presence of the giant talking skeleton. You could put somebody in their room, and if they're stupid enough to talk to the giant talking skull, that is on them. So they've been Mirandas. If there's some police department out there that wants to give this a go, I can't imagine this would get anything but a big laugh, but

0:22:29 Jenessa: Damn it holy shit I want to watch somebody argue that in court god oh no no because if you believe you are talking to a real spirit what could be more coercive that's terrifying that's now if you don't believe it's a real Spirit and you decide to go along with the gag I guess I think you're right it has to be novel and surely nothing like this has ever existed on earth and it has to be non -obvious and I suppose it is it is certainly a combination of all things that already existed so that would have been the most obvious challenge to me is would it not be obvious to combine these things in this way but I perhaps not for this purpose that that's a perfectly good argument you're never supposed to judge obviousness in hindsight that well and now looking at a thing. It's obvious to me to put it together.

0:22:54 Matt: Well, that's true. That's true, yeah, that sonya. Yeah, not too sensible thinking Thinking people, no. I don't think it would be, but no offense, Ms. Lame, but...

0:23:44 Jenessa: That's not the question. The question is before you did it, would it have been obvious? And perhaps not.

0:23:51 Matt: So there are just a lot of really pointless patents, aren't there?

0:23:55 Jenessa: Oh, yes.

0:23:56 Matt: Must be loads of them. That's incredible.

0:23:57 Jenessa: Oh yes. There's a patent for, oh my God, I should send it to you. There is a patent for trying to deliver a baby by centrifugal force.

0:24:05 Matt: Oh, no! Spinning it out?

0:24:06 Jenessa: Just whipping you around to see if you can just fling that thing out of you. It uh there's no way that works um but some you know in addition to the fact that the standards can be relatively low in certain ways there's also the fact that just I mean humans are involved in this and um not you don't have to end up in front of a judge if nobody if the patent examiner thinks you met the requirements and nobody objects there you

0:24:37 Matt: How much does it cost to register a patent?

0:24:41 Jenessa: Go you're all set so there's like small entity and micro entity, like you can apply for all kinds of reductions in fees and things like that. For a large corporation, it can cost hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to get all the way through the patent prosecution process. Right. Some lady in Oakland in 1927, probably not that much.

0:24:58 Matt: But just some lady in Oakland in 1927, probably not very much. All right.

0:25:05 Jenessa: If you qualify for small entity or micro entity status and you only claim like a very small, narrow set of claims. Just I'm claiming an apparatus that is made of this and this and this and the end. Yeah, it's probably not that expensive. It's really hiring the lawyer that gets extremely expensive if you have to defend this thing against being obvious, being and not novel that kind of thing apparently not presumably

0:25:32 Matt: But nobody was challenging the giant talking skeleton, so... It just sailed through.

0:25:39 Matt: I'd like to know a lot more about this lady and about what else she might have invented, because I can imagine her just like buttonholing people at parties and being like, you know, we have to get this built. I have had this vision. This is my dream. But, you Know, it just never happened.

0:25:41 Jenessa: Not oh gosh yeah yeah I you know I I'd like to read more about her at least as far as this article from atlas obscura who was the woman behind this a search for her name in the newspaper reveals only a few hints about her life She was in real estate and she occasionally bet on horses and she died in 1947, which is 20 years after the grant of this patent. No other patents on file. It doesn't look like anyone ever built it.

0:26:23 Jenessa: There's not much to learn about her unless I'm sure somebody could do a nice deep dive on her. I don't know, you know, back then, I mean, the kind of records we kept, who knows?

0:26:23 Matt: You know, the true genius move would be that you leave in your will that you will be turned into the giant talking skeleton. That is the fate of your body.

0:26:44 Jenessa: It's just like a really extremely specific dimensions of the skeleton in the bed yikes

0:27:06 Matt: Yeah uh well you know like jeremy bentham the utilitarian you know I've seen his body because he left in his will that it would be preserved uh in london at the college and it's just in a glass case he's just sitting there in his chair looking very friendly very very well preserved so there you go that was a lot of fun we had unexpectedly spooky trademark and patent cases so let's come back and talk about good old murder when we talked about Salem last year we talked a lot about spectral evidence which is the idea that you could say that someone's specter or spirit came to you and tried to torment you or tell you something. And of course, this is nonsense, but this is something that unfortunately in Massachusetts was allowed as actual evidence. It was held over from the common law, abolished after that, fortunately, never been used again. But I want to talk about a case in which spectral evidence was actually allowed in 1896 in West Virginia, pretty

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0:27:40 Jenessa: When did they like ban that

0:27:42 Matt: Much right after the Salem Witch Trials. They were in Massachusetts, at least. Apparently in West Virginia, I don't know how this got into trial. I'd like to learn more about this trial. But basically, they came in and cleaned up the Salem witch trials. When there were people still in prison who were possibly facing execution, the adults took over. The Supreme Judicial Court was created to deal with the entire mess. We talked a bit about the legal nightmare of the Salem Witch Trials, which, again, is an absolute horror story of justice gone horribly wrong. But in 1896, we have the murder of Zona Shue. And actually, I can't believe these are real people's names, but apparently this blacksmith and his wife were named Trout and Zona. I don't know what kind of sicko names his child Trout, but that was his first name. Trout and Zona Shue. So they're in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, and Mrs. Shue is found dead at the bottom of the stairs by a neighbor. By the time the doctor had showed up to look at the body, the Trout had already moved her, changed her clothes, put her in a different dress. It was really weird, the whole thing. But the records listed the cause of her death as childbirth. And her mother always suspected that Trout was actually responsible because this is his third wife, and his last wife had died under mysterious circumstances as well. Well, there's some rumors about him not being a great husband. And then Zona appeared to Mary Jane, the ghost of Zona, appeared to her mother to reveal the truth. And this is a very strange story. According to Mary Jane, she began to have visions. And Zona told her that he was mad that he had no meat cooked. And they got into some kind of a fight. And she told me that her neck was squeezed off at the first joint. And when they examined her body, it was in fact a broken neck that she died of and not of childbirth. And apparently it matched the description. At trial, Mary Jane was allowed to testify about this vision that she'd had of the victim coming to tell her about how she died. And I don't know why this was allowed in, I guess

0:28:03 Jenessa: Yeah right this is all ringing bells yeah yeah I love them already yeah

0:29:34 Matt: 1896, very different times. So he was convicted, but the jury believed, I guessed that, but also that there were already suspicions about this guy. And he testified on his own behalf and did a very bad job, did not help himself out at all.

0:29:35 Jenessa: I mean it seems like if you allegedly died in childbirth and then we found out you broke your neck it kind of seems like a little bit case closed right somebody killed you that's not usually a side effect of childbirth oh

0:29:56 Matt: Yeah, that's a murder. Yeah. And you're originally found at the bottom of the stairs. I mean, it's just, you know, so yeah, by someone else. Yeah. So he died of tuberculosis in prison, and that's pretty much the case closed on that one. But I thought that was an interesting sort of follow -up to last year's spectral evidence story. Moving on, I wanted to talk about a tortious clown. So we have, you remember, of course, from law school, from torts, everybody remembers the flopper, right? The assumption of risk case, the classic. Did you read about the floppar?

0:30:07 Jenessa: Oh that'll do it yeah

0:30:32 Matt: It's an amusement park ride. Ride and so this is the classic assumption of risk right the idea towards that you can see that something is dangerous and you do it anyway right and the flopper was like a very badly built amusement park ride that just like threw people around basically and it was the 20s and people just didn't have any sense of liability and the finding was essentially that like you can watch people on the flop or you know what you're getting into so like if it you know you throw your back out that's on you so this has to do with a haunted house and this is a very entertaining case nobody Nobody actually really got hurt that bad, so I don't feel too bad about making a little fun of it. This is Munoz v. Six Flags, and we'll just read the facts here because the judge was having some fun with the facts and all of this. Carly MunoZ and her cousin paid to gain admission to quote -unquote Fright Fest at Six Flagues. After several hours of being frightened at the Halloween -themed event, they encountered a scary clown. Carly says the clown appeared roughly six feet from her. She got scared, turned, and ran. She never looked back. After running for 10 seconds, Carly tripped and fell. She sued Six Flags for an injury to her knee. At her deposition, Carly testified that she was aware that Fright Fest characters would try to scare the patrons, and that she expected to get surprised, startled, scared, and frightened at Fright Festival. It's right there in the name. She agreed that people have different and unpredictable reactions to getting startled and scared. Carly justified that during her evening at the attraction, she encountered characters who tried to scare her, and some of the interactions caused guests to scream and sometimes run away. The question before the court is whether the risk of being frightened at Frite Fest was inherent in the activity. I feel like he's answering his question right there.

0:30:31 Jenessa: I'm not sure oh

0:32:04 Matt: Such that the primary assumption of risk doctrine applies to the injury that Carly's claimed she suffered while fleeing from the clown. This is quite a case. The court goes through the analysis, and this is a Missouri case, I don't know if I mentioned that, and actually starts by talking about whether a spectator at a baseball game assumes the risk of retinal damage from a hot dog thrown by the team's mascot.

0:32:24 Matt: In that case, of course, they found that flying hot dogs are not inherent in the traditional activities of Major League Baseball. Fair enough.

0:32:29 Jenessa: Right where like the classic assumption of the risk is that when you go to a baseball game you accept the risk that you could get hit by a fly ball like that that's part of what happens yeah

0:32:40 Matt: Baseball, the thing that they're hitting. Hitting. Yes, but not by a hot dog. So he goes through a number of haunted house cases. He makes the point that this is a case of first impression in Missouri, that no one has actually sued over running away from a haunted house. So it goes through the California case in which someone was injured when he fell running away form an actor wielding a chainsaw. I can see that. Actually, there's another chainsaw case from Louisiana. Apparently, a lot of haunted houses involve people wielding chainsaws. The Louisiana court in that case held that there's no duty to the patron to warn or protect her from a reaction to being frightened by a costumed character, quote, an experience she expected to have and for which she paid an additional admission fee. Makes sense. Maize v. Gretna Athletic Boosters. A patron was injured when someone scared her, causing her to run into a wall. The court found that patrons in a Halloween haunted house are expected to be surprised, startled, and scared by the exhibits, but the operator does not have a duty to guard against patrons reacting in bizarre, frightened, and unpredictable ways. I feel like we're getting a few too many adjectives in these cases. Here the undisputed facts established that plaintiff paid money to get scared, that she did get scared that she reacted to the fear by running and that she tripped while running. Six Flags owed her no duty to protect her from getting frightened or to protect Her from her own reaction to the expected sensation of fear. Six flags could not take the fright out of Fright Fest and the risks associated with patrons reactions to freight without materially altering the activity and patrons enjoyment of it. She tries to argue that summary judgment is inappropriate because there was some dispute about whether the Klan was actually chasing her, but the court finds there was no evidence that the clown was chasing her, that she just turned and ran and never looked back. So she doesn't even know if the clown is chasing her. Also, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for the clown to be chasing her."

0:34:15 Matt: There is no factual support that a clown chase occurred is a wonderful sentence that I enjoyed from this decision. So there you go. If you go and you buy a ticket to a haunted house, if you run away and get hurt from the thing you expected to be scared by, that is on you as a matter of law, just FYI, tortious clowns.

0:34:31 Jenessa: It's pretty straightforward to differentiate that from like you expect to get scared they should expect people are gonna get scared and run away so what they probably shouldn't do is have like I don't know pit full of sharp objects that people are going to that's like right in the middle of the path right where oh people who aren't scared would walk around it but terrified people might run and trip and fall into it then you would be able to say like that That was an unreasonable risk for you to create. And it was foreseeable that somebody scared and running in the dark would fall into it.

0:35:08 Jenessa: Like, that's where we can distinguish that from like, yeah, you tripped and fell.

0:35:15 Matt: That'll happen.

0:35:16 Jenessa: That's a thing that happens, guys. Like, I don't know.

0:35:19 Matt: And you should reasonably know going in. I know it's hard to, as the court says, It's hard for people to predict their reactions to things, but there's a very high probability that there is not actually a murderous clown that is actually going to kill you in the haunted house. That would be quite a twist. If you actually got murdered by a clown in the haunted house, that would be unfortunate.

0:35:34 Jenessa: It's true. I am surprised they don't get sued more often at these haunted houses because they do some wild stuff that's like, all right, that'S a little unhinged.

0:35:39 Matt: Sure. Yeah, I've heard. But I think the classic example would be when you go to a show like that, any kind of entertainment thing where there's flashing lights, right? And they say that people should know ahead of time. If you have a medical condition that's going to be triggered by flashing lights. Then you could get sued if you didn't warn people. That's important.

0:35:51 Jenessa: Oh yeah they definitely need to right give people the heads up and then if they make a decision to put themselves at risk that's one thing but you should give them the heads -up because that's not necessarily expected everywhere you go that like exact type of epileptic trigger yeah that makes total sense

0:36:15 Matt: If you have arachnophobia and there's a room that involves a lot of big spiders or something, that's, again, right.

0:36:20 Jenessa: Yeah there's probably going to be some spiders at the haunted house sorry everybody like if you were worried about it you can ask

0:36:27 Matt: You don't have to put that on the ticket, I don't think. That's an assumption of risk that that's a creepy thing that you might run into. Or if you're terrified of clowns and you have a heart attack because you see a clown, it's not really an eggshell point of situation, I think. Interesting legal questions.

0:36:38 Jenessa: But they should probably have like, uh, what are the, what do they think? The defibrillator? What do they call that thing that you put on the wall?

0:36:45 Matt: Yeah.

0:36:45 Jenessa: I forget the name for it, but you know what I'm talking about. The thing when people have a little horror episode. It would be a smart thing to have around. Are you legally obligated to? I don't know. Talk to your lawyer, I guess, before you set up a haunted house.

0:36:57 Matt: But you're trying to induce extreme fright. And yes, that is a foreseeable consequence of extreme fright that somebody might have a heart attack. So good to have. Just to run this down, we've had a trademark case, we've had a patent case, we've been a murder case and we've had a torts case. One of my favorite footnotes last year was in the matter of Vidal v. Hershey Company. It's from the Southern District of Florida. And we talked a little bit about attorney Anthony Russo, who seems to specialize in suing food companies for different kinds of unfair practices. And he seems to be pretty proud of his work. I'm not going to denigrate it that much. You know, man's making a living, I guess. But in this case, the plaintiffs, you may remember, had initiated suit for five million million claiming damages because the treats that they were eating, the Reese's Ghosts and Pumpkins, did not closely enough resemble Ghosts in Pumpkins. And they were very mad because on the packaging, you have a very clearly delineated pumpkin with a little smile and some eyes. And in the picture, in the complaint, they had some very sad pumpkins that were just kind of lumpy and didn't have eyes at all.

0:37:57 Jenessa: They're not wrong.

0:38:00 Matt: I just want to point out before we begin that this is late stage capitalism. For any historians listening, in the next couple of hundred years, this is how our empire fell.

0:38:07 Jenessa: This is America.

0:38:13 Matt: This is America that we had an entire industry where you could sue because your treats weren't scary enough. I think very reasonably in response, I'm not usually in favor of corporate defendants in these kinds of cases, but I think Hershey's very reasonably came back in its response and said, and this is a quote, the plaintiff got to enjoy, quote unquote, delicious candy. That was their defense. You know what you're in for. It's Reese's peanut butter buttercups. Everybody loves Reese's peanut buttercups.

0:38:35 Jenessa: Yeah, what's the damages is like the ultimate question.

0:38:37 Matt: Yes. That is the problem in this case, actually, it turns out. Five million was maybe overshooting it a bit, but they're claiming that they were deceived and that they would not have purchased these products if they knew that they were not, in fact, spooky pumpkins and ghosts. In the complaint, the plaintiff says, quote unquote, believe that the product contained a cool looking carving of a pumpkin's mouth and eyes as pictured on the product packaging. It's deprived of something cool looking. And he complained that, I mean, and again, there's a similar suit I found without even trying when when I was trying to find the decision in this suit, where somebody sued the white Kit Kat chocolate because they said it wasn't actually made of, quote unquote, white chocolate, that it was actually some other confection. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that keeps people up at night, apparently. The court, as you very reasonably point out, found that there is no injury in fact, that they're only trying to allege economic injury, but there's no economic injury because they got the deal that they signed up for, which was to buy candy, candy that they knew what it was. Hershey actually amazingly anticipated this and put decorating suggestion in caps in very small letters on most of the products. Decorating suggestion, I guess they're basically just saying that this is what it could look like in a perfect world. So the plaintiffs are trying to say that this was a factual question that should go to a jury, and they're saying that there's really just no factual dispute here because there's no actual injury, nothing has actually happened. And when they're talking about the deceptive packaging, Hershey also points out that some packages show partially eaten candy, which no reasonable consumer would expect to receive in a package of new candy.

0:40:08 Matt: Literally, it has a bite out of it, the pumpkin. So it's clearly not an actual picture of the candy because it's half eaten.

0:40:08 Jenessa: It's an excellent point well and I mean you can think of it like this as a comparison if you went to a baker and you were like I'm gonna pay you 50 bucks to make something for my kid's birthday party and they sent you that picture and you're like perfect and then what you got was the thing that looks like those lumpy Reese's pumpkins yeah you you would reasonably want your money back right like that's not what I ordered the problem is that these things cost a freaking dollar like you can't reasonably expect that product for the price you're

0:40:43 Matt: Yeah, that's very true. That's a good point. Because these are very artistically rendered pumpkins on the packaging. Obviously, private equity and capitalism has destroyed art. I understand this, but it's still pretty unreasonable to expect expect carefully carved, drawn pumpkins for the price you're paying. That's a very good point. I didn't even think of that. The plaintiffs have vowed that they are going to file an amended complaint.

0:41:11 Matt: And I just want to read the quote from Anthony Russo here. This only happened a few weeks ago, very conveniently timed for this follow -up. The court is merely saying the plaintiffs did not expressly allege in the complaint that the products were worthless to them, or they paid a price premium and allowed plaintiffs to amend the complaint, which they will be doing. We believe that companies should not be rewarded with sales when they falsely represent the main main characteristic of the product and only have to pay damages if it can be shown that the consumer has paid a premium. So they're actually going right to your point about the fact that they're saying this is cheap candy. I would say the main characteristic of the project is it is chocolate and peanut butter. I love Reese's peanut butter cups. That's what I'm in it for. I'm not looking that closely.

0:41:11 Jenessa: Paying all right yeah exactly and really what's the the main characteristic of them versus the regular peanut butter cups is the peanut butter to chocolate ratio that's what I'm going to the specialty ones for and you can take those out of my cold dead hands I love the specialty ones because they it's absolutely tastes different when you have you don't have that like build -up of extra chocolate that you get in the like cup shape it's just this perfectly coated ball of there's nothing better than a reese's peanut butter cup everybody who doesn't live in america and hates peanut butter for some reason you're all wrong like

0:41:55 Matt: Good point. Right on the edges. That's right.

0:42:17 Matt: And just biting into that peanut butter Yeah,

0:42:25 Jenessa: All of you go to hell peanut butter is amazing Reese's peanut butter cups are the best candy on earth I'll I'll die on this hill

0:42:32 Matt: I will say of all the horrors that the United States has unleashed on the world, all George Washington Carver still should get is due. Peanut butter is incredible, and I do love it. So that's today's, that's really actually a footnote to a footnot. We're putting a hat on a hat here, but I had to follow up to let everybody know what happened when the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup case. I feel a little better knowing that this did not go forward, to be honest, but, you know, nice try.

0:42:53 Jenessa: It's a little much yeah

0:42:56 Matt: Yeah.

0:43:00 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:43:00 Matt: Just as a little coda here, we've had some fun today. We've had, as I said, sort of an oops, all footnotes kind of episode, but we've got a little bit of fun. I did want to make sure, since we're coming up on election season, that we talk just for a minute about your specialty, about the thing you think about all day, since we talk all the time about the thing I think about. So what do you have to tell us about next week's elections?

0:43:17 Jenessa: So we've got uh quite a few states are hosting state and local elections some general things that everybody should know if you are doing a paper ballot flip your ballot ballot over. Some of you will be voting on many, many, many races and propositions. It may go onto the opposite side. In New York, we have a rule where all the candidates have to be on the front of the ballot so your ballot can get exceptionally long and then you flip it over and there's propositions on the back and like more than half of people don't flip their ballot over, so like, do it! You can find sample ballots on your county board of elections website to find what am I going to be voting on? Do your research in advance. Who are these people? The more local an election is, the more likely it is that it will be a lot less partisan. So you'll find yourself in a position where you actually have like a real question about who you want to vote for when it comes down to like these like county and town officials it's less likely that you know on the federal level just it's really hard for me to imagine any republican I would ever vote for I just I struggle to imagine that happening you know when it come to like judges we have judges that are partisan endorsed in new york it is is relatively meaningless, which party they got endorsed by most of the time. Sometimes they'll get endorsed by every single party in New York, and you're like, oh, all right, well, seems like everybody likes this person. There was one time in New Yorke where the Working Families Party was campaigning against their own candidate because they normally have a caucus, but somebody who was very conservative, and the Working families party is very liberal, this very conservative person petitioned to get on to the ballot which caused a primary for the working families party which there almost never is and so nobody showed up except people who liked that guy and so a person who was basically antithetical to the party

0:43:46 Matt: That's a good rule. I like them. Right. Right? Sure.

0:45:30 Jenessa: Ran unopposed in their primary and got on the ballot and then the party was campaigning against their own candidate so like when it comes to local stuff do your research you might have looked at that and said why are the democrats in the working Working Families Party not endorsing the same person. How interesting. I wonder if that person is so super liberal and the working families don't like the Democrat and the exact opposite was happening. So like, you really got to look it up. Similarly, when it's super local, it is not unusual for those races to be won by 100 votes, 10 votes, a single vote.

0:45:39 Matt: Show up. Yeah. Hmm? Sure?

0:46:07 Jenessa: There have been cases where a judge had people draw numbers out of a hat because they were like, it's tied and And we've done 15 recounts and it's still tied and somebody has to win. So I don't know what else to do. So for real, get out there. Local elections, they impact you every day. When you're walking down the sidewalk and you trip over a bump in your messed up sidewalk, that was not decided by the president. That was decided by your town council, what the budget was going to be for the sidewalks and whether they would take responsibility or if they were going to put responsibility on local property owners, which seems insane to me. I've never owned a house, so I didn't realize you could somehow need to maintain a sidewalk. That's crazy.

0:46:55 Jenessa: Why would that not be the town? Apparently that's true some places.

0:46:57 Matt: It's an important element of urban homeownership. Yeah, sure.

0:47:00 Jenessa: They affect your day -to -day life and they can also be really really important in either giving into fascism or resisting fascism. There's all kinds of things they can do to say, oh, the president says no mail -in voting. Well, I don't give a shit. I'm the county board of elections and I will be mailing you ballots and I Will be counting mailed -in ballots because that's legal and it's what I'm going to do. So really, really, really important stuff. Do your research on your local candidates. Think very carefully about those candidates and those propositions. Just to give you some examples, a lot of the stuff that's getting the most news attention, of course, you can't have missed the New York City mayor's race, California Prop 50 for redistricting. This is all over the news. But also Pennsylvania Supreme Court. There are three Democrats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts. Every 10 years, there's a vote about whether or not they retain their seat and there's a billionaire funding a campaign trying to tell you that you should get rid of them and if there's vacancy the republican state legislature of pennsylvania may not fill those and now you have a swing state that's not going to have a democratic majority on their supreme court to decide election laws and that's kind of a problem Kind

0:48:25 Matt: I've never heard of this before. Every 10 years, there's a mandatory confirmation by the voters, basically, to keep them in.

0:48:32 Jenessa: Of. Yeah, I don't fully understand it myself, to be honest, because I'm not from Pennsylvania. But yeah, it's a retention election, they call it. So it's something like, I believe they still have to be appointed by the governor and then confirmed by the legislature. But or maybe they get elected. The the replacement person, if they are not retained, a temporary replacement would go in. But the concern is a Republican state legislature in Pennsylvania might refuse to approve the replacement, the temporary replacement.

0:49:04 Matt: What a point. Right, right, right. I

0:49:11 Jenessa: I don't know if the permanent replacement is elected or if they are also appointed and approved. I don't fully understand their process, to be honest with you.

0:49:20 Matt: Mean, I live in a civilized state where we don't elect judges, so I don't know anything about this.

0:49:24 Jenessa: Oh, oh boy. One of these, one of these days I should walk you through the court system in New York so you can just like slowly die.

0:49:29 Matt: I refuse to learn about the court system in New york it's too much it's ridiculous

0:49:35 Jenessa: It's absolute hell. I'm trying to create like a voter education guide on our court system because it's like people are going to be out there voting on like surrogate court judge. Judge and it's like what the hell is that like you most people probably don't know and you're gonna go vote for that person they have a 10 -year term um Maine has a ballot proposal over voter idea laws and restricting mail -in voting again Maine place where you can pick up a potential senate seat picking up a potencial um they do that thing where they sometimes split their electoral votes so Maine is a big deal Texas all right they're trying to put citizenship as a requirement for voting into their constitution even though it's already in federal and state law it's a nothing burger like it's wasting your taxpayer dollars that this is on the ballot but like I can't find any reason it's gonna hurt anybody so like

0:50:10 Matt: Yeah the split yeah yeah very cool sure we actually talked about this

0:50:35 Jenessa: I don't know I would probably protest vote vote no

0:50:38 Matt: In last year's Halloween episode this came up we I talked about um like weird like sharia law type you know or like you know a ballot measure to you know to set up a commission to study ufos or whatever like stuff that's just like kind of weird ballot stuff that is based on yeah popular movements

0:50:51 Jenessa: Just dumb yeah I feel like that one

0:50:55 Matt: We talked about the citizenship stuff in that context and it's very true.

0:50:58 Jenessa: It's worth bringing up because there are ways that people are putting that stuff in that is nefarious that would be like and therefore you have to show a passport to vote it's not doing that it's literally just repeating something that is already elsewhere in texas law in federal law it's purely redundant nonsense that's wasting your tax dollars, but it's not going to like hurt anybody if it passes.

0:51:25 Matt: The state that's suing Tylenol just to make Trump happy. Yeah.

0:51:27 Jenessa: Yeah. Texas, on the other hand, Proposition 12 is going, you have a commission that disciplines judges. That would increase their powers, including their ability to suspend judges, which doesn't sound like a great thing to be happening in Texas. I don't know. Do your research. But like either way, that sounds like a really big deal. And you should do some research and think carefully and make sure you You vote on that proposition because no matter what, that seems like a big deal. New York City, Knoxville, Tennessee, you both have affordable housing propositions on the ballot. There's so much going on. Get out there. Check, check, check. Do your research before you walk in that voting booth so there's no surprises. Make sure you go to your assigned polling place on election day because you might have slightly different things on the ballot if you go the wrong one. So when in doubt, no matter what, ask to fill out a provisional or affidavit ballot. If they are telling you, we don't see you on the voter rolls, if they're telling you you're at the wrong polling place and the right polling place is either really far away, you're not going to be able to get there, it'll be too late by the time you get there. You're really sure that's not the right one there must be some mistake ask for a provisional ballot because what will happen is as long as you can demonstrate I am in fact an eligible voter they find you in the system whatever they're going to count everything on your ballot that they can which will be everything right up until the most local of elections so I often give this as like like, you know, worst case scenario advice, I have clients who cannot easily get from one polling place to another. So if you're somebody who's, you can just get in your car and go to the other polling place, fine. But there's a lot of people who can't do that. So when in doubt, if you are absolutely stuck, don't leave without voting. If you know you are right, that's the right polling place. I'm going to leave and go the correct polling place and vote vote without problems, do it. But whatever you do, do not give up and go home without voting. You can always ask for a provisional ballot. And I'm pretty sure everywhere, if you're online before the polls close, you get to vote. It's not your fault that they're taking too long. Your state League of Women Voters chapter will have the best information on the specific rules for your state. And the last piece of advice I'll give you, if anything goes bad in the polling place. They can't find you in the poll book. Somebody gives you a hard time. Something goes wrong with accessible voting technology. Anything like that. The second you get out of there, either written notes, voice memo, anything, record exactly what happened in the moment so you have contemporaneous notes of what happened. That way, if you want to file a complaint, you're not just going off of your memory a week later you have exactly what happened written down and you can talk to the right people about what do I do um but hopefully everything will go great and it will be very uneventful because we're in an odd year and unfortunately a lot of people don't turn out in the odd years be one of the people who does

0:54:52 Matt: No, local and state democracy are the only way that we can get out of this horror show. I'm sure of that.

0:54:56 Jenessa: Yeah

0:54:57 Matt: But democracy generally, let's keep it going. That's some good advice. Thank you for bringing your expertise to that. And of course, to the very important story of the talking skeleton. This is a lot of fun. Nice to take a break from everything we usually talk about on Fridays. So I really appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Screamore. And we will be back on Monday to talk about Palvey -McCormick, which is actually incredibly, unfortunately, still relevant as of the time that we are recording this, because Alida Grijalva has not been sworn in. We'll be talking about the only controlling Supreme Court case on that point. Going a little deeper, we talked about it last Friday, but I thought it was worth getting into more once I learned more about Adam Clayton Powell and about the facts around that and thinking about how that might apply in this situation. And accidentally election -themed, and I didn't even really think about the timing on that one. So we're back on that, and then we'll be back with some more bad takes. I think we've got some fun stuff lined up for next Wednesday, and we will be back once again to dive into the continuing horror show of American Law. So we'll see you then.

0:55:17 Jenessa: See yeah

0:56:33 Matt: I got nothing.

0:56:35 Jenessa: God damn it just say we'll be back