Declarations and Exclusions

A Ruse by Any Other Name [updated]

Ted Frank of Overlawyered and David Weigel of Hit and Run and Al Kamen of the Washington Post, among others, confirm report (see Update below) that ATLA -- the erstwhile Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the leading national organization for our worthy brethren in the plaintiffs' bar -- has elected to change its name to the American Association for Justice.

ATLA/AAJ is behind the times with this name change idea: it has been eleven years now since the California Trial Lawyers Association changed its name to become the Consumer Attorneys of California.

Here, though, is the troubling question that first sprang to my mind on hearing about this latest name change:

Which member of the Association will reap the enormous fee recovery that will go to the first to file a class action trademark infringement/likelihood-of-confusion lawsuit against the rechristened organization on behalf of the Justice League of America?

[Justice League cover via Steve Englehart.]

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UPDATE [1600 PDT]:   

Oh, phooey!  This story may in fact be just too good, and too amusing, to be true.

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FURTHER UPDATE [072106]: 

Norm Pattis of Crime & Federalism is seriously unamused by ATLA's name change.   So much so, that he is electing to resign his own membership in the organization:

What's in a name?  Not much.  Unless you are a trial lawyer ashamed of your calling and afraid that someone might some day come seize your Lear Jet. 

American Association for Justice?  Forgive me, but I thought all members of the bar were a member of that association.

FINAL [?] UPDATE [072106, 1518 PDT]:

It's official: the name change is for real and has been formally adopted, per Evan Schaeffer, who is certainly in a position to know.

Martin Grace is attempting to ascertain the secret identities of members of ATLA/AAJ.

There is, so far as I am aware, no truth to the rumor that the erstwhile trial attorneys' opposite numbers at DRI are considering a name change of their own, to the Society for the Perpetually Vigilant Scourging of Evil.

Res Ipsa Grinchitur

What do you do when you are an attorney ready for Christmas vacation and your worthy opponent insists you must stick around and litigate a dispute over production of documents?  If you are Texas attorney Michael P. Lynn, you file a rhyming brief à la Seuss.

Ho Ho Ho.

[Cross-posted to a fool in the forest.]

In Which We Weigh In On a Dispute "Among" Lawyers Over the Uses of "Between" [Updated 11/7/03]

Mike O'Sullivan of Corp Law Blog is wrestling with the relative merits of using "between" and "among" in drafting contracts. Mike posits the problem here and reports on reader response (endorsing "between") here.

Having had the dispute brought to my attention via a back channel communiqué from David Giacalone (the Conscience of Us All), and being a longtime proponent of the proposition that good legal writing must first simply be good writing, I ran to my copy of The Grammatical Lawyer, which provided this additional insight:

The prepositions between and among have distinct uses. Between (originally by twain) is used when only two items are being considered -- 'The choice is between nolo contendere and a plea of guilty' -- and among, when there are more than two -- 'The files were divided among the five lawyers.'

The rule governing the use of between, however, is subject to one notable exception: between is correctly used even when more than two elements are involved if the elements are closely associated and, though considered individually, are related to one another. To illustrate: 'The Constitution regulates trade between the states.' 'Agreements were reached between the five nations.'

That last example persuades me that Mike and his readers who favor "between," even in contracts involving 3 or more parties, are in the right, and I so rule.

Update: The discussion of this issue is ongoing, and currently resides most prominently at Ms. Scheherazade Fowler's Stay of Execution, a site that makes for good reading even when lexicography is not the order of the day. Ernie Svenson is also monitoring the situation closely.