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THE LAW IS A ASS for 07/02/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 151
Originally written as installment # 135 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 752, April 15, 1988 issue
Did you ever wonder why I started writing these columns in the first place and why I'm still at it after all these years years--other than the fact that they pay me to do it? The installment which follows sets out my reasons for writing "The Law Is a Ass." Except one, that is.
They pay me to do it.
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 151
by
BOB INGERSOLL
Did you believe a man could fly?
I did.
That's why I write my column.
Chris Reeve made me believe. He made it look so effortless and convincing. He looked upward with that slight, wry smile of his and he lifted into the air looking for all the world like a man who had flown all his life and loved it. He did it so well that, despite the fact that the Chroma-Key sometimes intruded on the effect because they had to make Superman's costume green, I still believed a man could fly.
I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that he wasn't really flying; that he was suspended by wires. But I still believed he was flying, because he did his job so well that the only thing suspended higher than Chris was my own disbelief
Suspension of disbelief. Comics, perhaps more than science fiction or fantasy or any literature of the fantastic, exist by trading on this most valuable of reader-supplied commodities. We are asked to believe that a man can fly. Or run faster than the speed of sound without tiring. Or be converted into all powerful ionic energy. Or invent a device capable of controlling weight and then, rather than patenting it, selling it to Weight Watchers, and living off of the royalties forever, use it as part of a M.O. for fighting crime.
I, for one, am willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the story. But only so far.
I make a deal with the writer. I'll believe the required fantastic elements of the story are real, if he or she doesn't make the real elements of the story fantastic. But, when the real world is just as fantastic as the fantasy, it stops me. The story no longer has any ground in reality. It loses its effect, because it asks me to believe in too much that is not believable.
Such a stopper occurred in Superman # 16. I believed in the Prankster's usual assortment of oversized and lethal practical jokes, up to a point. The point that stopped me was when Prankster pulled a lever and Morgan Edge fell through a trap door, down a chute, and out a specially built hole on the thirtieth or so floor of the Galaxy Broadcasting System Building.
Prankster didn't own the GBS Building. He didn't build it. So how did he put a trapdoor, chute, and hole into the thirtieth or so floor of a mid-town skyscraper without someone noticing it and reporting him? He couldn't.
In the same way, when the real world of courtrooms or the law is portrayed in comics, the writer should strive to make that world as realistic as possible. There is enough fantasy in a comic without making the real world a fantasy as well. That's one reason I write the column. I hope my nit-picking, sarcastic presence will, along with entertaining you, make the comic writer strive for legal accuracy, if not out of some conscientious care for his or her craft, then to avoid my nit-picking sarcasms.
If, for example, the story contains scenes of a civil trial in New York City, then the writer should make sure that only six jurors are shown. Because since the 1972 amendment of New York Civil Practice Law and Rule 4104, civil trials in New York state can only have six jurors.
Remember that requirement about only six jurors. It was the only part of the court room scenes that Daredevil # 255 got right. The rest of the real world stuff was strictly make believe; a real problem for a title which has in the past asked me to suspend my disbelief enough to swallow the training scene in Daredevil # 254.
(Remember that scene? Matt Murdock's mentor, Stick, wants to train the newly blinded Matt to develop his remaining senses. Stick attempts this by standing Matt next to a cliff. [And where, exactly did a poor kid from Hell's Kitchen find a cliff in New York City, anyway?] Then Stick stands behind Matt, and challenges Matt to choose the right way to step so that he doesn't go splat. Some training! Even without heightened senses, Matt should have been able to tell where Stick was standing. So, unless Stick learned how to air walk from those old, violent Warners Brothers cartoons, Matt should have realized instantly that taking one giant step to the rear, Mother May I, was probably a safe bet.
Certainly as safe as betting that I would do a column about Daredevil # 255, to get back on the subject at hand.)
Daredevil # 255 is the culmination of a longer than half-year subplot that's been running in Daredevil, the Kelco Industries lawsuit. In Daredevil # 248 a young boy named Tyrone Janson was blinded, because he went swimming in a pond that Kelco industries used as a dumping ground for industrial waste. Now Matt is suing Kelco on behalf of Tyrone in a New York City court. And my disbelief just hit the floor.
Why, you ask? Don't attorneys sue chemical plants, if their waste dumping cause blindness? Yes, they do. But only in the correct court.
Kelco is, according to Daredevil # 248, a New Jersey chemical plant. The pond that Tyrone went swimming in was also in Jersey. So what was the trial doing in a New York City court?
Law suits can only be brought in courts having jurisdiction over the subject matter of the suit. Subject matter jurisdiction is found, where the injury occurred. So, when a New Jersey chemical plant dumps waste in a New Jersey pond and blinds a boy in New Jersey, only the courts of only one state would have subject matter jurisdiction to hear the suit. Anyone want to try and guess which state?
Would the person who said, "Nebraska," please leave the room?
On second thought, come back. Nebraska is just as illogical an answer as New York.
Kelco is owned by the Kingpin. He wants to use Kelco to prove to Matt that the law doesn't work and that there is no justice. He wants Matt to sue Kelco, then when Matt is about to win a victory for Tyrone, Kingpin'll yank it away.
Frankly, I was insulted by this plan. Not because it's so mean-spirited. That's the American way. No, I was insulted, because Kingpin's plan was so dumb.
He wants to get Matt involved. So, rather than clean up Kelco, he keeps it dirty. "So dirty that only one man could clean it up."
One man?
Right!
Matt does some research. He discovers that a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kelco owns the land next to the pond and rents it out to a farmer, who doesn't farm it. This same plot of ground is the dumping ground. Moreover, another wholly owned subsidiary of Kelco owns the sole patent to a chemical which is used as an additive only in Kelco's adhesive, and traces of this additive were found in Tyrone's system. Finally, Kelco keeps the dumping site so dirty, that Foggy Nelson could see seven separate violations (subtle things like no labels on the drums, rusted drums, no sprinkler system, no monitors to guard against standing water, no vegetation, no monitors to check on gas emissions, and a clogged run-off system) by walking around the site in broad daylight and just looking at it. Imagine what someone might have found, if he were do a thorough investigation. This site was so dirty that even the "Happy Days Are Here Again So Let's Get Government Off The Backs Of Big Business" Reagan Administration--the one that believes EPA means Extra Pollution Allowed-- would have shut it down.
And the story expects us to believe that only Matt Murdock could win a case against Kelco. A one-armed paper hanger from Minsk could win this suit against Kelco
A dead one-armed paper hanger from Minsk!
Of course, the story also asks us to believe that this case could have come to trial within eight issues of the injury to Tyrone. (Eight issues, that's probably a week-and-a-half comic book time. One month tops.) Even if Kelco didn't engage in the usual pretrial dilatory tactics, because it wanted to teach Matt a lesson quickly; the case couldn't have come to trial that fast. No judge in New York could have cleared a hole in his or her docket for it that quickly.
Of course, the story further asks us to believe that this major lawsuit against a major corporation--a law suit which required expert witnesses who could identify the chemicals involved, describe their effect on the human nervous system, and could ultimately trace the chemicals back to Kelco--this law suit, which began in the morning, would not break for lunch and reach the point of closing arguments by 1:50 p.m. No. It would have taken longer for one expert witness to testify than half a day. To put on an entire trial in that time, I just don't believe it.
(Well, okay, maybe there's a very, very very slight chance that they might possibly have been able to have two witnesses testify in half a day. But the judge skip the lunch break? Forget it!)
Yes, I know some of you are saying artistic license. They couldn't really make the trial last as long as a real-life trial, it would take years in comic book time. That is true. But I don't buy the excuse.
Artistic license can forgive only so much. If a story requires bending the laws of reality so much that they looks like an off-ramp cloverleaf on the Santa Monica Freeway, the story has a basic structural flaw. Such a story should probably never have been told in the first place.
And artistic license still doesn't forgive the other errors, I've already detailed. Or the errors which follow.
What errors? How about when Kelco's lawyer, Foggy Nelson, tells the jury that the phrase, "beyond a reasonable doubt," is essential to his case? It may be essential, but it's not appropriate.
Beyond a reasonable doubt is the burden of proof in criminal cases. It is the highest burden of proof in the American system of justice and we reserve it only for criminal cases. The burden of proof in civil cases, like suing a chemical plant for turning you blind, is a, "preponderance of the evidence." This is also known as, "the greater weight of the evidence." Or good old, "more than fifty percent."
Foggy may have wanted, "beyond a reasonable doubt." I certainly would have if I was defending a case that could be won by a dead one-armed paper hanger from Minsk--a dead one-armed paper hanger from Minsk that couldn't get an exit visa from Moscow!--but that isn't the proper standard.
At the end of the case, the Kingpin realizes that Matt will win. (Matt had secretly found a dead one-armed paper hanger from Minsk who had dual citizenship and didn't need an exit visa). He decides he can't tolerate a loss. He asks his flunky, the Arranger, if the verdict must be unanimous. Arranger answers "yes." Kingpin orders Arranger to buy one of the jurors that night. I have no doubts that Arranger did exactly as he was told and bought one juror.
The next day the Kingpin lost.
Civil juries in New York haven't had to be unanimous since at least 1937, because that's the last time that New York Civil Practice Law and Rule 4113--which permits a civil verdict by a five-sixths vote of the jury--was amended. Buying only one member of the jury would have left the other five-sixths of the jury free to return its inevitable, legal, and binding verdict against Kelco.
Maybe the Kingpin shouldn't have wasted his time buying a juror. Instead, he should have bought competent legal counsel.
Or we should have bought a competent story.
Bob Ingersoll
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