Unfairly Snoped?

Has a Muncie musician/bar owner been unfairly Snoped?

I’m not sure I’ve ever before personally known someone who has been the subject of a Snopes item. (Snopes.com purports to arbitrate the truth or falsity of various rumors, theories and urban legends.)

Mike Martin, owner of Muncie’s FOLLY MOON bar and grill, has discontinued live music because of a dispute with the state fire marshal’s office. He has been led to believe that the state agency is acting on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security in regulating, and charging fees to, venues that offer live music “from a stage.” The qualifier is significant, sense Folly Moon has no stage (despite a reported finding to the contrary by an administrative law judge).

Snopes has pronounced “false” the idea that Homeland Security has banned live music:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/arts/livemusic.asp

Here’s a contrary take on the issue: http://www.infowars.com/homeland-security-is-now-regulating-live-entertainment/

So…are you feeling lucky? Want to make a little wager about what I’ll find once I delve into this thing? Let’s bet one of Folly Moon’s delicious burgers (and let’s limit this wager to the first three people to take me up on it). I will bet — without yet having done an ounce of research — that the legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security empowers state agencies to require permits of the sort that they are trying to impose on Mr Martin. And if that proves to be the case, it illustrates just have a tricky it is for the Snopeses of this world.

Even if Folly Moon’s owner has mischaracterized the issue, it’s clear that there is AN issue. It’s one that will likely be addressed by Indiana’s court of appeals, in which case you will be sable to read more about it on this blog.

Indiana’s Son of Sam law.

A newspaper article recently made reference to a civil case I’m handling. I won’t discuss details of the case here beyond mentioning the fact that I invoked Indiana’s “Son of Sam” law.

“Son of Sam” laws were adopted by numerous states after serial killer David Berkowitz was feared to be in line for another killing: the one he theoretically could have made by selling his story to a book publisher or movie producer.

Indiana’s version of the law, Ind. Code § 5-2-6.3, requires that 90% of the proceeds from the story rights be made available to the victim (assuming that the perp is convicted of the crime that made the rights valuable).

The phrase “Son of Sam”, by the way, is something that Berkowitz heard, or thought he heard, in the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze” around the time that a voice from his neighbor’s dog was instructing him to kill.

Multitasking Lawyer of the Week

Nelson Mandela, the ailing human rights activist, had a career as an attorney. Let’s keep him in our prayers.

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September 23, 2013/0 Comments/by bruce

SCAMMING THE SCAMMERS

Blog - Tales from the trenches

The 411 on 419’s: Scamming the scammers.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Like many cliches, this one has truth and wisdom (although if you follow it too rigidly, you’ll miss out on some great all-you-can-eat buffets).

Who among us hasn’t received an email like this one:

That leads to something like this:

To my knowledge, no American has ever made a nickel by lending his identity to a total stranger who claims to be an heir to a multi-million dollar fortune. Yet the scams persist. They often emanate from West Africa; they’re commonly known as 419 scams, after a section of the Nigerian penal code.

The typical 419 scam involves a request for some sort of modest fee(s) needed to access that big pot o’ gold. Once the sucker — which could be you, were you not too smart for this sort of thing — remits the fee, the scammers either disappear or ask for more money.

These scams have given rise to SCAMBAITERS who, for their own amusement and that of interet viewers, try to waste scammers’ time in various ways, including having them pose for absurd pictures:

Here’s a top ten list of scams-on-the-scammers:

http://listverse.com/2010/09/11/10-great-scam-baiting-operations/
Authorities who try to find and prosecute scammers take a dim view of scambaiters. If you’re tempted to goof with someone who has approached you with a preposterous inheritance scheme, be sure not to furnish any real info. Create a email address used only for this purpose. And keep this in mind: when you devise ways to waste the scammers’ time, you’re likely wasting some of your own.

Didn’t Abe Lincoln warn us about believing everything we find on the Internet?

Just yesterday, I stumbled across a site called nolo.com and found this insight into Indiana divorce law:

“Indiana is a mixed state, which means that you can use either fault or no-fault grounds as the basis for seeking a divorce.”

Wrong. Indiana is a no fault divorce state, period. Try to inject fault- oriented evidence and see how quickly the judge will blow the whistle on it — unless evidence of, say, adultery, is incidental to a relevant issue. If, for example, a cheating spouse is cheating with a child molester, and has that person around the kids, the evidence can come in. The evidence in this example is not about cheating, but about fitness for custody.

MULTITASKING LAWYER OF THE WEEK

“Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. There’s no question that I’m all of those things.” — Howard Cosell.

HOWARD COSELL for a time juggled two careers — practicing law and broadcasting sports commentary. Before he devoted his full time to broadcasting (and to a long, symbiotic relationship with Mohammed Ali). Baseball great Willie Mays was among his legal clients.

His much-parodied, nasal delivery came from beneath a rug that might as well have sported a sticker labeled “rug”. He died in 1995. Sports coverage, particularly of football and boxing, has never been the same.

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September 9, 2013/0 Comments/by bruce