Hillary's 1st jury trial: rat's ass in can of beans no real harm

[cali]

Ok, maybe this is so minor as to not be worthy of comment, but it's a turn off for me. Clinton's first jury trial was defending a cannery in a case where a plaintiff found a rat's ass in a can of pork and beans.

The above is from an article on the front section of today's NTY
Week in Review section, about the legal backgrounds of 5 candidates.

In her autobiography, Clinton wrote: "the rodent parts were which had been sterilized might be considered edible in certain parts of the globe."

Read the article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/weekinreview/28liptak.html?_r=1&ref=weekinreview&oref=slogin

[PollThis]

1. That statement she made just tells me that America will never go hungry if she is elected. nt

[MNDemNY]

2. Well, as long as the can of beans wasn't labled "Kosher".

[TwilightZone]

3. Attorneys, especially fresh out of law school ones...

rarely get to pick and choose their clients.

[HamdenRice]

5. Yes but attorneys fresh out of school get to choose the law firms

they want to work for, and therefore what kinds of cases they are likely to get.

On edit: Also, although the chronology isn't completely clear, Hillary was not fresh out of law school. She had been something of a junior star on one of the congressional Watergate committees, and it appears that it was after she left DC and moved to Arkansas to be with Bill that she conducted this trial.

But you are correct -- even many senior lawyers really don't get to pick and choose their clients or cases.

[TwilightZone]

13. Rose worked primarily in patent and intellectual property law.

So, if this was a case she handled at Rose, it wouldn't seem to fit their usual case type. As I suggested elsewhere, perhaps it was a "give it to the new kid" situation.

[HamdenRice]

19. I thought they did a lot of agribusiness?

I thought Tyson chicken and other Arkansas agribusinesses were their main clients, no? That would be more consistent with representing a canner.

Why would an Arkansas firm do patent work? Wouldn't that kind of firm be in either DC (near the patent office) or in scientific/innovation centers like Silicon Valley, Boston, etc.

Not saying it's not so, but it's surprising. What are they inventing down there in Little Rock?

[TwilightZone]

20. Wal-Mart, newspapers, banks, brokerage firms, and media outlets...

were some of their main clients. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Law_Firm

"What are they inventing down there in Little Rock?"

Please tell me that you really don't believe that everything is invented in DC, Silicon Valley, and Boston.

[HamdenRice]

22. Of course not

But I also wouldn't expect a firm that "specializes" in patent law to locate in Little Rock.

Trademark makes sense simply because of Walmart. That company alone would be a big enough client to have a dedicated trademark department.

But patent, no. I would expect Little Rock inventors to travel to Atlanta at the least to find a dedicated patent law firm.

[TwilightZone]

24. Why Atlanta?

I'm going to take a wild stab here, but I'm guessing that you've never been to Arkansas.

Little Rock's metro has 800,000 people. It's a city, not some village in the sticks. Every large city in the country (not to mention many smaller ones) has numerous firms that specialize in patent and intellectual property law. It's a very common legal necessity.

Besides, Atlanta's a little distant. If you don't like the attorney selection in Little Rock, your journey to find suitable representation would be shorter to Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, Nashville, etc.

Expand your horizons.

[HamdenRice]

26. I've travelled all through the south...

... Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston (where I once did a high tech barge mounted power plant export deal), New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Birmingham and Shreveport for business and pleasure. Although I grew up in New York, I spent my summers at my grandmother's farm in Virginia. I'm not a stranger to the South.

I've never been to Little Rock, I'll admit. But my impression from many years working in finance is that you need a pretty big client base to have a boutique intellectual property firm in a particular city. You need big technological universities churning out patents, and high tech businesses large enough to have research departments. Atlanta, along with Dallas and Houston, are the technology capitals of the south, not Little Rock. The Rose firm is just not a powerhouse in intellectual property.

But you are correct that Dallas and Houston have big intellectual property industries (my old firm had an intell property office in Texas) and it is closer to Little Rock than Atlanta.

It's not that I need my horizons "expanded." It's what I know about southern cities, technology and finance.

[cali]

6. She wasn't fresh out of law school.

This was in Arkansas, though I'll grant you that she probably didn't get to choose the case. However, she did get to choose the type of law she'd be practicing.

[TwilightZone]

12. "Clinton's first jury trial"

The story doesn't indicate when the case was, outside of it being her first one. Seems to fit the definition of "fresh" to me, though I recall that she also had some other jobs post-law degree and pre-law firm.

As far as choosing the type of law she was going to practice, Rose worked mostly in patent infringement and intellectual property law, so if the rat case was assigned to her while she was there, it doesn't seem to fit their preferred type of case. Perhaps, it was "give it to the new kid."

[IDemo]

4. Was that "US vs Slang Images"? n/t

[mondo joe]

7. Everyone deserves a defense. That's a constitutional right as well.

[cali]

8. For sure, but lawyers choose the type of law they want to

practice.

[mondo joe]

9. They do. But I have no substantial problem with this. As I said, everyone deseves

a defense.

[Bitwit1234]

10. You are full of it. You can't find anything postive about YOUR

flip flopping, running scared candidate Obama so you again start to bash Hillary...you are a sick bunch I grant you that. Petty Petty posts, if your Saint is so damn good, why do you post negative about Hillary instead of postive about him. I have not seen ONE not ONE single postive posts any of you make about him. HE PROBABLY DOESN'T HAVE ANY, THAT'S WHY.

[cali]

18. Pay attention instead of continuously frothing

at the mouth. I've defended Clinton numerous times with both OPs and posts on existing threads.

And I don't have a candidate. I've criticized and praised all of them, with the exception of Gravel.

[HamdenRice]

11. I agree overall. But having had rat for dinner, there is one thing I'll agree with Hillary on

It's quite tasty and nutritious. I had it while living in a village in Liberia. When it was served, I was told it was muskrat. But next day I saw the village hunter bring in a few more and basically it was rat.

It was very delicious, having been cooked with pounded cassava leaf, palm oil, onions, and hot peppers, and served over brown whole grain "country" rice.

I would eat it again tomorrow if I were back in rural Liberia.

[Gin]

14. what did the jury decide in that case?

g

[MNDemNY]

15. They didn't give a rat's ass.

[HamdenRice]

17. ...

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[HamdenRice]

16. She lost and won at the same time for the reason I mentioned

According to the Times, the company paid nominal (ie a small symbolic amount of) damages to the consumer.

That means that the jury agreed with the plaintiff (yes there was a rat's ass in the beans, which is a wrong) but also with Hillary's argument (you didn't suffer any damage by eating the rat's ass so you don't get much money for it).

[emilyg]

21. You have something against free protein?

[MonkeyFunk]

23. So?

That's what attorneys do. By all accounts Clinton was a very good attorney.

[ljm2002]

25. "might be considered edible"...

..."in certain parts of the globe".

This statement would be bad enough if she had issued it as a freshly minted young lawyer; the fact that it appeared in her autobiography is sickening.

Tell me, in what part of the globe do they eat rat with its hair still on it? Because you can be sure that any rat that got into the canned goods, was not properly skinned, gutted, etc. before it became part of the food.

These stories of rats being found in canned goods, BTW, are about to put me off of canned goods altogether.

Of course this sort of thing has gone on forever. I remember when I was 9 years old, I drank most of a Coke (out of one of those nifty old Coke bottles -- I so wish they'd bring them back!), only to discover a nasty cigar butt in it. Yuck! Unfortunately, we were not aware that could have been grounds for a lawsuit. Damn, we could have used the money, too.