Judge Extends Preliminary Injunction in NFL Doping Case

 

Judge Paul Magnuson extended his preliminary injunction barring the NFL from suspending Minnesota Vikings players Kevin Williams and Pat Williams and New Orleans Saints players Charles Grant, Deuce McAllister, and Will Smith for testing positive for bumetanide, an undisclosed banned substance in Starcaps, until a full hearing on the complex issues in this litigation is held. As a practical matter, this means these players will remain eligible to play through the NFL regular season.

The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) is seeking to vacate two arbitration awards by Jeffrey Pash, the NFL’s chief legal officer, ruling that the players violated the NFL’s strict liability drug testing policy and should be suspended for four games.  The NFLPA contends that independent administrator of the NFL’s drug policy, a consulting toxicologist, and the NFL’s vice president of law and labor policy (who worked under Pash’s supervision) knew that Starcaps, a dietary supplement, contained bumetanide but deliberately failed to communicate this information to the NFLPA or the players in breach of their fiduciary duty.  The union also asserts that Pash’s arbitration rulings were biased and violated public policy by condoning this breach of fiduciary duty in violation of New York law.

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Why the Legal Profession Needs More Latin

It’s taken me awhile, but I’ve finally focused in on the primary difference between lawyers and other professionals (especially doctors and scientists).  We don’t use enough Latin!

When science needs to describe a particular idea, it invents a completely new word to do so.  Often, it will borrow parts of words from fancy languages like Latin and Greek to come up with a word that may be difficult to spell, impossible to pronounce without coaching, but in the end is a unique combination of phonemes that has one very particular meaning, subject to no confusion.  Go look up esophagogastroduodenoscopy if you have any doubts.

When law, on the other hand, needs to describe a particular idea, it borrows some innocent, unassuming word in common parlance, a word that is completely unaware of the torture it is about to go through.  “Gift” for example, means completely different things depending on whether it’s in the scope of gift tax or income tax.  “Malice,” as far as libel goes, has nothing to do with what your ordinary English speaker would understand as its meaning.  And then there is that bane of first-year torts, “cause.”

Where law does use Latin, there is often less confusion because the terms are more specialized.  Res ipsa loquitur has a very particularized meaning.  (I have always been a little confused as to how an opinion “by the court” (per curiam) could have a dissent, though.)  Thus, my suggestion for cleaning up the legal profession would be to make up more words!  It will result in less confusion outside the profession while still requiring our specialized skills. 

I’m sure our Dean would have some great Latin suggestions.

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New Issue of MU Law Review

I’ve just received my brand-new, hot-off-the-presses issue of the Marquette Law Review, which has several articles I am looking forward to reading.  Here are the contents:

Nantiya Ruan, Accommodating Respectful Religious Expression in the Workplace, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 1 (2008) (SSRN version here).

Scott A. Schumacher, MacNiven v. Westmoreland and Tax Advice: Using Purposive Textualism to Deal with Tax Shelters and Promote Legitimate Tax Advice, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 33 (2008).

Michael W. Loudenslager, Giving Up the Ghost: A Proposal for Dealing With Attorney “Ghostwriting” of Pro Se Litigants’ Court Documents Through Explicit Rules Requiring Disclosure and Allowing Limited Appearances for Such Attorneys, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 103 (2008).

Barbara O’Brien & Daphna Oyserman, It’s Not Just What You Think, But How You Think About It: The Effect of Situationally Primed Mindsets on Legal Judgments and Decision Making,  92 Marq. L. Rev. 149 (2008).

Joan Shepard, Comment, The Family Medical Leave Act: Calculating the Hours of Service for the Reinstated Employee, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 173 (2008).

Charles Stone, Comment, What Plagiarism Was Not: Some Preliminary Observations on Classical Chinese Attitudes Towards What the West Calls Intellectual Property, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 199 (2008).

Congratulations to the student editors of Volume 92 for the successful completion of their first issue!

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