Statute of Frogs

From the intersection of federal law and high-energy particle physics comes this story:

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho have filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Hawaii seeking to enjoin a team of physicists from firing up the Large Hadron Collider this summer. Wagner and Sancho claim that the scientists at CERN have not adequately examined that possibility that experiments at the LHC might create a black hole that will swallow the earth or might release a “strangelet,”¹ which might convert the entire planet to strange matter.² I would be more inclined to worry about this if Wagner and Sancho had some serious scientific chops. But they don’t. Wagner studied physics at Berkeley, but has a doctorate in law. Sancho “describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory.” Stephen Hawking is apparently unworried. So is Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study³ in Princeton. He noted, however, that particle physics is an inherently unpredictable activity. There is at least an outside chance that “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the federal courts will ever get to pass on this. Because the District of Hawaii almost certainly lacks personal jurisdiction over the scientists at CERN, it can’t compel them to appear. Wagner — who is a Doctor of Laws after all — presumably knows this but “to save expenses,” he chose to sue in his home state of Hawaii rather than bringing suit in France or Switzerland. The money he saved will be cold comfort if the world ends this summer, but to each his own.

1. How do I get a job as the guy who gets to name subatomic particles? [↩]
2. Some of us might argue that much of the Earth is already strange matter, but I suppose that’s a term of art among particle physicists. [↩]
3. This is a great name for an research center. Perhaps next we’ll have the “Center for Knowledge” or the “Really Smart People Group.” [↩]

From the “Only in America” department:

Never quite sure what to say around the holiday to your incarcerated friends and family members?  Help is on the way.  Three Squares Greetings has a line a greeting cards “For Those Who Can’t Come Home.”  You can, for example, buy a birthday card (complete with barbed wire confetti on the front) that says:

It’s your birthday and I know that you’d rather be almost anywhere else right now. Hopefully, one year older will really mean one year wiser for you. Take care.

They also carry a card that says “I’m sorry to hear about your arrest” for the innocent-until-proven-guilty set.  My favorite, though is the Christmas card that says:

You had the choice to be “naughty or nice.” And you chose . . . . . . .

Oh well, now you have to do your time. But, Christmas won’t be the same without you here. Stay safe. Merry Christmas

The CNN article on the company is aptly (if snarkily) titled “Greeting cards target captive audience.”

Don’t assert clearly meritless positions, particularly early in your case.

This should be obvious, I suppose, but that’s true of most of these. But I’ve had several cases that were defined by clearly bogus motions to dismiss. From then on, the attorney is remembered as “the guy who made crazy argument X.” It’s sort of akin to the boy who cried wolf: once you’ve made some laughable claim, the Court looks at all your future claims more closely than it otherwise would.

The many abstention doctrines provide lots of opportunities for this sort of thing. Most of them are ridiculously obscure and known by the name of the single case in which the Supreme Court decided abstention was necessary for a particular reason. The odds that they apply to your case are — well — vanishingly small.

It’s not as though any of these motions are going to get granted. So it gains you nothing (except, of course, fees) and — believe me — the judge and the clerk remember.