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Op-Ed

Unexpected Results

December 30, 2019

Those of you who enjoy surrealism as much as I do may want to look at a somewhat frightening ruling by a Texas appeals court the other day. It seems that 13-year-olds and younger are now free to commit sexual assaults in Texas without punishment. They know not what they do.

Milt Policzer

By Milt Policzer

Courthouse News columnist; racehorse owner and breeder; one of those guys who always got picked last.

Those of you who enjoy surrealism as much as I do may want to look at a somewhat frightening ruling by a Texas appeals court the other day. It seems that 13-year-olds and younger are now free to commit sexual assaults in Texas without punishment. They know not what they do.

If you’re in Texas or have to travel there, I strongly recommend avoiding anyone who looks young. The appeals court says because state legislators decided that kids can’t legally consent to sex, they also can’t consent to sex they force on someone else.

I’m guessing Texas legislators might have been surprised by this interpretation.

The result was that a case against a 13-year-old who molested a 12-year-old was dismissed with prejudice. There was a crime but no criminal.

Note to Texas prosecutors: Just charge kids with assault. They can probably consent to that.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas, you can get away with false advertising of freebies. A divided Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that it was perfectly all right for FanDuel to promise $200 to new subscribers and not pay the money. Since the subscribers didn’t have the $200 in the first place, they weren’t damaged.

I won’t get into the arguments on both sides of this, but I do have an announcement: I’m offering any Arkansas resident who reads this column $1 million.

Don’t bother asking me to pay it.

Heads in the Clouds

It’s the end of the year and you know what that means: It’s time for long articles on the highlights (or lowlights) of the past year.

Some of us would rather not be reminded of the past year, but it wasn’t all bad news. My favorite yearend roundup so far is the review of “Technology Law” that just appeared on LexBlog.

Admittedly, I didn’t understand at least half of what was said but there were a couple of things that stood out. My favorite sentence: “Edge computing, which is related to ‘fog’ computing, which is, in turn, related to cloud computing, is simply put, the idea of storing and processing information at the point of capture, rather than communicating that information to the cloud or a central data processing location for storage and processing.”

I think that means you just do stuff on your own computer. Technology has come full circle.

Or it might be a weather report. Maybe both. You may need some waterproof covers for your computers.

The other interesting item was that “consumers are experiencing deeper and deeper ‘breach fatigue’ with every breach notice they receive.”

You are getting sleepy ...

We may be near the point where we all lose our identities and become part of the fog. Life is but a dream.

Legal Top Ten

Top ten lists, of course, are subjective. Usually they’re someone’s idea of the most significant or groundbreaking stories of the year.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The American Bar Association Journal posted a Top Ten list of “the stories that drove the most web traffic” to its site. In other words, they let their readers decide.

Pause for a moment to guess what landmark rulings and law firm trends ended up on this list.

I’m pretty sure your guesses are wrong. The ABA’s Top Ten included not one, but two stories about a lawyer who told opposing counsel to “eat a bowl of dicks.”

The top story was about a guy who made cat sounds. Kim Kardashian West made the list.

There’s not a single court ruling or new law.

The people have spoken.

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