I lied again.  Turns out that my 500th post wasn’t last Thursday, like I said, but on Monday.  Oh, well, one of the reasons I went to law school is they promised there wouldn’t be any math.

Speaking of reasons I went to law school, I recommended my blog to another lawyer who does a good bit of appellate work, and the next time I saw her, she gushed, “You write really well!  I think you missed your calling.”  I told her that a lot of people apparently share that view, because an increasing number of judges, lawyers, and clients are telling me that perhaps I would have been better advised to choose something besides law as a career. 

Anyway, on to what has become the tradition here on Friday, a tour of the blogosphere to find something that catches my fancy, and may catch yours.

No quarter asked, none given.  The vast majority of depositions I’ve been involved in have been relatively peaceful affairs.  Oh, sure, every now and then I have one like last week, when the other lawyer either wanted to impress his client or get an audition for the next version of Perry Mason.  But for the most part, lawyers are professionals, and act professionally during a deposition.

For the most part.  Then again, there are exceptions, such as a deposition in a medical malpractice case which prompted the plaintiff’s lawyer to sue the defense attorney, arguing that the latter had caused “grievous emotional distress” to his client.  According to this story, the case involved the death of the plaintiff couple’s baby, and in the deposition the doctor’s lawyer

asked the father what “he thought might have happened to the baby, whether he felt the couple’s baby nurse or nanny had committed negligent homicide and whether his wife had been involved in the death.”

The wife, who was present at the questioning, became pretty much of a basket case shortly thereafter.  The latest update on the suit over the deposition comes from Overlawyered: the judge tossed the suit, and even sanctioned the plaintiff’s lawyer for filing a frivolous action, thereby striking a blow for a lawyer to remain free to be as big a jerk as he needs to be.

Reefer madness.  I wish my mutual funds had a quarter like this:  Marijuana seizures in Algeria for the first three months of the year are up 592% from the same period in 2007, says the Algerian police.  Which will be good news in London; according to the Drug War Chronicle, the newspapers in that city are rife with stories about the effects of a “skunk” marijuana.

This apparently is not your father’s marijuana (or, if you’re of my generation, your college roommate’s).  Typical of the testimony describing the differences is that of “Gerard,” the nom de plume of the author of this piece in the London Times.  Gerard, described as “a former banker who is now self-employed in his own design business” (and how’s that for a career path), is no stranger to the evil weed, consuming around “six joints of regular cannabis every week,” but he draws the line at “skunk,” advising us that “just three drags on a skunk joint will induce paranoia on a massive scale.” 

There’s a certain irony in discussing “paranoia on a massive scale” in the context of marijuana laws, as this 1950′s drug education video might attest:

See you next week.