Publisher's Notebook

If you’re a fan of the TV show “Mad Men,” as I am, you’re glad that the 17-month wait for season five is over. Last Sunday, AMC aired two hours of the show, giving Mad Men-iacs a new dose of Don Draper and his advertising colleagues on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

The opening scene was unusual – it was set in a different ad agency (we learn later, Young & Rubicam) and some young ad men dumped water and tossed water bags at civil rights picketers below.

Several black women storm up to the agency to protest. A boy with them had been drenched by the water. The receptionist sputters that the activity couldn’t be from their office: “This is the executive floor,” she said.

“And they call us savages,” mutters one of the protestors.

Some viewers thought the entire scene was a bit over the top. A New York Times critic called it “unfortunately ham-handed.”

But as the New York Times blog “City Room” reports, it’s all true, all the way down to the dialogue. A researcher for the show came across a clip from the Times from 1966 and shared it with creator Matthew Weiner, who decided to use the scene, and the exchange, which had been transcribed by a reporter who happened to be present.

As someone once said, journalism is the first draft of history. Or in this case, of a TV script.

When Alexandria lawyer Vic Glasberg filed suit last November on behalf of a man claiming he was wrongfully assaulted by a sheriff’s deputy, he did something unusual, perhaps even novel and first-impression.

He incorporated a YouTube video as part of his complaint, providing the link in his complaint.

His client, he said, was standing in a submissive posture while talking to another deputy. The video was taken by the camera on the defendant’s cruiser.

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVN7s2pkkkI

The deputy, Terry Daniel, allegedly struck the plaintiff, Carlos Garcia, causing a mild traumatic brain injury.

Defense lawyer Alexander Francuzenko went after Glasberg’s use of YouTube in a pleading, filing a motion to dismiss.

He argued, among other things, that an Internet link is not stable enough and a posting is too tenuous a document to incorporate into a complaint.

Phooey, said Glasberg in response, although he used more legalistic language than that.

The court’s electronic filing system doesn’t allow parties to attach DVDs to pleadings, so he opted to post the video on YouTube, a widely accepted repository on the Internet.

He  noted that the video comes from the official dashboard camera on the defendant’s cruiser, and he said, “This case is rare in that liability in the matter is premised entirely on a video recording of the assault in question.”

After a hearing earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady denied the defense motion.

Rule 12(f) dictates the striking of any material that is “redundant, immaterial, impertinent or scandalous,” but none of those scenarios apply here, the judge wrote in an order. And the defendant admitted in his answer that the video is indeed a recording of the events that prompted the lawsuit.

O’Grady said he found no authority to strike the incorporation of a YouTube video from a complaint; he added that his ruling did not address admissibility of the video, a fight for another day.

There you have it: according to a federal judge, you can use a YouTube video as part of a lawsuit. Look for others to use this technique, Glasberg said.

“I expect that this issue will arise more often as we become more used to the interaction of technology and law,” he said.

Here’s a hat tip to our former colleague, Alan Cooper, who reports that he is enjoying his retirement and spends much of his time biking and hiking. Maybe he should start the Virginia Trail Lawyers Association.

**

Alan Cooper was honored at the recent meeting of the Virginia State Bar Council for his contributions as a journalist and a lawyer.

At its Feb. 25 gathering in Richmond, the council adopted a resolution that noted Cooper had served on several VSB committees, including the VSB Special Committee on Communications, in which he is currently a member.

Cooper, who joined the bar in 1977, “ably assisted the profession, the courts, and the public as a journalist of eminent regard” during his career, the resolution noted. He was a reporter at the Richmond News Leader and Richmond Times-Dispatch before joining Virginia Lawyers Weekly as News Editor in 2005. He retired last September.

“In each of these roles,” the resolution continued, Cooper exhibited “the highest degree of competence, integrity, dedication, and professionalism.”

The council concluded by thanking him “for his years as a volunteer in the Virginia State Bar, as a journalist covering the Virginia State Bar and legal issues with fairness and integrity and as a Virginia lawyer.”

Back in the mid-1990s, a book called, “Make It So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation,” was published.

This was when STNG was in its heyday, and the author took examples from episodes of the series to illustrate the leadership style and techniques of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Each chapter covered a different episode.

Alex Knapp, a writer for Forbes magazine, says that he covers “the future of science, technology and culture.” Makes sense that he’s a Trekker.

Knapp has applied this same approach to Picard’s predecessor as captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, James Tiberius Kirk (above, portrayed by William Shatner).

Instead writing of an entire book, though, Knapp has penned an article for Forbes enumerating “Five leadership lessons from James T. Kirk.”

These include:
• Never stop learning
• Have advisors with different worldviews
• Be part of the away team
• Play poker, not chess
• Blow up the Enterprise

Really good stuff and worth a look if you are in charge of an operation, whether it’s a law practice or a starship.

Live long and prosper.

Confession: I’m a sucker for puns and wordplay. A colleague sent me one of those lists that periodically makes the rounds on the Internet…jokes that are so bad they’re good.

My wife and I visited our son at college this weekend and he had one:

How can you tell the train has been through here?
You can see its tracks.

Clearly the fruit didn’t fall far from the tree. Enjoy the list:

Writing with a broken pencil is . . . pointless.

A thief who stole a calendar . . . got twelve months.

A dentist and a manicurist got married. .. . . They fought tooth and nail.

A will is a . . . dead giveaway.

If you don’t pay your exorcist . . . you can get repossessed.

You are stuck with your debt if . . . you can’t budge it.

A boiled egg is . . . hard to beat.

When you’ve seen one shopping center . . . you’ve seen a mall.

Police were called to a day care where a 3-year-old was . . . resisting a rest.

When a clock is hungry . . . it goes back four seconds.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, . . . she thought she’d dye.

I couldn’t find the source of this list when I tried to research it, but I did find that on Twitter, the hashtag “#punny” will turn up more of the same.

Example: If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?