The Challenge and Suing The Pants Off 'Em

I am challenging myself to post on the blog every day in December. It is entirely possible that no one will benefit from this except me, but in all reality, isn't blogging pretty self-centered to begin with? Blogging is sort of public journaling and since I've left my beloved journals behind in this electronic age, this seems like a good exercise in discipline.

The topic du jour is frivolous lawsuits. I heard two separate stories on NPR today that disturbed me, one about the Australian song about the kookaboro bird, the other about the artesian wells running under the city of Memphis. Apparently, a gameshow in Australia featured a trivia question asking contestants to name the children's tune heard in the song "Down Under" by Men at Work (a long-defunct Australian band). None of the contestants could name it, and until I heard this NPR story, I couldn't even have picked it from a multiple choice list! But there's a little flute action in "Down Under" that sounds like the kookaboro song (you remember this song--you learned it in elementary school: he sits in an old gum tree and he laughs). After watching this show, the person who owns the rights to the kookaboro song sued Men at Work and their record label. "Down Under" has been around for more than 20 years, but NOW the kookaboro person is suing. How insane is that? The kookaboro song is the Australian equivalent of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star--but apparently it is not in the public domain. As I listened to the story, part of me said, well, at least this is in another country--usually it's the dingbats in this country that pull stupid things like that. A few minutes later, NPR airs another story from right here in our fair city. The state of Mississippi is suing the City of Memphis for "stealing its water." There are artesian wells that run under the Mid-South area (Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas, and part of Kentucky). From these wells, Memphians have been getting their water since the 1880s. Mississippi has decided that the way the water is being funneled is akin to stealing the water from their state. Now I would like to take a poll of people in Mississippi asking how many of them support this multi-year legal effort (I believe it started in 2005), which has now been appealed to the US Supreme Court. So far, two lower courts have ruled in favor of the City (by indicating that this is a state-to-state issue that should be resolved at the US level). Do we or do we not have more important issues that our Justice System needs to address? Really.

And don't even get me started about medical malpractice/tort reform and the defensive practice of medicine.... We'll save that one for another December post!