Here’s the downside. Right to Work laws conflict with our rights to enter into contracts and have them enforced.

Imagine this. You’re a farmer and you enter into a contract to sell your crop to a buyer for a set price. That gives you piece of mind. You’ll sleep better knowing that when your crops come in, you have a predictable income.

However, when it comes time to sell, the buyer tells you, “I found a cheaper seller.” You tell him, “But we have a contract.” He tells you back, “Sure we do, but this is a Right to Buy state. That means I have the right to buy from whoever I want.”

Any union depends on the right to enter into contracts and having those contracts enforced. The workers get together and negotiate with the employer for wages, hours, working conditions, benefits, etc. The employer can agree, counter-offer, or disagree. However, once a contract is agreed to and signed, both sides have to honor it. The workers have to work and the employer has to pay.

What Right to Work laws do is eliminate any duty on the part of the employer to honor the contract. In a Right to Work state employers can still form unions and enter into contracts with employers, however, the employers can hire workers not bound by the contract.

So, much in the same way my hypothetical buyer can simply ignore the contract and buy from someone cheaper. Employers in Right to Work states can ignore the contract they freely entered into and pay non-union members whatever they want.

I recently wrote that the real purpose behind workers compensation laws is not to help workers, but is to give employers immunity from tort lawsuits. Similarly, the real purpose of Right to Work laws is not to help workers, but is to give employers immunity from the enforcement of contacts entered into with employees.

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MCL 339.1810(1) A person shall be subject to… penalties… if the person commits 1 of the following: (e) Using profane, indecent, or obscene language in the presence of a dead human body…, whose body has not yet been interred or otherwise disposed of.

How the frick is this law ever enforced?! And what facts transpired to get the state legislature involved?

My guess is that a highly influential money-bag overheard a mortician swearing in the backroom and threw a tizzy-fit. “How dare you swear in front of my dead mother!”

And FYI, this isn’t some bizarre law from the 1800s, it was enacted on Oct. 21, 1980.

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Back in 2007 Holly Averyt was a truck driver delivering goods and merchandise to a Wal-Mart store.

She slipped and fell on a grease spill and ruptured a disc in her spine. She was unable to work as a truck driver after that.

She and her attorney went to trial and was awarded $15 million dollars. The state’s supreme court reduced the amount to $10 million. Which is still pretty damn good.

So how did Averyt’s attorney win so much money from a slip and fall case? It’s not like she’s quadriplegic or anything. She can still walk, lift stuff, and get around. She just can’t work as a truck driver.

Well, sometimes the plaintiff’s attorney wins the case. And sometimes the defense attorney loses the case. While the plaintiff’s attorney certainly did a great job, the blame for the size of the award falls onto the defendant.

Wal-Mart’s entire defense was that there never was a grease spill. In Wal-Mart’s opening statement to the jury their attorney adamantly denied that a grease spill ever occurred. He stated to the jury that the evidence admitted at trial will confirm that a grease spill never occurred.

But Averyt’s attorney didn’t give up. He had an apparent epiphany where he realized that someone must have cleaned up the spill, so he decided to track down that entity. It turns out it was a local government department. He contacted them and they emailed back an official document explaining what they did to clean up the spill.

Wal-Mart’s manager took the stand and testified that there was no grease spill. Averyt’s attorney used the document to contradict his testimony. The shit hit the fan.

To make a long story short, suddenly Wal-Mart’s manager and attorney remembered that, yes there was a grease spill. And suddenly they found tons of documents concerning the clean-up.

Wal-Mart’s new argument was that, there was a grease spill, but “boy oh boy did we do a great job in cleaning it up.”

Needless to say, the jury saw through their attempt to outright lie to them.

What’s funny is that Wal-Mart tried to blame the whole thing on Averyt’s attorney for ambushing them during the trial. Exactly how was Wal-Mart ambushed? They knew damn well that the grease spill actually occurred. It’s not like they were surprised by the government document. It’s not like they couldn’t have prepared for the contingency that the truth would be revealed at trial.

As the supreme court pointed out, Wal-Mart decided on trial strategy that failed. That’s no one’s fault but their own.

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My state is planning on changing the balance of Workers’ Compensation law. The article I’m reading in Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly, which is not available online, states that the costs of employers providing Workers Compensation insurance by businesses is too high and needs to be changed.

The article has the following quote: The passage of the original Workers’ Compensation law,

was intended to help injured workers and get them back to work, and nothing else.

That “nothing else” is completely wrong. We as a society did not look around and say, “Gee, there are so many employees being injured at work, let’s create a system to help them.” No one thought that because there was a system in place which helped them. Employees were suing their employees in courts for tort negligence. And much to the employers’ chagrin, a lot of those employees were winning.

The real purpose of workers compensation laws was to give tort immunity to employers.

The employers were getting tired of having to go to court, go through trials, and having to pay the resulting verdicts. The purpose of workers comp laws was not to help employees, it was to help employers.

However, the rich and wealthy at the time could not simply make employers immune from tort liability, there would have been a workers’ revolution and we’d all likely be communist nowadays.

So they tweaked the immunity with a little balance. Employees could not sue their employers and get huge pain, suffering, emotional distress awards, but the employers had to provide de minimis economic stability to workers who were injured on the job.

The employers got their immunity while employees got certainty and peace of mind.

With that history in mind, what does it mean for employers who argue that workers comp costs too much money?

Do they mean that it costs more than removing the immunity and allowing workers to sue for tort liability? Of course not. That would cost much much more. There is no employer in Michigan who is arguing that workers comp laws should go away. They love their immunity from tort lawsuits.

What employers want is to tip the balance of the scales so far to their advantage that they get their immunity while employees get nearly nothing in return.

So for example, the changes that are expected to be made in my state would essentially eliminate workers comp for minimum wage employees. That means that it’ll be completely legal for employers to commit negligent acts and set up negligent and dangerous conditions in the workplace, and injured employees will have absolutely no legal recourse.

So the next time you hear some rich guy complaining that we need less government interference over business, go up to him and say, “I completely agree. Let’s get rid of the tort immunity given to you by the government through workers comp and let employees privately sue you for any torts you commit.” You can be sure he’ll start demanding that the government should interfere and protect him from that.

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Yes, slavery is funny!

At first I thought it was spam, because on first glance it was not related to the subject matter of my post and, well, no one reads my blog. So it had to be a spambot, right?

Nope, after investigating it a bit I determined it was not spam, it was written and sent by a real guy with his own blog.

So how did his comment relate to my post? My guess is that his comment was meant to be ironic. I made fun of someone who was sentenced to life in prison. The guy analogized a life sentence to slavery. And then mocked me for making fun of someone subjected to slavery.

Superficially and empirically, slavery and imprisonment are similar. They both involve locking people up against their will. But superficial observations aside, slavery and imprisonment have opposite underpinnings.

Slavery is the physical objectification of ainnocent humans. (Or aguilty, for the half empty crowd.) In other words, slavery turns people into objects. Slaves are not humans, do not have rights of humans, and are used as mere tools. On farms, for example, slaves are used like any other tool or beast of burden. The purpose of the enslavement is not to produce any change in the enslaved or to deter others to change.

Incarceration, on the other hand, is a form of punishment used to discourage criminal activity. It’s a social contract epitomized by the expression, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

People act in various ways. Societies determine that some actions are “wrong” and should be discouraged. Some societies use caning, some use banishment, some use incarceration, and some use death.

So let’s move on. If both enslavement and imprisonment involve the locking up of people, how are they different?

Criminal incarceration assumes humanity, and that’s because in our western based culture, only moral beings can be punished for their actions. People who lack the mental capacity to recognize the moral implications of their actions are generally not punished. If they are adults, they are found guilty by reason of insanity and are placed in mental health treatment facilities. If they are children, they are given rehabilitation.

However, slavery is the opposite of criminal incarceration. While criminal incarceration presupposes a human being to be punished, slavery presupposes the lack of human being to be enslaved. The reason white Europeans could morally justify enslaving non-whites is that non-whites were not considered to be truly human.

Of course some people will point out that completely innocent people are occasionally sent to prison. But that does not mean that criminal incarceration is slavery. That only means that a person was wrongly imprisoned.

Some other people will argue that we send too many people to prison. However, others will argue that we don’t send enough. Those are empirical issues that have nothing to do with the definitional aspects of slavery or criminal incarceration.

And of course some people will argue empirically that prisons don’t work. They’ll cite to studies which show that the threat of locking up people does not stop people from committing crimes. Of course some others will interpret that data to mean that if incarceration is not working, then we need even harsher punishments.

To put my response to these red herring arguments in a different way, merely because you subjectively don’t like prisons, does not mean that prisons are objectively slavery. We’re fortunate that logic does not give way to mere subjective feelings.

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I have served a life sentence of 22 years. I have lost everything I have ever known or loved.

Later he wrote,

I’ve served a life sentence sir. What more debt do I owe in your opinion?

Mmmmm… where to begin…

First, why do prisoners such as yourself seriously think that judges can release you from prison based upon mere letters? Judge have a lot of power, but they still have to act within the law.

Second, obviously the debt you owe is the completion of your sentence.

Which leads us to third, if you are still alive you have not completed your fucking life sentence. Write us back when you’re dead, and the judge will gladly consider releasing you.

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Most people (myself included) think this is a scam. But yet the idea of a windfall from a never before heard of distant relative is quite common in bad TV shows.

Is it possible?

Short answer “yes.”

There are specific rules that govern inheritance when a person dies without a will. If you have a spouse, everything generally goes to him or her (which could really piss off your kids if you remarried without leaving a will).

If you have no spouse, everything goes to your kids.

If you have neither a spouse nor children, everything goes to your parents. But, of course, chances are good that your parents are already dead. But the process only starts with the parents and works its way down. Do your parents have any children (your brother or sister)? Then they get an equal cut. If your brother and/or sister are ded, it’d go to their children. If they died, it’d go to their children.

But what if there’s no one below your parents to inherit the money?

This is where it’s perfectly legal to get an inheritance from a relative you never met. If your parents have no heirs to take your money. The next step is to go up to your grandparents, and then back down again. If that doesn’t work, you go up to your great grandparents, and then back down again. Eventually at least one relative is found and she/he/they get the money. (Of course, how far back the government allows the process to go depends on the laws of your country, state, region, whatever.)

However, merely because something is legally possible, does not mean it has a snowball’s chance in hell of happening to you. Always consult with a lawyer about such matters, as this blog post does not constitute legal advice.

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The attorney argued that it was his job to get her son the best deal he could. The mom argued that it was his job to get him off. The attorney argued,

How can I get him off? He’s guilty. They have three witnesses who saw him. When the police arrested him the next day he was carrying the same gun. He doesn’t have a defense. What kind of story could I tell the jury to get him off?

The mom screamed back,

It’s your job to come up with a story to get him off.

Criminal defendants in the US have Constitutional rights. These rights put limits on what the police can do, on what evidence can be used, on who has the burden of proof, on who will judge the facts, and most importantly, they give access to a court appointed attorney.

It’s is quite common in TV dramas and movies that defendants routinely get off on technicalities and that criminal defense attorneys are adept at manipulating facts to make even the guiltiest person look innocent. However, in the real world, most guilty people who go to trial are convicted. (And in the vast majority of instances guilty people simply plea.)

However, there still exists a belief among some people that the Constitution is some sort of magic pill that will simply make criminal charges disappear.

The Constitution does not give criminal defendants a right to a defense. It does not give criminal defendants a right to commit crimes and get away with them. Our Constitutional protections are intended to make the process fair and to keep the powers of the state in check. Nothing more.

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For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.

- Thomas Sowell

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How did she find out? Well, he defriended her on Facebook and then posted the new wedding pictures there. Unfortunately for him, he had other “friends” in common with his wife and she ended up seeing the pictures anyway. (FYI, defriending your wife is not a legal equivalent to obtaining a divorce.)

A legal blogger noted that Michigan does not have a specific statute outlawing bigamy. He’s right, we actually have a statute outlawing polygamy, but we apply it to bigamists. As pointed out by the blogger,

Michigan’s anti-multiple-spouse law makes it “polygamy” to have two or more spouses, which is grammatically wrong but avoids the need to have separate statutes for bigamy and polygamy, I suppose.

Anyway, Michigan’s polygamy statute is also interesting because it contains two odd exceptions.

Of course there are the normal exceptions. Such as if you divorced your previous spouse. And there’s an exception if your spouse has left you for a period of five or more years.

However, they don’t all make sense. The first odd exception is this one:

The provisions of this section shall not extend to any person whose husband or wife shall have voluntarily remained beyond the sea.

There is no waiting period for this exception. If your spouse merely voluntarily remained beyond the sea, even for a second, apparently you’re free to marry someone else. And “remained” is in the past tense too, so you could remarry even after she came back. “She voluntarily remained beyond the Labrador Sea in Greenland for a whole week, your honor!”

The other exception is odd because it too lacks a waiting period along with any sort of objective proof.

The provisions of this section shall not extend… to any person who shall have good reason to believe such husband or wife to be dead.

Let me make this clear. All you need to be exempted from the polygamy statute is a “good reason” to think your spouse is dead. Not a great reason. Not a medically verified reason. Not a death certificate. Not a corpse. Nope, any mere “good reason” will do.

So if you’re at a hospital, and a nurse accidentally or negligently tells you your wife is dead, you’re free to get hitched to someone else. Because that sounds like a “good reason” to believe she’s dead to me.

Or what if your wife dies during surgery, but is immediately revived? It’s actually quite common. Because there is no waiting period, I think the husband is good to remarry anytime thereafter, because he had a “good reason” to believe she was dead. That’s because she was medically verified to be dead. Remember, the statute does not say how long she had to be dead, or even that she was dead at all, or that she didn’t come back to life. Only that you had a “good reason” to believe it.

Heck, why go through all of this divorce stuff? Simply give your wife a vacation across a sea or find a “good” reason to believe she’s dead. Then marry that other significant other in your life. You’ll be glad you did.

However, what I’m saying here is not legal advice. Always consult an attorney before and after committing a crime. And don’t try to tell me that you’ve relied on my post and got into trouble. Everything I’m saying in this post is completely and utterly wrong. And don’t try to tell me that you got in trouble because you did the opposite of everything I said, because even the opposite of everything I’m saying is completely and utterly wrong.

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