My wife and I have been married 36 years. I suppose you could say that we have 72 years of combined experience being married. Does that mean that I should be a marriage consultant?
Judging from the use of “years of combined experience” in advertisements, many people must think that combined experience adds up to expertise, even in the Show-Me State, where people are not sheeple but skeptics. Here are some samples: Read the rest of this entry
What do lawyers do? In other words, what is the scope of the lawyer racket?
A suit filed in December 2009 in Cole County Circuit Court in December 2009 may give us some idea of whether LegalZoom’s document-generation service overlaps the practice of law in Missouri. LegalZoom has filed a motion to move the suit into federal court.
LegalZoom.com., Inc. takes information from its customers and uses that information to complete documents, which it sells to those customers. In some ways, it’s a web-based version of the books of forms that have been available in paper form for hundreds of years and in digital form for 30 years or more.
The lawsuit was filed by persons who used LegalZoom for the preparation of a will and organizational documents for a limited liability company. The plaintiffs asked the court to certify that they were representatives of all Missouri residents who have done business with LegalZoom. The plaintiffs and their lawyers want Read the rest of this entry
I’ve added a new feature called Ozarks on stage, with the first short bit about the play “Maid in the Ozarks,” which ran for 103 performances on Broadway in 1946, before and after thousands of performances in regional theatres around the country. Its playwright, a woman named Claire Parrish who was apparently an Ozarks native, is a mystery. Can you provide any clues about this person?
I would love to have an essay about the plays of Lanford Wilson, born in Lebanon, Missouri in 1937, who went to high school in Ozark, Missouri. He was a giant of Off Broadway in the 1960s and 1970s and won a Pulitzer for “Talley’s Folly,” one of the plays in the Talley Trilogy, which involved a family in Lebanon at the end of World War II and during the Vietnam War era. He also wrote “Hot l Baltimore,” which was first a play before Norman Lear turned it into a TV sitcom that had a short run in 1975. If you have stories or thoughts about Wilson or his plays, please let me know.
If you know of other plays set in the Ozarks, please comment.
I’ve also been fleshing out the Ozarks in fiction compilation, with new info about Suzette Elgin Haden’s Ozarks Trilogy, Donald Westlake’s Baby, Would I Lie? and Edgar Hulse’s Light on the Lookout. I’ ve received several helpful suggestions which I’m working on integrating into the text. Please let me know about deserving books that should be mentioned here.
Matt Meacham’s essay, “Plenty of Hope After All,” is a thoughtful insider’s reaction to a Washington Post’s reporter’s superficial article about West Plains, Missouri. The Washington Post sent Eli Saslow to West Plains, a busy trading center in the south central Ozarks of Missouri.
West Plains attained some temporary notoriety in 2009 because of the appearance of this billboard, Read the rest of this entry
The blog Caveat Emptor is a great source of information for lawyers and non-lawyers about some of the issues that vex most of us, such as:
If you don’t have the money to hire a lawyer, or you want to have a better understanding of an issue before you write a letter, make a phone call or see a lawyer or credit counselor, Caveat Emptor is a good resource.
Because the possibility that a dam could break is a continuing risk, an old dam isn’t exempt from newer rules for dam safety. So said the Missouri Supreme Court in an opinion released on May 5, 2009, reversing the ruling of a Springfield trial judge.
The trial judge threw out a suit filed by the Missouri Attorney General against the Olives, who had purchased a farm with an old dam on it. The suit alleged that the Olives violated the Missouri dam and reservoir safety law by failing to register the dam with the Missouri Dam and Reservoir Safety Council, a state agency. The dam was built in 1974, five years before the dam and reservoir safety regulations went into effect.
Registration of a dam triggers the implementation of a safety program and requires the submittal of an as-built survey of the dam. In other words, registration is the beginning of a process that allows the Dam and Reservoir Safety Council to keep track of the dam, make requirements for maintenance and repairs, and review any proposals for modification of the dam.
The trial judge’s decision was based on two points Read the rest of this entry
The biggest problem that I have in understanding economic ideas is that my own economic literacy is limited. I have only a bachelor’s degree in economics and am a poor mathematician. Yet I’m hungry for economic information. Here’s how I get it. Read the rest of this entry
By Harry Styron
I have been slimed on the internet by accusations that were completely false, and I don’t like it one bit (I say “don’t” rather than “didn’t” because the false statements are still there for all who look). The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District of Missouri has indicated that an old legal doctrine (the tort of “false light invasion of privacy”) can be applied to intentional statements on the internet that falsely make a private person look bad.
The opinion, dated December 23, 2008, was in the case Meyerkord v. The Zipatoni Company, which involved the situation of Meyerkord, a former Zipatoni employee, who was listed on a website for web domain Read the rest of this entry
In MPI v. Stone County, dated December 30, 2008, Associate Circuit Judge Carr Woods ruled that the system of planning and zoning for Stone County (Missouri) was not in compliance with the Missouri statutes that enable counties to adopt planning and zoning regulations after a vote of the citizens. I filed the case, and Springfield attorney Bryan Wade and his associates at Husch Blackwell Sanders carried most of the discovery and trial preparation burden. I assisted Bryan with the trial.
The decision is not final until 30 days after its date. Meanwhile, the Stone County Commission has closed the planning and zoning office while it considers its options, which of course include appealing the decision. Read the rest of this entry
