Blame the Machines

By Kirsten E. Small

Civil Procedure was my favorite class of my first year in law school, primarily because my professor found the cases in the textbook far less interesting than the many stories he had accumulated over the years. (When it came time to study for the bar exam, I found myself less enamored of that particular teaching style.)

One thing that stuck with me from that class was my professor's theory that modern mass tort litigation was made possible by--and would not have occured without--the invention of the photocopier. Unless you can make many,  many copies of documents for many, many plaintiffs and their lawyers, litigating a mass disaster is effectively impossible.

I was reminded of this theory by the news on Friday that the Eleventh Circuit had issued a 304-page opinion striking down the individual mandate portion of the health care law.

Appeals in the digital age: Using [sic] when quoting a text message.

by Kirsten E. Small

This opinion by the Supreme Court of South Carolina caught my eye yesterday. The fact portion of the opinion involved the quotation of numerous text messages, which didn't phase me until I got to this one:

""Leav me tha f*k alone im nt gna txt u bak and I want nothng 2 do w u so jus get out mx [sic] life already."

My first thought was, "Why bother? The entire message is one long [sic]." But then I looked up the proper usage of [sic], and learned that "sic" is a word (not an abbreviation) derived from Latin that means "intentionally so written."  So, the SC Supreme Court used [sic] not to point out the unconventional (to put it mildly) spelling of the text message, but rather to indicate that an actual error ("mx" instead of "my") was original to the text message, not an error in transcription by the court.

In other news, an amendment to SC Appellate Rule 219 became effective yesterday. The amended rule clarifies the procedure for seeking initial hearing en banc by the S.C. Court of Appeals.