The McTexLaw Email Newsletter for August, 2004

Food, mud, guns and politics. Talk about a diverse newsletter. It’s all here for you in the August edition, so read on, Texas!

New on The McTexLaw Business Owner’s Resource Center:

Can You Use Your Own Name in Your Business? Ask Mr. Brennan

Let’s do some word association. New Orleans. Breakfast. Eggs Benedict. There’s only one place at the top: Brennan’s Restaurant. But the Brennan family has more than just this one restaurant. Problem is, it’s various and different branches of the Brennan family, in various and different establishments, and let’s just say they don’t always get along. The ability to capitalize on the Brennan family name in the restaurant business has been a very litigious affair that has gone on since at least the early 1970s. Who knew? Now we have a brand new, June of 2004, case where one branch is trying to keep the other branch from making money off the “Brennan’s” family name. Click the headline to read this interesting “rest of the story” story on the legal restrictions to using your own name in your own business. Brennan’s, Inc., v. Dickie Brennan & Co., Inc., Case No. 03-30470, U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals, June 28, 2004.

New on The McTexLaw Commercial Real Estate Resource Center:

Premises Liability: What About Mud on Concrete After a Rain?

You know the scene. A strip center with concrete sidewalks between the parking lot and the buildings. Dirt nearby. Rain. Rain moves dirt onto concrete sidewalk. Customer parks, and begins to walk toward the building. For unknown reasons, Customer decides to walk through the mud on the concrete. Customer slips and falls. Customer is injured. Customer goes to a lawyer or doctor, then to the other. Somebody decides it’s not the Customer’s fault, and so Lawyer sues everyone in sight. The trial court threw out the case. But the Court of Appeals bought into the dirt. And then in rode the Texas Supremes to save the day. And in the process, the Texas Supremes revisited the whole issue of premises liability cases involving “dirt in its natural state” and gave the business and its owners/employees a decisive win. This is very good news for commercial landlords and commercial tenants. Click the headline to learn why the Texas Supremes poured out this plaintiff, and her lawyer. M. O. Dental Lab v. Rape, Case No. 03-0146, Texas Supreme Court, July 2, 2004.

WHEN WE SAY “DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS”, WE REALLY MEAN IT

The slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas” was originally developed for an anti-pollution campaign. But it was so successful at appealing to the myths and legends of our great State that its use has been broadened considerably. And now we have a new development to which it applies perfectly.

It seems that the U.S. military has a bunch of surplus automatic assault rifles commonly known as M-16s. Yes, the standard issue guns our soldiers have used for many years. And they’ve decided to donate these surplus guns to law enforcement agencies nation-wide.

Guess who’s getting these in Texas? Game wardens. That’s “MISTer Game Warden” to you, and by mid-September, 2004, all of the more than 400 game wardens in Texas will have one. So this hunting season and beyond, when a game warden asks you if you’re messin’ with Texas, you’d better at least stop and answer. And when you tell your out-of-state friends this story, feel free to leave out the part about all the other states getting M-16s. Be a good Texan by doing your part to perpetuate the legend.

PREGNANT CHADS, PART DEUX: COMING TO TEXAS

Last month I promised you a follow up with more details on the substance of the problems with electronic voting machines. When I first spotted these lawsuits challenging the electronic voting machines, this whole issue was still under the radar screen of the mainstream press. But it has recently exploded into the national spotlight.

The problem, generally, is that electronic voting machines do not keep a backup paper trail useful in auditing the machine-generated totals. These machines record votes on digital memory cartridges. When the polls close, these cartridges are removed from the touch-screen machines, and hooked up to another computer that downloads and tabulates the votes. Recounts, that dreaded word we learned from Florida, are impossible.

But that’s a problem Collin County (home to the McTexLaw juggernaut) does not find. Instead, they plan on using the controversial machines in this presidential election for the first time, over the protests of the Collin County Democrats, in part because they produce vote totals so much faster. So all across Texas, look for these new electronic voting machines. The days of pregnant chads seem to have gone the way of the cotton fields.

This stuff is more than fluff and Texas is not exempt from the debate over electronic voting machines, even with Bush commanding a heady lead in the state polls. Stated differently, just because Texas isn’t a “battleground state” doesn’t mean it’s not a battle ground. The ACLU has already sued state officials to force Texas voting system examiners to hold their meetings in public. The examiners study voting technology, such as electronic voting machines, and recommend to the Texas Secretary of State which machines should be certified for use in Texas.

As for me, I’m hoping the race is not close enough to justify any recounts, any where. But in the meantime my political science degree keeps my interest piqued on this sort of stuff. In the meantime, those of you who are still skeptical your man will win should just follow LBJ’s advice: vote early and often.

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