From Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. v. Min De Parle, 212 F.3d 1084 (8th Cir. 2000):
Lay, Circuity Judge, issued dissenting opinion.
I checked the print reporter, so this isn’t just a Westlaw glitch.
From Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. v. Min De Parle, 212 F.3d 1084 (8th Cir. 2000):
Lay, Circuity Judge, issued dissenting opinion.
I checked the print reporter, so this isn’t just a Westlaw glitch.
Jeff says:
Is that some kind of specialized patent court for electronic gadgets???
January 14, 2010, 5:21 pmWidmerpool says:
I find Judge Lay so hot, so, ya’ know, circuity. He’s so much cooler than those districty judges.
January 14, 2010, 5:24 pmChris Travers says:
So what does this mean about Lay people not understanding the law?
January 14, 2010, 5:30 pmPaul says:
Perhaps the clerk thought the opinion goes round ‘n round …
January 14, 2010, 5:39 pmOrin Kerr says:
Better that than Circuitous Judge.
January 14, 2010, 6:04 pmGuest12345 says:
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
January 14, 2010, 6:23 pmDG says:
Circuitish, maybe?
January 14, 2010, 7:01 pmJoseph Slater says:
Maybe they were thinking of Sir Kitty.
January 14, 2010, 7:10 pmAnderson says:
If he was only a Lay judge, then of course he was only circuity.
January 14, 2010, 7:22 pmXanthippas says:
Better than circuit-ish I say.
January 14, 2010, 8:49 pmMike McDougal says:
I’m quite certain that is the correct reference. More evidence here.
January 14, 2010, 9:55 pmJames says:
EV: The West print reporters also contain transcription errors. I clerk for a circuit-court judge and we have to check the West advance sheets (which become the print-reporter versions) for errors in transcribing our slip opinions.
January 14, 2010, 11:47 pmDoug says:
Its a glitch in West, my “third rate” electronic database available for members of my state bar says “circuit”.
January 15, 2010, 12:29 amrbj says:
The problem with a Circuity (especially a City) judge is that if they are any good, thus requiring a higher salary is that they’ll then be fired and the Circuity will go out of business.
James, for those of us teaching legal research, do you have other examples? It would help us disabuse students of the notion that what West prints is the gospel.
January 15, 2010, 8:19 amAnother Kevin says:
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific 118 U.S. 394 (1886) and the whole brouhaha about corporate personhood’s having been established by a remark in the headnotes that appears nowhere in the opinion (the question’s not having been reached by the Court)?
Note that I avoid expressing in this post any sentiment about corporate personhood other than to observe that considerable ink has been expended on the issue, some of it by cranks of various stripes.
January 15, 2010, 8:38 amPaul Zrimsek says:
I was in his court once. They made me swear to tell the truthiness, the whole truthiness, and nothing but the truthiness.
January 15, 2010, 9:00 amFrank Drackman says:
Reminds me of Med School when I wrote an order for a patient to get a “Bed Time Snack”…
January 15, 2010, 9:38 amgot typed in as “Big Time Snake”
corneille1640 says:
What’s wrong with “circuity”? It’s a perfectly promulant word.
January 15, 2010, 10:19 amegd says:
It’s a growing profession.
January 15, 2010, 11:15 amtroll_dc2 says:
Yes. I used to edit a specialized case service that sort of competes with West. West is capable of making errors (as all publishing companies can), but most of the time the errors are by the court. In the bad old days (before computers), West double-keyed the opinions and that was why there rarely were errors in the published reports. Then, I believe that it went to using the courts’ transmission as one of the versions. Now I think that it takes the court’s version straight on. If there is an error, it is the court’s. The result is lower costs, faster publication, and more errors in print.
This does not explain the “Circuity” of course; that was an editorial mistake of a type that I sympathize with.
January 15, 2010, 11:28 amNickM says:
Then there’s Kevin Huennekens, who was the Circuit City Judge.
Nick
January 15, 2010, 11:56 amJoe Kristan says:
From the dissent: “You call that circuitry? Those wires are going helter-skelter every which way!”
January 15, 2010, 12:03 pmJ says:
You know, as a former circuit court clerk, can I just say how mean and unnecessary I find posts like this? The poor clerk who wrote that is obviously working very hard, missed something (it happens), and are you really doing anything but being an ass by pointing this out? Are you adding to legal scholarship? Provoking interesting dialogue?
January 15, 2010, 1:45 pmDavid Schwartz says:
This is a very common type of error. The number of words that end in ‘uity’ is more than half of the number that end in ‘uit’. So if you’re typing ‘uit’ at the end of a word, you are often following it with a ‘y’. This becomes committed to muscle memory, and the ‘y’ is typed without even thinking.
Think of ‘equity’, ‘congruity’, ‘iniquity’, ‘annuity’, ‘acuity’, ‘fortuity’, and ‘promiscuity’ against ‘acquit’, ‘lawsuit’, ‘circuit’ and ‘fruit’.
For me personally, ‘ui’ is so often followed by ‘?y’ (where ‘?’ is a key hit by my left hand) that if I type ‘ui’, my right hand moves to the ‘y’ automatically.
January 15, 2010, 2:08 pmkarrde says:
I think that it is a typo for “Circuitry Judge”, the important legal position that decides legal questions about electrical circuits.
January 15, 2010, 2:19 pmlaw clerky says:
J @ 1:45 –
Relax. Whoever the law clerk was that wrote this is either unemployed or gainfully employed today. This story breaking on the VC won’t be a game changer.
Plus, it was more likely someone from the clerk’s office who prepared the caption.
January 15, 2010, 2:31 pmlaw clerky says:
Wait! J @ 1:45, are you the law clerk who did it? If you are, I can absolutely sympathize with you about making the mistake. (Seriously.) So just keep your head down and it’ll go away.
January 15, 2010, 2:38 pmJ says:
J again. Thanks to both. This was not me but I had a somewhat similar thing happen, pointed out on a blog. My judge was OK about it (thankfully) but it really did make me feel bad, and in the end I concluded that the blogger was cruel/clueless, and now I’m more careful. Lesson learned I guess. Sigh.
January 15, 2010, 2:53 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Like a Circuit Judge, But Not Exactly -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eugene Volokh, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: Like a Circuit Judge, But Not Exactly: From Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. v. Min De Parle, 212 F.3d … http://bit.ly/8fs4QA [...]
January 15, 2010, 3:14 pmtroll_dc2 says:
I checked out the opinion on the OpenJurist Web site.
I did not find the quoted error, which I suspect was written by West as part of the introductory summary and not by the court. But the second sentence of Lay’s dissenting opinion had this: “I am aware of no other decision in the Untied States which has upheld such a program.”
I do not know whether the error was made by the Web site or was part of the original opinion.
January 15, 2010, 4:23 pmlaw clerky says:
Yup. It’s in the original opinion. Now THAT was the law clerk.
January 15, 2010, 4:57 pm