Tag Archives: contract

Naked Cause of Action

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Jessie Nizewitz has sued Viacom and several production companies for failing to provide adequate pixelation of her genitalia during an episode of the VH1 show “Dating Naked,” on which she appears as a contestant, or whatever people on gimmicky destination dating shows are called. (“Failure to provide adequate pixelation” is my paraphrase of her claims, but isn’t that the greatest cause of action ever? Another good one I saw was “insufficient junk-blurring.”) It’s a pretty intriguing idea: what duty do the producers of a program that prominently features nudity—including in its title—have to protect the performers from actual nudity?

(If you simply must see the episode, here it is, queued up to her date with a dude named Keegan about 10:45 in.)

The New York Post apparently broke the story, but it doesn’t exactly have much legal analysis. The complaint isn’t up on the New York court system’s website yet, so I had to turn to Courthouse News to find out what Nizewitz is actually claiming:

She seeks an injunction, takedown, and punitive damages of more than $10 million for breach of oral contract, privacy invasion, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and gross negligence.

The breach of contract claim seems like the most obvious one to me. She claims, essentially, that she agreed to appear on the show on the condition that they blur her privates at all times: Continue reading →

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What I’m Reading, June 18, 2014

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Erik Adam Klausz [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)], via FlickrThe Truth About Pavlov’s Dogs Is Pretty Disturbing, Esther Inglis-Arkell, io9, June 17, 2014

When did Pavlov’s dogs start salivating? When they heard a bell, you say? Au contraire. Pavlov’s dogs started salivating when they saw lab coats. Workers at a lab that studied digestion noticed that the dogs used in the experiments were drooling for seemingly no reason at all.

It was only Ivan Pavlov, a scientist working at the lab, who made the connection between the lab coats and the drool. The dogs, Pavlov reasoned, knew that they were soon going to be fed whenever they saw a lab coat. What intrigued Pavlov was the fact that a physical response could be produced solely by way of a mental association. The dogs couldn’t drool on command consciously, but they could be trained to do so just the same.

Agriculture isn’t Natural, Keith Kloor, Collide-A-Scape, June 12, 2014 Continue reading →

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A Shiny Legal Analysis of Firefly

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tumblr_mb1eb5q5sb1qehzkcI recently offered a wee tribute to Firefly, the show that revolutionized television for at least five or six people ten years ago. It later found new life on DVD, developed a bigger following, and made me sound like an elitist hipster when I talked about how I watched it when it was still destined for cancellation.

One feature of the show that I never really considered until today was what it had to say about contract law. Thankfully, the Legal Geeks had the idea before I did (dangit) and offered their thoughts on the matter:

Firefly was wickedly creative, well-written and had fantastic humor. Spaceships and wardrobe that ranged from Western to Steampunk to Chinese aside, Firefly presented excellent Contract formation issues.

Contract formation consists of 1) Offer; 2) Acceptance; 3) Consideration; and 4) Performance.

In the world of Firefly, it was often 1) Offer 2) Acceptance 3) Gunfight (also known as breach).

The show was actually like a brilliant 1L contracts class:

  • Offer (Mal: “We’ve got some Alliance-imprinted goods for sale”);
  • Acceptance (Patience: “I think we can do business”);
  • Rescission (Scary tattoo-face guy: “You are thinking of taking Mr. Niska’s money.” Mal: “No, we changed our minds.”);
  • Restitution (Mal: “This is all the money Niska gave us in advance”);
  • Breach (Badger: “You’re later than I would have liked;” or Patience: “I never part with money I don’t have to.”); and
  • Expectation damages (Mal: “Here’s how this works: I do a job, and then I get paid.”)

And that was just the first two episodes.

If you want to get super geeky, and maybe a little bit blue, we could talk about in-kind service exchanges as consideration in the episode “Heart of Gold.”

Anyway, I don’t want to steal the Legal Geeks’ thunder. I’ll even link to their post a second time so you’ll be sure to visit them.

Until next time, keep flyin’.

Photo credit: Via alwayswithapplesandcherries.tumblr.com.

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