Attention anyone who may need a lawyer in Wisconsin starting in May 2009:

[eyesroll]

If you need a lawyer to resolve an easement dispute, kindly find someone else to do it, because I have had enough of easements for one lifetime.

:argh:

(Yes, it's brief time. It's due Thursday. Mine's 95% done -- just needs about half a page cut out and cites checked and general proofreading.)

The other sections got to write about negligent infliction of emotional distress and an assault at a hockey game. We got easements.

On the upside, when I'm in practice, I'll not be spending 6 weeks on a single brief and I'll have plenty of other stuff to do to provide a bit more variety.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Ha!

When you're in practice you won't HAVE six weeks to write your brief. You will stay up all night for like three nights in a row to get it done and filed before the deadline because that's all the time you'll have to work on it because of demented clients, rescheduled appearances, discovery deadlines, phone calls...

Ahhh... the good ol' days... :scared:

[eyesroll]

3. I'm quick -- I don't mind the 3-day dealines.

I was a journalist for several years before going to law school so I know how to research and write quickly (especially write quickly).

It's this drawn-out crap I can't stand....and all the revising and multiple drafts and 'research reports' and spending umpteen days on class on it...I'd just rather research, write, and be done with it. (Yeah, I know I'm learning -- but I'd rather just spend a bunch of concentrated hours than those same hours spread over weeks. I'm sick of looking at it.)

[dolo amber]

2. I don't even know wtf an easement is...

So I promise not to solicit you.

Which is good, as you're my husband's ex, and that would be inappropriate. :patriot:

[eyesroll]

5. An easement is a right-of-way across land belonging to someone else.

If, say, you live on a property that has no access to the highway (let's say you're surrounded by swamp on three sides, and there's someone else's lot on the fourth -- this happens when that someone else sells the swamp-side half of his property to you) you get an easement to cross over your neighbor's land so you can get to and from your house. (That's the set-up of our problem...asleep yet?)

I think I *could* represent you in an easement dispute, since you in all likelihood wouldn't be suing him. Dunno. The ethics class is next year.

[dolo amber]

7. You talk like Frasier

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Prescriptive easement? Easement by necessity?

Gawd, I used to hate that stuff. :puke:

[eyesroll]

10. Distinguishing those two is the issue in our problem.

I wanted the NIED problem -- a driver negligently plows into this guy and kills him while his girlfriend watched. The class was writing a brief in support of the driver -- why the girl's NIED claim should fail. I like writing about the more evil stuff.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Depends whether the zone of danger rule applies in your jurisdiction.

The claim of emotional distress is considered to be unreliable in the absence of physical injury unless the claimant was also in danger of physical injury.

Here's a fun NEID case: Quill v. TWA, 361 N.W.2d 438 (Minn. App. 1985). Check it out...

[eyesroll]

16. Yeah, I don't remember where this problem was set...

I'll look up that case. I don't really want to go into personal injury but torts is fascinating academically.

[flvegan]

4. WTF do you have against ingress and egress?

Easement-hater!

[eyesroll]

6. Ingress and egress can kiss my ass.

As can open, notorious and under a claim of right for 20 years. :grr:

[flvegan]

9. So if I said, "statutory way of necessity"

you'd probably be unhappy.

[eyesroll]

11. That's not the language in Wisconsin, so statutory away.

:thumbsup:

[flvegan]

12. Let me tell you this...

you're way ahead. Seems your real property studies are top notch. Way ahead of MANY real estate attorney folk I've worked with. "Easement" was as well understood as riparian rights. Big "what?" from them.

Well played.

[eyesroll]

13. Hee....in my Property class last week, my (patient) prof had to explain what an escrow account was.

I understand that many of my classmates are 23 and have never needed an escrow account (hell, even the homeowners might not recognize the term, since even though earnest money is held in an account we don't "close escrow" in Wisconsin) but still. He had to go over this a few times.

Bah.

Riparian rights are HUGE in Wisconsin -- about half the cases I found on the subject of easements involved riparian rights (and most of them were useless, but that's another subject for another day).

[mentalsolstice]

15. Ahhh! Legal Research & Writing?

I remember it well. By the way, Cameron v. Barton, 272 S.W.2d 40, 41 (Ky. 1954), involved my great-uncle and a cousin. It was in my real property book, and I got to brief it for the class.

I'm not really a lawyer, I just play one on TV.

[eyesroll]

17. That's got to be weird, reading a familiar case in class.

We read a case in Property that was a Skelly Wright opinion -- turns out my prof clerked for Wright during that case. I'm glad I didn't get called on for that, because the prof was tougher on that student than he'd been all semester.

Yep, LR&R. We get our second brief assignment tomorrow (it's a response brief -- hopefully it'll be something more interesting than easements).