The Appellate Record : Texas Appellate Lawyer & Attorney Kendall Gray for Fifth Circuit & Supreme Court Appeals

I was trolling the blogs not long ago and came across this little number on the ABA Blog about a judge who was scolding criminal defendants that showed up in court wearing baggy pants and showing their drawers.

Which of course reminded me of this episode from American pop culture, the famous "Pants on the Ground" song from some long ago season of American Idol:

 What does this have to do with appellate practice, or indeed law practice at all? The full explanation is after the break, but it has to do with respect.

And if you don't pay attention to it, you too could find yourself in court, "looking like a fool with your pants on the ground."

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Few things make me feel more self-satisfyingly ensconced among the cultured illuminati than the New York Times Book Review.

And yet even the Book Review has outdone itself this time.

Imagine my joy when, cup of locally roasted, fair trade, freshly ground-and-brewed organic coffee in hand, I turned to the essay by Alexandra Horowitz in the October 9 edition of the Book Review: an essay on Footnotes!

Although one professor has described footnotes as a "subversive breed of mice," the only thing that makes my heart go pitter pat more than a discussion of footnotes is an essay on footnotes in the New York Times Book Review.

Like any good footnote, the Essay makes reference to other works: books by Anthony Grafton and Chuck Zerby  detailing the history of the footnote.* It even cites an example of the Mother Of All Footnotes from the "History of Northumberland"--a footnote with footnotes that is said to range on for 165 pages.

I need a moment. . . .

Talk amongst yourselves. . . .

I'm all verklempt.

After the break, a few notes of praise and observation on Alexandra Horowitz's Footnote Essay!

I know! Too good to be true!

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Well, I've had a pretty busy fall, but every time I get a few moments and have a few spare brain cells, I've been making my way through Just My Type, the book about fonts that I wrote about some time back.

Written as a series of stories or episodes, the book traces events from the first information age: the explosion of written communication and literacy.

If you think about it, books have gone from rare, one-off works of art to commodities that exist in the 1s and 0s of digital format. During that time:

• Written language shrugged off the necessity of handwritten copies,
• We adopted mechanically formed moveable type,
• We changed the form of that type and created letter shapes that no longer needed to copy the pen strokes of a scribe
• We improved those fonts to make them more beautiful, more legible or more readable
• We moved through different typesetting technologies up to modern word processing where you can make create whole documents that look any way you want with a few clicks of a mouse.

And still I get drafts every day written in double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman.

**Sigh**

I know what you're thinking. Fonts? Typography? What's the big deal? Move on Mr. Gray.

Before you roll your eyes and move to the next blog, take in this quote from the book:

The essence of the New Typography is Clarity. This puts it into opposition to the old typography whose aim was 'beauty' and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today. The utmost clarity is necessary today because of the manifold claims for our attention made by the extraordinary amount of print, which demands the greatest economy of expression.

That's the big deal: clarity.

This quote was written by Jan Tschichold, the designer of Sabon, a clear and beautiful font.

But the most interesting thing?

It was written in 1928.

Do we have fewer "manifold demands on our attention" now, in 2011? Is clarity any less important?

Don't use accidental typography.

Be clear or be un-read.

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So, the first week in October, and it's argument week again, Campers.

The court has nine cases over three days and here are some of the issues to be covered:

October 4:

• SafeShred, Inc. v. Louis Martinez, III, No. 10-0426--Exemplary damages in the context of a Sabine Pilot wrongful discharge claim, including a due process challenge to the ratio of exemplary to actual damages
• Shell Oil Company, et al. v. Ralph Ross, No. 10-0429-- Limitations and tolling for an alleged breach of a mineral lease.
• Weeks Marine, Inc. v. Maximino Garza, No. 10-0435 -- Jones Act Damages

October 5:

• Natural Gas Pipeline Co. v. William Justiss, et al., No. 10-0451--Limitations and sufficiency of evidence in a nuisance claim.
• Hearts Bluff Game Ranch, Inc. v. The State of Texas and the Texas Water Development Board, No. 10-0491--Alleged takings of wetlands mitigation bank for reservoir development.
•  Matthew W. Wasserman, M.D. v. Christina Bergeron Gugel, No. 10-0513--whether an alleged assault is a health care liability claim.

October 6:

• Port Elevator-Brownsville, LLC v. Rogelio Casados and Rafaela Casados, No. 10-0523 -- whether the worker's comp bar applies to a temporary worker.
•  In re United Scaffolding, Inc., No. 10-0526 -- can the court mandamus an order granting a new trial on general factual sufficiency and "interest of justice" grounds, or is that specific enough?
• Rusk State Hospital v. Dennis Black and Pam Black, No. 10-0548--in an interlocutory appeal over the expert report in a med mal case, can the state raise subject matter jurisdiction, meaning the failure to invoke an an exception under the Texas Tort Claims Act, for the first time on appeal? 

For the truly geeky (not that there's anything wrong with that), you can watch the arguments streamed live on the interwebs. And they're archived on itunes, right there with the Beatles and This American Life. 

I'm particularly looking forward to the exemplary damages issue on Tuesday, the new trial mandamus on Thursday, as well as watching Houston colleagues Marie Yeates and Brett Busby argue on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

Cuz that's how I roll.

It will definitely be must see TV.

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