Learned & Noble

Excerpted below: some private correspondence in the wake of our query concerning the elusive N.S.D.U.N.S.P.H.I.

Fancy McCulture-Pants: There is only one mention of [American Name Society founder and probable N.S.D.U.N.S.P.H.I. member] Mr. Elsdon Smith in OASIS, in the papers of some dude named Learned Hand :

* 80-2 Smith, Elsdon C., 1946, 1950.
Attorney in Evanston, Ill., later in Chicago. Author of "The Story of Our Names" (1950) asking LH how his name may have affected his life; very amusing answer by LH.

Dick Umbrage: he is a famous mid-century US judge, responsible for the "Hand Test," a determination of negligence in tort law. he was one of the judges who shaped U.S. jurisprudence (for better or for worse) to evaluate the majority of civil law actions in strictly economic terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence

Sushiesque: the Hands were apparently way into adjectives-as-names: Learned had a cousin named Augustus Noble Hand (also a judge).

Dick: HE WAS THE JUDGE IN THE U.S. VS. ONE PACKAGE

Dick: i apologize for the enthusiasm.

Fancy: The enthusiasm was well founded...

U.S. VS. ONE PACKAGE

was about "immoral or obscene devices"

Dick: the defendent was a package of condoms!

Sushiesque: nice!

he seems to have made a career of cases in which one defendant was an inanimate object:

United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce

Dick: in a nice joycean twist, the appellate ruling in that case was a two Hand job.

Fancy: I think the defendant was more of a diaphragm.

Dick: point taken.

Sushiesque: "United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries"

Fancy: I'm cc'ing Almost-A-Lawyer [Leadlike]. If anyone has insight into the United States suing a box of diaphragms, it's Mr. B*******.

Sushiesque: ("pessaries" = it is OED time)

pessary, n. 1. In early use: a suppository. Later: spec. a vaginal suppository containing an antibiotic, spermicide, etc. 2. Any of various types of device, often ring-shaped, placed in the vagina to support a prolapsed or malpositioned uterus; (also) any of various devices that fit into the vagina or over the cervix to provide barrier contraception (now rare).

[Redacted: many examples of usage from the OED, with unwieldy formatting. Here is but one, from the 15th century:]

{Edh}is herbe wole dryve oute of a woman here dede childe, if gose grese be..medled with [it], and {th}an {th}ei be set vnder {th}e cunte as it were a pessarie.

Fancy: The only time it's not OED time is when you are having a discussion about the nature of your relationship with your eye-patch wearing ex.

Dick: that's thesaurus time.

Leadlike:It is not uncommon for the other side of lawsuit to be a "thing" rather than a person or company. However: it is typically more common in real estate actions. Actions such as this are called "in rem" i.e. "about the thing" rather the more common "in personum" case where a dude is at the other end. There are couple reasons this can happen. 1) the case literally hinges around the thing it self - as in real estate. A bank is bringing action to foreclose on the HOUSE not the person (although separate suits against the person may or may not follow). In the case of the Ulysses case (as an example), I'm guessing it was about the BOOK ITSELF and its contents rather than bringing specific action against Mr. Joyce personally. This can also happen because 2) it's not possinle get jurisdiction over the person in question i.e Mr. Joyce is Irish and lived throughout Europe - places where the U.S. courts system do not have jurisdiction over nationals (unless certain interactions w/ the US have occurred - the extant of these legal doctrines weren't fully developed by this time). The book however is present on American soil so getting jurisdiction over it is pretty easy. The big difference is, that, if the *thing* loses it just gets banned or whatever and the person repsonsible for it faces nothing. Whereas if a person loses, they get fined, jailed, etc. Nowadays if a person or co. has commercial interactions with the US, it's possible to get jurisdiction over them (but even then there all sorts of criteria that I can't remember. That stuff is first year civil procedure). But the legal theories allowing getting jurisdiction over foreigners like that hadn't been developed to the same extent.

Hmm, I just looked at the case itself and it appears to be a "libel for forfeiture" and is brought under the tarriff act - which makes the cases (and likely the Japanese diaphragms case) Admiralty actions. Admiralty has and uses different terms and norms - which might also explain why the thing is the object of the case rather than the person. But I don't know much about admiralty other than "libel" means "lawsuit" rather than the usual sense we think of it. I think that along with the in rem aspect of the case would explain it.

And yes, Learned Hand is one of the greater American legal minds to sit on the bench as well as possessing one of the most badass names ever assembled.

[Redacted: Ensuing repartee about paragraph breaks, Nazism, and sober consent parties.]