New Cases, New Limericks

In the past two years, I got complaints on student evaluations that I had not seen before: too many of the cases I assigned were "old."  In a precedent-based system, old cases are not necessarily bad, but the complaints motivated me to take a hard look at some old cases and see whether there might be more recent cases, to which students could more easily relate, that could  serve well as teaching cases. Some cases that had to be abandoned were ones that I had memorialized in legal Limericks. Was I still teaching these old cases just for the Limericks?

Last year, I added the thumbs-up emoji case to my course. I have paired it with an Oklahoma case, Devon Energy Production L.P. v. Line Finders, LLC, discussed here, in which a lawyer's statement, "looks fine," was treated as closing the deal. But I have gotten out of the habit of writing Limericks when I adopt a new case, and so the Limerick to case ratio in my course is steadily declining. Perhaps that will be a subject for future complaints in student evaluations.

To prevent any such complaints, I have composed a Limerick for the emoji case, and it may be the world's first legal Limerick to include an emoji as a rhyme word. So history is made.

 Southwest Terminal Ltd. v. Achter Land & Cattle Ltd.

Achter, whose conduct was lax,
Was too lazy to e-mail or fax.
Instead of “k”, or “wazzup?”
He just texted “👍”,
And was bound to deliver some flax.