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Epic fail

Candy coke is the new alcopopIn a move that’s bound to win awards at whatever trade industry events criminal masterminds hold these days, illicit drug dealers are picking up where alcohol…

user iconLawyers Weekly 23 April 2008 SME Law
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Candy coke is the new alcopop

In a move that’s bound to win awards at whatever trade industry events criminal masterminds hold these days, illicit drug dealers are picking up where alcohol distributors left off and are manufacturing candy-flavoured cocaine in California, MSNBC reported last week.

Less than a kilogram of flavoured nose candy was seized after raids on two homes in central California, and US Drug Enforcement Administration officials are hoping to keep the trend from spreading to the rest of the country.

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Cocaine distributors have reportedly sold cocaine cut with candy powder to dilute the strength and maximise the yield in the past, but the DEA speculate that cocaine flavoured with chemically synthesised strawberry, lemon and cinnamon would have a street value roughly twice the RRP of straight coke.

Remember the cola wars? Please don’t bring back Michael Jackson for this one.

War or CrackBerrys

Folklaw’s life is entirely mediated by the internet and mobile technologies and wouldn’t know what to do if our publisher decided to ban the use of mobile phones in meetings, but that’s what one brave US law firm has ventured to do six months ago, the ABA Journal reported.

Lawyers at Meltzer, Lippe, Golstein & Breitstone are no doubt substituting one digital fixation for another now that there’s a “no devices” rule for all important meetings. The firm is of the opinion that their lawyers were unnecessarily distracted by their handsets and not paying attention to … whatever it is whoever said about something or other.

The firm reported that the ban hasn’t had a negative impact on client relations.

Well, I guess that puts an end to Wank Word Bingo, a game that Folklaw derived many words of pleasure from on their old Palm Tungsten.

Drafting skills put to good use, Tim

Folklaw can’t vouch for the voracity of this material, but if it’s good enough for RollOnFriday, it’s good enough for us. The facilities manager at a commercial centre in Brisbane recently sent around their new contact details to the building’s tenants, presumably in the best interests of fostering a productive working relationship with their valued clients.

What they got back was the following broadside from the managing partner of one law firm tenant, which was reportedly circulated to all recipients of the facilities manger’s original email:

Subject: RE: Change of e-mail address

Hi Tim*

Great to hear from you (whoever the fk you are).

You are obviously another of the useless [Insert name of centre here] managers/hangers-on who think that the tenants care a nano-second what ISS or GPT does. You seem to think that I would want to contact you. Well, youre (perversely) right.

I do.

Id like to know, Tim, why your company is demolishing the building I used to rent; why your company is excluding me from access to that building; and yet why, at the same time, Tim, your pencil dk company thinks I still owe it money, and why, therefore, your company refuses to return my bank guarantee for my rental default.

Tim?

Clearly, Im not as rich as you, Tim. I now have another tenancy in the city, Tim. But your companys refusal to return my bank guarantee, Tim, has somewhat stifled my banking facilities, Tim.

Are you still with me, Tim?

Tim?

Managing Partner

* Tim is a name created by Folklaw to protect the, let’s just say, the innocent.

“Why, I eyes ya”

Italy is full of beautiful, heritage-listed monuments — the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Sophia Loren, for example. But next time you feel compelled to bask in the aura of a beautiful sight while travelling on Italy’s public transport system, stop for a moment and consider whether the view is worth 40 euros and the possibility of a jail sentence.

Reuters recently reported that a 30-something-year-old Italian man was sentenced to 10 day in prison and a 40 euro ($67) fine for staring too intensely at a 50-something-year-old woman sitting in front of him on a train. The incidents occurred in 2005, when on two separate occasions the man and woman travelled in the same car between Lecco in northern Italy to Milan.

In the first instance, the man sat so closely to the woman that she felt uncomfortable, Reuters reported, and the next day the man sat in front of the same woman and simply stared at her for the duration of the journey. At neither time did the pair speak to one another.

Yeah, um, weird, huh?

As of last week, the court had not explained its verdict, but the man is expected to appeal the decision.

Unhappy mediums

Upset that their livelihoods were under threat, and worried that the repeal of the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 (UK) might see them “persecuted and prosecuted” for their religious beliefs, mediums, fortune-tellers and spiritual healers have marched on the home of the British Prime Minister.

Amusingly for everyone but the protesters, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was visiting the United States at the time. Draw from that whatever conclusions you see fit.

Organisers of the rally argue that the repeal of the Act and commencement of new consumer protection laws will remove protections for genuine mediums, encourage malicious prosecutions from sceptics, and shift the burden of proof onto soothsayers and similar to prove that they can in fact see the future and talk to the dead.

“By repealing the Act, the onus will go round the other way and we will have to prove we are genuine,” said Carole McEntee-Taylor, co-founder of the Spiritual Workers Association. “No other religion has to do that.”

However, the British Humanist Association said the news laws were well overdue.

“It is misleading for spiritualists to claim that, as ‘religious’ practitioners they should not be regulated under consumer laws,” said British Humanist Association CEO Hanne Stinson. “The psychic industry is huge and lucrative and it exploits some very vulnerable, and some very gullible, people with claims for which there is no scientific evidence.”

Water into wine? Folklaw has been feeling misled about that one for years.

Epic Fail

You are a 36-year-old burglar. You have stolen 50,000 euros-worth ($84,182) of rare coins from a residence in Dortmund, western Germany. You take them to a bank for safe keeping. A bank clerk notices that the coins are in fact the collection that was stolen from their own home three days earlier. You are arrested by police. How do you feel? Epic fail.

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