Insurance Claim1

Years ago, I remember my mom demanding that we kids write letters to Santa.  We'd rummage through the Sears catalogs searching for toys that we'd never get.  I mean, we'd write down whole pages and never see any of it.  Got great stuff every Christmas, great memories of Christmas morning, but nothing I ever asked for. I don't know what it was with Santa but I can't remember a single thing I asked for that I ever got - until I got a credit card.  Things changed after that.  Oh, yeah - Nerf, here I come.  After a while, though, I learned that while having a credit card was all fun and games, you had to pay off the balance - eventually.  What with December being the month of debt, I can already see the line of people coming into my law library with legal problems. Take, for instance, the couple that came in just the other day.  Now that was a couple that understood the power of a credit card!  They had 23 credit cards between them for a ...

About a week ago, I was working with a guy who had come into the library. Seems Guy had been charged with raping a 3 year old baby girl. Three. THREE ! Pretty shocking, right? Took pretty much everything I had to stay on topic as I guided him around our resources to help him develop a defense. Why? Because until he is convicted, he didn't do anything.  Right?  Am I right?! The other day, I was reading a story about another politician who had been accused of sexual misconduct.  The thing is, the words "charged" and "accused" are not the same thing.  Seems Roy Moore had been  accused of engaging in sexual impropriety, including unwanted sexual advance and sexual assault, when both alleged victims were in their teens and Moore was in his thirties. I think the operative word here is "accused" meaning that Mr. Moore had/has not been tried and convicted in a court of law.  I'm sorry but accusations in and of themselves are not worth the paper t...

For whatever reason, this year has been the year of the rat at my house. No, I'm not talking about the Chinese Calendar .  I'm talking about the #$@#@$ rats that I've been trapping in my attic. Really been a pain in my backside but you gotta go get 'em before they start to multiply and/or gnaw on wires and things. As I was preparing to catch another rat (OK, we've only trapped two so far, but that last one was HUGE), I got to thinking about law and legal research.  Specifically, I was thinking about how I go about getting prepared to do a research project.  For instance, when I'm trapping rats, I start by setting up the ladder (to get to the attic), Then pull on my lightweight pants,  Strap on my knee pads (to crawl on the studs),  Slip on my dust mask,  Put on my 1,200 lumen headlamp,  Put on my glasses, Put on my lucky Cubs baseball cap and, finally,  Slide on my heavy-duty gloves and up into the attic and go a-hunting When I'm ...

Recently, I have noticed a rash of lawsuits by corporations who issue credit cards.  Most all of these actions are pled under the common count claim of money had and received . Wait, before we get too deep into this, what is a "common count, anyway?" According to Black's Law Dictionary , COMMON COUNTS means: In a plaintiff's pleading, in an action for debt. Boilerplate language that is not founded on the circumstances of an individual case but is intended to guard against a possible variance and to enable the plaintiff to take advantage of any ground of liability that the proof may disclose.  In the action for indebtiatus assumpsit , the common count states that the defendant had failed to pay a debt as promised. The thing is that as far as COMMON COUNTS go, there are five separate COMMON COUNTS . They are: For money had and received (popular with credit card companies) For work, labor, services, and materials rendered and requested by defendant (works lik...