Articles Posted in Legal Subject Area Guides

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Usually when one wants to “shepardize” an Oregon statute (i.e. look for subsequent cases or legal publications that have cited the statute), the results are fairly uniform whether you check the official ORS Annotations volume (print and online), Lexis-Nexis Shepard’s, or Westlaw Keycite. The results are not usually identical, but there is usually a lot of overlap and maybe a unique hit or two. But for the latest request we got 3 extremely different results for a single ORS statute, which shall not be identified for now in the interest of privacy.

1) The official ORS Annotations had 0 results – yup ZERO.
2) Shepard’s had 4 case citations (and a variety of non-case annotations).
3) Westlaw’s annotated statute (and KeyCite) has a zillion cases. (Well, not quite a zillion, but if you looked at the print ORSA volume, they covered more than 3 pages.)

There is always the “poor-man’s shepard’s,” which simply means you plug your statute citation into a Oregon case law database and run with it.

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Mrs. Bedsworth goes on a Hospital “Sign this Form Before We Even Talk To You” Rampage, as told by Justice Bedsworth in Criminal Waste of Space column in the OC Lawyer Magazine:

Send in the Clowns, June 2010:

Excerpt: “… After awhile, I just stopped reading them. Like most people, I want fast treatment more than I want a good forum, so I now skim the form and sign it. Someday an unscrupulous dentist will probably hold a quitclaim on my house.

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Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS) has a website with information about debt-repair (or debt management) companies:

FAQs for consumers about debt management companies:

Excerpt: “If you’re looking for help reducing or managing your debt – whether it’s credit card debt, a mortgage, or a car loan – you may be considering a debt management company. These companies must be registered by the state of Oregon, and Oregon has many protections in place for consumers who use these services. Before you pay anyone to help you with your debt, it is important to:

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If you have a long weekend looming, with nothing to do (hard to imagine but some do have lives of leisure), did you ever think about building your own DIY Book Scanner?

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When we hear about Animal Law Clinics and Projects, or maybe even the work of Temple Grandin, most of us do not think about farm animals and the law:

“Cow Whipping: How violent can a farmer get with his livestock?,” by Brian Palmer, Slate, Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Excerpt: “An animal rights group has released a video showing workers at an Ohio dairy farm punching cows, stabbing them with a pitchfork, and beating them with a crowbar. How violent is a rancher or dairy farmer allowed to get with his livestock?

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Rarely does a day go past without someone coming into our law libraries frustrated as can be: “I just spent #$% hours online and I can’t find what I need.” In the law librarian version of “breathe deeply,” we talk and walk the attorney through the search, more often than not taking them back to the origins of the West Digest System.*

Say what you will about the business-customer (vs. business-shareholder) side of Thomson-Reuters print and online services (and I surely won’t stop you), the legal research premise (or taxonomy, to be more precise) on which the original West Digest System is based is a thing of beauty. (See also West Digest System, from Wikipedia.)

The West Digest taxonomy (as remarkable as Roget’s Five Classes, the periodic table of the elements, and our 26 letters of the alphabet or even the Ten Commandments) is comprised of only seven topics – amazing:

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Heaven knows I’m no conspiracy theorist and this is not a conspiracy theory post, but I am wondering if a bag of mail (so to speak) containing Census forms was lost recently.

I’m not the only person in my small circle to be visited by a Census worker who says they never got my (our) completed Census form. Yes, we did complete them (and it couldn’t have been easier to complete) and yes, we did mail them.

I’m happy to provide the Census Bureau with the information; after all, I too want for my growing region better roads, public transit, hospitals, schools, parks, libraries, broadband, sewers, and maybe even another legislator.

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Do you need to research Oregon writs of mandamus?

(Related search-words to use when researching writs generally: original jurisdiction, writs, petitions, injunctive relief, mandamus, habeas corpus, quo warranto)

Consult the following primary sources, but take a look also at 1 & 2 for some useful guidance:

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(Not really, but anything is possible in the wild, wacky world of Senate Judicial Committee nominations, so give this post an April First dateline.)

Supreme Court nominees and their (judicial hearing) handlers are mere amateurs when compared to public law librarians who are masters at Answering a Question without Answering the Question.

This is a skill we practice every day, in every way, unlike legislators and judges who are required to give their opinions day in and day out and have a devil of a time not telling people where to go, what to do, and What the Law Is.

Collectively, public law librarians are asked hundreds of thousands of questions about the law every year and each and every time we state some variation on these themes:

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