Young lawyers quickly learn that
Clerks of Court know more law than many law professors. Accordingly, when I began my law practice, I
would occasionally call our local Clerk if I couldn’t find the answer to a
thorny problem.
One day, I came up with a way to
resolve an estate issue with minimal time and effort on my part. It would save me a great deal of aggravation
and would save my client significant money.
But as I considered my brilliant idea, a feeling of foreboding came over
me. I began to wonder why no other
lawyers had come up with my genius plan.
Something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. That afternoon, I happened to be in
Hillsborough and decided to drop by the Clerk’s office.
As I explained my plan to the
Estate Clerk, she shook her head in dismay.
She said the idea was a “No-No.”
“A ‘no-no’?” I asked. “Yes,” she
answered. “Could even get you sued.” She
then went through a lengthy explanation, citing the Code Hammurabi, Mordecai’s
Law Lectures, and the British common law as to why my plan would not fly. Dismayed, I mentioned that I had a feeling I
was going to get into trouble with that idea.
“You just had a ‘God Stop’”, she said.
“It’s when God sends a message to you to stop. Be alert to those feelings and trust them.”
Many years later, I had been exploring
hand weaving. One summer, members of a
Scottish clan – let’s call it “Clan X” – asked me to demonstrate tartan weaving
at their annual gathering. I agreed and
began to research the clan. To my
delight, I found the pattern for the clan’s tartan. It was beautiful. How awesome it would be to weave the clan’s
own tartan at their gathering. In fact,
I could weave up some clan scarves to sell there. About then, the old foreboding hit. Paying attention to the “God Stop,” I looked
more carefully at the pattern. It was a
new tartan. More research indicated that
it was copyrighted in the U.S. Not
wanting to get sued, I dropped my get rich quick scheme and put an older tartan
on the loom to take to the gathering.
I had barely set up my weaving
demo when an irritating, officious looking woman stormed into my booth
accompanied by two grumpy men. “What
tartan are you weaving?” she rudely demanded.
“Good morning to you as well,” I replied. “This is the Ancient Napier tartan. Isn’t it lovely?” She glared and responded, “You’re lucky it’s
not the Clan X tartan. Part of my job for the Clan is to be sure no one violates
our copyright. If you had been weaving
our tartan, you would be in big trouble right now.” I thanked her for her warm welcome and
excused myself to tend to my exhibit.
She appeared pretty frustrated to have failed in her plan to trap an
unwary weaver. She made a critical
comment about the quality of my work and stormed off.
Fortunately, the remainder of the
day was great. I found the other members
of Clan X to be friendly and charming. I
sold most of the weaving I had brought to the gathering and had almost
forgotten the snarky copyright cop as I began packing up my loom and
shuttles. Then, hearing a commotion, I
looked up. There she and her buddies
were again – this time looking a bit uncomfortable. “We were wondering if you’d be willing to
weave some Clan X tartan for us. We’ve
had to special order it from Scotland. It’s
a rare tartan and they don’t typically offer it for sale. It takes them forever and we have to deal
with customs. We noticed that you weave
tartan placemats. We haven’t been able
to find placemats in our tartan at all.”
Although I was glad that the
quality of my weaving had miraculously improved, I explained that I was already
swamped at work. I would not be able to
take on another project any time soon. I
thanked them for their interest and quickly headed back to Chapel Hill. On the way home, I said a prayer of thanks
for the “God Stop” that may have saved me from a copyright infringement
lawsuit. I also offered up a prayer of
thanks for the Clerk who gave me some good advice all those years ago.
