The Importance of Visualization - Oct. 2012

I’ve enjoyed listening to Earl Nightengale since I was a little girl.  Recently, I treated myself to an hour of simply thinking about his book, “The Strangest Secret.”  In it, he mentions the importance of setting a goal and visualizing yourself achieving the goal.  As I tried to imagine myself playing Grandjanay’s Aria, Classic Style, on my harp to a sold out audience at Carnegie Hall, a different and dreadful image came uninvited into my fantasy.  As I stared at the apparition, I realized that I had given a client some very bad advice.  Because I had failed to visualize him after he implemented my recommendations, I may have led him into grave error.

My client is a dentist of Scottish descent.  He called to ask about wearing a kilt to work.  As I used to be a professional tartan weaver, he wanted my advice on the choice of tartan.  He also wanted the names of a couple of skilled kilt makers.  I enjoyed talking with him about tartans, kilts, and kilt makers.  It then occurred to me that I’d better remind him to get a sporran to go with his kilt.  For those of you who may not be familiar with Highland dress, the sporran is the equivalent of the Scottish warrior’s briefcase or back pack.  It is a pouch, often made of leather and fur with tassels.   Depending on the ferocity of the wearer, it may have daggers or a dead animal’s head attached.  It hangs in the front and center of the kilt from the Scotsman’s belt on a chain.  Historically, its purpose was to “protect that which needs protecting.”  A kilted man without his sporran is like a football player without a helmet.  It just isn’t done.

Although I had given my client excellent advice on the wearing of Highland attire, I had failed to visualize him wearing a kilt at work.  Imagine that you are patiently sitting in your dentist’s operatory.  You are wearing an uncomfortable paper napkin around your neck.  You are staring at the drills and picks that are about to be used to make holes in your teeth and gums.  You’re also anxious about the price of the visit and radiation exposure from the mandatory x-rays.  There is just enough time for your anxiety to max out before you hear the dentist coming into the room.

You think you know what to expect when you turn to greet your doctor.  A clean, starched white lab coat will cover an equally clean white shirt and tie.  Spit shined shoes will peek out from sharply creased slacks that probably didn’t come from any warehouse.  But today, because the dentist’s lawyer failed to visualize your welcoming experience, you are about to get a disconcerting surprise.

You turn toward the door, already smiling, to say “Hello” to your dentist.  But something is wrong.  He still has the white lab coat and spotless shirt, but the trousers have been replaced with a brightly colored, pleated skirt.  Two boney knees protrude from below the kilt.  Below the knees, “flashers” fly out from the knitted socks like small flags hanging half-mast from poles in front of government offices.  Instead of the dentist’s shining wing- tipped shoes, you see shoes that could be worn by a male dancer of some sort.  But, to be honest, the object that has seriously captured your attention is the furry sporran hanging from the dentist’s belt. 

If you’re like me, you may have entered the dentist’s office with an anxiety level of 7 on a scale of one to ten.  But now, facing a Highland warrior in a lab coat wearing a dead animal head on his sporran, your anxiety level has jumped a few hundred points.  To make matters worse, being a polite person, you remember the instructions your mother gave you when you were a child captivated by the sight of an unusual person.  You must “Stop staring!”

Imagining the impact of my client at work in full Highland regalia, I remembered the last “casual Friday” we ever had at my office.  I wore my favorite tee shirt.  It warns, “Mess with Me and You Mess with the Whole Trailer Park.”  I was working on a lease agreement when my secretary announced that there was a potential client who wanted to see me.  Tragically, the lady’s son had been killed when an 18 wheeler crashed head-on into his car on Interstate 40.  She needed a lawyer.  Although she did not have an appointment, I wanted to see her.

Jeannie showed the lady into our conference room.  I stood up to introduce myself, but after taking one look at my tee shirt and scruffy jeans, she shook her head and said she needed to think about hiring a lawyer.  I watched as the biggest case of the year walked hurriedly out of the office.  That “casual Friday” cost me several hundred thousand dollars. 

So, I agree with Mr. Nightengale.  Visualization is a key step to success.  I need to call my client about that kilt.  That fur covered sporran is probably an OSHA violation.

Want to go Broke? September, 2012

A few Saturdays ago, I took the day off to study unemployment compensation law.  I had been looking forward to it all week.  I was on the verge of figuring out the 100 day rule, when someone started banging on the front door.  Wishing I had a bazooka handy, I stormed toward the source of the racket. On the front porch stood a thin man who appeared to be in his twenties.  Either he had just finished doing some yard work or he was trying out for the part of PigPen in this year’s Charlie Brown Christmas play.  He stated that he was a tree trimmer and would be happy to cut down some of the dead trees on my lot for a reasonable price.  I explained to him that I needed the dead trees for my annual Halloween party.  I told him to watch his step as he was leaving.

I don’t like door to door salesmen.  I have even put a “No Solicitors” sign up in front of the house.  Although the sign has scared off a few English lawyers, it hasn’t kept away  the magazine hawkers, yard men, painters and other aggravations that I had hoped would buzz off.  Perhaps I need to get a new sign that says, “Salesmen Will Be Shot.”  For those of you who think I’m being too harsh, let me tell you about a few cases I’ve stumbled across involving door to door painters, tree trimmers, and gutter cleaners.

Any case that begins by identifying the plaintiffs as somebody’s “widow and children” is not going to be a happy tale and the Shaw case is no exception.  Mr. Shaw was a self-employed house painter.  He had come to Ms. Watson’s house to give her a quote on doing some painting for her.  While there, he offered to clean the gutters. 

Had Ms. Watson been a wiser homeowner, she would have asked for proof that Mr. Shaw had workers’ compensation insurance.  However, she simply agreed to pay him to clean the gutters and went back to her housework.  Soon, a “tremendous noise” came from the area where Mr. Shaw had begun working.  His ladder had fallen, throwing him onto a concrete porch.  He died from his injuries about three months later.

The widow and children sued Ms. Watson.  They alleged that her failure to properly maintain her house caused the accident.  They said she had allowed her gutters to fall into disrepair as they were not securely fastened to the fascia board.  Also they claimed that she had failed to replace the aged and brittle shingles on her roof.  Finally they said that the roof was too steep and the concrete porch was slippery.

Meanwhile, Ms. Watson’s homeowner’s insurance denied coverage because Mr. Shaw was working for Ms. Watson when the accident occurred.  The homeowner’s policy did not cover persons injured while providing “professional services.”

In a similar case from California, an injured tree trimmer stated that the homeowner had violated the state Labor Code by hiring an unlicensed contractor.  As several people were working on the homeowner’s project, the tree trimmer claimed that the homeowner should have purchased his own worker’s compensation coverage.  Finally he argued that the homeowner had violated OSHA safety working standards.  The case tied up the California courts for many years.

Even if you’re lucky enough to find a court that makes your homeowners’ insurance pay the injured handyman, you might not have enough insurance coverage.  Assume our gutter man, Mr. Shaw, was the sole support of a wife and three children and was in his twenties when he fell off the rickety roof.  Had he not fallen, he would have been able to work another 40 years to provide for his family.  If he was making $25,000 per year, his lost wages alone would total one million dollars.  Add pain and suffering, medical bills, his wife’s loss of her able-bodied companion, and you have a multi-million dollar claim.

Now, assume your gutter cleaner falls because your not-so-friendly Rottweiler knocked over the ladder while trying to kill the man.  You know which dog I mean.  He’s the reason you have a large “Beware of Dog” sign in the front yard.  (Plaintiff’s Exhibit A).  At this point, because you did not keep your dangerous dog under control, you face a claim for punitive damages.  Add another $250,000 to the claim of the widow and children.

The last door to door guys I hired were house painters.  The morning they showed up to work, I noticed a strong odor of Kentucky bourbon coming off the painter who staggered past me as he was heading for a ladder.  I asked the foreman if the man had been drinking.  “Of course he’s been drinking,” he answered.  “He’s terrified of heights.  Getting him drunk is the only way we can get him up there.”  Having already paid the painters, with no refund in sight, I could only go back inside to begin my prayer vigil.

So, now you know why I have the “No Solicitors” sign up in the front yard. And why the house needs painting.  And why the gutters are clogged up.  And why I have dead trees in the yard.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream - August 2012

I have many fond childhood memories of ice cream shops.  They were cool, well lit and sparkling clean.  The hypnotic hum of the hypnotic ceiling fans, the delicious smell of fudge, bananas, and chocolate, and the menus featuring photos of tantalizing sundaes, splits, and shakes were almost more than my excited senses could handle.  While waiting to be served, my friends and I would entertain ourselves by spinning around on the bright red barstools.  We’d spin them around faster and faster, until an adult came ‘round to spoil the fun.  Little did we know that we may have been contributing to serious personal injuries.

 

In September of 1971, two ladies decided to escape the North Carolina heat by having lunch at a Durham ice cream shop.  Other customers had already filled the booths, so the pair took a place at the counter.  As one of the ladies sat on the bar stool, its seat flipped and threw her onto the floor injuring her back.  After helping the lady to her feet, the store manager apologized and told her to send him the medical bills.  Things apparently escalated from there because six years later, our State Supreme Court gave its opinion concerning the liability of the store for the lady’s injuries.

The defendants maintained that they were not liable for the malfunctioning stool.  They  admitted that the stools were defective when they were first installed, but claimed that they had been repaired.  The store management said it had no problems with the stools after the repairs.  Despite this testimony, the Court ruled that the store’s own employees may have provided the evidence the plaintiff needed.

The customer testified that when she returned to the store with her doctor bills, the assistant manager told her that the store had been “having problems with the stools, and that the children came in and turned the tops.”  She allegedly told the customer that she had asked the company that made the stools to fix them but that they hadn’t “done anything about them.”  The Court ruled that if the assistant manager made such statements, they would be sufficient evidence of the store’s liability.  The statements  showed that the store knew or should have known of continuing defects in the counter stools.

This case points to the need for all businesses, no matter how small, to have risk management policies.  A good policy would:

1.       Instruct employees how to respond to incidents including injured customers,

2.       Explain the need to document an incident at or near the time it occurs,

3.      Describe how to preserve evidence concerning incidents, and

4.      Tell employees how to notify appropriate personnel when an incident takes place.

In the ice cream parlor case, employees should have provided first aid to the customer after she fell.  Management should NOT have agreed to pay the customer’s medical bills.  At the time the store manager made that offer, he could not have known the extent of the medical bills.  Nor did he know whether the customer had a pre-existing back condition that would make the customer more susceptible to an injury to her back.  Finally, he did not know whether making the offer to the customer would cause the store’s insurance company to decline coverage.

The employees who witnessed the accident should have documented it shortly after  they knew the customer was medically stable.  They should have taken photographs of the broken stool and the location in the store where the customer fell.  They should have recorded the date and time of the incident as well as the names and contact information of any employees who witnessed it.  They should have recorded the extent of the customer’s injuries at the time she fell including any statements she made about what happened or whether she was hurt.  They should certainly not have discussed previous problems with the bar stools.

Management should have stored the broken stool in a secure location in the store so that it would be available to their insurance carrier if needed.  Finally, management should have notified the carrier as soon as possible and should have documented this notification.  Failure to notify an insurance carrier of potential liability can result in loss of insurance coverage.

As a kid whirling around on the shiny red stool, I had no idea of the dangers and pitfalls associated with bar stools.  Now, I see them as potential disaster areas.  That’s probably why I always choose a booth!

No More Mr. Nice Guy - July 2012

When I first read the regulations known as “HIPAA,” I worried about the stiff penalties that could be leveled against health care providers.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought the penalties were draconian.  To calm all of us “worriers” down, the government issued publications assuring us that the HIPAA police were there to help us come into compliance and not to penalize us.  Now, it is clear that things have changed.

A few years ago, two doctors opened a cardiac surgery clinic.  It was a small operation.  It got a lot smaller this year after the clinic had to pay a $100,000 HIPAA fine.  I’m sure the doctors also paid out many thousands of dollars to the lawyers who represented them during the HIPAA investigation – not to mention the cost of the time taken from their practice as they responded to the government investigation.  Reading the “Resolution Agreement” between the government and the doctors, I could see how easily any small practice could fall victim to a similar fate.  This is how it began.

In an effort to provide better patient care and more efficient services, the practice contracted with an Internet scheduling company so that patients could check the office surgery schedule on-line.  I’m sure that the doctors assumed that the service provider was aware of HIPAA and had taken necessary steps to provide security for the patient information posted on the surgery schedule.  Unfortunately, the clueless company made the on-line scheduling information available to the public.  Even worse, the doctors didn’t think about requiring the Internet company to sign a Business Associate Agreement.  HIPAA requires covered health care providers to have these agreements with people working for them who have access to patient information.  The contracts require those persons to treat the information confidentially.

Eventually, a patient learned that the “confidential” scheduling information was available to the general public and the HIPAA police rode in like the US Calvary in some corny western.  Like the Calvary, they destroyed the enemy.  Not a shot was fired, but the big guns of the U.S. government took their toll.

Ask yourself the following questions to see if you are also at risk for a HIPAA attack:

1. Do I have a signed business associate agreement with every person or business  who has access to patient information in my possession?  For example, has my lawyer signed a business associate agreement?  My accountant?  My IT company?
2. Have I provided HIPAA training to each of my employees who has access to patient information?  Do I have documentation of that training?
3. Have I identified a “Security Official” and a “Privacy Officer” at my office?  Is that in writing?
4. Do I have a written “Risk Assessment Process?”  Have I conducted a “risk assessment” to identify potential problems with maintaining privacy of patient information?  Is that assessment in writing?  Is it regularly updated in writing?  Does it contain an inventory of every system in the office that stores patient information?  Does it identify risks relating to each system?  
5. Do I ever email patient charts?  If so, are those emails encrypted?

The HIPAA police also discovered that the clinic sometimes emailed confidential patient information to its doctors’ private email accounts.  This might happen if a physician got a call about a patient in the middle of the night.  The doctor might need to see the patient chart to respond to an emergency.  He could access it on his home computer.  The clinic had not given any thought to insuring the security of those home computers.

It is very important to be especially careful about patient information that your employees access away from the office.  Are your employees sending emails and texts to patients?  Is the content of the email or text put into the patient’s file?  By whom?  How quickly?  Are you sure that the cell phones your employees use to send those emails or texts are password protected?  Are your employees able to access patient information on their home computers?  What do you know about the security of those computers?

In my humble opinion, technology has rendered privacy illusory.  My mother’s advice remains the best I’ve heard concerning privacy.  She used to say, “Don’t ever do or say anything you would regret reading about on the front page of the News and Disturber!”   

Marriage - A Trap?

The debate over North Carolina’s “marriage amendment” made me think of the many laws that punish people who choose to marry. Of course most people know about the equitable distribution and alimony threat. But there are other laws lurking in the shallow, muddy waters. North Carolina’s “Stark” law is one of the anti-marriage laws that can sneak up to bite health care providers. That state law takes its cue from the federal “Stark” law.

In 1989, a U.S. Inspector General Study reported that a physician was more likely to refer a patient for laboratory services when the doctor owned the laboratory. The government estimated that these “self-referrals” cost Medicaid and Medicare millions of dollars. To stomp out the waste, Congress passed legislation known as the Stark law. Stark applies to most health care providers. It prohibits providers from referring patients to a business in which the provider or a member of his immediate family has a financial interest. The federal Stark law applies only to certain services covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

Shortly after the federal law took effect, North Carolina enacted its version of Stark. The General Assembly intended to expand the federal law to address services covered by health insurance as well as those covered by Medicare and Medicaid. So, how does North Carolina’s law snare married people? Assume a family practitioner refers a patient to her husband, a cardiologist. Or, a general dentist’s patient needs a root canal. He refers the patient to his wife, an endodontist. In each case, our state’s Stark law may have been violated. Violations of Stark laws result in whopping penalties.

Assume our endodontist treats her husband’s patient and sends the patient a bill. She has just incurred a $20,000 penalty. If the government can prove that the married dentists had an “arrangement” to refer their patients to each other, a $75,000 penalty is also assessed. Malpractice insurance will not pay these penalties and they may not be deductible for income tax purposes.

 In addition to the financial repercussions, North Carolina’s law provides that those who violate Stark will face disciplinary action by their licensing boards. In our example above, the Dental Board can prosecute the dentist who made the referral as well as the endodontist who accepted the referred patient.

As well as violating the Stark law, the providers involved could face charges of a conflict of interest. Assume our endodontist examines her husband’s patient and finds that her husband has not addressed a lesion that could be cancerous. She refers the patient for a biopsy and the biopsy is positive for cancer. The delay caused by the general dentist’s negligence has worsened the patient’s outcome. Does the wife-endodontist inform the patient that her husband missed the lesion during his exam of the patient? If so, she may trigger a malpractice suit against her husband.

Assume the endodontist refers the patient to an oncologist but says nothing to the patient about the problems caused by her husband’s negligence. The patient begins treatment and the oncologist tells the patient that the lesion must have been present for a long time. He also tells the patient that if it had been checked earlier, the patient would have a better treatment outcome. Now the patient has reason to suspect that the endodontist withheld information in order to protect her husband.

Let’s go a step further in the “assumption” process. Assume our endodontist sees the lesion and, in order to protect her husband, she decides not to tell the patient about the lesion. A year or so later, she learns that her husband has been having an affair with his billing clerk. The endodontist is hurt and upset. To get even, she tells the patient about the lesion and says that her husband should have had the lesion biopsied. When it is finally checked, it is cancerous. The patient’s cancer doctor tells the patient that his cancer could have been easily treated if the dentists had noticed the lesion earlier. Now both dentists are “in the soup.”

Although the Stark law doesn’t give patients a right to sue doctors who violate its provisions, the patient may file suit against both dentists alleging malpractice and fraud. Health care providers who make referrals to their spouses should be alert to the dangers of the Stark laws. These laws are clearly a trap for the uninformed.

Help! They've Arrested the Easter Bunny!

Cattaraugus County, New York, will not soon forget the Easter of 1992. That April, two tourists decided to explore the 17 counties of the Western District of New York. The decision was not as random as it may first appear. One of the tourists had recently been convicted of felony tax evasion. His probation limited his travel to that area of the state.

The morning of April 23, the men stopped for breakfast at a café in the “Enchanted Mountains” of Cattaraugus County. They noticed a little girl at the diner all dressed up “in her Easter finery.” They thought it would be fun to put on the “Easter Bunny” mask they happened to be carrying in their van to surprise the girl. One of them then donned the two foot tall rabbit head, peered into the café window, and waved at the child. Locals also spotted him looking into bank windows and windows of the police department while disguised as the Easter Bunny. Having had a look around, the tourists headed out for Chautauqua County, New York.

Back in the Enchanted Mountains, alarmed villagers alerted local law enforcement to the Easter Bunny and his “surveillance” of the bank and police department. Worried about potential bank robbers, Police Lieutenant Travis issued an all points bulletin on the tourists. He warned that they should be considered “armed and dangerous.” Later, Travis heard from the FBI that one of the men had been convicted of “some type of perjury” under Title 26 of the US Code. Having never heard of Title 26, Travis went to the library where he learned that it was the federal tax code.

Meanwhile, New York State Troopers spotted the van, surrounded it, and - with weapons drawn- arrested the tourists. They handcuffed them, threw them into the back of the patrol car, and hauled them and their rabbit’s head back to the Enchanted Mountains. There, the local police interrogated them for two and a half hours. At the conclusion of the “interview,” they had a good laugh and released the men. To the Easter Bunny, however, this was no laughing matter. The tourists sued the county and its officers, claiming that police had violated their civil rights.

The court said the police had no reason to arrest the tourists. No bank had been robbed. Nor had anyone attempted to rob a bank. True, the men had “looked around,” but they were tourists and that’s what tourists do. Looking around isn’t illegal, nor is wearing a fake rabbit head. The court said, “It is hard to imagine why a true potential bank robber would don such a bizarre, attention-grabbing mask” if he were about to rob a bank. The judge noted that when robbing a bank, “stealth is preferred.”

Clearly this judge hadn’t seen the 1991 movie Point Break featuring robbers who wore Nixon masks. How inconspicuous is a Nixon mask? Moreover, at least one of the tourists owed a lot of money to the IRS. He probably needed some quick cash. Yet, the judge ruled that the Rascally Rabbit and his friend could take their claims to the jury.

There are many questions left unanswered by this case. If they weren’t going to rob a bank, why were these guys driving around with a giant fake rabbit’s head in their van? Where was the rest of the costume? Also, the entire episode was triggered by a child wearing her “Easter” dress. But April 23, 1992, was the week after Easter. Why was the child so dressed up? Who wears a rabbit costume a week after Easter? I may have discovered the answers to these questions.

In addition to its natural beauty, Cattaraugus County is famous for its annual Pond Skimming Party. In the frigid spring weather, locals don various costumes, enjoy the Margarita Bar, and try to ski down a snowy hill fast enough for the momentum to carry them across a watery pond without sinking. In photos from last year’s event, I saw a few costumed kids racing downhill in the snow and falling into the freezing water. This may explain the Easter dress. (Apparently, the county has no Child Protective Services agency.) I didn’t see any rabbit costumes in the photos. Perhaps the Easter Bunny no longer comes to Cattaraugus County. My favorites were the three men in togas wearing Mardi Gras beads and huge feathery masks. It must have been impressive to watch them hit the water. Togas, feathers and beads probably went flying everywhere.

For some reason, no one told the court about the Pond Skimming Party. Had the officers mentioned it, they would have had even less reason to have arrested the tourists. They had argued that wearing a rabbit costume was suspicious and warranted the arrest. However, wearing a costume during pond skimming season is not suspicious at all. Had the tourists mentioned the party, they would have had to explain why they only had the rabbit’s head. Perhaps the rest of the costume is in the bottom of the pond along with the togas that didn’t make it across. Maybe driving after drinking Margaritas would have been a probation violation. We’ll never know.

From what I can tell, the case eventually settled out of court. The Pond Skimming Party continues to be a popular annual event in the Enchanted Mountains. But if you go, leave the rabbit costume at home. The Easter bunny is no longer welcome in Cattaraugus County.

Leprechauns and the Law - The Last Laugh

The European Union recently enacted a law protecting leprechauns. To appreciate this law and it impact, it’s important to learn about leprechauns. Perhaps the best source of information is a poem by Robert Dwyer Joyce. He tells of an Irish man who hears a “tick tack tic” one moonlit night. He follows the sound to a “shady nook” and spies a leprechaun. The little man is wearing a “scarlet coat and cap of green.” He has a jug of mountain dew by his side. He’s working away cobbling a tiny fairy dancing shoe. There is mischief in his face and a twinkle in his eye. The poet warns us that as the man laughed to think of catching the little fairy and his pot of gold, “the fairy was laughing too.” The man grabs the leprechaun and demands his gold. The fairy tells him that his purse is “in her hand”- “the lady by your side.” The man turns to see the lady and the leprechaun disappears. As every skilled leprechaun hunter knows, if you take your eyes off the leprechaun even for an instant, he will disappear. Joyce tells us that the man laughed “to think what a fool” he’d been. Joyce says “the fairy was laughing, too.”

But aren’t leprechauns the stuff of folklore? We know that the European lawmakers think they’re real. But what do our American courts tell us about leprechauns? This is what I found:
1. Leprechauns are very creative. In a contract dispute, one judge ruled that “It would require the imagination of a leprechaun to” interpret the contract to cover the situation before the court.
2. We love leprechauns. In a lawsuit over lawn ornaments, a judge noted that leprechauns “evoke feelings – positive, warm feelings in all but the most grumpy.”
3. Humans often hunt leprechauns looking for easy money. One judge cautioned against courts that create new grounds for lawsuits. He said such courts “invite parties and their lawyers to stalk lawsuits as if they were leprechauns.”
4. Leprechauns can disappear quickly. One lady suing for sexual harassment claimed that her employer sniffed her all over and then “ran off like a little leprechaun” with a “smirk on his face.”
5. Seeing a leprechaun may be a sign of dementia. In one competency hearing, the court decided that an older lady who saw leprechauns in her hospital room was incompetent. She tried to explain away the leprechaun vision by saying that the leprechaun was really a priest wearing a pointy hat who came to help her to the bathroom. I was buying her story until she mentioned the physician who did cartwheels over her bed as he explained her insurance benefits. We all know that doctors know nothing about health insurance.
6. Unfortunately, some evil doers have latched onto the leprechaun image. One court tells of a gang in Nevada whose members wear leprechaun tattoos. The state argued that the defendant’s wearing of the tattoo was evidence of his gang membership.
7. In prison, a “leprechaun” is a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who doesn’t wear tattoos. (These guys must have heard about the Nevada gang case.)
8. Another case involved a deputy who identified a small green pill as the drug “ecstasy” when he saw it on a suspect. He admitted that ecstasy pills usually have a leprechaun image stamped on them, but since the pill was green, he felt justified in seizing the pill even though it had no leprechaun stamp.
By the way, the lab confirmed the deputy’s suspicions - it was an ecstasy pill.

The people of Carlingford, Ireland, sponsored the European law protecting leprechauns. Claiming that their community is full of leprechauns, they sponsor annual leprechaun hunts for tourists. To give their claim more credibility, they lobbied to have their lands classified as a “Special Protection Area” under the “Birds Directive” laws of 1979. The lawmakers obliged and enacted a provision protecting the “flora, fauna” and “little people” of Carlingford.

Once again, the leprechauns have had the last laugh. The new law requires Carlingford to post signs in the area stating that “Hunters will be Prosecuted.” And, anyone who engages in “potentially damaging operations” to the “resting places” of the leprechauns will be prosecuted.

From what I can determine, British courts impose strict liability against anyone who “damages” the protected areas. So, if you show up, pay 5 Euro for your hunting license, and go trooping about the area looking for leprechauns, any incidental damage to the area resulting from your search is a violation of the law even if you didn’t intend to cause damage. A cautious tourist would be well advised by his legal counsel to avoid the leprechaun hunt. At least the little folk of Carlingford can rest easy now that they are legally protected! I ask you, who’s laughing now?