I think the Mayo Clinic should work on the epistemological training of its urologists, should any philosophers want to take up penises as a topic.

Properly philosophically-trained urologists should always focus on the Dong an Sich.

Also, anybody who can talk men into walking into an apartment and paying somebody to put a needle into their penis should teach rhetoric somewhere.

Unless it's just a New Jersey thing.

Ironically, we can never experience the Dong an Sich because our intuition is receptive.

ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE!

paying somebody to put a needle into their penis

Seriously, why pay somebody?

Because outdated television is the most important thing in my life right now, I misread "Justin Street" as "Jason Street" and got penile silicone shots confused with embryonic shark cell injections. (By the way, that's only about the fourth or fifth dumbest plotline this season, after IKWYDLS and "why are Tami and Julie still in Dillon anyway?," and waaay after the clearly-unhinged-but-irrepressibly-sexy Latina domestic help. /complaining about FNL)

7: He didn't pay for insertion.

I misread "Justin Street" as "Jason Street" and got penile silicone shots confused with embryonic shark cell injections.

The QB who gets paralyzed in the pilot episode of FNL is the same guy who does embryonic shark cell injections?

He just rammed a needle into his penis until the pain became unbearable. Completely unremarkable.

11: Actually, apo was advocating for free universal health care.

9: Exactly. Insert it yourself and save your money for the removal.

11: I will continue to ram this needle into my penis until the nation gets universal coverage. We'll see who's more dedicated: me or Congress.

13: Who are you and what have you done with apo?

In a way, the founders thought of Congress as a needle rammed in America's penis.

14: That could really move the needle of public opinion.

Or maybe just of pubic pinion, it's hard to tell.

Aaaaugh, somebody get me to Canada already!

16: See? Everything IS beautiful, in its own way.

18: Not specifying which nation you were referring to in 14 was a clever move. Well played!

George Washington's Congress had, like, thirty goddamned Senators.

It's like cold fusion.

Mitt Romney believes in it?

OT question for the lawyers:

So I'm editing an answer for a line attorney. And the complaint alleges that plaintiff did something wrong because some unnamed representative of my client told him to on some unspecified (no date, manner of communication, identified individual) occasion. We have no record of this interaction, and the advice plaintiff reports having been given would be contrary to our policy and makes no sense at all.

The line attorney denied knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief, on the grounds that hey, we're a huge organization, and we can't know that something didn't happen. I changed it to a flat denial: while I see the line attorney's point that we don't know with absolute certainty that it didn't happen -- plaintiff could have called our offices and spoken to someone who happened to be insane -- we have no reason at all to think it did happen, good reason to think it didn't, and you don't need absolute certainty to deny something in an answer, just a good-faith belief.

I'm not being overly cavalier, am I? I hate having superiors override me when I'm being cautious, but this seems like serious overcaution on the line attorney's part to me.

11: He just rammed a needle into his penis until the pain became unbearable. Completely unremarkable.

I once met a man who had inserted his own amphalang. Or Prince Albert. Or something like that. I didn't ask to see. He said it was pretty much like you'd expect. 7 seconds to push the needle all the way through and lots of blood.

23: How far did the plaintiff stick the needle into his penis?

LB, I personally would go with the more cautious answer, but that's why I'm not a manager. Any cockamamie thing is possible, and without evidence it would seem difficult to be absolute, but then I have no idea of the stakes here.

I don't think I'm overly cautious about these things, but since under FRCP 8 denying information sufficient to form a belief has the effect of a denial, and you can certainly in good faith say that you lack sufficient information, I see little upside to issuing a flat denial and a mild downside if some of the allegations turn out to be true (eg, if he did talk to someone at your client, but the conversation didn't go as alleged). Just an initial off the cuff take without much thought or research.

If the denial of information sufficient to form a belief has the effect of a denial, then how can a denial (which has the effect of a denial of information sufficient to form a belief) have a downside and a denial of information sufficient to form a belief not?

If some of the allegations do turn out to be true (eg if a conversation did happen, but didn't go as alleged) and you want to structure your defense around that, you'd then have to amend your answer from "deny" to "admit" which is at a minimum embarrassing and carries a (very small) risk that a Court would find that you're estopped from changing your answer.

"Effect of a denial" means that you havent admitted something as true by saying you lack sufficient information, so the plaintiff can't use the answer to narrow the facts or issues in the case.

Generally this doesn't come up and answers don't matter unless you screw up in a big way, the most common of which is asserting an affirmative defense. Some judges get mad about them though

Asserting sb failing to assert. I give up now.

The only concrete consequence of a denial is that if you don't deny or DKI, you admit. The reason for denying rather than DKIing is that it's a core issue -- we took action based on plaintiff's wrongdoing, which would be capricious of us if we'd told him to do that. Saying that we don't know it happened but we don't know it didn't, which is the effect of a DKI, looks problematic in that context. And we do have pretty good reason to believe it didn't happen -- it's something that no one doing their job properly would have said, and that would be an unlikely and unmotivated error.

I've always understood that a good reason to believe the truth of a denial is enough, and that metaphysical certainty isn't required, but the line attorney's squeamishness is worrying me.

I mean I don't think it's Rule 11 sanctionable or anything to flat deny, based on what you've said. I'd just worry about the downside of having to amend the answer and changing "denies" to "admit" vs the upside of pleading the flat denial.

33

... but the line attorney's squeamishness is worrying me.

Is it possible that this is because he knows (or suspects) that it (or something sort of like it) actually did happen?

29.1 doesn't seem that likely to be a problem (at least under federal practice, I have the general impression LB usually practices in state court) since if the conversation did happen but didn't go as alleged then a flat denial would be appropriate as to the allegation as a whole and wouldn't have to be changed. Also, 23 sounds like a good-faith basis for a denial to me.

since if the conversation did happen but didn't go as alleged then a flat denial would be appropriate as to the allegation as a whole

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how things are alleged. That's one of the things I'd look at.

23 sounds like a good-faith basis for a denial to me.

Yes, I agree there.

A good faith basis for denial is my life goal.

God civil law is such a cluster. You should be able to respond with "it's incumbent on you to provide evidence for your claim, fuckhead".

Is it practicable to survey the population of employees who might have interacted with the plaintiff? As in, send a privileged email with the bare minimum of information about the plaintiff to all the customer service reps or whatever and say "anyone who has recollection of interacting with this person reply to legal", and then use the absence of responses to justify the good faith belief in the event it becomes an issue? I'm analogizing (banned!) from our Sarbanes Oxley compliance process, where we get an email every quarter asking us to speak up if we are aware of any material omissions or misrepresentations in the financial reports.

Not really. That is, we've spoken to everyone who had any reason to talk to him -- the metaphysical doubt rests on the possibility that he somehow called someone completely random and got insane advice. There's no population short of every employee to survey.

I've decided to stop worrying about this -- the line attorney rattled me by being concerned, but I confirmed that he hasn't got any reason for the concern other than 'you can't prove a negative'.

37: That's really what DKI is -- "I dunno, but unless you can prove it you don't either".

23, 33: It sounds like an in person, informal, unrecorded, unscheduled conversation is in order.

41: That conversation had happened, and it's not an issue. It has been firmly established that the only basis for the line attorney's concern is "How can we know for absolutely certain that this guy didn't somehow make contact with one of our thousands of employees and get told something insane?" No actual reason to believe that it did happen beyond plaintiff's allegation.