KCLL Klues: Washington State Legal Research

A heads up to all our patrons that the law library at the Maleng Regional Justice Center (MRJC) will be closed all day on Monday, September 15 for building-wide staff training.  Regular MRJC users should note that the third and fourth floors will be closed to the public.  Floors G, 1 & 2 will be open.  This includes the clerk’s offices for King County District and Superior Courts.  The Seattle library will be open regular hours with normal services.

The Seattle and MRJC libraries will both be closed all day on Friday, September 19 for staff in-service.  During this time, the staff will be attending training and performing other duties that require our operations to be closed to the public. A book drop will be available outside the Seattle library doors. Books normally due on Friday, September 19 will be due on Monday, September 22. Chat, email, and telephone reference will not be available.  Other county departments will not be affected.

The Seattle Times is reporting today that a Lane County, Oregon presiding judge sent out the sheriff to the streets to round up jurors for three pending cases.  The court had an unusually large number of criminal trials, along with an unusually high number of no-shows for jury duty forcing the extraordinary action.  Washington law provides for the selection of additional jurors, but it isn’t as broad as the Oregon statute. 

The Library Catalog will be down for planned maintenance from 10pm on Friday (August 29) through early Sunday morning. 

The Law Library has just received a 2 DVD set from the American Bar Association that promises to “bring out the best qualities in your witnesses during their depositions and testimony”.  One DVD is exclusively for preparing your witness for deposition; the other for trial.  Both are accompanied by a booklet that summarizes the three major points of being a good witness:  listen, think and answer.  For more information you can link to the ABA’s site.

In one of the blogs I regularly read, BoleyBlogs, a legal research blog for law students at Lewis and Clark Law School’s Boley Law Library, they mentioned an article written by Orin S. Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School. This article is titled “How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students,” published in 11 Green Bag 51-63 (2007). You can find the article at the Social Science Research Network.

While written for first year law students, this is a great guide to understanding what a court case opinion is and what it contains. If you do not know much about written opinions from the court, this is a place to start.

Here at KCLL, we frequently get questions about the name change process.  There’s an excellent general FAQ about name change at a web site hosted by Nolo.  Nolo is a publishing company in Berkeley, California that specializes in affordable self-help legal materials.  Our staff has also created a Name Change Research Guide aimed at Washington State residents you should review for information specific to our state.

On July 28th the Seattle City Council passed a new ordinance that will require a “green fee” for disposable shopping bags used by convenience stores, drug stores and grocery stores in Seattle. The stores will charge 20 cents for each bag. The ordinance goes into effect on January 1, 2009. Mayor Nickles put out a press release praising its passage. Here is a brief summary of the ordinance, along with a link to the complete text, if you would like to know more.

Ord. 122752
C.B. 116251
AN ORDINANCE relating to the City of Seattle’s solid waste system, establishing an advanced recovery fee (a green fee) for disposable shopping bags, providing a deduction for the green fee from the City’s business license tax, creating two new positions, and amending Seattle Municipal Code Chapters 21.36, 21.40, and 5.45.

The Mayor’s Office also has a page describing the initial push to pass this bring your own bag legislation.

If you want to search for information on new legislation, just use our library local links to the City of Seattle, or directly to the Seattle City Clerk’s Office. And remember that we have links to the Seattle Municipal Code, if you need to find out more about the current laws in our city.

     Westlaw has a great feature that makes it easy for you to narrow the results of any search quickly and effectively.  It’s called Locate and is available through a link called Locate in Result.  Once you’ve run a search, this link appears near the top of your search results screen.  Click on it and you’ll see a dialogue box called Locate Search Terms.  Now you have the opportunity to add additional terms or phrases, text from other recent searches, date restrictions and document field restrictions.  Choose the options you want to add and click on the Locate button.  These additional criteria are applied to your original results list, narrowing it and helping you identify just the documents you want.  Not satisfied with this new results list?  Simply click on the link called Cancel Locate and you’ll be returned to your original results list.

When I received my latest telephone directory I remarked about its size, or lack of size. I teach a class on Skip tracing and public sleuthing and noticed that finding telephone numbers is getting more difficult. Yesterday I read the preliminary National Health Interview Survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, which indicates that by the end of 2007, nearly one out of every six US homes had only a cell phone. In addition, even in those homes that had both landlines and cell phones, one out of eight received most calls via cell phone.

This switch from landlines to cell phones will continue to accelerate, and as it does it makes finding a telephone number for an individual a challenge. Thus far, there is no cell phone directory, and a big push not to publish one. Some public record information providers claim they can find these cell phone numbers for you, but this will not work well until most people use only their cell phone number when registering for services.

Volume 29 of Thomson-West’s Washington Practice is a relatively new addition to and often overlooked piece in this indispensible research series.  Titled Elements of an Action, it provides a concise analysis of the litigation elements for a variety of common and not-so-common topics including dog bite cases, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution, nuisance, and dram shop liability.  Each chapter follows a common outline that includes information about authority, time limitations, remedies, defenses, and counterclaims.  Each chapter also includes sample trial documents and other related forms.

Elements of an Action has become a valuable addition to KCLL’s tort law materials and is a research gem you shouldn’t overlook.