What do this picture, most of my college experience, and 1L law school exams have in common?

We are taking a much needed break from studying - going on 15 hours today. We were actually in the study zone, as it were, until just a few minutes ago when our mind suddenly made a whole bunch of connections. Unfortunately, they have very little to do with our next exam. Fortunately (for you), they have everything to do with this blog.

First, a quick story from a few weeks back. As a lunch time special lecture, USC law school hosted two USC law alumns, Joe Rice and Ron Motley. Lest you think poorly of USC law, we present these two plaintiff's attorneys as evidence to the contrary. As our civil procedure prof later noted, Motley and Rice are, financially speaking, the two most successful attorneys in the history of the world. You read that last line correctly. Go Cocks.

These guys made a name for themselves as the brains behind the asbestos litigation, the tobacco company suits and the Bridgestone/Firestone tires rollover litigation (to name a few), and are now taking on litigation for the 9/11 victims, suing the Arab Bank for financing Hamas and Hezbollah, and a suit against an Arab Sheikh for kidnapping, human trafficking and child enslavement (essentially the thousands of kids that have been forced to become camel jockeys). You could call this an alternative form of counter terrorism - suck the financiers of terrorism dry. The pending litigation was the topic of their lecture. Oh, and if you're curious, you can read the amended complaint for the 9/11 suit - if we were you, we'd skip over the first 200 pages (all plaintiffs and defendants names) and get to the end of the complaint, where they list the damages...at $1 trillion dollars. Mmhmm, 1,000,000,000,000 dollars.

Connection number one. These guys are USC law alumni. We too will one day graduate from USC law. Rice's daughter is in our 1L class. One of our close friends here at school has a stepmom who is an attorney at Motley Rice. In the presentation, Joe Rice publicly ridiculed our buddy Blaine in front of the entire student body (Blaine graduated from Clemson and happened to wear a bright orange shirt that day). On more than one occasion we have publicly defamed Clempson, and while we love Blaine, we very much dislike tigers, especially of the orange and purple variety.

Story number two. In college, we lived in Manville. Not the small town near Myrtle Beach, but room 211 on Second South in Carter Hall. We had a huge green sign that hung in the hallway outside our door: <---- MANVILLE. Hence the name of this blog. And so much more...

Story number three. We are currently studying for our Torts exam. Our professor is internationally recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of products liability. Our exam will undoubtedly be 50% plus on products liability. Fortunately, our professor seems to enjoy history as much as we do, so a lot of this studying includes legal history and common law development.

Connection number two. Motley Rice is recognized as a leading firm in the field of products liability. Also, professor Owen is an exclusive bow tie wearer. We too wear bow ties.

Connection number three. One of the leading cases in the early history of products liability is Beshada v. Johns Manville Products Corp. It was an asbestos cases.

Story number four. Our professor has, on multiple occasions, referred to himself in the third person, as THE David G. Owen. We do not use the third person reference, but instead prefer the first person plural.

Connection number four. Did we mention Motley Rice did asbestos litigation? In fact, they did so much asbestos litigation, The American Lawyer dubbed Ron Motley as "The Man who took on Manville." Hey, we lived in Manville. And we're reading about asbestos and Johns Manville right now.

Connection number five. The picture above is a pic from college of Rob and us in front of the Johns-Manville sign at one of their plants in Tennessee. Oh, and the t-shirt we're wearing is one we got when we worked at Nexsen Pruet (one of the largest Defense law firms in SC).

Summary: I don't even know how to sum all of this up.

Lesson: there are a heck of a lot of things that are more exciting than studying for Torts, and somehow your brain will focus on those things rather than the studies at hand.

Connection addendum: A second major asbestos case was Anderson v. Owens-Corning. The USC law school is notoriously "infected" with asbestos (that's right, the building that we spend 10-14 hours a day inside, the same building where Motley and Rice earned their JD's so that they could sue the asbestos manufacturers). Certain sections of the building are sealed to keep the asbestos in. We hope to be a member of a class action suit one day. Owens-Corning, in addition to producing asbestos, also is a leading shingle manufacturer. MPC used to (and we presume still does) sell Owens Corning asphalt shingles. We have roofed several houses with Owens-Corning shingles.