Fwd: Legal rights while wearing a bunny outfit

Subject: Fwd: Legal rights while wearing a bunny outfit
From: Gwen Gall <ggall -at- CA -dot- ORACLE -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 1994 17:11:00 EST

O.K. one more before I log out for the Season. See you all on the 'net next
week!


Cheers,

Gwen (ggall -at- ca -dot- oracle -dot- com)
Oracle MultiDimension

"Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and
nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes




---- Included Message ----

Received: 12-22-94 16:06 Sent: 12-22-94 11:26
From: OO4US1:TROBERTS.US.ORACLE.COM
To: GVT
Subject: Fwd: Legal rights while wearing a bunny outfit

For those of you who are thinking of Dressing up as Santa, this may apply ...

Tim Robertson
Senior Technical Staff
ORACLE Corporation
Government Products Division
@3OP,510 415/506-2464
____________________________________________________________________________
"Space: is big. Really Big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,
mind-bogglingly big it is."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.




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Received: 12-19-94 17:26 Sent: 12-19-94 17:26
From: OO4US1:BWADDING.US.ORACLE.COM
To: here there
Subject: Fwd: Legal rights while wearing a bunny outfit



*****************************************************************************
William H. Waddington Oracle Corp. bwadding -at- us -dot- oracle -dot- com
SQL Execution Group (415)506-3988
Server Technologies Division Redwood Shores, CA Location 400 OP 1368
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"There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way
is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."

C. A. R. Hoare, "The Emperor's Old Clothes", CACM Feb. 1981




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Received: 12-19-94 15:27 Sent: 12-19-94 15:24
From: OO4US1:WNEE.US.ORACLE.COM
To: pge_Trek,bwadding
Subject: Fwd: Legal rights while wearing a bunny outfit




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Received: 12-19-94 12:29 Sent: 12-19-94 11:40
From: OO4US1:BBLATTER.US.ORACLE.COM
To: humor
Subject: Legal rights while wearing a bunny outfit

--------<forwards deleted>----------------
DAVE BARRY

Like most people, you probably often ask yourself: "What, exactly, are my
legal rights if I am wearing a bunny outfit?"
The answer, you will be relieved to learn, is: "It depends."
To understand why this is, let us first consider a 22-page legal decision
filed in October by US District Judge David G. Larimer and sent to me by
alert attorney James G. Vazzana of Rochester, New York. Here, according to
Judge Larimer's decision, are the Facts of the Case (and I want to stress
that I am not making ANY of this up):
On April 23 1992, Timothy Wagner and John Payment were travelling on
holiday through western New York state. They stopped their van in a
Cattaraugus County town called Randolph to eat breakfast, and they noticed
a little girl in the restaurant. This, according to Judge Larimer, gave
them an idea:
"The men decided it would be a treat for the girl if one of them went to
the van, put on the Easter Bunny mask and walked to the window of the
restaurant to surprise the girl."
It seems that Wagner and Payment were travelling with (Why not?) a large
papier-mache bunny head. Each time they entered a new county, one of them
would put on the bunny head and pose for a photograph next to the county
sign on the roadside. (Judge Larimer notes that "They also had a
seven-foot stuffed dog in the van which apparently also posed for some of
these roadside pictures.")
So Payment got the bunny head out of the van, put it on and waved into the
restaurant window until the little girl saw him. Then he put the bunny
head away and went back to finish his breakfast.
In some towns, Wagner and Payment might have got away with this. But
Randolph is not "some towns." Several alert citizens observed the Easter
Bunny; they thought that it might have been looking into the windows of
local banks. So a bank employee called the Cattaraugus County Sheriff's
Department, which sent two officers to Randolph to investigate.
By then Wagner and Payment had left town, but one of the officers, Lt.
Ernie Travis, was able to trace Wagner's van from its licence plate; he
learned that Wagner had a criminal conviction (which later turned out to
be related to income-tax-evasion charges).
So here was the situation:
1. Two strangers had been hanging around Randolph, and one of them had
been
wearing a bunny head in a possibly suspicious manner.
2. One of the men had been convicted of something. 3. There were banks
around.
Lt. Travis, according to a deposition he gave later, as summarised by
Judge Larimer, concluded that "the men were bank robbers." So he issued an
All Points Bulletin to apprehend the suspects, who were described as
"armed and dangerous."
Wagner and Payment were arrested at gunpoint by state police, handcuffed,
and returned to Cattaraugus County. There the bank-robbery case against
them -- which up to that point probably looked airtight -- began to fall
apart. For one thing, as Judge Larimer noted in his decision, no actual
bank had been robbed. Also, Payment and Wagner did not flee, nor were they
armed (unless you count the stuffed dog). Also, as the judge pointed out,
robbers casing a bank probably would not wear a 60cm-high bunny head
featuring "enormous pink ears."
"Generally," observed the judge, "stealth is preferred when engaging in
such activity."
So after a couple of hours in custody, Wagner and Payment were released,
and everybody had a good laugh, and then Wagner and Payment sued for
$US2.1 million ($A2.73 million). Judge Larimer ruled that Lt. Travis acted
improperly, and a jury will determine what the damages are.
This case reaffirms our fundamental right -- not specifically mentioned in
the Constitution, but clearly on the minds of the Founding Fathers -- to
look into bank windows while wearing bunny outfits. But that does not mean
that we have carte blanche (literally, "hors d'oeuvres") to do whatever we
wish. I have here a November 3 Los Angeles Times story sent in by alert
reader Cathy Perlmutter, concerning a 35-year-old, 100kg man who dressed
as a "Samurai Bunny" for Halloween, meaning that he carried a wooden sword
and had (I am still not making any of this up) "a stuffed bunny on his
head." This man was arrested on suspicion of assault after he allegedly
almost whacked off another man's ear with his sword when the man asked if
he wasn't too old to be trick-or-treating.
So we see from these two cases that there is a "fine line" between legal
and illegal bunny-outfit conduct, and the distinctions become even more
blurred when we enter the arena of wearing giant chicken heads or (this
can be a legal nightmare) two-person horse suits. So in this or any other
legal matter, I strongly recommend that before you do anything, you pay a
qualified attorney to give you advice that neither you nor he really
understands. And make darned sure you register your stuffed dog.


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