Saturday, December 24, 2005

Just like a politician

While in Consumer Transactions this semester, we saw a couple examples of careful draftmanship of bills/laws to ensure they don't apply to the wrong people (i.e. lawyers). A good example of this is the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which allows for recovery of damages for misleading statements, yet precludes recovery for anything that is opinion of a person providing professional services, such as a doctor, lawyer, or architect.

Now remember that as you read about the Attorney General in Florida, who passed a law against spam, and now is facing accusations that his campaign might include spam. It appears Charlie Crist, who had defended the new law, and who is now a gubernatorial candidate has been sending unwanted e-mails to residents of the state in his zeal for campaigning. One man had asked repeatedly to be removed from the e-mail list, which he didn't know how he got on.

His defense is that this isn't spam, according to his campaign spokesperson. "This is truthful, it's straight forward. We're honest. TO be spam it has to be, under Florida law, defined as being deceptive. The attorney general (Crist) does not consider this spam and is, as you know, at the forefront of protecting citizens against that."

Now, I have a problem with that affirmative defense, in that it charges that they are truthful. They are politicians campaigning for office. Need I say more?

1 comment:

Bookworm said...

Oh, you cynic! I hope that cynicism didn't leak into your Christmas. I suspect not. I know it's a bit late, but I still want to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas.