Black cars

I've noticed that when there are a bunch of Lincoln limousines in front of the courthouse, and a bunch of lawyers in three-piece suits, there's certainly an out of town case being tried.

I've heard lawyers saying they like to bring urgent cases here because there's no waiting, juries are very pro-plaintiff and pro-DA, and because Diagon is such an out of the way place. (Diagon doesn't even show up on some maps.) Lawyers call it the "Kazoom Courtroom," when Judge Bean isn't around to hear.

NOBODY covers trials here, except sometimes the Diagon Daily, which is so small that its "press" is an inkjet printer. And I've noticed that all the judge or sheriff has to do is nod to the reporter, and he'll quietly close his notebook and drift out. Sometimes, even when he stays, there's no story in the Daily, even though there's never enough news to fill both sides of the page.

But nobody worries about me hanging around the court. I'm just a kid. They don't know I'm a blogger. (In fact, most of them don't even know what a blog is.) I plan to report on the cases that the Diagon Daily doesn't.

Just yesterday, passing the courthouse after school, I overheard one of the three-piece suits saying "Well, I guess we TRUMPED his little real estate deal! His lawyers really should have been here!" and they all laughed.

Last week there was a trademark infringement suit. Macrosoft sued Electrical Arts for infringing its Game® trademark. I only heard the preliminaries before I had to head back to school, but I heard later that they won, because no one showed up to argue EA's side of the case. Doesn't seem fair to me. Game is a pretty common English Word®; how can they claim it as a trademark?

I bet you never heard of either of these cases, right?