Maybe we have always been crazy as a nation

Long teaching story coming up.

I end the Discovery portion of Civ Pro by having the class argue the discovery issues in Coca Cola Bottling Co. v. Coca Cola. The case involved a contract dispute between a bottling company and Coca Cola following introduction of Diet Coke and New Coke; the bottler sought production of the formula for original Coca Cola, the court agreed and ordered production, and Coca Cola refused to comply with the order, resulting in sanctions. (Marcus, Redish, Sherman, Pfander included this as a note case--I repurposed it as an in-class hypo). I split the room in half, each representing one party. Many students highlight it as an especially fun class session.

Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast ends each episode with the line "Remember Zelmo Beatty" (Beatty is a Hall of Fame professional basketball player from the '60s and '70s, the "remember" thing is a riff on an old interview in which David Letterman asked Shaq about old-time players and Shaq admitted to not knowing who Beaty was). I stole the idea end each Civ Pro class session by telling the students to "Remember" someone who is in some obvious or non-obvious way relevant to something we did in class that day. Sometimes it is clear--David Souter on the day of Twiqbal or Milton Shadur on the day of his quixotic effort to get defendants to follow the damn rules in their responsive pleadings. Sometimes it is more obscure--Raymond James Donovan on the day of relation back, Tennessee Williams on the day of International Shoe, or Preston and Charlotte Grace on the day of tag jurisdiction Sometimes it is about the day rather than the course materials--Robert Briscoe (the Jewish former Lord Mayor of Dublin) yesterday. (I leave it to readers to figure all of these out). Once students overcome the initial confusion of why they are supposed to remember some random person, they have fun with it; at least one person does an end-of-semester creative project with pictures or biographical information on everyone they are supposed to remember.

Today we did the Coca Cola problem and I told them to remember Roberto Goizueta Cantera, the CEO of Coca Cola during the New Coke fiasco. Goizueta was born in Cuba, educated in the U.S., and worked for Coca Cola in Cuba before defecting after Castro came to power. Nevertheless, in the public blowback to New Coke, some people pointed out that he was Cuban and suggested that New Coke was a communist plot.

Thus the title of this post.