The Meadow Report

I recently had the honor of attending Tony Robbins' Date With Destiny in Scottsdale. I've been a few times before, of course, but this time was a little different. Robbins presented some new content, that, well, just makes alot of sense and is also pretty amusing. At least to me...

Back in the day, we were all part of hunter-gatherer societies. The men were the hunters, the women were the gatherers. Men generally went out with a spear, or a club, took care of business, and drug the carcass back to the cave, and were done. Someone else dealt with it then. So men are wired to go out, solve a problem, take care of business, and be done. We do lots of things that way.

Women, being the gatherers, would go out into the meadows, find the ripe berries, roots, leaves, whatever, and bring them back to the cave. But then they also needed to share the information about where the berries were located with the other gatherers in the tribe; "Go out to the second meadow past the stream, by the big rock, and then there is this bush, about 30 paces past the little ant hill, and then you want the berries from the bush on the left, not the right, and be sure to get the ones that are just the right shade of red ..." you get the idea.

So women are wired to go out and observe all sorts of things, and make sure they have every detail, and then bring the information back and share it with everyone.

In both cases, high degrees of each skill, male and female, related directly to the prosperity, and even survival, of the clan. The best hunters, the best gatherers, led to the strongest and most successful tribes. So, ladies and gents, we are genetically wired to be this way. Men are not hairy women, and women are not hairless men who can multitask. We are very different.

What does this mean -- how can this information be useful today?

Gentlemen, how often does your woman come home and want to share every ridiculous detail of what she went through to find a parking place at the mall? And ladies, how often does your man communicate with you in monosyllables, how often, when you want to tell a story, is he searching for some point to it, when you have none? And how often does he yearn to just fix some problem you have? That's what we do: Women give meadow reports and men want to fix problems.

Gentlemen, two things: The Meadow Report does not have any point; and, she doesn't care whether you remember it or not. She needs to share it with you. You must listen to it, but she expects no action from you as a result (usually -- your mileage may vary).

Ladies, we men sometimes forget that you are delivering a Meadow Report and we will try, in vain, to solve some problem we perceive you have; understand it is how we are wired. We are here to solve problems, break through, and have peace. We are not designed to listen. Your survival depended on listening and sharing; our survival depended on hunting down and killing things.

The vestiges of these behaviors still affect us today. Understanding a little more of why we do what we do (thank you Tony Robbins) can help us live happier, more understanding lives.

--PLH

Lis Pendens Sanction Illumination

On December 15, 2009, the Arizona Court of Appeals published its opinion in Lebaron Properties, LLC v. Kaufman, which sheds new light on statutory sanctions and that may presage the final outcome in the pending appellate matter of Galeb-Miller Development v. Markham Contracting, mentioned in two previous blog posts. The briefest summary of the facts pertinent to the disposition of this most recent appeal is this: Kaufman, a Scottsdale attorney, represented five defendants in a lawsuit over a busted realty contract. Before filing an answer and counterclaim on behalf of his defending clients (a violation of the Court of Appeals “choate claim” rule established in Santa Fe v. Bartschi discussed elsewhere on this blog), and, apparently without consulting the defendants, Kaufman filed a lis pendens describing the busted-contract land in the Maricopa County Records, and then refused to quash it upon demand from Lebaron.

Lebaron sued under A.R.S. §33-420, seeking $25 thousand in damages since Kaufman represented five defendants in the dispute – the statutory threshold $5 thousand per violation, multiplied by five. The trial judge found that only Kaufman was “to blame,” as there was no evidence that the defendants were in league with the attorney in his decision to file the lis pendens. Nonetheless, the trial judge interpreted the statute to mean that 5 defendants X $5,000 per “violation” entitled Lebaron to $25,000 in statutory damages. Kaufman appealed.

The Court of Appeals disposed of the argument that everyone named in the caption of the lawsuit leading to the lis pendens is per se a “violator”; it cited to the statutory language that a violator must be, at some level, a person “who causes” the filing, meaning an active participant in the lis pendens filing, at least to the extent of knowing (or having reason to know) of one’s attorney’s intended recording of the lien against the other camp’s property. In short, merely being a party to a lawsuit that precipitated the lis pendens lien is not, alone, a sufficient showing of a principal’s scienter (intent or knowledge of wrongdoing). So the Court reasoned that 1 X 1 X 1=1 (single violator, single instrument recorded, single landowner means only one statutory damages award is appropriate).

Hmm. If that’s going to be the Court of Appeal’s perspective, then how will that view affect the Motion for Reconsideration now before another panel of that court in the long-running saga of Galeb-Miller Development v. Markham Contracting? I notice that one of the parties filed a “Supplemental Citation of Authority” with the Court of Appeals on December 18, three days after Kaufman’s slip opinion was issued. I’m guessing that the party doing that filing is reminding the court that the conservative approach – dictated by “episodes” of groundless filing, instead of numbers of lien instruments recorded by the wrongdoer – should determine the size of the statutory damages. (See the August 17th post here for further details.) In other words, your honors if a number of groundless liens contemporaneously are recorded, kindly ignore that, so long as it’s all part of the same episode of groundless liens being impressed against the land of a single owner.

--MNW