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    Wisconsin Lawyer
    March 01, 2000

    Wisconsin Lawyer March 2000: Book Reviews

     

    Wisconsin Lawyer: March 2000

    Vol. 73, No. 3, March 2000

    Book Reviews


    This Month's Featured Selections


    Easements Wisconsin Law of Easements

    By Jesse S. Ishikawa
    (Madison, WI: State Bar CLE Books, 1999).
    185 pgs. $45.

    Reviewed by Clarence W. Malick

    Order It Online Now!

    Some books that begin with definitions never escape tedium, but not this one. I was fascinated and read through it in a single sitting. Of course, the seven chapters of actual text total just 73 pages. Still, I recall being befuddled after studying the topic back in law school. The subject is not trivial. Mr. Ishikawa has packaged clarity with interest.

    Chapter 1 begins with the author's definition of an easement: "a nonpossessory interest in land that gives the holder the right to use land owned by another for a specific use and without profit." The author then dissects each phrase, contrasts legal constructs which are not easements, and explicates the concepts of benefit versus burden and easements appurtenant versus easements in gross.

    Chapter 2 explains different ways that easements come into being - by deed, implication, necessity, prescription, and so on. Chapter 3 summarizes the rules of construction. Chapter 4 contains excellent drafting tips and refers to examples in the appendices. Chapter 5 discusses amendment and termination of easements. Chapter 6 discusses enforcement. Chapter 7 discusses how and why to use an owners' association to manage an easement that serves several owners.

    Organized in the manner of CLE books, this six-by-nine inch, paperbound book contains a six-page table of contents and five-page index that cite to section numbers. The first appendix reprints statutes. The other seven appendices are examples of typical easement documents. They are reproduced on a disk, which installed easily. The forms opened readily for me in WordPerfect 6.1, but the screen characters were truncated slightly in Word 97.

    Certainly anyone who styles himself or herself a real estate lawyer should own this book. Those who regularly draft or review utility easements, condominium declarations, and subdivision covenants ought to at least read it.

    Clarence W. "Buck" Malick, Harvard 1971, is the executive director of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Boundary Area Commission. He also practices in estate planning and real estate in Hudson Township.

    Leaving the Bench:
    Supreme Court Justices At the End

    By David N. Atkinson
    (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999).
    248 pgs. $29.95.

    Reviewed by Michael B. Brennan

    When a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court leaves the bench can be as controversial as that justice's appointment. Leaving the Bench: Supreme Court Justices at the End describes when and how justices left the Court. It also considers the various reasons why justices left the office, including personal pride, party loyalty, and pensions. The book describes the physical and mental impairments of various justices in their last days, and the consequent impact on the Court's work. It also explores less obvious reasons for departing, including the threat of impeachment, ambition for another office, dissatisfaction or weariness with the work, and family pressure. This thin volume offers glimpses into the deaths, retirements, and resignations of each of the justices who have left the Court.

    The most interesting portions of Leaving the Bench are anecdotes about the departure of each justice. Chief Justice John Marshall died in office. In tolling his death, the Liberty Bell cracked, dramatically symbolizing the end of his contributions to our nation. Circuit riding duties actually killed certain justices. Justice Stephen Field held on through declining mental health and a game leg to break Chief Justice Marshall's longevity record on the Court. The other justices asked a mentally impaired Justice Joseph McKenna to retire. He relented eventually, but not before the Court had decided one year earlier that no case would be decided upon his vote. Even august Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was, at the age of 90, urged to resign by his colleagues. He did so, gracefully and at once.

    The book offers more details in the departures of more recent justices. Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone appeared healthy when he and his colleagues ascended the bench in April 1946 to deliver opinions. When it was his turn to deliver his opinions, though, there was silence. Justice Hugo Black quickly adjourned the Court, and he and Justice Stanley Reed carried the Chief Justice off of the bench. As Stone lay muttering incoherently, the Court reconvened quickly to issue the opinions that had been decided. "No one can cast a dead man's vote; the day's business could be concluded only while Stone still lived." He died three hours later. Justice Charles Whittaker left the Court after only five terms due to a nervous breakdown. His struggles with the issue of reapportionment in Baker v. Carr allegedly precipitated his final collapse. Justice William O. Douglas's infamous physical and mental deterioration are detailed. The rest of the Court, over Justice Byron White's written protest, would not allow Douglas's vote to decide any important issue in his last years. Also described are Justice Thurgood Marshall's final years before retirement, notwithstanding his oft-repeated refrain of "I have been appointed for a life term, and I intend to serve it."

    The author suggests certain reforms to prevent unseemly departures from the Court. The Court should be more forthcoming about the justices' health. Further, it should limit the influence of law clerks; the author believes their large role in the Court's work harms the institutional integrity of the Court's decisionmaking by propping up ill justices. Individual justices also should be sufficiently self-aware to leave the Court while still in good health.

    The strength of Leaving the Bench is not as a polemical work, however. Amending the Constitution to mandate a retirement age for the justices - one reform considered in the book - would only further politicize the Court as an institution. The book's strength is its historical detail and wealth of information about the justices. Ultimately, there is nothing other justices can do to remove a physically or mentally impaired colleague who is not amenable to peer group pressure and who has remained in office too long.

    Such is the price to pay for lifetime tenure, which, along with salary protection, aims to ensure judicial independence, essential to the maintenance of judicial review, a guarantor of the continuing integrity of constitutional freedoms.

    Michael B. Brennan, Northwestern 1989, is a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge.

    Emergency Vehicle Accidents,
    Prevention & Reconstruction

    By Stephen S. Solomon
    (Tucson, AZ: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Co., 1999).
    304 pgs. $79.

    Reviewed by Dennis Verhaagh

    In their practices, personal injury lawyers occasionally and municipal lawyers frequently encounter accidents involving emergency vehicles. For the lawyer or engineer investigating such accidents, Emergency Vehicle Accidents is a good source of case law, technical insight, vehicle specifications, and industry standards.

    The author is an optometrist and consultant on issues of visual perception. From that perspective, he devotes chapters to perception of emergency signals, both visual and audible, accident reconstruction, and case examples. Contributing authors devote chapters to the legalities involved in police chases, the defense of governmental immunity, and the responsibilities of emergency medical personnel. The last half of the book contains appendices setting forth federal specifications for emergency vehicles. The citations on governmental liability in police chases are worth the book's price.

    Given the nature of emergency vehicles, speed and lookout usually are principal contributing causes of their accidents. The author provides the usual skid mark charts to estimate speed. However, photogrammetric reconstruction and video reenactment are the new tools of the reconstructionist, and the text would have benefited greatly if a chapter had been devoted to their uses as visual aids for the jury on the issue of lookout. Nevertheless, I would recommend the book to any lawyer for discovery purposes when litigating these cases.

    Dennis Verhaagh, Minnesota 1972, practices patent law in Green Bay. He is an environmental engineer with the Wisconsin DNR and has testified as an accident reconstruction engineer in both criminal and civil cases.

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