December 6, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 12/6, I distributed one handout, excerpts from the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure (regarding the Hawkins case brief and the Idnani case) and the Maine Rules of Evidence (regarding the Timmermann case). We first went over the issues in Hawkins, and I clarified what I thought the Court was doing: by ruling on the Rule 55(c) motion to set aside the default judgment, they were introducing the concept of good cause (Hawkins' behavior) into what otherwise would have been a straight question of the sufficiency of service of process (the deputy's behavior). We also talked about dictum in the Hawkins case. After that, we went over the Idnani case and discovery sanctions. We looked at the Maine Rule of Civil Procedure regarding discovery sanctions. We then went over the Timmermann case on spousal privilege. We also looked at the Maine Rule of Evidence regarding spousal privilege, and I talked about waiver of the privilege in the Maine case of State v. Lipham. The assignment for Thursday 12/8 is to finish work on the Brown v. Thaler and Bank v. Hawkins case briefs, due at the beginning of class Thursday. In addition read through the end of Chapter 5 of the text, including the Fontenot case.