Month: May 2016

What’s Brewing with Regional Alcohol Laws?

Jim Dedman Brewery Law, Continuing Legal Education

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If you find yourself in Charlotte, North Carolina in early June, please join us for an upcoming brewery law CLE. As you might know, I serve on the Mecklenburg County Bar’s Continuing Legal Education Committee. As such, I propose and plan CLE programs for members of the local bar. In the past, I’ve organized presentations on the Salem witch trials (featuring colonial historian and novelist Katherine Howe), the fascinating tort of alienation of affection (for a Halloween event at which presenters also explored the legal implications of the Ashley Madison hack), and of course, the regulation of breweries.

My next program is the Mecklenburg County Bar’s “What’s Brewing with Regional Alcohol Laws?” event, which takes place in a few weeks here in Charlotte. The roster of speakers is impressive; it includes lawyer and South Carolina Brewers Guild executive director Brook Bristow of Bristow Beverage Law, Raleigh beverage industry attorney Laura Collier of Strike & Techel Beverage Law Group LLP, and Carrboro trademark law guru Ed Timberlake of Timberlake Law, PLLC. Both Laura and Ed have spoken at past events I’ve planned, and they are not to be missed. For two years, I’ve attempted to plan a program featuring Brook, and now it has finally come to be. The event will take place on the afternoon of Thursday, June 9, 2016 at the Birdsong Brewing Company on North Davidson Street in Charlotte. Known for its famed Jalapeño Pale Ale, Birdsong also brews a seasonal wheat ale called Fake Plastic Trees, named for the sublime 1995 Radiohead single. (The image above of the cans of Fake Plastic Trees is courtesy of Birdsong’s Tara Goulet.).

If you’re an attorney desiring CLE credit, it can be yours, but if you’re not and/or you don’t, there are other pricing options. Registration information can be found here.

By the way, if you find this subject matter appealing, you might also be interested in “Free The Brews: The Perils of Craft Beer Regulation,” an upcoming program sponsored by The Bastiat Society’s Charlotte chapter (of which I am the chapter director). Featuring the Civitas Institute’s Greg Pulscher, host of the “Free To Brew” podcast, the event takes place at Kickstand Charlotte on the evening of Thursday, June 30, 2016. (The podcast’s tagline is: “Without beer there can be no liberty, and without liberty there can be no beer.”). Additional information about this event can be found here. The best part: It’s free.

For posterity, I’ve compiled a list of the past alcoholic beverage regulation programs I’ve planned. You can find it below along with links to the program information for each event.

PAST ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE REGULATION PROGRAMS

Blogging for Lawyers and Related Ethical Issues

Jim Dedman Continuing Legal Education, Social Media Law

If you find yourself in Columbia, South Carolina this coming Friday, May 13, 2016, please join us at the The South Carolina Bar Employment & Labor Law Midyear Meeting, at which I’ll be speaking. I’ve been asked to present on the issue of “Blogging For Lawyers and Related Ethical Issues,” which is a broad enough topic to permit me to stray into some new opinions that have been released this year which may affect lawyers’ work online.

In addition to reviewing the daily challenges faced by lawyer bloggers, I also hope to discuss the recent “Ruling Rejecting Jury Questionnaire” and “Order Re Internet and Social Media Searches of Jurors” by U.S. District Judge William Allsup in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc. (No. C 10-03561-WHA) currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. I also plan to address John J. Robertelli v. The New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics, A-62-14, 075584 (N.J. April 19, 2016), in which the New Jersey Supreme Court found that two lawyers could, in fact, be prosecuted for ethical violations arising from improper usage of Facebook. If time permits, I may also share my thoughts on the State Bar of California Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct’s recent proposed opinion on lawyer blogging and advertising.

The program will be held at the South Carolina Bar Conference Center on Park Street in Columbia, South Carolina. Scheduled to last an hour, my presentation begins at 3:45 p.m. Registration information can be found here.

Many thanks to Greenville attorney Matt Johnson of Ogletree Deakins for the invitation to speak at the seminar. In addition to being an employment lawyer, Matt is also a fan of fine music. In fact, in late 1985, he saw The Minutemen and Jason and The Scorchers open for R.E.M. on the second night of a two-night stint at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre. How about that?

The Postponed Concert Blues

Jim Dedman Interviews ,

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Matt Wake, an entertainment reporter for AL.com, recently interviewed yours truly for “The Postponed Concert Blues,” a piece in which he chronicles the perils of concert cancellations and their effect on ticket purchasers. In our brief but lively conversation, we addressed Bruce Springsteen’s recent cancellation of his Greensboro, North Carolina show (to which I had tickets, which are depicted in the image above). Any discussion of artist cancellations must necessarily include Morrissey, who I once beheld in concert in 2007. However, on several subsequent occasions, the former lead singer of The Smiths thwarted my attempts to see him perform again by axing shows to which I held tickets. Of course, I lamented those fateful experiences to Matt, as well.

Here’s an excerpt of the piece which features some of my quotations:

Dedman was living in Greenville, S.C. when he saw Morrissey, the moody crooner formerly of ’80 British band The Smiths, perform there in 2007. “And he was great,” Dedman says. “He played (The Smiths’) ‘Death of a Disco Dancer,’ which was the one song I wanted to hear most of all. When you lose yourself in the moment like that and the songs that have transfixed you for so long are being played by the original performer, it’s just magic.” A couple years later, Morrissey was touring again and Dedman purchased tickets to see back to back shows in Atlanta and Asheville, N.C.  He booked a hotel room and drove from Greenville to Atlanta to meet up with a friend there for the concert. The afternoon of the show Dedman and his friend went to that city’s High Museum of Art beforehand.

“So we’re just walking around the art museum and I get a text or a call from Ticketmaster saying that the show is cancelled,” Dedman, now 40, says. “And of course Morrissey has a reputation for cancelling. And I’m already there. I’ve already got the hotel room.” A message on the singer’s website indicated the show had been cancelled due to “illness.” The Asheville show was also cancelled. “So I’m out a hotel that night too,” Dedman recalls.

You can read the full article, which offers a handful of other anecdotes, here. If you’re feeling nostalgic for news of Morrissey, you can revisit the original Slicing Up Eyeballs coverage of his March 2009 tour woes here.

Many thanks to Matt for allowing me to share these memories with his readers. I first became aware of him five or so years ago when he worked as a writer for the Greenville News. I’ve followed him on Twitter for a number of years, and if you’re interested, you can do so as well at @MatthewBWake. By the way, he also owns Echo Records, a vinyl shop in Huntsville, Alabama, which I hope someday to visit.