The Legal Geeks
The Legal Geeks are proud to be attorneys and geeks. We have been recognized by the ABA Journal Web 100 for one of the best legal podcasts in 2017 and nominated for Best Podcast by the Geekie Awards in 2015. Please enjoy our podcasts exploring legal issues Sci Fi, comic books, and pop culture, from Star Wars to Captain America and all things geek. Our podcasts are not legal advice and for entertainment only.
The Legal Geeks
Superman Legal Panel at Baltimore Comic Con
Recorded Live at Baltimore Comic Con!
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Felony? Did Superman Cause Us to Go to War?
Our favorite Kryptonian and adopted Earthling returned to the big screen in 2025, but legal issues abound in this movie, including: Is Superman an American citizen or even legally adopted? Can his actions represent the United States Government? Did Lex Luthor violate the Espionage Act? Which kind of license should Krypto have: dog or pilot? Can Supergirl be held legally responsible for drunk partying? Join our team of lawyers and comic book aficionados as they educationally and hilariously analyze these questions and more, with Michael Dennis, David Donovan, Joel Schwarz, and Mark Zaid. Presented by The Legal Geeks (TheLegalGeeks.com) in their first Baltimore Comic-Con appearance!
No part of this recording should be considered legal advice.
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All right. Thank you guys for your patience. Good evening. You guys having a good time at the con? We'd like to see, especially in Baltimore, we we we do this presentation uh in San Diego every year. Not this one, different topics every year. Uh and of course we get lots of people. We don't generally have a lot of people at Baltimore Panel Cons. It's starting to get better each year, which is awesome. Uh so really appreciate you coming here. Uh my name is Mark Zayd. I'm an attorney in Washington, D.C. I do national security work. Some of that will actually be part of tonight's presentation. Uh I'm also a comic book dealer part-time, uh, do a lot of legal work in the comic community. I'm an advisor to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and Grading Guides, represent CGC uhwise when comic dealers get in trouble, which is not as often as my federal government clients uh who do. Um here's our legal geeks ensemble. Dave Donovan is a luckily retired lawyer, uh big big firm, retired lawyers, uh lawyer. And I'm gonna let them, as they start a little bit of their presentations as we go along, to add in details about what they do in their practices to why they might have chosen a particular topic. Joel Schwartz and I went to law school together uh back in New York and has worked for the Justice Department and the New York State Attorney General. And Michael Dennis gets our award for traveling the furthest because he's come from California just to be here with you guys. He is my fellow legal geek member. Uh we were supposed to have the our founding legal geek father show up, but he got sick, unfortunately. Uh but a shout out to Josh, who who isn't here and hopefully will listen uh in the recording. Uh so the Legal Geeks is a group of lawyers, mostly on the West Coast. A few of us now brought it out to the East Coast, and we will analyze comic books, movies, television shows, whether they're related to comics or not. Uh we've done Daredevil. We did a uh mock trial of Jaws a few years ago at San Diego. That's where those pictures are from.
SPEAKER_03:That is where the pictures are from. That's Mark's closing argument. And um, that's me saying I'll fight for you. 1-800 shark bites if you're looking for representation.
SPEAKER_00:Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Star Trek, you know, all sorts of uh Transformers, Indiana Jones. It's a lot of fun. This is the first time we've brought it here. Uh so hopefully this will be something we will continue. Someone who's like eight feet tall just walked by the door there. That was very strange to see. Uh so we will uh see how this works out, and hopefully you'll all enjoy it, and we'll bring it back again for next year. So, our topic tonight, as was said, uh it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a felony, did Superman cause us to go to war? So, the latest Superman film, I trust, hope everybody has seen it, right? Uh, because otherwise you will be so lost uh for as we talk about this tonight. But you'll still get it because it's it's a hoot. And we were gonna go through a bunch of issues because what happens for those of us as legal geeks, uh, and now we have two newest members, you we sit in these movies and go, oh, there's a tort that just happened there, or no, he would be sued for that. There's no way this was happening. And it it actually kind of ruins a lot of movies as we go through them uh to have that on. Uh, or like that would never happen in the real courtroom scene in Daredevil or something of that sort. Superman 2025 presented a lot of good legal issues. And we're gonna start off with uh Joel telling us, well, for one thing, was Superman adopted legally, he came here obviously from another planet. Now, in the comic book, it's the 1930s, Kansas, so it's probably easier to adopt a child that you did not have and just showed up on your doorstep. But as I remember, this film is modern. So Superman was born in the 1990s, and someone told me the metropolis was like Delaware.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it is Delaware.
SPEAKER_00:It's supposed to be in Delaware.
SPEAKER_03:Seriously?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So I'm not sure what happened. Joel, what would happen?
SPEAKER_02:Right, thank you. Well, first, since I've never done this before, it's great that I get to go first. Um so and and the movie does, and I saw this movie a few uh recently, but it doesn't really go into the question of Superman's origin. I think most of the people assume they know it at this point in time, and Tim Gunn didn't spend a lot of time about the, you know, as a baby part. So if you assume that he was adopted, and I'm gonna raise that for a second because there might be an assumption that he actually was born here in the US, which I know people are gonna be shocked about. We'll talk about it in a second. So if he was adopted, looking at the Kansas statute, what would happen is obviously Martha and um uh Jonathan Ken did not have the baby. So they would have found the baby, and the way it works in Kansas, under the statute currently in place, is you'd actually take the baby, surrender the baby because it's not theirs, they can't legally keep it, surrender it to one of the authorities, law enforcement, the firehouse, etc. Um, they would have to then report that to the secretary of the state, who would then deliver the infant to a specific facility set aside for that. What happens at that point in time? They become a ward of the state, foster child. Now, that's where I thought was the most interesting part, and I'm looking at my slides over here to make sure they're up there, but you know, Jonathan Kent would and Martha Kent would have had to apply for adoption, to be an adoptive parent. But there's no guarantee, because you brought the child in, that you actually get to adopt them. And in fact, actually, the challenge would have been that when you try to, you know, when you bring the child in and try to get the adoption going, you have a lot of questions you gotta answer. A lot of questions like, where did the child just get found? Do you know who the parents are? What were the circumstances surrounding coming into possession of the child? Those are gonna be a little challenging. Even in 1980, 1990, with all the UFO you know discussions today, explaining that's gonna be hard to do when you're filing an adoption certificate. And if you do, it's very unlikely you're gonna think you're well enough to give them child custody of you. You custody. But I do want to talk a little about foster care. So just to qualify this, I actually was a prosecutor for the DC attorney's office for a couple of months, six months, dealing with domestic violence cases. I met a lot of kids who actually were very brave. One actually had to testify against his own mother because she had stabbed him, to put her into a mental site board to help her, but then by doing that, he became a foster child. So some of these kids are really brave. But I've also seen the other side where foster care doesn't work out that well, and that's what some of these pictures are. So, Superman, if he had actually gotten to foster care. So you have a few different options here. Red Sun, which was a great uh movie, we still uh rented a few years ago. Um theoretically, I guess in this case, he wasn't he didn't crash in Russia, but he was adopted by Russian parents and moved back to Russia, Soviet Union back then. Or you have Brightburn, one of the scarier movies. I don't know. Has anybody here seen Brightburn the movie? Basically, I mean I have four kids, so I can tell you, when you get a boy who doesn't want to listen to you is scary, that's bad enough. A superhuman boy who has nothing to stop him, has laser eyes, he can do anything he wants, that's very scary. So, you know, you never know where Brightburn came from. They don't talk whether he's adopted or not. And Homelander, come on, Amazon the boys. Again, absolutely no restrictions whatsoever on what he does, and no sort of filter, if you will. So those are possibilities with foster care. But let's turn to slide, because I think there's a good argument here that he was actually may not have been adopted at all. Because if you read, and this is the last com one of the last comics I read when I grew up, the 1986 version of The Man of Steel, you actually have Superman um the um pod crashing, and the way it works in, you know, in on Krypton, apparently, you put them in the gestation chamber. So when the gestation chamber opens, theoretically, they're born here. But assuming you put that aside for a second, there was also the idea in this comic that they'd been snowed in for five months in a snowstorm, and therefore they claim that they actually gave birth to the child. They had a couple of pre uh previous miscarriages, they had a still birth. So it is feasible, given a big snowstorm, if they had the child, which means they might have gone and actually filed the birth certificate, claiming it's their child. Which gets the final question I want to cover here, which is fraud. Um because clearly we know the truth that he did not actually give that Martha didn't give birth. So now you have the question about perjury. Did Jonathan Kent commit perjury by filing for the social security number? Um you'll see at the bottom over there, there is a sworn statement that you do actually have to sign under penalty of perjury. Now, the good news for Jonathan is the five-year statute of limitations, so I think he's passed it at this point in time. However, it runs from the date if you could seal the crime. So the question is, when would you have figured out that Superman really wasn't their child and they was actually a superhero from another planet? Finally, I just want to note I also looked at the Nazi questions about Nazi citizenship. Back in the old days, you know, people from the World War II would claim to get citizenship here, become naturalized. You could revoke it if you found out they lied on their application. Um theoretically, you could denaturalize Superman if he actually was naturalized through his parents. But given that his parents weren't the aliens from another country, but aliens from another planet, I'm pretty sure the naturalization laws did apply anyway. So I'm going with they think he was born here, he wasn't adopted. Jonathan did lie, but he's way past the statute of limitations, so we're cool.
SPEAKER_00:So the movie starts out with Superman lying in the as we learn to be the Antarctic, and crypto brings him to the fortress of solitude. And there's a comment by Lex Luthor that that violated uh 12 treaties. Did it?
SPEAKER_03:I can go to the next one. Of course, you you all follow Lex Luthor Corp on the socials, and there is an active Twitter account that you can follow where he does post Superman has violated 12 treaties. I would counter with uh hashtag do better because he's wrong. It's one treaty signed by 12 countries. It is the Antarctic Treaty, and 12 countries originally signed it, and what it's designated to do is say, hey, we can make Antarctica special. And we're gonna sign a treaty that says everyone who has a claim to it, you get to keep your claim. And no one's gonna say your claim should be something different. And we're gonna make this an area where all we're gonna do is science. There is gonna be no military aspect to it. What does Superman build in Antarctica? A fortress. It's not a bungalude of peace, it's not a like a charming little quaint fixer-upper. He builds a fortress. I mean, like the T spheres on this guy. So if you look at it, this well, you know, just gotta look at it. People don't violate treaties, countries violate treaties when it comes down to so the US can actually violate a prosecute a citizen that violates it. So let's look what Superman has done here. This is a comic when he was racing Flash, and apparently he decided to stop off and give a tour of his house. He goes, here's all the things I have, people, that uh come and come see. To my fortress. The stuff he has there, he has an alien zoo. You're not allowed to bring animals or vegetation to Antarctica. He brings an entire zoo with him. And it's not just a fortress. He has the miniature city of Candor, the capital of Trypton in a bottle with a complete red sun there. Yeah, that's a complete violation of the when he saw it there. So would a kid be prosecuted for this? Most likely, yes, because the USA could come in, and now we've established she's a citizen, and actually prosecute a citizen for violating one of the treaties. There's an old not old, but it's called Uh Bond versus US. This lady caught her husband cheating on her. So what she did was apply chemicals to the mistress's doorknob, mailbox, and car, hoping she'd get chemical burns. They prosecuted her for a violation of the Chemical Treaties Act for improperly using chemicals, something they tried to ban to the convener convention. They never got to the subject, but she was brought up on that. So it has happened. He could get charged, but at the end of the day, he's an individual. He did not violate any treaties because he's an individual.
SPEAKER_00:So, Joel, we talked a little bit about whether he could be legally adopted in the United States, but is he actually a U.S. citizen?
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for asking the question. And by the way, I wasn't going to say the fortress is out now available actually on Airbnb if you want to look at it. So, first of all, gratuitous Latin, because every time a lawyer speaks, you want to hear Latin. And since we're doing this for free, I can say equilibrius unum. So I'm going to go for jus sanguinis and jus soli. Basically, the right of blood, meaning you're born to parents, people who are actually citizens of the country. And basically, jus soli means right of soil, born in the soil. We hear this today a lot about birthright citizenship, right? So going back to my idea about the pod crashing here, the idea in the more recent comic books is that the pod, he was actually still gestating when he was traveling here to the um to the earth. When he landed in the pod opened, that is when he was actually born. And thus, therefore, he was born here on American soil, born in the USA. I was actually hoping to get the Bruce Springs thing song, but I didn't know how we were gonna get that going. So if he was born in the USA under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, he is a natural born citizen. And yes, you can try to revoke citizenship under very rare circumstances when children are born to aliens. There's a famous case actually from the 1800s, a US Supreme Court case, US v. Wang Kim Ark, where they tried to deny him citizenship based upon the fact that he was born to parents. But the only exceptions the Supreme Court finds to this birthright idea born on American soil is when either you're born to a diplomat, because theoretically you're not really here as a citizen, or you're born by on a hostile territory, by the to an alien on a hostile who's there hostile. So in other words, you're in possession of a piece of territory and the child's born there. You're not there truthfully and voluntarily. Now I don't think either of those work, um, is this case, especially, and plus the alienation thing, again, intergalactic aliens, probably not part of the Supreme Court case in 1898. So I think the idea here that he has birthright citizenship makes a lot of sense. Which then, of course, now we come to the current time when we're now litigating whether or not you can revoke birthright citizenship. Um I did want to note that right now it's actually still sitting with the Supreme Court. Um, the um Trump administration in September of this layer, last month, asked the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of an executive order where he was trying to remove birthright citizenship if at least one of your parents is not a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident. And in this case, I think we can be very clear that neither of Superman's parents were legal residents or U.S. citizens. But I want to do a couple of alternative theories here. So if you could turn the page. So in action comics number 900, Superman actually renounced his American citizenship. Has anybody read this one? Yeah, because again, it's become more controversial over time, and he said, I'm tired of being considered an instrument of U.S. policy, I'm a citizen of the world. Now, if you renounce your citizenship, you potentially could lose that citizenship. But I think there's an easier question to answer here, which is in the movie we learned that Superman's parents did not send him here for beneficent purposes. They sent him here to rule the world, to take over, to have many wives, to um do us proud and rule without mercy, quote unquote. And I just, by the way, I just finished watching the um last season of Cobra Kai, so I kept on thinking about Cobra Kai without mercy when I was watching the movie. But to rule without mercy here. And there is a statute that allows you, if you have terrorists or parents who are terrorists, who come here under false pretenses and get citizenship, and they actually gotten to citizenship, you can denaturalize them, you can denaturalize the child as well. But I'm going to go back to my original theory here because I think it's how it works a lot better and I like Superman, um, which is that he's theoretically born here, they think he's a US citizen, and he thinks Martha and Clark Kent, sorry, Martha and Jonathan Kent gave birth to him. Um and finally, I did want to note, because it's also very um concurrent, you know, the other option is that Superman's a dreamer. Right? You have to DACA people, you know, deferred action for childhood. So even assuming that he actually came here and he wasn't a citizen, he wasn't born here, etc., and he was brought here by his parents without his own will, because he was still just dating a baby, he is then a dreamer under US law. As of mid-2025, Congress has not yet granted a citizenship for a right to passage way to citizenship for dreamers. So right now, Superman is probably the best poster child for the dreamer community, and DACA to approve DACA in Congress to pass the law. So next time you talk about DACA in Congress, say, make Superman a citizen, pass DACA.
SPEAKER_00:Well, since we're not sure if he's a citizen, is he not a citizen, whichever one it is, can he be arrested by the US government? Right? We saw that. He's called an extraterrestrial organism. Uh so do they have rights? Right? They he talks about though, they don't give any details of the Department of Justice issued an arrest warrant. They don't say what the basis of the arrest warrant was, did it go to a grand jury or not? But without getting too political, at least if you were an alien, you did still have rights in the United States, and if you got arrested, you would still, by the Fifth and the 14th Amendment, have, as it applies to all persons. It doesn't speak to citizenship of whether or not you would still have constitutional rights. Uh, of course, we have this very strange deportation, so to speak, uh, where he's sent to the pocket universe, which we'll talk uh a little bit about uh a little bit later. Uh but as the Supreme Court case said, even 25 years ago, uh even aliens have rights. So uh pretty confident he could not be sent to the pocket universe without going through at least some due process system of whichever city he was actually in, whether it was fictitious or under the United States. Now, Lex Luther, we learn, has a very secret plan with the president of Boravia. Uh at first we know he's selling arms, military weaponry to Boravia, and then we learn that he has a much closer relationship to the Boravians, where he's going to actually take part or take over some of the neighboring country, so he's acting in cohoots with the President of Boravia. So, does he need to register as a foreign agent? We have in the United States the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 22 USB 611. Uh, and without having to go through all the language there on the screen, basically the answer is uh yeah. I think way the way you are working with the President of Boravia, that you're engaging in political activities or in the interests of such foreign principle, you would need to register with the Department of Justice. It's not that difficult. I've done it uh at times in some of the cases that I have worked in. You just file a bunch of paperwork. But if you don't submit that paperwork, you can be convicted and have a fine of not more than$10,000. Probably Lex Luther doesn't care about that. Uh but hey, for each count, you could get up to five years imprisonment. Uh so we don't see what happens to Lex Luthor towards the end uh with respect to his relationship with Boravia, other than he gets beat up by crypto, uh, which could be a separate tort in and of itself that we can talk about. Uh but there is an issue that he's going to have among many, as we saw in the film. One of the things that he was doing, of course, was these damn monkeys. The army of monkeys def was he being defamed by the armies of monkeys.
SPEAKER_02:I think you're asking me that question. So the question, so there is defamation has defamation has a number of elements. And for those of you who are not lawyers, which those of you who are very fortunate who are not lawyers, um there's an every crime has a number of elements. In this case, there are four elements. You have to have a false communication of facts. Can we all agree that what he was having the monkeys transmit were false communications? Yes or no? Raise your hands, come on. Yeah, alright, okay. Publication communicated to the third party. You don't see who it's sent to, but we're pretty sure it's going up to third parties on the internet. Causing material or reputational harm and negligent- he does so negligence or with malice. Now, pretty sure that wasn't negligence, but how many people here think malice? Yeah, there we go. Alright. I'm not even gonna talk about defamation per se, because I just want to talk about some of the defenses to defamation. So the question is can we talk about Lex Luther? Is he subject to prosecution for defamation? And there's of course civil defamation, there's also criminal uh charges you could bring. So some of the defenses are truth. Now, truth is an absolute um, you know, absolute defense to defamation, but we're pretty sure he didn't have super harems. We know that um so and some of the things he put up there were actually not true as well. Opinion. Clear opinions are not prosecutable under defamation. Now I will say the hashtags like super shit. I hope there are no kids in here. That probably is considered opinion and probably not gonna be defamation. But he said enough other stuff as well. And then there's also privileges. There's an absolute privilege, such as when you're testifying before a congressional committee, testifying in court, or qualify privilege, such as when if you have a legal or moral duty to say something, whistleblowers is a good example. But then you have lack of fault. If it's a public figure, the standard is higher, and basically it's not defamation unless you have actual malice. So again, I think we get back to the idea that there is actual malice here. Clearly, Lex Luthor has it out for him, not happy with him. So that's the easy one. So I did want to touch on one thing though, which is the social media liability. Thank you. So, first of all, is Lex Luthor guilty of, let's say, cyberbullying? So, I will tell you actually, one of the cases I prosecuted, one of the first cases I worked on as the Justice Department, was a case called Lori Drew. You probably all might remember it. There was a girl named Megan. Her Lori Drew and her daughter were defaming the Megan online. Megan ended up committing suicide, which led to a conviction. She actually had her conviction overturned on appeal, but many states started passing cyberbullying laws. Sadly, by the way, I thought uh metropolis was in New York, so I went to New York here. So New York actually does not have a cyber bullying statute. So once again, Lex Luther gets away with it. But there are harassment statutes, which is a misdemeanor. There is an aggravated harassment statute, which is a felony. I think we can all concede that it's probably aggravated harassment. So I do think Lex Luthor could potentially be liable for a few of those things. Now, could he be liable as the publisher? That is where section 230 of the Communications Decency Act comes in. And you probably remember from like 10 years ago, five years ago, we were all trying to repeal it because platforms aren't responsible for the publishing information published in the site as long as they take it down when they get notice it's false and untrue. So the CDA provides a lot of immunity, and probably I'm assuming Lexaluther who runs the platform will probably get away with it. But I just want to say one thing, and I think I have one more thing I want to talk about here. Nobody talks about this. There's lots of memes about the whole monkey thing and monkey bots and trolls, etc. But nobody yet, and this was epiphany the major in the movie, nobody once talked about how amazing the connection was. I mean, I can't get an internet connection from my basement to my office, and he's sitting in a pocket universe on the internet and getting great connectivity. Elon Musk can't even produce that. So, putting everything else aside, I want to know the provider that Lex Luthor uses for his monkeys.
SPEAKER_00:The other thing we saw was that Luther had said he was authorized to kill Superman. Now that is a complicated matter for anyone in the United States to be authorized by the government to murder someone or to legally kill if it is not murder. There's no indication of really what basis it was that he was relying on, or an indication of whether it was a defense contractor like Blackwater in Iraq, which, if you might remember, there were numerous instances of contractors who had killed Iraqis or Afghanis and were then prosecuted here in the United States because they weren't authorized to just outright kill anyone without uh following the rules of engagement. Uh so there was one possibility. I've worked on terrorism cases uh on the civil side going after terrorist states, and we always tried to look into could a letter of mark and reprisal be used? Could that have been what Luther was authorized to do? This dates back to the earliest days of the founding of our country. It was used to go after the pirates by Thomas Jefferson. It was used in the War of 1812 to help go after British ships, where we would hire the French to help us uh seize our enemies. It hasn't been used for 150 years, although Congress keeps trying to uh initiate legislation to bring this back. Now that, right, you can imagine how great that would be if Congress gave the authority to have civilians go out and kill anyone the United States government wanted. It would work well for Lex Luther, perhaps, but it doesn't appear that there was any type of real authority, I think, that would have been given uh the allowance for Luther to actually kill Superman, especially without any, can we say, due process? Although if he's not an alien, maybe due process, if he is an alien, maybe due process wouldn't have mattered. But I think more importantly than this type of issue of killing Superman would be: does Jimmy actually have to spend the whole frickin' weekend with Eve?
SPEAKER_03:I I do enjoy that Joel got the super serious child abuse issues, and I'm handling whether someone has to fulfill a contract to Netflix and chill this coming weekend. And I'd also like to point out this is the first time we've had an American Sign Language interpreter with us, and we're forcing her to come up with signs for hashtag Segret Harum. I just hope that's uh video. Thank you very much. Uh first off, do we have any?
SPEAKER_00:But I always but I always love the the the one for hashtag super shit doesn't it's right? Isn't it supposed to like with the she does quit bullshit? Alright, sorry.
SPEAKER_03:Don't don't challenge the sign language. Do we have any attorneys with us tonight?
unknown:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03:Our apologies. Yeah. Um thank you. My analysis takes us back to the first day of law school, so it might be a little triggering. Um look at contract 101. What do you need to form a contract? And I'm gonna take Jimmy's part on this because it's more fun to take someone's position when you're an attorney and argue that no, it is not a contract. On its face, it looks like we have one. Do we have parties? We got even Jimmy. Do we have a subject matter? I send you the text that will get all the dirt you want on Lex, and you spend the weekend with me. Time of performance, I send it now. You come over on the weekend. Uh consideration. This consideration is considered something you're giving up that you're not legally responsible or legally required to do. Such as pay money for something. Jimmy's not required by law to hang out with her, she's not required to give him the dirt on Luther. Um, another example of this is by pay Mark$50 not to murder me. It's not a contract because he's legally obligated not to murder me. That's not a consideration. I would argue we don't have to. Yeah. Wait, are we bidding here? Yeah. 30. The problem we have here is do we have parties? Parties require someone to make an offer and for someone to accept that offer. She makes the offer, I give you the dirt, you spend the weekend with me. What's his response? The whole weekend? And before they can negotiate this term, she gets nabbed. So he never really accepted the offer. She gets nabbed and she hits send. So Jimmy is in a position of, hey, I never agreed to this. I was still negotiating what the weekend meant. So we have a thing called quasi-contract where the law can step in. I'm gonna call it meta-contract for the purposes of a Comic-Con. And they're gonna say, we're gonna create one where one did not exist because someone would get unjustly enriched by one person performing who expects to be paid for what they're doing, the other person accepting that, and then not paying. Their traditional quasi-contract you see is if an ambulance takes you to the hospital, you get a medical bill, and you're like, wait a minute, I never consented to pay for this doctor to perform surgery for me. Well, yeah, you accepted the benefit, like having your spleen removed, you're gonna pay for it. Uh same thing, uh, a kid comes over and moves your lawn. You know the kid's going around house to house paying for it, you watch them do it, and you try to sniff them saying, Hey, I never agreed to pay for that. Um I'll step in and form a quasi-contract for you. This is another case where I say, hey, we don't even have one of these. Because first, Netflix ain't in chilling. I was one of the last people to come around to what that actually meant. You can't exchange sex and have that be the consideration of your contract. That is illegal. Illegal contracts are unenforceable. Second, she voluntarily hit the send button. So she was gonna be nabbed, she sent it. Knowing that Jimmy had not yet accepted it, but she sent it anyway because she wanted to get one over on Lex there. So she was what's called an officious intermittler or a volunteer. So there's no contract there. But if you watch the movie, after that frown, he kind of smiles and he comes around. So I think he's going to fulfill that end of the contract anyway.
SPEAKER_00:So I think we can all agree one of the hits and the hit star of this movie was Crypto. Who is not a real dog. Oh, there he goes. And you can actually read, there's a whole bunch of articles and and uh news programs about how dog adoptions went through the roof after the movie. And actually the the ASPCA and the other organizations were getting upset because uh people then were trying to return the dogs after uh because I guess it wasn't crypto. But the question, hopefully, the case.
SPEAKER_08:People really wanted AI dogs, no.
SPEAKER_00:They wanted an AI dog, right? Didn't eat, didn't care, just took care of himself. Uh but does this dog have a license? First of all, we don't know who owns him, which we will get to, but you know, does he have a license? So we can look here in Baltimore. I didn't know this. I had to double check. So anyone who's here in Baltimore lives here in Baltimore City, you have to have a license for your dog if he's over four months old. And there's a whole bunch of different, you know, fees, and and there are fines, of course, if you don't have a license. I did not see any collar on crypto that indicated he has a license. I've had dogs in the past, and they've always had that either their, you know, they had their vaccines and they had their license. And we do see this is a one hell of a super dog. We don't have any indication in the movie of how he got to the earth, but he's clearly a Kryptonian dog and he has superpowers. He pounds Supergirl into the the uh floor uh of the fortress of solitude, so and he goes after Lex Luther and he fights against whatever the bots were that he was using, I forget what they were called. So, what kind of liability can we have because of crypto? Um, if crypto was here in Maryland, we are now a statutory, strict liability state. So if you know that dog can be dangerous, and I'm pretty confident that since crypto could bite the arm off of anybody really easily, and I didn't seem to me that he had a lot of degree of care of what he was doing at different times, that that would make the owner liable for what crypto was doing. Uh now, some of it could be depending on what kind of breed the dog was, and has there been any type of previous uh violence that the dog has shown? We don't know enough about crypto, uh, but without a doubt, uh there are some possible possibilities there that the owner, whether it's Superman or someone else, is gonna have to bear some possibly criminal and or civil liability. We do have in Maryland that if the victim contributes in any way, even 1%, that that could limit the liability. And I think we could at least say that Lex Luthor brought it on himself for for doing what he did, and so maybe Superman and uh anybody else could get away with that. But I mean, who the heck does own crypto?
SPEAKER_03:All right, this is my next subject. Um, just let you know, I'm a I'm a Southern California beach kid, and I went to college, and so I I've seen a lot of drunk people, and that's how they introduced Supergirl to the movie at the very end to launch her next phase, and I think it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna take on her defense. And when I was in law school, I interned at the DA's office, and as an intern with only one year of law school underneath me, I handled the misdemeanor calendar, and one of the things we used to enforce was drunk in public. And so the question now becomes was she drunk in public? And this is something we can prosecute her for. In the bio for this, we said uh excessive partying. So, usually you're not ever arrested just because you're drunk in public, it's because you did something else while you were drunk in public. You vandalized something, you maybe decided to go to the bathroom in a park, or uh you're just loud breaking the peace. That's where it comes down to. Delaware code is different than what I've had to prosecute in California. They've added an extra layer. Before it's are you so drunk you can't take care of yourself, or can you not take care of others? That's California statute. Delaware threw in, or you're annoying. I'd love that part of the statute because that's something that attorney, a nice weasley word we can lock on to. Like, at what level do you become annoying? She is super annoying when they introduce her. Why did you move the door, dude? Thanks for watching my dog beep board. Um so that's something that would definitely have to be argued about later on. Yeah, but why would Delaware law apply? She did it in Antarctica. Well, we're gonna apply Delaware because that's eventually when she goes into public because she has to she leaves the fortress and will go home. So I'm assuming she probably has a some sort of studio apartment in downtown. I don't know, where she ends up going to. The bigger question it's gonna face her is DUI. There are in the comics, they say, well, there is a line of reasoning that Superman doesn't actually have to breathe and he doesn't actually have to eat. He gets all his power from the sun. He's just a giant battery. So he can fly through space and they can go to these red planets where they can lower their immunity enough to get drunk. But in the movie, they say Superman can only hold his breath for one hour. When Gary, which is a great name, gives his list of injuries to talk about all the internal organs that are injured. So more than likely, she wouldn't be able to fly to this red planet under her own speed because she'd have to breathe or do something. She had to fly there. And then she had to be there long enough for that red sun to lower her powers enough where she can get drunk. She piloted something to get there, and who knows what the closest planet is with the red sun? She drove a vehicle a long time because when she gets back to the fortress, she's still hammered. So more than likely, she did um, yeah, she did get it, wouldn't be eligible for DUI. The trouble being that DUI laws apply to vehicles, and the Delaware code does not include aircraft as being a vehicle. So she maybe be able to get around on that, but there's probably a whole host of FAA regulations she would violate by doing it. So at the end of the day, yeah, in Delaware, she would probably be susceptible to excessive partying. California, probably not.
SPEAKER_02:And I think everybody drinks in Antarctica. I mean, what else can you do there?
SPEAKER_00:Now we saw especially at the end of the movie where Metropolis was almost destroyed by the pocket universe. And la and you had the big creature, I don't remember if it had a name or not. Uh but there was a lot of destruction going on throughout the movie. And Dave's not sitting up here just to look pretty for us. He's gonna tell us who the hell is responsible for all of this.
SPEAKER_08:Well, uh, my practice when I have one and I don't anymore was much simpler than the fancy stuff these guys do. Uh early in my career I dealt with insurance law, and so that's I thought what I would uh ask ask that question. The first question that occurred to me would be uh, is there gonna be insurance to pay for this mess? And frankly, this may just show what a nerd I am. This occurred to me when I saw the first Avengers movie, and then again when I saw Fantastic Four, and then when I got I saw this, because all these buildings are getting destroyed, and some commercial liability insurance company is gonna get tagged for this damage, but will they have to pay? Uh first thought I had, well, are is this all covered as acts of God? I said, Well, you know, as it's been pointed out, Superman is not a god, he's an alien. This case doesn't involve Thor or uh Captain Marvel, the uh Shazam, the original Captain Marvel. There might be a question there. The bad news is that acts of God coverage in insurance policies doesn't really apply to acts of deities at all. It's really acts of nature, like earthquakes and hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and the like. Uh the good news is that it doesn't really matter because acts of God isn't really a term used in insurance policies anymore. Insurance policies cover damage caused by anything unless there's an exclusion. And the bad news is there's lots of potential exclusions here. Uh and I I preface uh some of the rest of this by telling you that as a young lawyer, 45 years ago, I was at a firm that, like uh 12 or 15 other big firms in the United States spent the better part of a decade litigating about what the meaning of the terms sudden and accidental. And if if you think sudden and accidental is ambiguous enough to need 15 law firms to fight about it for 15 years, try some of these as applied to the facts uh in this case. Typical exclusions that apply that exist in most insurance policies bar any coverage for loss caused by bulging, expansion, shrinking, settling, resultant cracking of foundations, floors, walls, patios, earth movement, damages caused by volcanoes, landslides, mud flows, the sinking, rising, or shifting of land, surface water damage. And if you remember that scene where the earth is splitting in two because of the rift, you know, uh loss caused by floods, surface water, waves, tidal water, overflow of a body of water or spray from any of these, or groundwater damage. Uh water below the surface, including water that exerts pressure or seeps through the building or sidewalks or foundation or other structure, which seems to me is gonna be great defenses for any insurance company that you're trying to tag with this liability. And then you have acts of war exclusions, which are even more esoteric and changing constantly. You ought to I check my homeowner's policy, and it had my own homeowner's policy, and it had some of these terms, and I didn't know what they meant, and they're not terribly well defined. We don't cover loss caused by hostile action by a military force or cybermeasures. Action in hindering or defending an attack by any combatant or an agent acting on behalf of a combatant. Well, and you know, we've already talked about Luther. He maybe he's an agent of Moravia, maybe he's an agent of the United States. It's hard to tell, but he's probably arguably an agent of some sovereign power. They don't cover losses resulting from war or warlike action or cyber hostilities. And even if the peril is covered, if it's if the damage is covered, is covered under one portion of your policy, for example, you spent the extra money for earthquake insurance. But it's not covered under the act of war exclusion, you don't get anything. Uh uh trust me on that. But can't All State save you? Uh All State? Well, will Allstate let this mayhem get the best of you? Again, you have to tick through all these issues. Was Luther a government actor or an agent of a state? Were he were he or his agents? I remember all those military guys that seem to be answering to him. Uh they a military force? Was the rift a cyber hostility? Was setting the kaiju, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, off to attack Superman a warlike action. And so at the end of the day, you uh you you remember Superman and uh Mr. Terrific uh chatting at the end. I've changed the dialogue a little bit, where Superman is speculating this looks like it might be the result of a structural movement or earth movement or loss caused by pressure or weight of water, don't you think? And that's when Mr. Terrific walks away, and Superman sadly claims he didn't mean to bum you out. So I think ultimately, unless FEMA shows up with a big bag of cash, metropolitan metropolitans, if that's what we call them, are probably uh shit out of luck.
SPEAKER_00:It's better to say bullshit to watch her do it.
SPEAKER_03:He's waiting for you to do it now. I didn't see it. My question for you is like, where does what if Percy Jackson caused this damage where he's a demi-god? He's half human and half son of Zeus.
SPEAKER_08:Well, again, you know, the acts of gods and the exagon. They're gonna correct you.
SPEAKER_03:Like didn't get anything wrong. I just kept all over myself in a Comic-Con.
unknown:Is that climate running comic?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, you still got all the things.
SPEAKER_02:The son of Poseidon, you know he's involved with water. You should have ordered Flood Rider.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Now there are obviously a lot more issues like did Superman torture the president of Boravia by putting him up against the cactus? And then why can Hawk girl just apparently kill the president of Moravia without any repercussions? But we'll have to save that for another time. Really appreciate that you guys came. We can stay, because this is the end of the night. We can stay for a tiny bit if anyone has questions. Look us up on Legal Geeks. There's a lot more content that's online of programming we've done over the years. Uh, it's a lot of fun, especially for the for the lawyers. So, questions?
SPEAKER_04:Luther and a presidential agent of the U.S. government just put a presidential finding apply. And the second one was personal.
SPEAKER_00:So first question was whether Luther could be an agent of the U.S. government uh and presidential finding. A presidential finding. I mean, obviously, we've seen with this administration a much greater use of presidential memorandums and executive orders, uh, and and even when attempts to modify the Constitution. Uh so probably would depend on which administration. There's no indication of, of course, who's in power. We do see, I guess, cabinet officers or at least senior leadership at the Pentagon. Uh and there's discussion, it appears there's uh interaction with Luther with respect to contractual relations, but we don't know all the details. Uh I would probably say if it were now, the Trump administration would say, yes, we can do it. Uh in the future, we don't know. And the second question was, John?
SPEAKER_04:Uh personhood. So the question of whether, like, whether he has any rights or not, based on a combination of what you said and what's on the slide, it looks like it deals with whether or not he is a person. So, like, I mean, I know Scartrack covered this in depth, but on data and others, but but it is a is uh a non-Homo sapian who seems to have all the mental qualities or whatever of a human being. Is he legally a person?
SPEAKER_02:It hasn't been a lot of like what I'll tell you is because this came up in the artificial intelligence world recently. So it's gonna depend upon the statute, of course, but I will tell you that somebody tried to recently, about a year or two ago, register a piece of art drawn solely by artificial intelligence. The copyright office denied the right, they appealed it all the way up to the federal circuit court, and the federal circuit court said no, because if you look at the Copyright Act, which sends back to the Constitution, it talks about things that only humans can do. Creativity. Um, you and your children, your progeny. You can't have progeny if you're not a person. So I suspect, depending upon the law involved, you'd have to look up and see the types of verbiage used to see whether they intend to include persons as human beings or entities that are basically still breathing oxygen, reproductive, etc.
SPEAKER_00:And it will depend also where and what laws we're talking about. Uh Michael and I were on a Transformers panel uh for the legal geeks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It was can you murder a transformer?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, is that against the law to murder a transformer? And in, I think I'm trying to remember, was it Saudi Arabia uh has has made AI a person under their laws. So if you did it in Saudi Arabia, it could be against the law. If you do it here, it might not be. So it would it would just we always say it depends. That's that's the best legal answer.
SPEAKER_02:So if you get pissed in your Alexa, don't hit it.
SPEAKER_00:All right, question was what uh would it be an affirmative defense if you were representing a meta human?
SPEAKER_06:Affirmative defense is a I guess it would depend.
SPEAKER_00:I mean it would depend on the factual context, obviously. Is there a a scene?
SPEAKER_06:Are you referring to the Are you referring to like when like a hot girl murdered the president?
SPEAKER_00:I mean self-defense would obviously always be a possibility.
SPEAKER_08:Where are situations where you can think that in the movie context is a clear self-defense or say clear I can kind of argue either way, or you might have some situations where if these actions took place in the pocket universe, you have a question of extraterritorial application of U.S. law, and so maybe the U.S.
SPEAKER_00:courts wouldn't accept jurisdiction over that. And it would also depend on, I mean, we don't have a good sense of the justice gang, uh, which I guess ends up being the name at the end if if they let uh metamorpho, metamorphosis, metamorpho, uh, into the justice gang because he liked the name. You know, were they acting, whose authority are they acting under? Uh there are arguments under Article 51 of the UN Charter of affirmative violence, affirmative strikes if someone is going to attack you, uh, before they do. It doesn't have to be self-defense of they attacked us, we strike back. It could be a preventative strike. Uh, you know, was that what they were doing when they went into uh Boravia or or the neighboring country? Janinpur? Very good. Did I get that right? Was that one? Something like that? Close enough?
SPEAKER_02:Um good question. And then there's also one more thing to think about. There's also the laws of armed and conflict and laws of armed engagement. So those same laws that apply to you know peacetime in a country, murder, etc., there's a different standard when you're coming to acts of war and the laws of armed conflict. What is considered minimal, what basically collateral damage, etc. So I would argue that you probably this is a war scenario and you probably look at some of those questions.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and what kind of combatant they might be, uh like Al Qaeda, do they belong to a country, do they not?
SPEAKER_03:There's a instead of just looking at affirmative fences, there'll be a lot of enhancements against meta-humans where the law is gonna come down harder against them because of their special abilities. The law doesn't like it when you bring a gun to a knife fight. They're more, if you're gonna be a mutual combatant, you both have knives, you can't bring something extra to it, and all these meta-humans are bringing something extra to the fight. That happens a lot with people that are trained in martial arts. If they get in a fight, they're right. They're considered to have these special skills over and above, and they um the law comes down harder on them when they're like that. And then the best one, the best one is temporary insanity.
SPEAKER_02:Come on, green lantern. I don't like the guy. His character, you might be able to plead for temporary insanity, which is the defense in itself. Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's weird because you start off with the first the fortress was built just outside Metropolis. He burrowed it out of a hill, and it was kind of cool than my picture he had. The way he locked it was a giant key that only supposedly he was powerful enough to lift and open the door. And then they moved it to Antarctica or to Arc to the Arctic. I really don't know why he moved it to Antarctica except to be able to throw that line in about violating the 12 treaties.
SPEAKER_05:The cool part is not the Roman version of the back.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So that was and I I run into this when I'm trying to get into deeper into the comic book lore, where depending on who the writer was, it kind of changes the story a little bit. And with Superman, I discovered was they decided that every three years they'd have a new generation of people reading the comics. So it was okay to go back and change things or add stuff or rewrite plots because no one would catch up, because it'd be a next generation coming through. So stuff got moved around quite a bit. Any others? Yes, ma'am.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, ma'am.
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. That's that's an awesome I I haven't even thought about this. This is a great question. All right, so what laws would apply? We mentioned the extraterritorial jurisdiction or application. What laws would apply to the pocket? I'm just repeating the question here, and I'm gonna let you guys answer because I don't know the answer. Uh does it is it the law where you enter and you bring that with you, or is it the laws in the pocket universe or where you exit?
SPEAKER_08:Well, and who's gonna decide? I think there's a real good chance that U.S. courts, certainly state courts, would just say, find another court because it's not me.
SPEAKER_02:But jurisdiction also depends upon whether or not you impose actions that are have effect or impact on another place. So, for example, the computer crime and a few computer fraud abuse act was amended many times to deal with the fact that people might hack in from third-party countries and computers might be located outside of this country, but you still want it to be able to do something about it. But again, it's focused on countries. Another dimension, I'm not sure it would cover. And then it has an impact on the area. Exactly. But if but if you're doing a strict construction as to the statute, I'm pretty sure you're gonna struggle. And then the most important question is dual criminality. Can you extradite somebody? You need to have it a crime in both the place you're extraditing from and the place you're extraditing to. I don't know if there are any laws about dual criminality that would cover the pocket universe, so probably staying there is where I keep you.
SPEAKER_08:And does the court have jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction over the monkeys?
SPEAKER_04:Unlawful imprisonment. Does it matter if the does it matter where you imprison? Because couldn't you get legs on unlawful imprisonment in the popular universe?
SPEAKER_00:Well, and and some uh the question about unlawful imprisonment, and I'll tie it back into your great question on the universal on the jurisdiction. He mentions that some of the people were imprisoned there under the authority of the U.S. government. And then others, like his ex-girlfriends who pissed him off, uh, he brought and put in. And that just raises all sorts of questions, obviously, due process, uh, questions under uh Fourth Amendment and etc. Eighth Amendment. Eighth Amendment, cruel and human punishment.
SPEAKER_03:The legal gigs thing was the phantom zone, a violation of the Eighth Amendment, where you stick somebody where time doesn't exist. So when you get out, no time has actually gone by. Is that cruel and unusual? Kind of be a punishment because your kids are grown?
SPEAKER_00:Now there are some jurisdictional principles to go back to your question, uh, that there's called universal jurisdiction. There are certain crimes, what we call Yous Kogan's crimes, so I can use my Latin uh phrase, that are crimes of all nations, that no one can derogate and commit that. Genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, everyone has jurisdiction over them, uh although it still does depend. Uh if there's a crime on an airplane, for example, or it's over the Atlantic, who has jurisdiction over something, an assault and battery, a a drunk person, uh uh some uh sexual harassment? And it will often be the country from where the plane left, the country to which the plane is going. The if it's a ship, they used to go if you ever look at a ship, look at the back of the ship to see where the ship is registered. That country has jurisdiction over it as well, no matter where the ship, it's called a f it's a floating island all around the world, no matter where it goes. Isn't it sometimes the state over which the airplane is flying? That it can be also that, depending on where it is.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, sorry, get what occasion is on registering.
SPEAKER_00:We sued the government of Libya for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and we made the argument that the U.S. had jurisdiction because Pan Am would have a big American flag on the back of its tail and that it was essentially a flying island just as if a ship was, that it was registered with the United States. Uh that argument didn't work, so I changed the law to make sure we had jurisdiction over Libya, and then that worked. Yes, sir.
unknown:What country are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00:What country do you want to talk about? I don't know if there's laws. There are. Whenever they want to make one of you get executed. So, where do you think metropolis is? Where's Metropolis? Ben, where's Metropolis? Is it in the United States or is it just made up? That would be part of the question. We can take a final question. Anyone got anything else? Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, how many laws is we're going to break when we're flying over other countries' interfaces in the book?
SPEAKER_00:Uh with with did you say with the fly when they're flying? So when Superman, Super Drunk Supergirl is flying over all countries, is she violating any laws? Let's say she creates a sonic boom and that causes damage.
SPEAKER_03:I would go with uh episode of in Superman, I'll play it to him, where he was given the golden ticket by the UN, which granted him the ability to go to every single country that's a member of the UN. Without a visa. Without yeah, having a visa or something.
SPEAKER_00:But so insurance, Supergirl, drunk Supergirl flies over a country, creates a sonic boom, and blows out the windows. Does insurance cover that?
SPEAKER_08:Uh yeah, I'd no exclusion jumps to mind.
SPEAKER_02:But it's not a vehicle, also. Well, it doesn't have to be a vehicle. Wind.
SPEAKER_08:Wind, there's usually wind exclusions unless you have tornado insurance.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we're not gonna solve all these issues, unfortunately, tonight. Thank you all for coming. Have a great rest of your con if you're coming back tomorrow. And hopefully come back next year to another Legal Geeks Imposium.
