January 6th Commision Hearings, Is an Elephant Legally a Person? and How Good is Top Gun Maverick?

This week on The Outlaw Lawyer, Josh and Joe are gonna tackle all things legal. What's going on with the January 6th commission hearings? Is an elephant legally a person? What?

And how good is Top Gun Maverick? And now, Outlaw Lawyer. Welcome in to The Outlaw Lawyer, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Whitaker and Hamer law firm, they're managing partners there, practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina.

They have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina and Gastonia. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. We get into the legalese, the topics each and every week. If you've got a situation that you are currently dealing with and you just have questions, you've run up against the wall, you just don't know what to do, I've got a phone number for you, 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. And leave your contact information briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the program, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com and we'll answer those questions on a future program. Please check out the website, theoutlawlawyer.com. So this week on The Outlaw Lawyer, Josh and Joe are gonna tackle all things legal. What's going on with the January 6th commission hearings?

Is an elephant legally a person? What? And how good is Top Gun Maverick? Alright folks, there you have it. Josh, Joe, let's get into it. Let's start with, let's go with movies.

Man, movies is always a great place to start. Guys, have you seen Top Gun Maverick? Have you seen it yet? I have not, and can I just say this right now, and I'm sure Joe's right on the heels with this, don't, if you haven't, I haven't seen it, so no spoilers. I've heard that it's, at least from the people I've been talking to, that it's really good, better than the original that came out, and I shouldn't say original, the first movie that came out, are you ready?

36 years ago. Joe, I'm not going to ask you how old were you when Top Gun came out, but I will ask you how old were you when you saw the original Top Gun? Oh man, so haven't seen the new Top Gun. I don't know, I don't have, you know, my memories of Top Gun are all like through like popular culture references, like I don't know that I was ever really enamored with the movie Top Gun at any point in my life, so I may have seen it, but I don't have strong memories of it, so like it wasn't something that really stuck with me or that like defined me or that had any impact on me whatsoever.

I'm going to take a quick sidebar. I don't want to get too distracted with this, but you know, my fifth grade, sixth grade, that was original Nintendo for me, right? That was original Nintendo, tried to play every game I could possibly play.

Top Gun had an official Nintendo game. Real quick, Joe, this is a sidebar to a sidebar. Do you know, there was like a, I don't know who voted, some video game. No, wait a minute. Now, if we're doing a sidebar on the show, I want to paint the picture.

You guys huddled up next to where the judge would be. I mean, is that the sidebar? Is that what's going on? No, no, this is a sidebar to the sidebar. We're just going to keep side.

It's like Inception. We'll just keep side barring. So you guys have to remind me so we can get back to what we were talking about, but my sidebar to the sidebar is there were some, I don't remember, there's some vote. Worst video game of all time, worst video game of all time. Wow.

Do you, do you remember, did you hear this? It was like last year or two years ago, but do you have an idea of what the worst, it's not Top Gun by the way, but do you have the idea of what the worst video game of all time was? I know, I know what the worst video game of all time was. So, but again, this is subjective too at the same time. Like that's a subjective thing. No, this is so bad.

It's not subjective. This is so bad. If someone could love this game. What is it?

Big Rigs. No, no, that's the worst, the worst video game. You Google worst video game of all time, any vote that's ever been taken in the history of video games. It was ET on the Atari.

Yeah. But see, I don't know, man. I thought I was a kid that had an Atari that you like that got handed down and I thought that game was pretty cool, man.

Like, I mean, it was terrible, but like. What was the, what was the objective in the game? I don't know the game. I haven't seen the game.

Haven't played the game. Look, I'm going to tell you what it was. You were ET, your ship had crashed. That's how the game started.

Your ship had crashed, you're ET. You go to the right, you fall in a pit. You go to the left, you fall in a pit. You go forward, you fall in a pit. And to get out of the pit, you needed Reese's Pieces. You had to collect Reese's Pieces. And that gave you the energy to use your, it was real weird. Your neck would go up and down and you could float out of this pit, but you can never get out of the pits.

Sounds like the pits. It wasn't a great, I mean, I'm not saying it was a fantastic game. Like, I mean, what on the Atari was a fantastic game, but like, I don't know, I felt like I was playing a relic of the past and I just felt, you know, I don't know.

Maybe it's just a nostalgia thing. The game sucked, obviously. I'm not sitting here and praising the game design. I'm just saying, yeah, it could be the worst game ever. It could potentially be the worst game ever.

I will give you that. If anybody out there gets bored, Google that. Because I think it might've been Deadspin when Deadspin was a thing, but there was somebody who took the time to write this huge article on how it got rushed into production. It had a debut with the movie. They were way behind. You can't finish the game. It had all these problems. $61 is what the Atari ET video game goes for these days.

How much? That's $61, man. That's a tank of gas. But apparently they dumped them all, right? They couldn't sell them. They dumped them in like a landfill, right?

It was like a hole. Yeah, people go dig it up. People figured out where it was and they dig it up and they clean them up and they sell them.

September of 83 is when they semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes crushed and buried at a landfill in El Paso, Texas. That sounds like a cool thing, man. It's a good story. Well, it's not really a good story.

It's a story. All right, so we're going to draw back from the sidebar and obviously Top Gun had a video game and that got you into the worst video game of all time. And now we're back to the movie. And you've seen it. Yeah, I played it.

I owned it. No, no, I'm talking about the movie Top Gun. No, we're not back to the movie yet. Look, we came out of sidebar, sidebar. We're still in sidebar. We're working our way back out of the movie.

Just trying to learn it. I'm trying to hang in there. Top Gun for Nintendo. I'm going to go on record.

I haven't seen this anywhere. Second worst video game ever made. It was really bad, but it's got that iconic, you know, you see that you see that case, you know, you see the case for it. And like it it resonates with you, man. Like that's one you would always see. And but yeah, it was also terrible.

I got it at like a yard sale and I would try to play it like once every like week. Like this is maybe I'm just because back then you didn't know, man, you couldn't Google anything. There was no YouTube instruction. Like you just assumed you were maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

Right. Maybe it's just all me. And it took you a while. You had to talk with your friends at school.

Somebody else had it had the same problem. Nintendo Power magazines. That's how you would learn about these games. Like you had no Internet.

So that's what you would end up doing is you'd read a magazine about it basically. All right. Now back back to Top Gun Maverick. I have seen it and it is it is good. It is very good. I won't say it's better than original Top Gun.

Original Top Gun I saw as a kid. And because I was a kid when it came out and it was good. Are you saying it's not better than like objectively it's not better? Are you saying it's not better to you?

Like in your like if you're you're thinking back as when you were a kid, how you took it when you were a kid. Like, have you rewatched it? It's not better. It's not better than the original. I have not rewatched it. I have not rewatched it ever. I don't think I saw you either. You make that claim, you know, and I can't give spoilers, but I could tell you specifically why I can't.

I could maybe later. Don't tell you. Don't do it. No spoilers. I'm not. No, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to do that to the people, to the good people who might be listening. Do they fly airplanes? They do. That's a spoiler.

There are airplanes involved. The but it was good and everybody should go see it. It's well worth seeing.

One day I'll sit around with you guys. I don't know when the appropriate time is to spoil something, right? Like I saw a stand up comedian.

I think you give it three weeks and then the gloves come off. I remember there's a stand up comedian. I can't remember who it is, but he's got a whole bit about what's that Bruce Willis? What's that Bruce Willis movie? Die Hard? No, the one that has the thing at the end. The Sixth Sense?

Yeah. So he had this whole series of jokes that were based on the Sixth Sense and he was doing them in like 2019. And that was the whole bit. He's like, look, I got some spoilers in here for the Sixth Sense, but it's a 20 year old movie.

I think it was Mulaney. It's like it's a 20 year old movie. So I think we're past the spoiler time. You know, we should be. I don't think 20 years is the appropriate time.

I think I think like a month really like a month is sufficient time to do that. You know, like I know there's a lot of important things going on and things that we should be talking about on the show about law and legal stuff and cases. And I think we need to come together as a nation and figure out two things.

We need to put all this bickering aside all these partisan politics and we need to get together and we need to figure out one. When can you freely talk about a movie and not be spoiling it for people? I think six. I think six months. I think six months after six months is a lot of time. All right. A month. How about a month?

No, I mean, I see that. I don't know, man. You're taking into account those people who aren't getting out to the theater.

You're waiting for the home release or the streaming release these days. So I think six months is generous. But like if you want to err on the side of caution, you know, that's that's probably let's say three.

Let's split the difference. Let's say three months. OK. Yeah, because at some point you're not even want to talk about it.

When is it going to come up? That's true. That's very true. I know, because movie number three is going to be 36 years from now. So this this reminded me like I thought Ghostbusters afterlife. Right. I enjoyed that movie. I thought they did just enough nostalgia that you had some new characters. Right.

Everything kind of I like it. And I'm not going to give you any spoilers for Ghostbusters afterlife, but it was a good movie. I think we're close to the I think we're close to the cutoff where you could, though, man, by our own established timeline. But I want more of these movies.

Right. I want more of these movies like like they're coming out with a new it's not a movie, but I'm so excited. They're coming out with a new night court.

I'm very excited. That was my favorite show growing up. That was made for you. Like they had the big wig executives. They got the whiteboard and like, who we got, who are we who are we making the show for?

It's just a picture of your face. We're not getting Josh Whittaker viewing enough stuff. We've got to dial him in.

How can we do it? I was like, maybe if you put night court and cheers together and like a new hybrid show, that would really that would really dial me in. They need to hire you, man. You missed your calling.

The anywho. One thing I didn't pay a lot of attention to, which is something that I think people would maybe expect us to talk about, but I haven't paid a lot of attention, is the the primetime January 6th commission. I haven't really I don't know. Joe, have you been you've been following that? No, you know, you know me, Josh, and you know that I I don't say I don't want to say I don't keep up with with those things, but like that's not my top priority necessarily.

So like I picked up on bits and pieces of it, but I have not followed it very, very closely. I I couldn't do it, man. I don't know why it had to be primetime.

Like if it was on during the day, I'd probably turn it on while I was in the office or doing something else. But the the primetime aspect of it had me confused. I don't I'm not really used to something like that being in in primetime, you know, and I got the boys there. We went holy moly. That's what we watched. We watched holy moly. You're really about that holy moly, man. But man, holy moly has has figured it out.

You know, we talked about this. They added the Muppet. I'm a big fan. Always have been like I love Jim Henson and I love the Muppets. And I grew up that was like my favorite show when I was a kid.

And you took something that was already great, right? Holy moly was already great. We can all agree to the greatness of the show.

Holy moly. And you add in the Muppets. And for me, that's like, man, that's like the Cheers Night Court thing.

I was like, you're just putting all this good stuff together. That's. But anyway, I thought this was interesting. A lot of people did pay attention to the January six primetime commission hearings. They say 20 million people. That was the rating. 20 million people tuned in, which sounds like a lot. Right. 20 million.

It does. It sounds like a lot to me. So I was like, well, you know, I know a lot of people watch the Super Bowl. That's one of the most popular things on TV. So I was like, all right, this year, how many people watch the Super Bowl?

And the number Google gave me was 112 million. Right. So a lot more people watch the Super Bowl. But that makes sense.

Right. And so then I got to thinking about TV shows like the last episode of MASH or whatever and all these things that used to be like in the top five. Last episode of Cheers was 93 million. And last week's holy moly, two point six, which I found a little disappointing. You know, two point six million.

But what I really wanted to compare to. So 20 million watched the January six commission primetime hearings. I can't remember what. What was the WrestleMania where they had Trump on it? Well, that's when Trump was on WrestleMania one point two million. Yeah, he was. He was. He like that's good stuff.

If you go back and watch it, too. Like you can't say what you want about the man's politics, but very entertaining to watch the man wrestle. And as he's still in the hall, did they remove him from the WWE Hall of Fame or is he still in there? Because he was in the celebrity wing, I believe. I don't know that they. Well, I don't know that they removed him. Like why?

You know, I don't I don't see WWE removing him. Well, the the that WrestleMania got is a little different, right? Because it wasn't in primetime. You had to pay. You had to pay for it. Pay per view. So it was one point two million pay per view buys. And eighty two thousand people were in attendance.

So we got two million on the WrestleMania. I don't remember when it was either, but it was like, what, 2010s. It was wasn't that long ago.

Twenty. He was inducted 2013 into the WWE Hall of Fame where he remains. I don't know that they really remove you from the WWE Hall of Fame.

Josh, I think once you're in, you're in. Didn't they remove Hulk Hogan? I thought I thought Hulk Hogan got removed.

Maybe not. You're making you're making me do research here, man. That's the reinstated him.

He had a he was suspended three years suspension from the Hall of Fame and they brought him back. OK, let everything die down, I guess. That's that's interesting. Interesting.

But anyway, it just I'm going to get back to it. Right. You know, everything I've understood is that, you know, they're the commission's not going to bring no matter what the commission funds. It's not going to it's not it's not going to charge Trump criminally. Right.

And however you feel about Trump, we're not here to say he's great or he's the worst person to ever live. But how we feel about it, this commission may charge some other people criminally. It sounds like they don't intend to charge Trump. I guess the Department of Justice has said they are watching the hearings and they may or may not do something.

I don't know. But yeah, man, I haven't I haven't been able to get into it. And then usually I would or at least read a good summary or, you know, but the prime time turned me actually turned me off. I would have paid more attention had it not been put in a prime time, which had it not been conflicting with holy moly.

I think you'd have been right there with it. Well, Joe, we have real legal things to talk about and got two of my you know, we had we had Justice Kavanaugh. We had someone get charged with attempted murder who may have been was found with weapons and what have you. And the resulting there's been some legislation about protecting judges. And I want to talk about that for a minute.

So that's coming up. And in this one, I kind of like bizarre legal cases. And so the one that made the news here recently that kind of piqued my interest was the plight of Happy the Elephant.

And it was litigated whether or not he he should have civil rights, the same rights as a person. And this one struck me odd for a couple of ways. And then we got some listener questions. So we got a pretty, pretty full docket today.

All right. Well, a stack show on the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your hosts. They are the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. And again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia.

If you have your own legal situation you're facing, you've got questions. I've got a phone number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info and briefly what that calls about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can always email your questions to the program. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We're back right after this. Back on the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm are your hosts. They are the managing partners. They are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate.

Want to remind you, too, that Whitaker and Hamer conveniently located offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. And if you have a legal situation you're facing and you've got questions, I've got a phone number for you and you can get some answers. Here it is. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. And just leave your contact info and briefly what that call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. Again, you can always email your questions to the program and we'll use them on a future show. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

Again, that's questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. Well, the show has gone to the elephants. Gentlemen, take it away.

Joseph, I feel bad about this last segment. You were talking about video games and you you offered your suggestion of what the worst video game of all time was. And honestly, I don't even know what that game is.

And I glossed over you. I think this is ageism and went straight to E.T.. What was big rigs? Just so I know, it's a it's a 2003 racing game where you control us like a semi trailer truck and you kind of race a truck through checkpoints. It was real bad, man. It was really bad. That's all I've got for you.

You're never going to know about it because it's, you know, I walk I walk through. Was that PlayStation? Yeah, it was. So 2003.

Let's see. What did it actually come out for? Probably it was Windows came out for PC. But, you know, Metacritic, you've got Metacritic who like compiles reviews that do like an aggregate review score. And it got the lowest of all time, which was an eight out of 100. Hey, you got that you got that list in front of you. What's that? The list of the lowest games of all time?

Yeah, I'd like to know like the bottom five. Mm hmm. Let's see. Let's see.

I walk through my walk. My boys were playing video games and I always thought when I grew up, I'd be that cool dad that played a lot of video games with my kids. I never play any video games with my kids. They were playing deer simulator and they had a deer. You ever play that? No, not really. It's not my it's not my game, man.

It's not my type of game. Like they were being a deer. Yeah, they used to. There was a goat simulator.

Right. So they used to play goat simulator. But I now and I guess I don't know what it's called. I am familiar with goat simulator, but again, well, now there's really never did it for me from the makers of goat simulator came deer simulator. And so they were down there with a deer who had guns for antlers like fighting a guy. I was like, OK, you're you know, you did not have me at deer simulator. But then when you describe what it was like, I'm going to be honest with you, you kind of it's kind of speaking to me now, man. Well, yeah, this is not a good list.

You're not going to know any of these games, man. So I think we go on to elephants. All right. All right. All right. Legal stuff. Legal stuff.

Right. So there was a case, New York, New York State Court of Appeals. It's been widely reported on every media outlet seized on this story. But there's a happy there's got is an elephant named Happy. But apparently he's not not a super happy elephant.

He's he's in a zoo. And so we have a nonprofit group who decided to sue. They filed a writ.

I think we talked about this one time. They filed a writ of habeas corpus. It's not something that attorneys deal with every day, but a writ of habeas corpus. I guess criminal attorney might deal with it some, but it's illegal. I don't know. I would say illegal confinement. Right.

If you've you know, there's there's all types of things that it could cover. But anyway, a writ of habeas corpus is what you use when you have got a defendant, someone who's charged, who's being illegally or improperly confined. And so it's to get them out of jail rights to get them out of this confinement. And so this this nonprofit organization that is concerned with animals treatment, fought a writ of habeas corpus that was denied on the lower levels and they went to the Court of Appeals and the Court of Appeals.

I think the amazing thing is that this made it to the Court of Appeals and that the Court of Appeals spent a lot of time letting the parties argue. And then we got a 5-2 decision from the Court of Appeals that said the animals were not human. Right. They're not entitled to civil rights, human rights. They can be confined. You can't be cruel to an animal. I mean, all that's still the same. But these folks, their argument was that that animals or at least certain animals should have the same rights as a human, which I think is crazy.

Yeah. To me, that's just crazy. I can't believe it went to the Court of Appeals and it was a 5-2 decision, Joe. So that means two Court of Appeals judges, justices wrote opinions saying that, in fact, humans should be treated.

I mean, animals should be treated as humans. And this is just I mean, maybe it's just me. Maybe other people read this and it doesn't sound crazy. I mean, but to me, it sounded crazy. No, Josh, it does sound crazy. And when you boil it down like that and you're like when you literally just boil it down and you're like these, you know, they rule that animals are, in fact, not humans.

Like, I think that illustrates the absurdity of it. And like, I don't want this to be misconstrued and anyone to think that I am not someone who believes in animals being treated properly. I love animals, man. I love elephants. I think they're fantastic animals.

I really do. But like, there is a line that we draw between a human being and an animal. And we use you know, we really love to throw out the slippery slope term. And I think you see this is this is one of the greatest illustrations of a very, very slippery slope. It's like a slope that you put a tarp and dawn detergent on and you can just really slide down because you start you start classifying animals, you know, and you give them the same rights as humans. And what do you do, man?

Like, where do you where do you draw the line there? Like, I want to eat some of these animals, Josh. It's very important to me to have some of these animals and to eat them. And I can't eat you, Josh. I can't eat another person. So that would be a real problem for me in a lot of ways.

Where does that leave us? The crazy thing to me is anybody can file a lawsuit, right? And that's what I tell people. We'll have people that come in for a consult and be like, well, this is my concern.

Yeah, I don't want this, you know, I don't want this to get... Anyway, anybody can sue anybody for any reason, right? And it doesn't have to be legitimate. Like, you know, you might be if I went and filed a lawsuit against you, Joe, and there was no basis in it, like I might end up being responsible for your attorney's fees. There might be some sanctions or penalties for any attorney that might have tried to help me with that. But I can do it. And it can just get thrown out of court.

And they'll be like, you're crazy, right? You have no standing here. Get out of here. Don't come back, right?

You know, but you can still do it, right? So people still have to defend these things. And so, sure, like how crazy is it that they filed a writ of habeas corpus and filed it for happy the elephant? And then some lower level judge did the right thing, at least in my opinion.

I was like, this is stupid, you know, get it out of here. And then they appealed it to the Court of Appeals and the Court of Appeals not only heard the case. And again, I don't know the state of New York.

I'll be there next week. But I don't I don't know how they I don't know if they get to pick. All right. Or do the court of appeals have to hear anything that was appealed? Like, I don't know the process for the state courts of New York. Again, a good reminder, me and Joe are only licensed to practice in North Carolina, but they heard there were oral arguments. There were pleadings filed and a judge and seven justices, you know, voted and two of them were on board. And not only were they on board, right? They wrote sharply worded dissents and they didn't agree. They both agreed that the elephant should have some rights, but they didn't agree exactly how it would happen. So they wrote their own dissent. So there were two.

Usually a lot of times there's one dissenting opinion and everybody will join in. Sometimes there'll be two if one judge has another legal theory he wants to express. But here we had two justices who think, yes, happy the elephant should have human rights. But and they got there differently. Right. They were different.

They wanted to say different things about it, which is that's just it's like one level of crazy after another level of crazy. One of the quotes from, I guess, Judge Jenny Rivera is one of the dissenting justices who thought happy, happy's right should be protected. And so her quote was from her opinion was, Happy's captivity is inherently unjust and inhumane. It is an affront to a civilized society. And every day she remains a captive, a spectacle for humans.

We, too, are diminished. And I was like, what? What else? What's that? I didn't get it, man.

I just couldn't follow it. I was like, what's these moments? You know, you can have these moments in life where you're doing a thing, you know, you're in your profession or your career and you're doing a thing. And and like you have that moment where, like, the light bulb goes off and you're just like, what am I doing right now? Like, what am I doing in my life? What is what is this? And I think for me as an attorney, that moment would be when I am drafting a sharply worded written dissent about whether or not an elephant should should have the rights of a human. I think that would be that moment for me.

I it was it was this when this kind of thing succeeds, it's just shocking to me. And look, man, we got we got little dogs, right? I need that. We got little dogs that are useless, right? They don't serve any they don't do anything. Right. They're not they're not protecting us at the house. Right. They're not they're just living this life of obscene luxury for a dog.

I would I would argue. But so we're not we're not at home torturing animals. You know, we're not supporting dogfighting. No, I love animals. Please don't get me wrong. Don't mystery elephants.

Treat them very well. But my love of animals is is it does not extend to they should have the same rights as humans. But I don't know, Joe. I thought that was just a crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy story. Crazy, crazy case and not important in the grand scheme of things besides there. There are people in the judiciary who side. That's that's the whole story to me.

There's there's two people out there who are judges that think elephants should have the same rights as me and you. Right. Yeah. It's one of I was just going to say it's one of those cases that kind of gives you whiplash. You see it and you're like, what?

Really? And it's kind of hard to look away from it. You've got to talk about it.

Yeah, I got to talk about little dogs, Josh, like little dogs. And I don't know. This is a tangent. You know, this is a sidebar.

This is our third. But like you think about like a little dog and how you say they serve no purpose. But like think about that little dog came from like a giant wild wolf. Right.

Like that's the descent like they were. How do we not have tiny domesticated elephants? Because I'd really I could get down with like a mini elephant pet, to be honest with you. I saw I saw a news story or this to someone somewhere. They got pygmy, a part of a part of my hypothesis is that it got one pygmy, a part of us hippopotamus.

Yeah, people were like losing their minds. Yeah, the hippopotamus are like the danger, most dangerous creature in the world. Right. Well, not that.

Isn't that a thing? I don't know. They're pretty dangerous. The big ones are.

I would imagine, you know, mini me would be pretty dangerous, too. I don't know. There's one quote I want to share before we leave this story.

But in one of the I don't remember where I took this from. But anyway, the nonprofit founder is a guy named Stephen Wise. And his quote was he said he was pleased that they managed to persuade some of the judges, you know, to go with them on their side here.

And he noted the group has similar cases underway in California and other states and has more planned in other states and other countries. This is a nonprofit who who exists solely. This is their goal.

We want somewhere, some jurisdiction, some state, some country to say animals should be treated with the same rights as humans. And that's that's their that's their sole goal. So this is someone, you know, when you talk about judicial when you talk about, you know, active activism through litigation. I'm using the wrong term.

I can't I can't bring the term to mind, but that's that's what this is. This is a nonprofit. This is their goal.

And they're going to keep going until they they can do it. But but interesting, the outlaw lawyers tackling elephants in this portion of the program. We're going to come back and talk about more legalese. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your hosts. You can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They're the managing partners there. And they're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices conveniently located for you.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina and Gastonia. And if you have a legal situation and you've got some questions, I've got a phone number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact information briefly what that call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch with you. And also, you can email your questions to the show and we'll answer them on a future edition. And that's questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. And check out the Web site. It's a good one. The outlaw lawyer dot com.

We're back right after this. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host, the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm offices conveniently located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina and Gastonia. And they are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week we get into the legalese and other types of discussions.

Always a lot of fun. We do understand that, look, there are there are legal situations going on with a lot of our listeners. And if you have a question about what you're currently going through and you need an answer, I've got a phone number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what that calls about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch to help answer some of those questions. You can also send your question to the show. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

That's questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. Gentlemen, we're going to go to the Kavanaugh case. Well, before we do that, Morgan, I got two things I want to I got two things I want to talk about before we get there. One, Joseph, I know you're doing some Internet research in our last segment. Can you give me the top three movies of all time that featured an elephant?

Well, again, these are subjective things. And so if you look at the rankings, if you look at like the rankings online, you get the top three. They give you as Dumbo as number one. Oh, that's a good I think that's animated Dumbo. Then they've got Babar the movie as number two. Babar.

It's Babar. Excuse me. I'm not a big fan of.

But I wasn't either. And then you got Tarzan as number three, which I don't even is I really even a truly an elephant movie. I mean, is the elephant the feature role there? I don't think so. I don't remember. My list is not like that. My list doesn't go like that.

I think my list goes number one for me personally is you ever seen that? You probably haven't, Josh, because you don't watch movies. The Protector. It was called Tom Young. It was like a tight Taiwanese movie. It's like an action film. Fantastic. You should check it out. It's got features and it features that he protects an elephant.

And if you're into action movies, you'd really like it. And then I'm going to go Dumbo number two, obviously. And then I'm going to go I think I'm going to go.

Horton, here's who? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you got a bad bar. Those are like books like bar, but it's a bar bar. Those are the books that were like in the doctor's office that you only read if like every other book was gone. Yeah.

And every time you read them, you're like sick with the flu because you're in the doctor's office. And the painting bar for like that, she ate him with feeling like crap. Well, I felt like you mentioned that during the break. And I felt like that was important enough where we needed to. We needed to get back to that. But the second thing I wanted to remind everybody. Is that a lot of times me and Joseph, we like to we like to sidebar, right?

We like to sidebar. That's a nice way of saying it. And but we are still real attorneys, right? We have I feel like we have to convince everybody.

Yeah. And I think I feel like after we talk for like 30 minutes, we have to we have to circle back around and remind everybody that me and Joseph were Whitaker and Hamer. And just like Morgan tells you, when we come in, we're real attorneys. We're licensed to practice in North Carolina. I hear from some of our listeners. So some of our listeners do, in fact, call us and and get legal advice. Right.

Schedule, get a consult. And we've helped a lot of listeners. And we and that's one of the reasons we do this show.

Right. We want to hear from our listeners. But I feel like when we're we're we're kind of being super silly.

Sometimes we have to come back in and remind people that we do like to have fun on the show here. But we are real attorneys, competent. I would argue competent real attorneys. Very competent. Right.

You can help. Have you seen the research we do on the fly about elephant movies? Like, come on. But but anyway, a very serious thing to talk about next. You know, we talked about we had a whole show where we had Cassandra and Taylor on with us.

And we talked about the leak, the big the Supreme Court abortion leak. Right. And and that was a very serious thing. You know, we talked about it and it was very serious for a lot of reasons because it never happened. It's kind of more evidence of how our society's not respecting, you know, traditional norms. Right. That was something that never happened.

And, you know, generations past, you know, the Supreme Court's kind of a respected institution and they operate in a certain way. And so we've been seeing the fallout from that leak. There's a lot of it. One, there's a whole story we could talk about about how they're going to figure out who leaked it, you know, who's in charge of that. I don't think that's really going real well. We haven't really heard. There's no leads right on who may have leaked that.

I don't know that we'll ever figure that out. So that's a part of the story. But the other part, you know, is is it is very easy.

I haven't done it right. But apparently it's very easy to figure out where, you know, public officials live. Right. So after it got leaked, you know, the justices all had folks like protesting on their in their neighborhoods, like on their yards.

You know, they were getting death threats, you know, things like that are happening. And that's never good. Right. That isn't that that isn't a good thing to happen. That's our public officials should be able. Our elected officials should be able to do their jobs as they were elected. And certainly everybody has the right to protest and disagree.

But I don't know if camping out on their yards because they're doing something you don't like is the should become the normal thing that happens. But, you know, it would even further for Justice Kavanaugh, who was kind of a lightning rod when he I don't know that. We have to go into the circumstances around that. But when he's getting confirmed, it certainly was a very. What's the word contentious, contentious?

Yes, contentious. Anyway, so he's kind of a lightning rod. And and it wasn't even his opinion that was leaked. You know, the opinion was was being written by another justice. But he anyway, they found a guy in his neighborhood armed with his address, who I guess sounds like, at least from the admitted that he was going to attempt to kill Kavanaugh.

And so he was there was some kind of tip someone gave and he was picked up and charged with attempted murder because he made it very clear this was his intent. And for me, that's, you know. It's just, you know, and then the House and the Senate, I don't know if you saw this, Joe.

So it's kind of that's a crazy situation. That's a deadly situation for Justice Kavanaugh. He's a Supreme Court justice.

He needs to be able to act in and perform his public duties, his official duties in a way where he doesn't think he's going to get murdered tomorrow. Right. You know, so the Senate and the House have been trying to pass a bill to get the Supreme Court families some protection. They're not really covered now.

And maybe some folks who work for the Supreme Court, like, hey, we're not to protect them like we protect the president and, you know, other federal officials. And so the Senate and the House have been going back and forth trying to pass this bill. And they haven't agreed.

Right. They haven't been able to agree that this protection should be offered. And the arguments, I don't know if you saw some of the arguments, Joe, but some of the arguments were were a little crazy. There's a there's a there's some Democrats that won't vote for it because they want abortion providers to receive protection in the same bill. So they kind of want to add that on there. And then there's some there's a New Jersey contingent that wants it. You know, there was a terrible story of a federal judge, you know, family being killed in New Jersey. They want the protection to go on down the line to other federal justices. But it's just it's just weird to me to see this this play out. But it's it's not good. You know, Josh, one thing we always do on this show is we really strive to be nonpartisan, to not take sides, to be very neutral in our approach to things.

But I want to go on the record and I want to say that we we unequivocally think it is a terrible thing to threaten to kill Supreme Court justices in response to their their the the rulings that they issue. I'm confident in putting that on the record for. We're going to have to have to spend some time one day going back.

I don't know. We've done 50, 50 of these shows, 55, something like that. I think we have to go back and have someone record everything that we were comfortable. Right. We were comfortable going on the record.

And I'll extend that. I'll extend that to say I think anybody should be able to perform their job without the fear of being murdered by someone for that job and giving, you know, giving additional protection to someone, especially like we have a super vested interest as a as a society. For our Supreme Court justices to be able to, you know, rule on things and and do what they do from the bench without fear of repercussions. Like if if if it gets to the point where someone can be swayed or fears enough to really impact the way that they they issue a ruling. I think it's a terrible, terrible thing for us as a society.

Yeah, it's it's not good. It's the you know, and we're seeing it in different ways. And and every generation, I think, sees it to some extent. So no matter what, you know, we like, you know, we see it, we see different things happen every generation. I think every generation kind of feels like it's going off the rails a little bit.

It's not like it was when I grew up. You know, I think you have a lot of that. But I do think we're seeing I think we're seeing some signs that that that's happening. Right. You know, and maybe we you know, the pendulum always swings. Right. So things get a little crazy and then people get tired of it and it swings the other way.

And there's more law and order. And it's just kind of how it works out. But it was a very disturbing story and everybody reported on it and it kind of went away. And the one thing I hate when something like this gets reported, the real important thing is, well, what what are we doing about it? You know, like, what are we doing about this? You know, because that's what happens with some things like some things. We talk about it in the national news cycle for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And then, you know, nothing happens, you know, and it's just anyway, it's neither here nor there. We're not going to solve it on today's show, but it's disconcerting. And it's it's just definitely something to keep an eye on when it when it things like this pop up in the news. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, you can find them at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They are the managing partners at the firm. They are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

And they have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. We're going to get into a few more topics before we wrap this show up. But if you've got a legal situation you're facing and you have questions, I've got a phone number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch to help you with that question. And you can always send your questions to the program. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We're back right after this. Welcome back to the outlaw lawyers. Your host are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm and practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Offices conveniently located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. And if you've got a legal situation, you can always contact the firm. Call eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. And leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. If you've got a legal question and you can get an answer, an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the program.

Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. And speaking of listener questions, I believe we have one. We do. We do.

This is one. Again, we get we get a lot of the same questions over and over again from different clients at different times. But this is a question that we we get every so often.

And so I've kind of compiled those questions into into one generic fact pattern that we can take a look at. But here is how I have phrased the question. So we've got a client who's got two siblings and their mom has their elderly mom has passed away. Left them a house, left all the her three children a house, including our client. And our client tells us that her sibling is living there and is is rent free.

Right. Not paying any rent, not maintaining the home, not paying the tax bill, not cutting the grass. Generally, just not taking care of the house, has decided that they're going to live in mom's house and they don't care about anybody else. And our client doesn't like that. There are clients, a one third owner. They inherited one third. They're not living there. They're not getting any rent and they're probably forking out some money to take care of the property. So they want this. They want the sibling who's living there to pay her fair share. So it's a sister in our fact pattern living there. They want her to pay her fair share.

What can they do? Right. So that's the that's the legal question. Joe, what what pops in your head when you get that question? You know, we this is a question we actually get fairly frequently and maybe not phrased exactly like this, but it's not uncommon for someone to come into our office and present this same similar fact pattern where you've got, you know, co-owners who've inherited a property.

And a lot of times, you know, people think about this. And the first thing that pops into their mind is, well, you know, this person is living there. I need to have them evicted. I just need to take, you know, get them thrown out and have an eviction done.

But, you know, that's not the way these things work. You can't just you can't evict a co-owner, someone who is a co-tenant or co-owner of the property. Eviction isn't the proper method to go about it. You know, if you have a rental situation, of course, then you can evict someone. But this isn't someone that's renting from you.

This is someone who has a vested ownership interest. And in that scenario, there's there's no way to evict that person. That person does have a right to be on the property. That person has the right to occupy the property. So you have to you have to go about it a different way. But in this particular fact pattern, I think there's a few preliminary questions you have to ask. The first being, you know, wasn't a state ever open for your mom? Because the first issue that you're going to have to take care of is proving your ownership of the property as well.

I think that confuses a lot of folks to Joe, not to not to sidebar, go down a rabbit hole. But, you know, in North Carolina, if you know, if something happened to me tomorrow, my heirs at law inherit real property. So a house right at the time of my death.

Right. They it's theirs. That's how it works legally. Like I own it until the day I'm dead and then my heirs get it. But who are my heirs? Right to the general public. You may not know who my heirs are.

And so what do you do? You go open up an estate at the courthouse. You know, if it's done properly, the estate, I kind of tell people, I always say it kind of acts as a deed. Right. It shows the general public who the heirs of, in my case, Josh Whitaker is.

Right. Who inherited his property and it's all there. It's an estate file.

A clerk has signed off on it. We know who our owners are. So hopefully that's been done, because that's how you prove to anyone that's not you, that you own the property. So assuming that's been done and sure enough, we've got three siblings who all inherited one third of the same house. What you would do what you're left with, you know, like like just said, eviction doesn't isn't the way to go.

That's not going to work for you. It's not trespass. Right. Because they have a right. They are one third owner. Right.

It's not a trespass. Any of the owners could be there at any time. And so you end up there's a legal proceeding called petition to partition.

And it's just a fancy word for for saying, hey, we're going to we're going to sell this house. I'm only a one third owner. Maybe the other two people don't want to sell it. Maybe one person doesn't want to sell it because they're living there rent free. But I'm a one third owner. I want my equity out of this property.

I want to sell it. And of course, it's much more complicated than what we're making out to be. But it is a it's a legal action that you can take to to handle just the situation.

And so that's what you end up doing. And a lot of times we're doing estate planning for folks. We talk about this like, OK, you want to you want to leave everything to your three kids, share and share alike. But these three kids are gonna have to work together if the asset is one house.

Right. So there's things you can do to try to you know, that's the whole point. If you're estate planning, you don't want to leave your kids or your heirs or your surviving spouse. You don't want to leave them a bunch of problems. You want to have worked through all these things. And there's all kinds of ways to do it.

But here, obviously, it wasn't done. You got a problem. So now one or two of the kids are going to have to go hire an attorney.

It's not the cheapest action. Right. Petition to partition. You're going to be going to court. You got to you got to put some stuff together. But that's that's where you end up.

If the if the siblings can't agree that, hey, we should sell this or you can live here, but you have to pay this much in rent, then you got to go to a judge and handle it that way. Exactly. And I think one of the things that we tell people in that scenario is it's going to be costly. You know, it's litigation. You're litigating and it's a it's a process and it's going to be timely and time consuming.

You know, this isn't a thing that's going to occur quickly. So, you know, we always try to. One of the things I think we do in every situation, you know, for the very most part, is try to encourage some some form of alternative dispute resolution where you come to a compromise and you come to an agreement outside of this process. Because generally speaking, it's going to be better.

Everyone's going to everyone's going to be in a better spot if you can all come to some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement ahead of time. Because when you when you do this partition procedure, you know, it's to a large degree, it's out of your hands. You're putting it in the court's hands and you're not going to maintain a lot of the elements of control that you would have otherwise. But, you know, a lot of people aren't reasonable. And unfortunately, that's where the basis for most litigation comes into play is you have folks that you just can't reason with that aren't interested in working with you or compromising in any way. And in that case, you just have to go the hard route. And this would be the hard route.

But it's but it's something that's doable. And, you know, you mentioned the fact of, you know, this person wanted him to pay their fair share, pay their taxes, et cetera, et cetera. All of these things can be factors in that partition proceeding. But it is going to be a matter that's going to come before a court and a judge. And it's going to have to be handled the hard way, basically. Well, guys, I know that we're up against it, but it really pays to be proactive.

Talk to your parents, especially if there's going to be real estate involved. Make sure you have that legacy plan in place. Will, trust, however you want to go. But if you've got questions in this this arena that we've been talking about, you can always contact Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. And get those questions answered for you. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will return your call. We're going to take a short break and we're back right after this. Welcome back into the Outlaw lawyers, your host or Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, also practicing attorneys here in North Carolina offices conveniently located.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina and Gastonia. Gentlemen, we're up against it, but you've got some closing thoughts. You know, Joe, it occurred to me just as Morgan was bringing us back, we didn't. We haven't talked about Johnny Depp, Amber Heard since the since the decision came down.

I guess that's old news now, but we never talked about it. Yeah, it is, man. You know, that was something that really burned very hot there for a while. And you had a lot of folks really absorbed in it. A lot of people keeping up with every single move. And then, you know, you get the you get the verdict.

It comes out and it kind of just dies out a little bit, you know, pretty much just dies out from that point. So I think it is old news now. We missed the boat. Well, if, yeah, because they both will say they both won, but one Depp got a bigger judgment than the other one. But I think everybody gave the win.

I think if you look at it, I think you look at it and you have to say that that Depp came out on top in pretty much every appreciable way. If you look at that case, I'm actually a little glad we don't have to hear about it anymore. So I'm the one who's sitting here talking about it, bringing up.

But I'm kind of glad that one. Why did you bring it up? You didn't want to talk about it. Why did you bring it up?

I don't know. I just thought about it. And you had it written on your script. That's why I did. I had it written on the script as something that we never got to.

And there it was. But but yeah, we again, Joe, Joe and I attorneys, we're in North Carolina and we're licensed to practice in North Carolina. So when we talk about stuff, we're talking about North Carolina law in North Carolina specific. But we do we do have six offices about to be seven or eight here before too long. But we're we're usually close by. We're happy to consult with you. Our attorneys, we're always happy to sit down with you as we get further and further away from the official pandemic.

People are more inclined to sit down in the same room and talk about your issues. But we're also available by phone. We'll schedule Zoom consult sometimes.

And we have a couple of attorneys who do a lot of those. But we're we're happy to sit with you. We're happy to talk with you.

We definitely would appreciate being able to help you with your with your legal problems. That's what we we do every day. So we and Joe sit around every day and have folks tell us what's going on. And and we do our best to help them through because there's there's usually a way out. There's usually a way it can work out. You need a strategy. You know, experience matters.

Having seen things before, having been around for a little bit, old enough to have seen Top Gun as a kid when it came out. So I got we got that going for us. But we're always we're always happy to be helpful to you.

It's kind of our goal here. The Outlaw Lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. Again, if you are facing a legal situation and you've got questions, here's the number. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what that call is about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch and you can always email your questions to the program. Questions at the OutlawLawyer.com will answer those on future editions. It's been a great show, guys.

Have a great week and we'll see you next week right here on the radio. Outlaw Lawyer is hosted by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on the show may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion of the show is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney licensed in the state in which you live. Had the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on the show are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of the show, contact us directly.