Monday, May 10, 2004
The Load Warrior
We get an email newsletter here each day - “Today’s Legal News.” It’s usually pretty dry, with one or two small items of substantive or political interest. However, I did particularly like this small item, lifted verbatim from the “Today’s Brief“ section: “A sperm donor has no child support obligations or parental rights unless he’s signed a contract saying so, a Washington court has found. In an apparent case of first impression, the state’s Court of Appeals took a load off a married man whose longtime girlfriend had two children by his donations. The woman, who had received financial support for the first child, had sued to collect for the second, but her former boyfriend argued that he never agreed to Baby Dos ... “
I really don’t have the energy to pursue the implications of this ruling to the reducto ad absurdum to which all legal decisions are susceptible, so I don’t have any opinion on whether this is good or bad law. I just see that the court took a load off this dude. He must be psyched - you know, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I guess he found himself a little amicus curiae in his briefs. Just more proof that the gavel of justice makes for strange bangfellows.
