NEWNAN PRATLAW|| 14th amendment essay

The Supreme Court is reviewing a Chicago gun ban statute this term. The case is McDonald v. Chicago. This is what little I can recall from listening to Nina Totenberg's (PBS) interview with him: Mr. McDonald, an elderly man, was upset that on 3 different occasions "Utes" came to his home to "visit", would not leave when he asked, demanded that they vacate his property and then stole everything he owned that was valuable. Mr. McDonald decided to purchase a gun to help him persuade the "Utes" the next time they came to visit that they should leave his home without looting it. Mr. McDonald's acts were apparently illegal according to Chicago's handgun ban. Legally, the case poses the prospect of the Supreme Court finally issuing a decision as to the extent of the scope of the 14th amendment and if they take on that topic the case could be one of the most important cases in our lifetime. It is more likely that the Court will just strike down the handgun ban and limit its decision to the specific statute. I posted the link on my blog at Hot Legal Topics|CLICK NAME TO GO TO IT. Hope you find the topic relevant enough to follow and keep up with the Court's decision.

KEEP YOUR ORIGINALS CLEAN|| MAKE A COPY...

...to make notes on. Why? When it comes to documents:

Over the past 23 years I have come to appreciate the fact that Judges as a whole do not like being given documents with highlighted passages or handwritten notes beside the part of the document you think is important. Doing that is really close to a demand that the Court become a participant in the blind men and the elephant philosophical exercise about the scope of perception: The Blind Men And The Elephant Fable and they do not like the Socratic Method to the extreme of banality, i.e., rain is rain you cannot assert you do not understand it until someone explains it to you and you "feel" it. What all this means in plain English is: (a) The Judge controls his or her court room and no one else has any right to control it. So make a copy of any document you feel the urge to write on, so your lawyer can present the 'clean' one to the Judge and draw the Judge's attention to the passage you have highlighted in your 'dirty' copy by asking the Court's permission to draw its attention to that passage; (b) A testifier's inability to grasp easy questions and evasive answers soon turns a Judge off [and a Jury Too]. Do not engage in Tabula Rasa Socratic Responses [inane question answers to straightforward questions], and; always remember: Neither Judge nor Jury need to be hit over the head with information they can clearly see or hear. They really can be trusted to figure it out.

CHANGES IN MODIFICATION OF SUPPORT LAW

The Changes are substantial and are reviewed at this link: GA Family Law

Call today for an appointment. The cost is minimal for the information given.
770-253-7778

|||TORTIOUS INJURY USUALLY INVOLVES THE PHYSICS OF ENERGY|||

Winslow Homer's famous painting of the pastoral child's game 'crack the whip' is a great illustration of the dynamics of energy transference. Notice that the 'base' of the whip requires two boys to fight against what is probably a 2+/- mph transference of energy ["click" the picture to see the full image] and that energy is more than enough to fling the last two boys off the whip! Imagine now the energy transferred to the bodies of passengers of a vehicle that has just been hit in the rear by a vehicle whose speed at impact exceeded 7 mpg. Whiplash can be a chronic malady, particularly the older you get. Read more about this and other tort injuries at |||PRATLAW ON INJURIES||| or call today for an appointment to meet with an experience attorney regarding your vehicle collision: 770-253-7778
call now before evidence is misplaced or forgotten.

2010 BIG CHANGES FOR THE GOOD

R. KEITH PRATER, P.C. will change its name over the course of 2010 to PRATER & ASSOCIATES as Attorney John D. Duncan has associated with the Firm. Keith Prater is excited about the prospect of mentoring John in the beginning of his practice. John has worked hard to gain his law license and has since associating with the Firm proven himself more than capable, winning outright his first trial, a difficult modification of child support and medical payments case, and obtaining a Not Guilty verdict in his second trial in a misdemeanor case. John's association will allow the firm to handle all the calls coming in from prospective clients many of which were not being returned as the firm's practice grew so large over the past two years that on multiple occasions new prospective client calls were not returned because workload and returning existing client calls consumed the entire workday. We have since John cam on board in October been promptly returning calls more than 95% of the time.

IF YOU CALL ME AND WE DON'T HIT IT OFF I WILL ...

REFER YOU TO ANOTHER GREAT LOCAL LAWYER OR TWO OR THREE TO CHOOSE FROM. THERE IS NO ONE GREAT WIZARD OF OZ LAWYER HERE OR ANYWHERE BUT THERE ARE A NUMBER OF REALLY GREAT ONES AROUND HERE ||||

WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY, here is a repost with solid logic for you to consider:

First: always consult face to face with an attorney regarding any matter that is serious to you.

Second: The ancient mathmatical logic mandate is alive and well today: "All things being equal the simplest answer is the correct answer". This is the anglicization of the latin maxim attributed to the mathematician Ockham, called "Ockham or Occam's Razor": Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."

Third: The 'Devil Is In The Details', always was, and always will be. || The hard decision is deciding when all things are in fact equal and what the things are that are equal. That is where experienced legal counsel comes in ~

Fourth: Experience is not just a linear time continuim but also requires/mandates actual real involvement in significant disputes and litigation; a lawyer could, after all, get his/her license, go to sleep like Rumpelstiltskin, wake up 50 years later and parade around proclaiming "Come see me!! I am a Lawyer with 50 years experience" ~ of course the experience would be that he or she had been asleep at the wheel for the past 50 years! Unfortunately some lawyers proclaim just about that.

Fifth: Experience is a great teacher - being asleep at the wheel not so much. Hire a great lawyer with real life experience and a lot of it.

A FEW THOUGHTS FOR CHRISTMAS TIME

Rambling thoughts at Christmas Time: Children are egocentric and get more so the older they age. Do not transpose your beliefs in how you think they should see divorce. Remember they get 2 Christmases. They will wonder if the divorce was their fault and need to be told it was not ~ once. Like horses and pets, Children not only learn from our words, but our tone, cues, gestures, etcetera. The phrase 'grown children' is an oxymoron: after age 18 human beings in the United States are as a matter of law no longer children but citizens, sons and daughters ~ and childhood is but memory. Make your memories fond. Don't qualify to go on the Jerry Springer Show. Here's Wishing You Nothing but The Best! Godspeed you in your life's journey, may you Live Well, Love Truly and Prosper From Your Endeavors!