All Rise! Coyote Court Is Now in Session - The New Yorker

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before this honorable court are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the court is now sitting. Today, the court will issue a decision in the case Coyote v. Acme. A special judge has been drafted into service. He is the Honorable Michael Levine, a personal-injury attorney known to TV and radio audiences in the New York City and Long Island area as Motorcycle Mike. His chambers are in Islandia, on Long Island, with tennis trophies on the desk and an electric shoe buffer in the corner. Levine will hear the case on a break from deposition prep for a client who fell down a boat ramp at a marina.

CASE SYLLABUS: In the new film “Coyote vs. Acme,” based on a piece published in this magazine in 1990, Mr. Wile E. Coyote alleges that the Acme Corporation’s defective products, including rocket skates, dynamite, and a boulder catapult, caused him such injuries as severe burns, eye bulging, and dissection into three parts. His attorney is played by Will Forte. Levine considered recusal, on the ground that he kind of knows Forte’s father: “I’d go helicopter skiing up in British Columbia. We’d always stay at this lodge called the Monashees Lodge. To ski at the Monashees Lodge, you’ve got to be a pretty serious skier. And Reb Forte always stayed at the Monashees Lodge.” Recusal was declined.

SUBDECISION, ON THE FILM’S ARTISTIC MERITS: Levine held, “I was really conflicted about the coyote because he was likable and then he was not likable. At times, I could really relate to the coyote, and other times I thought he was just diabolical. Ultimately, I think the coyote was going after that roadrunner because it was just instinctually part of its chemistry. It couldn’t help itself, even though it was wrong.” Decision: not bad.

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ORAL ARGUMENTS: Acme could invoke the doctrine of foreseeable misuse. “There’s an argument that his use of the rocket shoes to chase a roadrunner was not foreseeable,” Levine said. On the other hand, he went on, “I think Acme knew the products were going to be used for nefarious purposes. They bear responsibility if they’re selling dynamite without knowing who the purchaser of that dynamite is. It wasn’t like the purchaser was a mining company. It was a goddam coyote.”

PRECEDENT: Are there any anvil-related decisis to stare? “Literally hundreds,” Levine said. “I’ll show you one.” He pulled up a video, in which a construction worker is standing on a steel beam, twenty feet off the ground, as another beam is hoisted via crane above his head. “My client is a union worker,” Levine said. “That I-beam, by the way? Sixteen thousand pounds.” Suddenly, something snaps, and the hoisted beam falls. It somehow misses the worker. But the crane fell on the beam he was standing on and knocked him to the ground. Levine shook his head. “People suffer,” he said. Rocket skates had precedent, too. “E-bikes,” he said.

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PERSONAL BIASES CONSIDERED: Levine feels for the coyote. His line of work has taught him that danger lurks everywhere. “When I drive my car anywhere on Long Island, I’m, like, O.K., I sued that company over there, I sued that landscaper over there. That municipality? Sued them,” he said. “I’ll tell you a story. I’m driving to work seven years ago, in a really nice Porsche Turbo. I stop at a light. I wake up in the hospital four days later.” A woman going sixty miles an hour rear-ended him and launched his car three hundred feet. “The police thought I was gonna die,” he said. He had twelve broken bones and a bleed in his brain. His bowels were resected. He was back at work seventeen days later, without a spleen. “It’s like an appendix,” he said. “You can live without it.”

JUDICIAL MUSINGS: “The attorney’s advertising in the movie was really effective,” Levine said. The key is to be short and memorable without being unserious. “It’s really easy to remember ‘Call Motorcycle Mike.’ My firm advertised a little bit over the years, but if we advertise on TV as ‘This is Rappaport, Glass, Levine & Zullo,’ who the fuck’s gonna remember that?” There are some exceptions, like Cellino & Barnes. “They had the jingle. And Cellino & Barnes is a two-name firm, so it’s not that hard to remember.”

LEGAL ANALYSIS: “The coyote’s got to have a theory of liability, and he’s got to have severe injuries.” The biggest question, jurisprudentially speaking, was whether the coyote’s injuries warranted compensation. An incident that for others might be fatal—a free fall from a high bridge—affects the coyote for only a brief moment. “He is very resilient,” Levine said. “He goes right back to his old habits. Maybe the damage was psychological, like P.T.S.D. But I think the jury’s gonna say, Give me a break.”

DECISION: “I don’t believe you, coyote. You’ve got to have an injury. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time.”♦

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