Page 316 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
thought that Municipal Problems somehow related to issues in “poverty law.” In fact, as I found out in the first class and from the course materi- als that were handed out, the concentration would be on municipal finance—in other words, on (tax-exempt) bonds, their purposes, and the power of states, cities, and their agencies to issue them. As was my wont, while I would read the materials, most of them toward the end of the semester, I promptly stopped attending. Very close to the end of the semester, however, in a relatively rare appearance, I was having coffee in a law school lounge when a student who knew me came by.
“Did you know that Farnsworth wants to see you?” he asked. “What!”
“Farnsworth wants to see you.”
“Why?”
“Dunno, just know that he wants to see you.”
“How do you know that?”
“There was a message on his office door saying that he wants to see
you.”
“He has an office at the school?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“It’s on the fifth floor of the stacks.”
“What stacks?”
“The library stacks. I was up there looking for a carrel when I
noticed his door, and then I saw the message.”
I had taken Civil Procedure in the first year and knew that your
adversary couldn’t start a lawsuit without having to “serve” you person- ally with papers, unless he had first made reasonable and unsuccessful efforts to try to find you. If he couldn’t find you, he could serve you by “nail and mail”—that is, by sending a copy of the summons to you and physically attaching a copy to your last-known address: your basic due process, you know. Now, I recognize that we’re not talking about a start- ing a lawsuit. But putting a notice on your door and in a part of the building where students seldom trod did not strike me as the best way to get hold of someone. There was a student directory, and it actually had
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