Illinois "Pidgey's Law" an Overly Hasty, Muddled Attempt at Regulating Augmented Reality

Several news outlets have reports on this bill (AB 6601) recently introduced by Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy. Nicknamed "Pidgey's Law," the bill was introduced in response to reports that players of the augmented reality game, Pokémon Go, were trampling the habitats of endangered species in a federal park.

From the Chicago Sun Times:

Cassidy introduced “Pidgey’s Law” on Wednesday during a news conference at the Loyola Dunes Restoration Site. Named after one of the game’s bird Pokémon, the bill aims to crack down on location-based game developers to remove problematic gaming sites from their maps.

. . .  

If passed, “Pidgey’s Law” would give game developers up to two days to remove a location-specific site from its game if that site’s property owner, manager or custodian requests its removal. After that, developers would be fined up to $100 each day until the stop is removed. 

The bill is in response to a Pokéstop — real-life locations gamers can visit for in-game perks — that rests at the center of the dune restoration area, which is protected under state and federal law. The stop, based on an art installation that stood there a few years back, sometimes draws players off the designated path into areas where some endangered wildlife lives. 

The hundreds of Pokémon Go players who frequent the area each night have caused increased littering and vandalism as well as occasional trampling of the wildlife when rare Pokémon appear in the augmented reality of the game.

Other news outlets report on the bill here, here, and here. A common theme in all of this reporting is that the purpose of the bill is to remove in-game landmarks (in Pokémon Go these are known as Gyms and PokéStops) from private property or environmentally sensitive areas at the request of property owners or managers.

But is this what the bill actually does? Below are the pertinent sections of the bill. To make efficient use of these extensive quotes, I've emphasized the terms that are either undefined or that cause problems:

Alternative Rankings for Law Schools and Some Thoughts on the Impact of Scandals

Over at The Faculty Lounge, Alfred Brophy has a post where he discusses his paper, Ranking Law Schools with Lsats, Employment Outcomes, and Law Review Citations, which was recently posted on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This paper returns to the perennially favorite topic of ranking law schools. Where U.S. News & World Report includes a wide variety of factors – some of which are criticized as irrelevant to what prospective students care about (or should care about) -- this paper looks to three variables. They are median LSAT score of entering students, which seeks to capture the quality of the student body; the percentage of the graduating students who are employed at 9 months following graduation at full-time, JD required jobs; and the number of citations to each school’s main law review. This paper rank orders each of those variables, then averages those ranks to obtain a new ranking; then it compares those new rankings to the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Brophy includes a reorganized list of schools' rankings and indicates which schools are affected the most by the new ranking system. However, since Brophy's focus on the gains and losses is based only on the raw numbers of how the ranks of the school shifted, the biggest ranking shifts that result from the metrics change do not include schools that rank very highly on the US News Rankings. But there are a few noteworthy shifts that Brophy's approach causes among schools that rank highly in the US News Rankings. Under Brophy's ranking system, Columbia jumps to first from tied for fourth on the US News rankings. Georgetown ties for 8th rather than 13th. And Chicago suffers a notable drop from being tied at 4th in the US News rankings to tied for 10th in the new rankings.

Alienation of Affections in Illinois: Strategy, Reform, and Unintended Consequences

My last post had me thinking about Illinois and mistakes, and this reminded me that Illinois is one of several states that recognizes the tort of alienation of affections.

I learned about this tort during my first year of law school in Eugene Volokh's torts class.  In one of his older Volokh Conspiracy posts, he lays out the elements of the tort and the situations that most commonly give rise to alienation of affections lawsuits:

Alienation of affections basically consists of a defendant's (1) wrongfully (2) causing plaintiff (3) to lose the affection and often company of the plaintiff's spouse. In principle, it could apply to supposedly meddling in-laws, and has sometimes been applied that way, though if the in-laws are looking out for their married child's best interest such behavior might not be "wrongful." In practice, it has generally been applied to people who supposedly seduce away one spouse from the other (if it can be shown that they caused the alienation, rather than that a preexisting alienation of the spouses caused one spouse to be interested in the defendant's attentions). The related tort of criminal conversation basically consists of a defendant's having adulterous sex with plaintiff's spouse, though of course such conduct may also often lead to an alienation of affections claim. [I have corrected some punctuation discrepancies that appear to have been caused by the post's older coding.]

As Volokh goes on to note, the tort is still around in a number of states, including Illinois.  People continue to file alienation of affections lawsuits, indicating that the tort -- while seemingly archaic -- is far from dead.  Also at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein posts on why he teaches this tort in his torts class.

Illinois's formulation of the tort differs slightly from Volokh's description of the general elements, as no "wrongful" act by the defendant is required (meaning that meddling in-laws had better beware).  As the Illinois court of appeals stated in Orbeta v. Gomez, 733 N.E.2d 1287, 1289 (Ill. Ct. App. 2000):

A cause of action for alienation of affections consists of three elements: (1) love and affection of the alienated spouse for the plaintiff; (2) actual damages incurred by the plaintiff; and (3) overt acts, conduct, or enticement on the part of the defendant causing those affections to depart.

While Illinois is one of the states that allows parties to file alienation of affections lawsuits, the state has limited the scope of damages that plaintiffs can claim in such suits.  The Alienation of Affections Act (codified at 740 ILCS 5/1) bars punitive and aggravated damages in alienation of affections lawsuits and also states:

In determining the damages to be allowed in any action for alienation of affections, none of the following elements shall be considered: the wealth or position of defendant or the defendant's prospects of wealth or position; mental anguish suffered by plaintiff; any injury to plaintiff's feelings; shame, humiliation, sorrow or mortification suffered by plaintiff; defamation or injury to the good name or character of plaintiff or his or her spouse resulting from the alienation of affections complained of; or dishonor to plaintiff's family resulting from the alienation of affections. 

Despite this limitation, plaintiffs can still seek actual damages, and the tort lives on as a strategic option for those who are interested in aggressive divorce litigation.  Illinoisdivorce.com explains that while an alienation of affection suit may not result in a large monetary award, the lawsuit can still be used to wreak havoc on the life of an ex-spouse (I apologize for any offense caused by the source's overgeneralizations about gender):

New Citation Rules in Illinois

Via the Legal Writing Prof Blog, I came across this video on how to cite Illinois cases:

When the movie laid out the citation rules in the abstract, I was convinced that the Illinois Supreme Court had made a huge mistake.  Even the part of my brain that I had set aside to remember California's citation rules was appalled as the example began and the year of the decision was written without parentheses.

But when the full example was written out, I realized that this citation format has some substantial points in its favor.  For one, it is more compact than reporter citations in both Bluebook and California styles because the reporter volume and year of the decision are combined into simply the year of the decision.  Moreover, the rule's requirement that citations be to paragraphs rather than pages may end up simplifying citations that would typically span across multiple pages in traditional reporter citations.  If one is trying to quote a line from a decision, or cite to a case's holding, that holding or quote will probably be contained within a single paragraph.

I know that this development means very little for editors of law journals, since the Northeastern Reporter will still contain most Illinois cases that those journals will cite.  And I think that West's reporters have such a strong foothold in the standards and expectations of lawyers and law scholars that citation styles will stay the same on the broader scale.

But the Illinois rule change illustrates how citation rules can develop to become simpler and more aligned with electronic, rather than print, sources.