Distinctions Without a Difference

In law school you get taught about material facts. There is a famous case (at least famous to people that went to the University of Miami and took “Legal Reasoning” when I did) about a car accident. Damned, but I can’t remember the name of the case. I think it was written by Benjamin Cardozo. But, at its center is a “blue Buick” which teaches you about material facts.

Is either the fact that the vehicle is blue or a Buick material to the legal issue? Well that depends. The case is about an auto accident. Do the legal issues to be resolved include whether the brakes contributed to the accident? If so, the fact that they are Buick brakes and thus Buick might have some responsibility makes Buickness a material fact. Did the accident happen at an intersection that happened to have a building with a blue wall there, from which direction the Buick came from, which might be why the other driver didn’t see it and thus crashed into it? Again if so, the vehicle’s blueness might be a material fact. If no is the answer to both questions, then the only material fact is that the blue Buick is a vehicle that crashed with another vehicle. The hunt for materiality must go on.

So where is this going? Well, I’ll tell you.

Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are up in arms about Media Matters calling Rush out for referring to “phony soldiers,” the plural is important to the rhubarb. Rush dissed soldiers who opposed the war, or maybe he dissed one soldier, a guy named Jesse McBeth (who happened to have washed out of basic training, presented himself as a veteran and told the media he didn’t like the war) labelling him or them as phony. Media Matters jumped on it saying Rush was dissing all of our soldiers who weren’t in line with Rush and the Administration. Rush, rushed back saying he was only dissing Jesse.

Both sides miss the point. Whether the disses are singular or plural is not material. What is material is that Rush thinks less of those that oppose the war than those that support the war. That being so, he labels him or them as phony, so as to reduce their, or his, credibility. He doesn’t bother to examine what is being said and whether it has merit whether said by a serving soldier, an honorably discharged soldier or a Jesse. Rather he attacks who says it and dismisses or supports what they say based on the position taken on the war without analysis, masking his factually unsupported attack by using the phony label.

Rush isn’t a lawyer to my knowledge. I suppose Media Matters has a few on staff or available. Both sides ought to think about materiality before they engage the next time. The debate might be more material to the issues that face us, rather than wasting our time distinguishing differences that mean nothing.

UPDATE: The case is McPherson v. Buick Motor Co.. It is indeed by Justice Cardozo, then on the New York Court of Appeals, early in the last century. I can't find the actual opinion to make sure the Buick was blue, but that is my recollection. Having done the search, I've remembered that the case is also famous for a more important matter than teaching baby lawyers about materiality. It expanded tort, or negligence, law. The case found Buick had a duty to inspect the parts it bought from others, and failing in that duty, despite not being "in privity of contract" to be liable to people like McPherson, who bought the car from a dealer, who were injured when a part fell apart (a wheel) and the facts showed that an inspection would have shown that it was defective.