Tuesday, December 29, 2009

People v. Pham (Cal. Ct. App. - Dec. 28, 2009)

Justice Bedsworth begins this opinion with the following opening line: "There appears to be no limit to the ability of our species to devise new and different bad things to do to each other."

Strong words. So I was anticipating a particularly vicious and unprecedented attack.

But it turns out that Pham, a chiropractor, gets convicted of tricking people into letting them touch them intimately in the guise of treating them.

Which is assuredly totally wrong. But something that's hardly novel, with a history going back at least centuries, and almost assuredly millennia. Indeed, for unrelated reasons, just last week I was reading several dozen cases in which the defendant did exactly what Pham did. Despicable? Yes. Novel? Hardly.

So while I agree with the sentiment, I gotta dissent from the surprise. New pony. Sadly, very old trick.