It's a pretty big ego stroke when a Ninth Circuit opinion and dissent substantially revolve around what you meant when you wrote your law review article.
That's what Donald Chisum -- whose ego probably doesn't need any additional stroking, since he's already a big stud -- gets out of this opinion.
He writes a law review article in the Washington Law Review back in 1973 (he was a professor at U-Dub Law School at the time) that discussed whether the Washington franchise statute covered franchisees who were located out of state. The Washington Legislature then amends the statute in 1991 to respond in part to Chisum's article. And the question in 2011 then becomes what Chisum meant and what the Legislature did.
People sometimes say law review articles don't matter. This case proves that they clearly do. As long as they're written in the early 70s.
