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?Pterodactyl Implications? for Lawyers: When All Else Fails

Over the years, I?ve compiled a (very) short list of authorities a lawyer can cite to When All Else Fails. This list includes the following, pretty much in order of frequency of use (at least from attorneys I?ve spoken to :-):

1) Marbury v Madison
2) Hadley v Baxendale
3) Statute of Westminster
4) Something, anything almost, from Blackstone
5) Bracton

And today, while tracking down another librarian lead (Government Database Restriction Access Information on Abortion ? also Wired story here), I found this:

Pterodactyl Implications (from the experiment):

?I recently read this news article about a man who ran his car into a pole, and when asked by the police what caused the accident his one word answer was ?pterodactyl?. I thought that was pretty great, and a friend and I decided that it would become our one word answer as well, to be produced when nothing else would work. Then, today I read this post about a tiny pterodactyl fossil found in China the size of a sparrow.?

Maybe I can start a When All Else Fails for Librarians list. Pterodactyl is a good word to start off any list, isn?t it?

Full post as published by Oregon Legal Research on April 04, 2008 (boomark / email).