Ethan Brown '25
Features Editor
I learned two important things this week.
First, never trust Andrew Allard ’25 to be your advocate at the Virginia Law Weekly’s Monday meeting; despite pleading that he bring up my unavailability to write an article for this week’s issue during article assignments,[1] I now find myself typing furiously on my computer on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, relegated to committing what borders on journalistic malpractice by squeezing out an article as quickly as humanly possible.
Second, there’s a lot of litigation surrounding the holiday that soon approaches us: Halloween. To Andrew’s credit, when he informed me that I was on deck to write an article this week,[2] he gave me a pretty bang-up story idea: to investigate Halloween through the only lens a law student knows how—haphazard searches on Westlaw. The idea came partially from Andrew’s job as a Legal Writing Fellow for Professor Joe Fore, who introduced a new problem for this year’s 1Ls concerning the legal standard for impersonation of a federal official. While I was dismayed to hear that Professor Fore had retired the awesome saga of Chris Hopper’s Hop Lobster persona that dominated my 1L LRW experience, his new fact pattern made me think of a fascinating legal question. How, if at all, does October, and specifically Halloween—a holiday notorious for its elaborate costuming and deception—impact the ability to bring impersonation claims?
This seemed like a great question for about ten seconds. Until I did literally an ounce of research into it on Westlaw and realized that this idea, as hysterical as it sounds, has gone literally nowhere. Unsurprisingly. A quick query on Westlaw for “halloween” /p “false impersonation” yielded precisely zero results. But then my interest was piqued; what if I broadened the search to “halloween” /p “costume”? Then, my friends, things got good.
There are actually so many cases involving Halloween across so many legal fields. Torts, contracts, and criminal law predominate, but there’s a little something for everyone, just like the Halloween trick-or-treat bags of our youth.[3] As if everyone reading this article doesn’t have enough legal research in their life, I’d like to share some of the “bests” of Halloween law with you all. (And by the “bests” of Halloween law, I definitely don’t just mean some of the first several articles that come up on Westlaw.)
First, consider Guyer v. School Board of Alachua County.[4] In this thrilling Florida appellate case, a concerned parent sought a permanent injunction preventing the county’s public schools from displaying imagery of witches, cauldrons, and brooms. Appellants argued that these depictions constituted an endorsement of the Wiccan religion, thus violating the Establishment Clause. The fun-loving Florida District Court of Appeals had none of it, holding that Halloween festivities “serve a secular purpose” that “enhance[] a sense of community” and “do not foster any excessive entanglement between government and religion.”[5] So when you see spooky Halloween decorations around the Law School, thank the brilliant minds of the Guyer court and their like-minded jurists.
Second, consider a classic slip-and-fall accident exemplified by Bellikka v. Green.[6] While I’m not going to get into the granular details of this case, the basic premise is that the plaintiff fell into a large, partially concealed hole on the defendant’s driveway as she trick-or-treated with her preschool-aged children. Tort law aside—1Ls, this is an excellent opportunity to brush up on your premises liability, take notes—reading this case activated my fight-or-flight response. When I was a kid treat-or-treating in suburbia circa 2004, my neighborhood was particularly hilly; it took about ninety seconds to hike up to each house. One house was especially scary because the couple who lived there would purposefully turn off every light along their path and force you to walk up to the front door in total darkness. Some years, they’d dig little divots in the ground next to the path with the goal of tripping you up. I’m not saying I almost peed myself one year in my Mario costume, but I’m not not saying that. All this to say to the plaintiff in Bellikka: I really feel you, dude.
The treasures—or horrors?—continue. There are cases involving people using Halloween trick-or-treat messages to induce fraudulent signatures;[7] litigation over whether certain criminal defendants were above or below the acceptable age of trick or treat;[8] and so on. If you have a few minutes to spare while you’re dressing up for HalloQueen this Friday,[9] go ahead and treat yourself to the splendors of spooky-themed legal research. You (probably) won’t be disappointed.
---
bwj2cw@virginia.edu
[1] You might ask why I wasn’t there to plead my own case, but I had another meeting, and I really thought I could trust the man. Devastating.
[2] Again, I cannot reiterate enough how writing a weekly article is literally my only responsibility for the Law Weekly–the hint’s in the name—but I’m truly just so whiny.
[3] Minus the disgusting thirty Tootsie Rolls that I somehow always managed to end up with, ugh.
[4] 634 So.2d 806 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1994).
[5] Id. at 808.
[6] 306 Or. 630, 762 P.2d 997 (1988).
[7] Fox v. "John Doe", 12 Misc. 3d 1168(A), 820 N.Y.S.2d 842 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2006).
[8] State v. Watson, 144 Mont. 576, 398 P.2d 949 (1965).
[9] Be there or be square!a