XIV. Give examples of legal expressions which have become adopted into general English.

XV. What features of the following passage should be omitted, if it were to be included in a legal document:

She envied Nigel and Myrtle. They were obviously having a lovely honeymoon with a perfect alibi, and what was a score or so of rich and raucous fellow guests to them? She wondered how soon she would escape. She supposed she would have to stay for a few days, and decided that the only thing which she could do to make the visit tolerable would be to select the richest and least raucous of the young men in the house-party and enroll him temporarily as her devoted slave.

XVI. Can you rewrite the above text as a part of a legal report of criminal machinations?

XVII. Write a three-paragraph composition on one of the following subjects:

1. The Role of the Jury in the Court.

2. Capital Punishment.

3. The Duties of the Notary Public.

XVIII. Read the following pieces of advice how to protect yourself. Have you ever found yourself in the situations described?

Preventing Identity Theft
Could This Be Your Story

When Janet Romano opened her credit card bill, she got more than she bargained for. ”I’m diligent about matching up my receipts to my bill, ” Romano said. “Several of the charges were mysteries to me.” A call to her credit card company began a months-long effort to recover from identity theft and credit card fraud. First, Romano found thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges on her credit card bills. She disputed each charge but the finance charges kept growing. She even found a purchase of an Internet domain name on her bill. That domain name created a Web site that scammed people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Some people using the scam site knew how to look up the name of the site owner. A public directory listed my name and phone number. I actually got messages on my voice mail threatening to break my legs, ” said Romano.

Romano thinks that identity thieves got her information when she replied to an email asking her to refresh her email account information. It looked like a real request – so real that even a cautious consumer like Romano replied with her personal and financial information. Such email tactics are called “phishing.”

Unfortunately, phishing is growing way to steal someone’s identity. And it’s only one way. Identity thieves can take your personal information from your mail box or your home. They can steal your wallet or purse, or convince you to give out personal information. We all have to be on our guard.

Identity theft is the fastest growing white-collar crime. It happens when an identity thief obtains some pieces of your personal information. The thief then uses the information about you – without your knowledge – to commit fraud or theft. The identity thief is disguised as you. The trail leads back to you.

As with any crime, you cannot completely control whether you will become a victim. But you can minimize your risk. You can be alert to how the crime happens. And you can manage your personal information cautiously.

What Is Your Identity?

If you ask most people to identify themselves, they probably would tell you they are skinny or balding, tall or short. Or they may say, “I’m a baby boomer who’s planning a second career after I retire. “You might hear, “I’m a new grandparent and I’m more thrilled about it than I ever thought I would be.”

You may be tall, dark, handsome, a boomer and a grandparent. But that is not your identity – at least in the identity theft sense. Your identity is all those bits of identifying information about you that are pieced together to make your financial identity: name, address, Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, ATM PIN (Personal Identification Number), date of birth, bank account number.

How Do Thieves Steal Your Identity?

You may be wondering how your identity can be stolen if you still have your own identity – and you haven’t lost your credit cards or recently. Many victims of identity theft are shocked to learn that someone else has been taking out loans, ordering cell phone accounts, getting new credit cards and even committing crimes using the victim’s identity. Thieves do this by collecting those bits of identifying information about you and piecing them together to create a “new you.”

It’s like there are two of you – the real you with your good credit, and the person pretending to be you. Without your even knowing this other you exists, the identity thief does financial things using your identity. The thief’s real name and identity are invisible because the thief uses your name and identity.

John T., an airport security guard, took a short vacation to Mexico. When he tried to return home, he was arrested at the border – because “he” was wanted for murder. John was held in jail o a fugitive warrant until he could prove “he” wasn’t the suspect and that his identity had been stolen. After a week in jail, he finally was able figure out that someone had found his driver’s license and applied for a new one using his picture and John’s information. That person was wanted for murder. But his driver’s license number was the same John’s.

Mary W. had been widowed for ten years. One day she got a call from a bill collector demanding payment for thousands of dollars of electronic equipment. Someone using her deceased husband’s name had purchased the equipment and not paid for it. She never found out how they got her husband’s Social Security number. But she realized that she had recently thrown away a lot of old files while cleaning out his desk. The thieves must have found her husband’s Social Security number in those old files. They used it for an “instant credit” application at the electronic store.

Sue G. decided to go high-tech and purchase her first cell phone. She was denied credit because “she” had $568 in unpaid cell phone bills. When she started investigating where this phone bill came from, she checked her credit report. There, she learned that someone had opened other accounts using her name.

Fred T. found that retirement was not so exciting after all, so he applied for a part-time job as a clerk at a neighborhood store. He got turned down because “he” had an unpaid court judgment for $15, 000. Eventually Fred figured out that a workman in his home had taken bank account statements off his desk. The thief must have used Fred’s personal information to borrow money. When the loan never got paid back, it ended up in court.

Maria C. got a bounced-check notice and fee from her bank right after she had deposited her pay check. She finally found out that someone had stolen a check out of the middle of her checkbook. It must have been when she left her purse in a grocery store shopping cart. They used her bank account number to open a new account, order new checks, and withdraw all the money from her account.

It’s pretty scary how ordinary people going about their day-to-day business suddenly find out that their identity has been stolen. An identity theft can make your life pretty miserable. Victims universally complain that it takes days – or even months or years – to straight out the financial mess created by identity thieves. Sometimes the victim never finds out how it happened. We also know that sometimes there is nothing the person could have done to stop the thief. But there is no reason to hand them the tools they need to commit their crimes.

No matter what you do to secure your home, it can be burglarized. But we all make sure we lock the doors, stop the newspapers, and leave some lights on when we go away on a trip. We don’t leave the keys in the car, the windows open, and a laptop computer on the seat when we park our car. Now let’s look at what you can do to make your identity less inviting.

Your first step is to make the identity thief’s job more difficult. You want to limit the thief’s opportunities to piece together bits of information needed to create a new identity.

Think back to the experiences of Janet, John, Maria and others. What pieces of information were used to steal their identities? Can you think of other essential pieces of personal information that make up your identity that you don’t want thieves to get?

Take a moment to write down on a piece of paper at least five bits of information that a thief needs to create a new you. This information about you can be found in many places.