Good talk on blocks

[Van Canna]

Valkenar »

Maybe the best thing to do is overcome the idea that fighting somehow makes you manlier. Cultivating a mindset based on the idea that it's the guy who starts the fight that is the lesser person could help some people to relieve feelings of inadequacy for not having gotten in a fight.

Then again, it's one thing to tell yourself "the fact that he's beating on the hood means he's a childish idiot" and another to make it enough a part of your worldview that you believe it without having to consciously say it to yourself.

A lot of the aftermath psychology here seems rooted in trying to establish or defend your sense of manhood. It may not be possible for everyone, but if you can overcome the need to worry about whether you're a real man or not, then you don't feel bad for avoiding fights.

I don't think it's absolutely inevitable that backing down from a fight will make you feel inadequate.

- Justin Powell

[Van Canna]

But then 'emotional high jacking' sets in.

I agree, and we should all strive to achieve this healthy emotional state. But at times it isn’t you that makes you feel inadequate, it is your friends and family, or dojo mates that will make you feel like a second class citizen.

Also, we must understand that the great majority of martial arts students got started because they probably took a beating or backed down from confrontations.

So after training..and still backing down..can do some funny things to your head.

No easy answers.

[Van Canna]

CANDANeh »

I don't think it's absolutely inevitable that backing down from a fight will make you feel inadequate.

If you backed down for the reason(s) you believe in then what others say to lower your status should have no effect.

In the case of the "BMW boys", they are effected deeply because they were forced to back down and indications are they regretted it as they made excuses and it became uncomfortable in facing their peers.

They not only became the target of an attack but they are suffering through significant self doubt because they were unprepared to deal with the attack, even though they may have actually reacted properly.

Candaneh

[Van Canna]

Cross training

Why do you think many teachers/except GEM/actually prohibit their students to cross train with other teachers? It is human nature and fear of looking bad.

Ted Dinwiddie »

One aspect of cross-training is the opinion of the instructors involved. Some instructors will not like it and others will be in full support.

There are egos involved and you may alienate yourself from one school because of your affiliation with another.

Then there is the ability to bring another aspect to your training and that of the others in your school.

Some instructors love outside perspective and can work from that to further your understanding of their own concepts.

This leads to the common recommendation that one should reach a dan-level rank in one's core style before branching out.

The point being that you have not reached a level of knowledge and competence in the basics of a particular style sufficient to fairly compare or supplement with another. I don't know.

It would have confused me to cross-train at my early kyu level, but that doesn't make it bad for you.

Maybe you don't have a core style (yet or never) and you are still checking stuff out. Cool. It can be difficult to attain rank in two styles at once; very time consuming, for one. Maybe rank means little to you and that is fine, too. But, without being invested in the curriculum of a particular school or system you may miss out or be excluded from some training.

Special "brown belt practices" and such. It can also depend on the similarity of the styles. This does not apparently apply to you, but I remember a young woman in my school (Okinawan Kempo) who was simultaneously practicing another style of Okinawa-derived karate.

She actually demonstrated some of their core techniques when asked to perform some of ours during a test. The validity of the techniques was not questioned, but she was testing in a particular style and curriculum for a low-mid kyu rank. She did not pass.

I started in one style of karate (Ohshima Shotokan) and met with little success in that curriculum. I drifted away from MA in general for a while, but felt the need to be part of a practice somewhere.

I then found my current instructor. Ten, or so, years later I reached shodan. I have just begun cross-training for the first time, in judo.

It is important to realize that the karate school I belong to and came up in is a very inclusive place. We all attend as many seminars as possible and invite other styles to come and train with us.

So I was not ignorant of other points of view. But to be learning basics again and from a completely different direction is a blast. As a matter of fact, the judo basics are dovetailing quite nicely with what I have already been learning.

So, be wary of dividing your available focus to the point of diminishing overall gain. But, remember that there is always another way to accomplish everything.

ted

[Van Canna]

Akil Todd Harvey »

Everybody,

The first thing I think about when people say dont cross train before bb is the fragile karate teachers ego. You just trying to learn how to save your own but and now you have to worry about the teachers ego (not all, but certainly many.

I made BB in 92 and moved to this area in 99. I looked around for the Uechi dojo (I know, orange county-thanks), not finding one all that close to the house, I started looking st a Korean all in one style (grappling, striking, etc, all in one style). I found a nice hapkido place real close to the house and while I really wanted to join, I was taken aback by some of their policies.

First policy I could not live with in the hapkido dojang(?): No cross training outside their dojo, regardless of rank (BB-dont matter-NOT allowed).

I did not rerally need to know much more than that since I askeed them if they would mind if I occasionally worked out in my own style occasionally.

Let me tell you, they minded...............and so did I........

There are reasons for NOT wanting your students to cross train and some of them even have to do with the training.

ATH

[Van Canna]

https://www.coxandpalmerlaw.com/site/me ... 202017.pdf

Justice Iacobucci cautioned that a court must look beyond the labels used by the plaintiff in drafting a statement
of claim, and determine the true nature of the claim pleaded. He then provided guidance as to the proper
resolution of a duty to defend situation where the pleadings alleged both intentional and non-intentional torts:

“ … Having construed the pleadings, there may be properly pleaded allegations
of both intentional and non-intentional tort. When faced with this situation, a
court construing an insurer’s duty to defend must decide whether the harm
allegedly inflicted by the negligent conduct is derivative of that caused by the intentional conduct.

In this context, a claim for negligence will not be
derivative if the underlying elements of the negligence and of the intentional
tort are sufficiently disparate to render the two claims unrelated. If both the
negligence and intentional tort claims arise from the same actions and cause
the same harm, the negligence claim is derivative, and it will be subsumed
into the intentional tort for the purposes of the exclusion clause analysis.

If, on, the other hand, neither claim is derivative, the claim of negligence
will survive and the duty to defend will apply."

[Van Canna]

Parenthetically, I note that the
foregoing should not preclude a duty to defend simply because the plaintiff has
pleaded in the alternative. …

The reasons for this conclusion are twofold. First, as discussed above, one must
always remember that insurance is presumed to cover only negligence, not
intentional injuries. Second, this approach will discourage manipulative pleadings
by making it fruitless for plaintiffs to try to convert intentional torts into negligence,
or vice versa. …”28 (emphasis added)

[Van Canna]

And further Justice Iacobucci stated:

“… In the context of an insurance contract’s intentional injury exclusion clause,
the goal is to determine the gravamen of the complaint, and whether one can
infer an intent to injure from that complaint. …”29 (emphasis added)


As noted above in Reeb v. Guarantee Company (supra) the Court concluded that the legal allegations were not
properly pleaded because all of the particulars pleaded in the underlying action were founded in negligence
with no suggestion of an intentional tort.

The labels used were consistent only with negligence while the
evidence supported an intentional act. The damages resulting from the negligence pleaded were entirely
derived from the intentional shooting. The harm which resulted from the intentional shooting was the same
harm upon which the claims in negligence were based.

The Court was clearly of the view citing Tedford v. TD
Insurance Meloche Monnex30, Monenco31 and Scalera32 that this was an appropriate case to “look beyond the
labels used by the plaintiff in the pleadings to ascertain the “substance” and “true nature” of the claims.

It was
the Court’s conclusion that this was an example of a plaintiff drafting “a statement of claim in a way that seeks
to turn intention into negligence in order to gain access to an insurer’s deep pockets”.33

[Van Canna]

My observations here, based on this legal article, are from the viewpoint of a professional liability claims field investigator and case litigation management along with defense attorneys assigned to particular cases in the evaluation of applicable policies coverage, defense and indemnity obligations under insurance contracts.

Most martial arts practitioners as well as the ones who have a license to carry concealed weapons, even as they might give a thought to liability insurance protection against civil action by perps...have no legal mechanism in place for criminal charges that might be brought against them...

and absolutely no understanding whatsoever of how the manner in which their criminal defense is handled and disposed...will affect their liability insurance policies [Homeowner's/umbrella] as to coverage or denial of benefits.

A criminal defense attorney may not necessarily be able to improve a client's chances to ultimately secure insurance coverage for any subsequent civil litigation, but if the attorney consults the relevant policy, he or she may be able to prevent taking an action in the criminal case that irrevocably surrenders the client's right to pursue insurance coverage.

This is a veritable 'can of worms' best left to specialists.

Without some sort of legal mechanism in place...think of your karate moves as 'patty cake play' and most definitely, leave your concealed weapons at home, because you are now knocking at the gates of hell.

[Van Canna]

A criminal defense attorney who wants to avoid entering a plea in a criminal case that will automatically trigger an exclusion in a client's insurance policy should first examine the policy language.

If a particular client's policy includes an intentional acts exclusion or an intentional criminal acts exclusion, a guilty plea to an intent-based crime will likely establish the application of those exclusions.

Conversely, a guilty plea to a crime for which intent is not an element will still preserve the client's right to argue that his or her actions were not intentional and thus that those exclusions do not apply.

But, if the policy includes a broad criminal acts exclusion, Daniel and Aldrich indicate that any guilty plea conclusively establishes the application of the exclusion and cuts off any right for the insured to argue that he or she is entitled to coverage.

[Van Canna]

THE CRIMINAL ACTS EXCLUSION

Like most clauses in insurance policies, criminal acts exclusions come in different forms. Some policies contain criminal acts exclusions that are very broad and simply exclude coverage for any suit arising out of a criminal act or omission.

Other policies use criminal acts exclusions that bar coverage only when the criminal act was committed with intent to cause harm. The policy language is the key to determining whether a guilty plea to a particular crime will bar insurance coverage in a subsequent civil action.

[Van Canna]

The Devil's bargain=plea agreements.


https://www.cato.org/publications/comme ... ne-justice

From a defendant’s perspective, plea bargaining extorts guilty pleas. People who have never been prosecuted may think there is no way they would plead guilty to a crime they did not commit.

But when the government has a “witness” who is willing to lie, and your own attorney urges you to accept one year in prison rather than risk a ten-year sentence, the decision becomes harder.

As William Young, then chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, observed in an unusually blunt 2004 opinion, “The focus of our entire criminal justice system has shifted away from trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence bargaining that is heavily rigged against the accused.”

Talk about ending up fuked in any self defense situation you might be in....

[Van Canna]

“Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. “[T]he negotiation of a plea bargain, rather than the unfolding of a trial, is almost always the critical point for a defendant.”

One of the most critical being the destruction of defense and indemnity coverage under your liability policies...that will leave you open to financial collapse in a law suit against you by the person you hit or shot in self defense.

[Van Canna]

According to the Court of Appeals, the guilty pleas in these criminal cases were the conclusive facts triggering the mandatory application of this version of the criminal acts exclusion.

In these cases, the insureds had no opportunity to introduce facts to argue that the exclusions did not apply (for example, that they did not actually commit crimes, even though they pleaded guilty). Any hope for coverage was lost the moment the courts accepted their guilty pleas.

[Van Canna]

CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY

A criminal defense attorney who wants to avoid entering a plea in a criminal case that will automatically trigger an exclusion in a client's insurance policy should first examine the policy language. If a particular client's policy includes an intentional acts exclusion or an intentional criminal acts exclusion, a guilty plea to an intent-based crime will likely establish the application of those exclusions.

Conversely, a guilty plea to a crime for which intent is not an element will still preserve the client's right to argue that his or her actions were not intentional and thus that those exclusions do not apply.

But, if the policy includes a broad criminal acts exclusion, Daniel and Aldrich indicate that any guilty plea conclusively establishes the application of the exclusion and cuts off any right for the insured to argue that he or she is entitled to coverage.