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As Maui Burns, Power Companies Land In Court

·43 min·12 clips

Amber McKinney welcomes listeners to Pro Se with Alex Lawson and Haley Knapp. The opening revisits the show’s long-running fixation on Fyre Festival and the legal fallout that followed. Amber says she was low-key obsessed with the story. Alex agrees it became one of the show’s first hobby horses. The trio note that the podcast launched around April-ish 2017, right as the fiasco was unfolding, which made it an early and formative subject. They say they kept following the litigation as it moved through court, and Amber also remembers getting pulled back in by the documentaries. The conversation then shifts to a legal dispute over murals painted on the side of a school community center. The question is whether covering the murals with a barrier counts as destruction. Haley and Alex frame the issue around a building-based mural and the limits of legal recourse. The panel explains that the work was not a canvas that could simply be removed, but art fixed to a wall. The hosts note the artist had already lost in district court. On appeal, the Second Circuit again rejected the claim. The opinion says the law protects against damage or modification that compromises the work. Simply hiding the art from view is not the same as modifying or destroying it. The hosts point to the opinion’s line that the wall did not touch the murals and did not physically alter them. They draw a clean line between concealment and active harm. The episode ends with a familiar caution about being careful on the internet. It wraps with thanks to the guests, producers, and listeners before the show’s sign-off.

As heard by us

A clean legal listen that pairs mural litigation with a familiar Fyre Festival detour.

This episode is a compact, clear take on a Second Circuit dispute over whether putting murals behind a barrier counts as destroying them. The Fyre Festival jokes give it an easy way in, but the legal discussion does the real work.

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Why you'd press play

You want a legal-news episode that walks you through a clean Second Circuit holding without burying you in doctrine.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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